Borrowed Beliefs

Borrowed Beliefs

I’ve been thinking about how many things we believe about ourselves that didn’t actually start with us. Things we’ve been told over the years, things people have made us feel, labels that have somehow stuck until eventually we’ve stopped questioning them and just accepted them as part of who we are.

Too sensitive. Too loud. Too emotional. Difficult. Dramatic. Weird. Selfish. Lazy. Too much. Not enough. We hear these things, sometimes directly and sometimes through the way people treat us, and without even realising it we start carrying them.

And after a while, their voice starts sounding like ours.

We start saying things like, I’m just difficult. I’ve always been like this. I’m rubbish at that. I can’t stick to anything. I’m too much for people. I could never do that.

But lately I’ve started thinking… who actually told me that?

Because how much of what we believe about ourselves is actually true, and how much of it is something somebody else handed us that we’ve just carried around ever since?

Maybe you were called selfish the first time you started putting yourself first. Maybe someone called you difficult because you stopped letting them walk all over you. Maybe you were told you were too sensitive because you actually felt things deeply. Maybe you were made to feel weird because you didn’t quite fit into the box somebody else thought you should live in.

And maybe you weren’t too much at all. Maybe you were just too much for people who needed you to be smaller.

That one hits differently when you really think about it.

Healing, for me, isn’t about waking up one morning as this perfectly healed version of yourself who never gets triggered, never doubts themselves and floats around permanently zen. Hmm..no.

Sometimes healing is simply catching one of those thoughts and going, Hang on… is that actually mine?
Where did I learn that? Who made me feel that way? Do I still believe it now? Does it even fit the person I’ve become?

And you don’t have to immediately replace every negative belief with some massive positive affirmation that you don’t believe either. Sometimes just questioning it is enough to start loosening its grip.

Imagine standing in front of a mirror with every label anyone has ever given you written across it.

You’ve spent so long looking through those words that you’ve forgotten there’s actually a person underneath them.

Now start wiping them off.

One by one.

Not so you can replace them with another set of labels. Just so you can finally see yourself without everybody else’s handwriting all over the bloody glass.

Because some things were never yours to carry in the first place.

And you’re allowed to put them down.

Daily Affirmation

Onwards, Nova x