Dear Higher Self: My past relationships haunt me

"I want to heal"

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Dear Bunny,

I listen to you every night before I sleep — your voice comforts me in ways I can’t fully explain. You feel like the big sister I never had.

Lately, I’ve been living in a constant fog. I feel disconnected from my body, detached from reality, and overwhelmed by even the simplest decisions. My memory slips too easily, and I often find myself wondering how I ended up here — so far from who I thought I’d be.

My past is full of difficult relationships — with my mom, my sister, and the people I’ve loved. Somewhere along the way, I became passive, almost invisible in my own life. I didn’t stand up for myself, even in the choices I made for my career.

Now, I’m trying to come back to myself. I work out almost every day. I meditate. I practice yoga. I journal. I’ve been off antidepressants after six years. My therapist diagnosed me with depersonalization and derealization — and that gave some shape to what I’ve been feeling.

But I still don’t know where to begin. My past relationships haunt me. There was never any closure, so my mind keeps circling back to those people, wondering why they left, and whether I’m truly worthy of love.

It feels like nothing I do is working, and I don’t know how to help myself. I want to heal. I just don’t know how to start.

Please help me

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Hi love,

I’m sorry you are struggling and things feel so hard. Being on a healing path is not for the faint of heart. Because it means looking into the past, addressing your pain, and understanding how to better treat yourself.

What doesn’t often get acknowledged is that healing is extremely disorienting. Because you are becoming aware of the false narratives that have motivated your behaviors and choices for years. All of a sudden, you are noticing how much you put yourself down or tell yourself you aren’t good enough. Where as before, those beliefs in your inadequacy were hidden in your subconscious. You were unaware how much they influenced your behavior. Now, you see it and it’s like, Ummm WTF? The dissolution stage of healing is stepping outside of who you thought you were. Why did this happen to me? You ask yourself. Who am I, really? And most importantly: How long will it take me to finally heal and free myself from this pain?

It’s important to remember that the people in your life that hurt you also needed healing. People treat others how they unconsciously feel about themselves. If someone treats you lovelessly, it’s not because you are unworthy of love, it’s because they have not addressed their own wounding. They don’t have the self-awareness to see that mistreating another person is a protective mechanism against vulnerability and insecurity. To truly love someone requires confronting all the walls you have put up from letting love in.

Now, I don’t know what your mom and sister have been through personally but I do know they were also raised in a culture that taught them they weren’t inherently worthy (We all were). And that alone is a kind of trauma. I’m not excusing their behavior, I’m reminding you that you were not responsible for it. You couldn’t have changed their choices by being a “more lovable” version of yourself in the past and you cannot control their behavior now.

You cannot find closure from the people you are healing from. Closure comes from breaking the cycle: giving yourself the love, compassion and acceptance you always needed.

But you don’t wake up one day fully healed. Because healing is about your relationship to reality. And reality hits you everyday. Healing is your response to it.

Healing doesn’t look like never having painful thoughts, triggers or difficult emotions. Healing is responding to those experiences with more love, tenderness and compassion i.e responding from the voice of your Higher Self.

Your Higher Self is the inner awareness of your wholeness and your worth. It’s a state of consciousness that is the compassionate witness of your experiences. You were born fully aligned with your Higher Self and then you were socialized by a toxic culture, went through painful experiences and became disconnected from your truth. But your Higher Self has never left you. It is you! And the practice of healing is to choose to connect with that inner love as often as possible, so you can respond to life from the perspective of your Higher Self instead of the perspective of your wounding.

Here is an example:

Let’s say you are ruminating about your past relationships and it’s making you feel bad. A thought comes into your head that says, You will never be healed from this.

That thought is the voice of your wounding. So now, not only are you feeling bad from remembering a painful experience but you are shaming your self for feeling bad about it. Basically, you are putting yourself down for putting yourself down. That’s what our wounding tries to do: use every experience as a weapon to hurt ourselves with by turning it into another reason there is something inherently wrong with us. (Reinforcing the narrative of our conditioning)

Your Higher Self responds very differently because it is the voice of love, acceptance and is fully compassionate for whatever you are going through. Your Higher Self knows nothing is wrong with you because you were created whole.

Here is how your Higher Self would respond to your painful memories, emotional triggers or grief: It’s ok to be struggling. This stuff is really hard. How can you give yourself some love in this difficult moment?

Again, healing isn’t about never struggling, it’s about how you respond to the struggle.

Whenever you find yourself ruminating on the past or putting yourself down, ask yourself: How can I give myself love in this moment?

That is how you interrupt the cycle.

Healing is a practice, not a goal.

“Coming back to yourself” is coming back to the awareness of your Higher Self, the part of you that knows you are enough right now. Not at some future date when you are no longer triggered, not at some future date when everything is easier—right now. Because you have always been enough.

You are doing an amazing job on your healing practice. Meditating, yoga, going to therapy…all those things are so helpful in connecting to the awareness of your Higher Self on a daily basis. But don’t turn those practices into another reason to put yourself down by saying, I’m doing all these things and I’m still not healed! That’s the voice of your wounding, not your truth.

You are in a new phase of your journey. Getting off meds after 6 years is incredibly challenging and it’s going to take time to adjust to that too! Please know, that I am sooooo proud of you. And I want you to let yourself be proud of you too. Your Higher Self loves you so much.

One day at a time, sweetheart. You are not alone. We are all on this journey together.

Sending lots of hugs,

Bunny

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