Anyone else have interpersonal dramas that keep repeating?  Scenarios that replay endlessly much like the movie Groundhog Day? Does it have you making that Bill-Murray-I-am-over-it-face we all can identify with? 

Any helpful friends saying phrases that feel like platitudes?  Or maybe you are offering sound bytes to a friend, feeling frustrated by their confusing behavior.  Maybe someone puts up with wa-aaay more than they should.  Or settles. Or gets wrapped up dramas that don't make sense considering how smart, funny and intelligent that person is. 

And often we try to use labels, diagnoses, descriptors to understand why a person keeps struggling with an issue.  I see it all the time.  I have been it.  And maybe you too. 

I do want you to love yourself.  And know your worth. And set boundaries. And every other possible self care recommendation.

But what if you don't?  Or your best intentions fail? Then let us look beneath the descriptors and understand what unhealed trauma is being enacted.  It begins makes sense when we understand and uncover the unprocessed feelings that are still looping... when we become conscious of the decisions we made to survive and the conclusions we drew that we are over-applying to current situations (in hopes that we never have to experience it again). 

And yet we do experience it again, in some way, and we will repeat it until we heal it. 

And we will heal it! Absolutely! I see it every day.

So next time we diagnose someone as needing to love themselves first (and you should, you really are lovely), let us also consider the antecedent trauma.  Let's us look to experience and release buried emotions, change stories and revisit decisions we made as our younger selves experiencing trauma.

Let us heal all of these parts and come into all of our power; mature and wise and living in the present!  Happy Groundhog Day!