Am I Broken?

Welcome to Expand Your Life Podcast. This is Jc Jones and you’re Listening Episode 15. Today we’re going to go over question #12 in the Self Awareness Workbook. If you haven’t already gotten a copy of that, it’s completely free, and you can find it at expandyourlifepodcast.com/resources.  I will also put a link to that in the Show Notes page for you today.  

The question we’re going to go over today is, where do I feel broken? Where in your life do you feel broken? There are many things that can cause us to feel broken. Whether it’s a failed relationship or many failed relationships, abuse (mental, physical or emotional abuse}, trauma, a traumatic incident in your childhood, parents that didn’t show us love or treated us poorly, addictions. All of these things can contribute to a feeling of brokenness. A feeling of not being fixable.  

A lot of us have this feeling of brokenness, and some may go years without realizing that this feeling of being broken or unfixable is what has shaped their lives and the decisions they have made over the years. It’s been a contribution to repetitively making poor decisions or having low self-worth. Some of us even take on the identity of being broken as an excuse for the things that we do or don’t do.  

Feeling broken can last a very short time or a lifetime. There’s no set time frame for feeling broken. That is completely dependent on your ability to become aware of where you feel broken and start the healing process.  

There have been a few areas of my life where I have felt broken. And the only way that I was able to get past that feeling of brokenness was to first become aware that I even felt that way. I didn’t realize that the feelings I had about myself, the feelings of not being lovable, of not being able to do anything right made me feel like there was something wrong with me, made me feel like I was somehow broken, unfixable, and these feelings kept me in relationships that I shouldn’t have been in. It contributed to many decisions that I made in my life that I would not have otherwise made if I didn’t feel that way about myself.  

But I had to get to the point where I couldn’t stand feeling the way I felt anymore. I had to get to the point where I was willing to do anything to feel differently. In the past, I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t want to really know if I was broken. I didn’t want to question how I felt and find out that how I felt was true. And so, I shoved those feelings down.  

I ended up using different things like food, or playing games on my phone, or drinking to keep me from thinking.  Keep me from dealing with me. Whenever I would have spare time, I would read, or I would watch TV or I’d have a drink to change how I felt or eat some food to change how I felt. Me and McDonald’s. Yeah, we were best buds.

And then one day something clicked for me. I don’t even know what it was that made me think about it, but I realized that all of these things that I was using to keep myself from thinking, to change how I felt, all of these things were just making everything worse instead of changing how I felt. These things just contributed to me feeling even worse. I’d feel guilty. I’d feel fat. I’d feel bloated. I’d feel hungover. felt unhealthy. And the things I was using to numb out and not think about things, all they contributed to was me not doing anything with my life. Wasting time. Wasting my life.

So when I had this ah ha moment, when I was feeling at my lowest, I got brave enough to decide that I wanted to find out if I really was broken. Am I really broken? So I’ll share with you what I did through this process that helped me gain a lot of perspective and truth about who I thought I was and who I came to find out was the real me.  

The first thing I dealt with was not feeling like I was lovable. That there was something so wrong with me that no one could love me. This played out in relationships that I got into where this feeling of being broken in this area of my life was reinforced by the type of people that I chose to have relationships with.  

So One day I hit rock bottom. Another circumstance arose that showed me once again that I wasn’t lovable. What was wrong with me? I felt like there must be something wrong with me. I remember thinking the thought What is so wrong with me that I can’t be loved? I felt like a good person. Pretty easy going, kind, pretty positive. So why couldn’t anyone love me? So I got a piece of paper out, and at the top of that paper I wrote, Am I broken? I was finally ready to accept the fact that I might be broken. And I was ready to ask that question. Am I really broken?  

And then I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote. And I remember not even really thinking at the time about what I was writing. I just remember pouring out all my feelings, pouring out all the pain. And when I got done writing, I was so exhausted. But at the bottom of that paper, multiple pages of papers, I should say. But at the bottom of that last page I wrote, I am not broken. By the end of that writing session, I came to the realization that I was not broken. I was worthy of love. I was enough.  

And as I read through the things that I wrote; it really opened my eyes as to where these feelings originated. These were feelings that I had had since I was a small child, that had been reinforced over the years because of decisions that I made. I was creating the cycle of being unlovable. I was creating that cycle because of how I felt about myself. Because of things that had happened to me in my past. Beliefs that I had created for myself at a very young age because of circumstances in my life. The beliefs of a small child who was not loved.  

This affected every area of my life. Not just in relationships, but the really surprising realization for me is how it affected the choices I made, how I felt about myself, how I changed myself so much to conform to what I thought was lovable. I became someone I didn’t even recognize.  

But the odd thing is, is I also became what I believed. I became unlovable. And when I came to that realization that I am what I believe I am, my actions and reactions, how I think, everything boils down to who I think I am. Who I believe I am. And that becomes me.  

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t even recognize yourself anymore, you don’t even know who you are anymore. It’s generally because you’ve tried to change yourself so much into the person you believe you need to be for others, that you’ve lost sight of who you really are. How this played out in my life, though made me realize that that never works. Because when I tried to conform and change to be the person who I thought I needed to be, to be lovable. All it did is cause me to become more resentful. Cause me to resent the people that I was having to conform for. And resenting myself for that belief that I wasn’t enough. I had to be something or someone different in order to be loved.  And then, of course, I felt sorry for myself. Wondering why couldn’t someone just love me for who I am?  

It also drastically changed how I viewed my personal development journey. Before this point, I always viewed my personal development as something where I needed to figure out how to become someone better for everyone around me. And after this I realized that No, I need to figure out first who I am. I need to change my belief about myself. I needed to create a new belief around who I wanted to be for me. Someone that I could be happy becoming.  

Figuring out you who you want to be and really authentically being you is the key to all personal development. That’s what becoming self-aware is all about. Questioning your beliefs about who you are and who you want to be. Making those choices for you and who you become ultimately is up to you. No one can force you to be anything other than who you want to be. The choice is completely up to you on how you want your life to look and how you want your life to feel and the beliefs that you want to have for yourself and for your life. Those are all your decisions no one else’s.  

When you get brave enough to start dealing with your beliefs about yourself and your life and where you feel broken, you will come to see that it’s the greatest thing you could do. To release those burdens. It’s very freeing, very healing to come to the realization that it’s not necessary to keep feeling broken. No matter where in your life you feel broken. There is a way past that. It can seem really scary and daunting to think about dealing with it, dealing with how you feel, dealing with why you feel the way you do. But until you deal with it, you can’t start healing and healing is very important.  

Just realizing that my belief of being broken was untrue was tremendously healing for me. Allowing the emotions, I had pent up my whole life around this feeling and belief, allowing them to just come out of me to drain me was another thing that was tremendously healing for me. And the third thing that was important in my healing process was to claim unbrokennous. Claim being worthy of love. Than to continue to I tell myself that until I began to actually believe it. To really, really, believe it. To start making decisions in my life based on that new belief.  

To forgive myself for what I thought was wasting so many years with my head in the sand, not wanting to deal with it. And wasting so many years of my life because of these beliefs that I had. I had to forgive myself for not dealing with it sooner. I had to forgive myself for all the poor decisions I made because of the beliefs I had about myself. Forgiveness in this is really important. Beating yourself up for past mistakes never changes any of it. The key is to learn something from it. What is the learning in it that you can take and use to create a different future?  

Another thing that I did as part of my healing process was to write down all of the things that this belief that I had did effect in my life. All the decisions that I did make throughout the years that were because of feeling broken. And what this did for me was to open my eyes as to all the many things that I was still continuing to do or continuing to be because of this belief, so I would have the opportunity to change those things in my life. Becoming aware of all the different aspects of my life that it affected. 

All of this takes time. All of this takes a lot of self-reflection, breaking bad habits. And always remember – the biggest thing I came to realize through all of this is: No area of my life am I ever broken. I was simply the recipient of brokenness. My identity and who I am is not my circumstances. Is not who has treated me poorly, but who I choose to be and who I choose to become.  

Thank you for joining me this week. I hope you’ve gotten something out of it. Be sure to check back next week where we will be discussing question #13 of the Self Awareness Workbook. And the question is, how do I feel about myself?  

Once again, thank you for joining me today. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you can get updates and notifications when new episodes air released. Have a great week. Bye for now,