Giving Up the Search for What’s Wrong

True self love begins the moment we decide to give up the relentless search for “what is wrong with us.” The desperate and often unconscious belief that if we find what is wrong with us - we could fix it and escape the source of our suffering.

Part of my own healing journey involved a phase of longing for an answer, an explanation, a diagnosis - I needed a why. Why was I in so much pain? Why did relationships feel so hard? Why couldn’t I sleep? A part of me held out hope that if there was a name for what I was going through, then there had to be a cure.

This seeking part of me found myself in a psychiatrist’s office and the diagnoses rolled in, I bought in and took own these new labels as my identity. I took the pills and prescribed to the lens I’d been given to make sense of my experience. But still, something was missing.

The more I leaned away from the medical model’s pathologization of my suffering, the more the truth emerged like a many petalled flower. There was nothing wrong with me - there never had been. Parts of myself had only come to believe that after they had internalized the trauma they’d been through. My suffering and the mechanisms I had developed to cope with that suffering, disordered eating, dissociation, avoidance - were remarkable adaptations that had helped me survive. But the core part of me, my Self, had survived unscathed.

Internal Family Systems, (IFS) teaches that each of us has a core Self that is curious, compassionate, clear and capable. We are not broken, even though parts of us may believe that we are. Once we start to approach our healing from a place of what is already whole, already healed, already well - we can start to put down the corrosive belief that something is fatally wrong or flawed about us. Then we can approach the parts of us that feel broken with the compassion that they need to heal.

What would happen if let go of the belief that something is wrong with us? How would the way we orient to ourselves, others and to life itself shift? What if all our painful emotions, the grief, the rage, the numbness - were adaptive responses to trauma and not proof of our inherent unworthiness? In the current world we’re living in - grief, rage and numbness are natural responses to living in deeply broken systems.

So the next time a small voice within starts to tell you the old story that something is wrong with you, how can you turn towards that part of you with compassion? With curiosity for when and where they learnt that? Every “symptom” or strong emotion is a part of us crying out for our love and understanding. If a plant is failing to thrive, we don’t ask what is wrong with that organism, we ask is it getting enough nutrients, water and sunlight? Let’s start turning towards ourselves with that same radical acceptance and compassion, every “symptom” and feeling is a gateway in the journey of our healing - pointing us in the direction of our needs.