Forgiving Yourself for How You Responded

Do you carry shame when you think back on how you behaved inside the hardest stretches? You may remember small things you did to keep the peace, or large things you said when you finally broke. You may remember crying that felt like it would never stop. You may remember going numb when you could not afford to feel any more. You may remember the small, exhausted ways you tried to gather information about something you could not control. You may remember being quiet when you wanted to scream, or screaming when you wanted to be quiet.

Looking back, you may judge those moments harshly. I was not myself. I became someone I do not recognize. I let it turn me into someone I do not want to be.

The truer thing is this: those responses were not who you are. They were what your body did to survive inside something it could not get out of. They were attempts to manage threat, to find a moment of safety, to read what was coming, to keep hold of something you still hoped you could save. They were not choices made from steadiness. They were the honest shape of a nervous system in a hard place.

Softening into someone who was hurting you was a way to lower the temperature in the room. Pushing back was your body trying to defend you. Shutting down was protection from too much, too long. Watching closely was an attempt to gather information when information had been taken away from you. Big feelings, in moments when nothing else was working, were what bodies do when they have been pushed past where they can hold.

None of these responses describe who you are. They describe what you needed to do to make it through. And you did make it through. Which means, whatever the cost, those responses worked.

There is nothing to forgive here, really. There is only compassion to offer. The version of you who lived through that did not need to be perfect. That earlier you only needed to survive. And they did.