You can’t always get what you wantYou can’t always get what you wantYou can’t always get what you wantBut if you try sometimes, well, you just might findYou get what you need
Let’s break this down …
On one hand, we have New Age Spirituality telling us that if we want something sincerely enough, we raise our vibration enough, we work on our inner limiting beliefs enough …
That we will get what we want … it’s only a matter of time of course! Haven’t you read or watched “The Secret”?
Oh, but then if you somehow don’t get what you want, you get what you need or whatever The Universe or God serves you for not getting rid of enough limiting beliefs or doing enough “healing”.
When will we just call a spade a spade and call out this absolute crock of bullshit?!!!!
If you have been around for a while, you may have noticed that one of the only things we do have volition over is our perceived experience. Even this is somewhat fraught due to a little something called PTSD and Complex PTSD (or CPTSD).
If has become increasingly clear to me as I work with and am in relationships with those with CPTSD (and am in my own healing journey) that we cannot ignore the huge differences between particular “default” settings that shape the way people with trauma experience the world – also known as “shared reality”.
In addition, it has also become increasingly clear to me how not just incorrect but actually harmful the perpetuation of these beliefs and statements of how simply using our “will and positivity” will shower us with all that we want in the world, and if we don’t yet have it, we will somehow be continually “punished” with “lessons” from “the universe” until we get it.
This New Age belief system, woven into so many different Western interpretations of a multicultural kaleidoscope of modalities from yoga to shamanism, actually mirrors some of the keystone components of religious abuse (not to mention poor understanding of the origins of these ideas via cultural appropriation).
To be clear, I am not in any way shape or form attacking “New Age”ism; I am however directly going for the jugular so to speak of the toxic misunderstandings of free will, punishment, and “karma”.
It’s actually not about New Ageism at all.
I see this stuff perpetuated by the coaching and self development world all the time.
Ever hired a business or “mindset” coach?
You’ll hear a different version of the same old toxic bullshit story.
The huge problem I have with this is that if you so happen to be someone who has experienced emotional neglect, religious abuse, toxic family dynamics, etc. as a child, your nervous system is basically primed to use this as toxic fuel to further cement belief systems that make it really fucking challenging to function in day to day life.
In short, if you have a history of childhood trauma, this kind of crap will reinforce programming in your nervous system that was put there before you even had any choice in the matter.
Fair it is not.
However, sadly, true it is.
Something happens to children when we grow up in these kinds of environments.
Aside from the fact that this is well studied, documented, and is validated through consensus of a large body of phycology experts and trauma therapists, I am going to share with you from the lens of my own personal experience – both in my own life, the stories of survivors in the support groups I have participated in and the stories and healing journeys of my own clients and friends.
When we are little, our survival depends on our parents or adult caregivers.
This is a simple fact.
When we are 4 or 5 years old, it’s not as if we can just get up and move out because our parent is an alcoholic, mentally ill, or entrained in a cult-like system.
Our biointelligence recognizes our need to survive the situation and so does everything that it can to make sure our caregivers will keep us alive. This means we will give up a bit of our souls if you will in order to keep us fed and relatively protected. But sadly, without any reference points of healthy relational field with our caregivers, we implicitly believe that this is how everyone else experiences life, or “that’s just how life is”.
We don’t realize or recognize what is healthy for us because we just have never experienced it before. Furthermore, since our whole world has been shaped in this way, we learn certain adaptive beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.
We learn first, that somehow we are responsible for our caregivers state.
We learn to stop crying, to hide our survival needs, because making a fuss could trigger our caregivers into abandoning us and since at infancy, or childhood, this is not a viable option, we learn how to be highly sensitive to the triggers and responses of others so that they will not abandon us, therefore surviving.
The thing is that our environment literally shapes our nervous system subconsciously and therefore our perceived experience of the world.
“Growing up” does not make the patterns go away.
Even as adults, we will behave in ways that we adopted as infants and children without even consciously realizing it.
Worse, humans tend to believe that our actions are mostly driven by logic, so we intrinsically believe if we just think it so, it is.
A few examples of ways this shows up …
Not seeking medical attention in a timely manor, dismissing, or hiding the severity of a problem, delayed response to needing help.
Not believing their own body or symptoms, often living/dealing with severe physical pain, chronic illness, or injury and believing that they “don’t want to make a big deal”, question whether “is this pain severe enough to get help?”.
Holding a deeply held belief that somehow “it’s my fault” when sick or injured or something bad happens.
Holding deeply held beliefs that somehow because “it’s my fault”, there’s something I did wrong that could have prevented it.
When you combine the patterning experienced by children who grew up in toxic environments with the toxic beliefs of the New Age/self development/coaching/religious spaces, you get a recipe for disaster.
These core beliefs that are absorbed as children, that it’s “our fault” and we can somehow change external circumstances by changing who we are and how we behave are first off, simply NOT TRUE, but sadly reinforced by the paradigms, teachings, and belief systems so very prevalent in these systems.
It’s literally reinforcing the trauma bonds that bind us.
This is why I am so impassioned by breaking through this misinformation.
We need to understand and reorientate to our patterns of perception, not our “limiting beliefs”.
The way we see, understand, and perceive the world is in part shaped by our patterns of experience – that is to say, the environment we grew up in laid the baseline foundations for this.
The beauty in all of this though is that although we had no volition in our baseline as children, we can do something about our experience as adults.
One of the gifts of this world is impermanence.
We are a constantly shifting, evolving, living, breathing organism.
While we will never know the experience of growing up in a safe and nourishing environment, that doesn’t mean we are doomed to live an existence without nourishment, love, and safety.
Untrue – and unhelpful – beliefs perpetuating our trauma however need to be pierced with a proverbial sword of light so we can see through them and focus on what is truly helpful.
It’s important to recognize that if you grew up in an emotionally supportive environment, your experience is not and will not be the same as someone who grew up surviving their childhood.
This doesn’t make some people broken and others whole however.
In reality, we are all here trying to do the best we can, with the resources available to us (perceived or not).
I think sometimes this kind of reality check can be interpreted as “negative programming” or “negative belief systems”, but really it’s not.
The path to freedom and acceptance, which leads to positive change, means first acknowledging the real truth, the reality that what happened happened. Validating that our experience was real, that we are not the “crazy ones” is an important keystone to healing.
While it is very much true that many who suffer from PTSD and CPTSD become unhealthily identified with their trauma, which very much is limiting and can slow their healing and keep them trapped in toxic trauma loops, acknowledging our experiences is not the same as identifying with our trauma.
This perhaps is a topic for another day, as there are many distinguishing factors here and I feel that the meat of this writing is probably enough for us to digest collectively for now, however it is a very important one.
Circling back to The Rolling Stones …
You can’t always get what you want …
Certainly true.
As babies we all wanted love, safety, emotional support and stability to be able to thrive in this crazy world we call home.
A lot of us didn’t get what we want, nor do we get what we want as adults, but the important thing to remember that it’s not always “your fault” that you didn’t get what you want.
By being born into whatever experience you were born into, or otherwise.
We don’t “get what we need” as reasoning for punishment.
Bad things happen.
That’s part of the experience of living on this earth.
You didn’t attract that toxic abusive mate to you any more than a baby born into war “chose” her unfortunate fate.
No one choses to be born into abuse.
No one.
Abuse and trauma are not spiritual punishment or “lessons” that we are “supposed to” overcome.
They are simply the patterns of experience that are sadly a part of the world we live in.
The choice we do have as adults is moving towards understanding, compassion, and healing in hopes of taking responsibility for how we move through the world from where we now stand.
xo,
jenn
PS … I want to mention that if you experience PTSD or CPTSD that there are resources out there. One of the biggest myths we tell ourselves it that our pain and experience is uniquely our own when in reality it’s not. You would be surprised, trust me. There are free and helpful resources that are here to support us. There are others in your shoes who have walked your path and come out the other side, alive and well. Finding the right support is a huge challenge, but one that is ultimately worth it. Keep looking. Keep being discerning. Keep listening to your instincts.