- May 19
- 3 min read
How old stories often distort our reality.
A lot of my past relationships weren’t that great. I often fell victim to my own idealized version of who I was with, seeing only the potential within them, not acknowledging who they were at that moment in time. It created a lot of victimization and frustration within me, not to mention resentment. After several of these relationships, one day, in a victim mindset of “WHY ME?!” it finally occurred that I was the common denominator, so it must be something I am doing.
That realization set me on a path of healing and personal growth far beyond what I had yet known. My challenge had been taking the learnings from those experiences and finding a way to integrate them. If you know your worth and know you are valuable and do not want to tolerate anything less…at what point do you walk away?
Through a lot of trial and error, I repeated the old cycles, instead of being used though, my old story threw out warnings saying that they were trying to use me. This took some practice and a lot of awareness to move through. At first, I just bailed, not even exploring if it were true.
After a while of that not working, I started trying to communicate my boundaries with the person I was interested in, saying “Hey, I’ve noticed this come up a lot in conversation. I don’t feel comfortable with it being the primary focus, can we please focus on other things first?” Which was a mixed bag of success. Usually, I would get an acknowledgment, a slight adjustment before it came back up in conversation again. So I would then choose to remove myself.
Finally, I gave myself space after communicating the boundary. I recognized the old story running and controlling my narrative, so I stepped back and gave myself space to process it. This let me approach things differently in how I chose to communicate my boundaries with my romantic interests. It was almost as if I was talking to a completely different person, even though I had already communicated my boundary to them once. My second warning, I approached it differently and suddenly it was heard, honored, and validated.
Honestly, it caught me by surprise. It’s almost like I had taken off these glasses that had distorted how I perceived the person and could see them clearly.
This is just one instance of how I have witnessed reality shift under my feet after removing my old stories from my perceptions and inner narratives. There have been countless others since I embarked upon this karmic cycle-clearing adventure.
I tell you this story because, before those moments where the distortion was lifted, I would have sworn to you that I was right about all of those people and their intentions and how I saw things play out. Give space to others and yourself, allowing for you to be wrong about how you understood things. Sometimes it’s just an old story controlling your perception of things and not the actual truth.
Make a habit of asking yourself what stories you are telling yourself about others and if it is based in past experiences. Not everyone has ill intentions. Forgive yourself for allowing those in the past to have treated you in such a way, and close that book. You don’t need to reread that old story anymore.
xoxo
Ashley