You’re not broken.
You’re not a failure.
You don’t need fixing.
If you feel like there’s something wrong with you, that’s not the truth—it’s a sign that you’ve experienced relational trauma in your childhood.
Relational trauma happens when the people that are supposed to care for us by providing safety, love and connection, instead caused harm, neglected you, or made you feel unworthy. It’s not about one off events, but about repeated experiences in relationships that impact you and how you see yourself and how you view the world.
Where Do These Feelings Come From?
When babies are born, we don’t see them as broken or flawed. We celebrate them as the perfect and divine little humans that they are. We don’t look at a baby and think about what’s wrong with it. We see them as perfect and worthy of love.
Somewhere along the way, for some of us, this changes. We might begin to feel fundamentally flawed and unworthy in some way.
Do any of these statements connect with you?
“There’s something wrong with me.”
“I’m too much for people.”
“I’m not good enough.”
“If people really knew me, they’d leave.”
“I don’t deserve love or kindness.”
“I shouldn’t be so sensitive.”
“I always mess things up.”
“No one actually likes me; they just tolerate me.”
“I ruin every relationship I’m in.”
“I don’t deserve good things.”
“I only got lucky—I’m not actually talented.”
“Everyone else is doing better than me.”
“I should be further along in life.”
“If I fail, everyone will see how worthless I am.”
These statements are all rooted in shame, not reality. Shame is deeply painful. It’s the belief that something is wrong with you -not that you made a mistake, but that you are the mistake.
Shame beliefs like this are learned in relationships.
Read through the list above again and go back to one or two that you particularly connect with. Are they connected to memories from your past? Do those memories involve important people from your past giving you those messages in some way?
Here is the truth about shame beliefs, about feelings of unworthiness or being fundamentally flawed in some way….
Those beliefs aren’t yours. They were given to you.
Maybe you had parents who couldn’t meet your emotional needs or dismissed your feelings. Or you might have grown up in a culture that told you that you had to be different to be accepted.
These beliefs were learned in relationships, and they can be healed in relationships.
Relational trauma happens between people but healing happens between people too. Safe and supportive relationships, whether that’s with friends, partners or a therapist, can help you heal.
You don’t have to do anything, achieve anything, be anything, to be loved and accepted.
You are enough exactly as you are.