When It Hurts So Good

The moment we locked eyes I knew we were meant to collide.

The gravitational pull was unlike anything I had ever experienced and the connection felt overwhelmingly inevitable.

For a time we were nothing and then everything. Anything beyond us seemingly ceased to exist. Logic be damned. Conscience be gone. My world was a vacuum of him and I, and it promptly reshaped me as I responded viscerally to the intensity.

My heart burst open, roughly tearing through the flimsy seams and bleeding out in an rare offering of submission. My soul called to his and the rhythmic dance ensued.

Was it love? Lust? Something in between? Regardless of what it was or what we called it, it was never a choice for me.

But soon the fiery flames that had once excited me, engulfed me. I was living and dying simultaneously. I wanted all of him, and he gave me so very little that I nearly asphyxiated. I desperately needed to love him well. To pour into him. But the overflow was drowning me.

At some point in the longer term future I realized I couldn’t keep harming myself like this. I knew that we loved each other deeply, but also that the love was burying me alive.

But even with the full possession of my faculties, my psychic gifts and my good pragmatic sense I couldn’t find it in myself to just “let go.”

I was back and forth for a year or more before I finally gained the courage to deliver the TKO blow that would close out the cycle for good.

And even after doing what I knew to be the right thing, I immediately went into shock, feeling sharp physical pains in my chest, regularly tempted to spy on him to see if he was as “happy” as he had professed himself to be.

And perhaps this was the most confusing thing about the whole experience.

I knew the relationship was hurting me. I knew I needed to let him go. I knew the advice I would give to a friend or family member in my position. And yet this thing that had caused me so much hurt became the hardest to give up.

We like to believe that knowing something is bad for us should be enough to make us give it up. That once the cost outweighs the reward, our logical mind will reach a threshold that allows us to simply walk away.

But the truth is much more complicated. Often some of the most harmful relationships, habits, and patterns in our lives are also the ones we become the most deeply attached to.

Perhaps we are trying to re-create an old dynamic and produce a different outcome. Or prove our worth through an identity of martyrdom and devotion. The unhealthy dynamic might feel familiar. Safe even, depending on our upbringing or our experience.

The bond can be intensified when your time together is rare or fleeting, or if you experience things together that are profound, traumatic or unique, creating a shared experience and nervous system response that always seems to call you back to each other.

I was reminded of this when news broke this week of the beloved Hayden Panettiere passing away amid reports that she had reconnected with her former partner, with whom she had a documented history of domestic abuse.

The headlines seemed to offer both compassion and judgment, questioning her return to someone she had previously denounced as a terrifying monster.

But if you know anything about the lovely, vibrant, talented Hayden’s story, you’re well aware of the complicated circumstances surrounding her childhood, growing up too fast, being exposed to drugs and alcohol, and experiencing things her young brain likely couldn’t comprehend the impact of. She spoke publicly and articulately about her addiction, mental health struggles, and trauma, which can sometimes lead us to falsely believe that a cogent understanding guarantees transcendence from a pattern that has kept us stuck.

But articulating your trauma is not the same as healing it.

You can understand exactly why you behave the way you do and still struggle to change. You can spend years in therapy, develop incredible self-awareness, identify your triggers, understand your childhood wounds, and still find yourself returning to a cycle you had once broken.

Her reconciling with this partner is not an invalidation of her healing or resilience. We all have our vices, our comforts, our fixes for navigating the complexities of life. Mental health struggles, addictions and other symptomatic expressions of trauma should not be responded to with moral posturing, but with compassion and kindness.

You are not only your worst days, but your best days.

You are a multi-faceted being who is immeasurably powerful while sometimes feeling anything but. The thing that might hold you back isn’t in “not doing better,” but in being kinder regardless of how you’re doing.

Shame is terrible motivator for growth. Compassion is the key that unlocks new doors, and helps us leave old versions of ourselves behind.

And there is neuroscience behind this. Shame can activate the body’s social-threat response, increasing cortisol and inflammatory activity. Research examining compassion has found that its practice can reduce activity in neural networks associated with threat while increasing the perception of regulation and safety.

In laymen’s terms, relentlessly attacking yourself for struggling will not create the internal conditions that can help you change. Creating safety can.

This choice is yours.

If you’ve been struggling to leave an unhealthy relationship. Eat more nutritious foods. Spend less time on your phone. Give up the vice that seems to follow you wherever you go.

I want you to honour it instead. This behaviour is a clue to where you need more self-love. More compassion. Deeper healing. More creativity. A renewed purpose.

Release the shame around it. Soften the tension. And over time, you may find it starts to loosen its grip on you.

And instead of asking “Why can’t I just let this thing go?”

Ask - “What has this been giving me that I haven’t yet learned to offer myself?”

Safety. Comfort. Excitement. Escape. Validation. Love. A sense of belonging. A momentary reprieve from the weight of the world on your shoulders.

You don’t have to hate the person you were when you needed those things. And you can’t punish them into becoming someone new.

But you can understand them.

Have compassion for them.

Give them everything they were searching for in all the wrong places.

Perhaps one day you’ll realize you didn’t have to force yourself to let go at all.

That the ask was then and now, to listen, to hear, to acknowledge - to witness.

To meet your needs, lovingly - and with the utmost compassion.

Xx

Mercy

I’ve created a guided meditation to help you meet the version of yourself you’ve been judging fully, understand the deeper need beneath the pattern you’re ready to break, and begin replacing shame with compassion.

We’ll work somatically to soften the body’s threat response, release some of the guilt and self-judgment you’ve been carrying, and offer yourself the safety, love, validation or support you may have been searching for.

Become a paid subscriber to access the guided meditation and begin creating the internal safety that makes real change possible.