An ending can be a difficult time. When we leave behind our alcoholic or dysfunctional family upbringing, doors will open and the path forward might seem easy at first. But there are many endings we will experience throughout our lives: Jobs, romantic relationships, friendships, and unfortunately, losing those we love.
In the grief that we experience during challenging times of change, it’s difficult to see that there will be a tomorrow.
All of us will leave this life at one point or another.
How we choose to live with the time we have now is up to us.
When a job ends, we can fret, worry, and fail to see the opportunities ahead of us. The same is true for other hardships in our lives. We are not flies stuck in the ointment of life. We can grow, move onward, and mature if we allow ourselves the opportunity.
When we choose to only see the negative, we’re falling into a trap of tunnel vision because that’s what we experienced as kids. With a turbulent family life, the struggles we survived are hard-wired into our brains. To survive those times of stress, we adopted certain coping mechanisms. What was mine? I became hyper responsible and took on all problems in trying to “save the world.” I became a superhero who could do everything for anyone, but I didn’t make time for myself.
When you live through a life-changing event that will end an important part of your life, be mindful of how you feel and how you act.
It is easy to fall into the trap of past unhealthy behaviors (becoming a martyr or superhero or joker—whatever role you played in your family).
But something changes within when you realize that you cannot be manipulated by an ending. You can choose to embrace the change, live through the grief, grow, and to move onward.
Some choose to ward themselves off from emotion and become stoic and unfeeling—I am not suggesting that you take this path.
When you experience an ending event in your life, how you respond to it will help propel you down a different path. If you lose your job, then you will find another. Maybe not right away, but you can overcome the obstacles if you’re open to new paths (maybe you need training, coaching, or choose to go back to school).
What you decide to do at a critical juncture in your life is up to you. Often, as a child who was raised in an alcoholic upbringing, we tend to repeat past behaviors because they helped us as kids. Some of what we did to survive will not be helpful today.
Being aware of the difference and open to change can be hard, but growth takes some struggle. To become who we want to be, we need to shed the fear from our past and what has always held us back.