Imperfectly Healed Part One: The Enemy in the Mirror
I’m going to start this Imperfectly Healed series of self-help articles off with some brutal personal truths. I’m not telling you all this to solicit sympathy or ask when it’s my turn to weep. There’s no victim mindset in my spiritual bone marrow. I just want you to understand that no matter how low you might be feeling, I too have owned real estate at rock bottom.
A little over three years ago, I was a broken, sick, hungover, pud-stain of a man rotting his existence away on the couch. Dabbling just enough in outdoor fun and being a good father to make it look like I was living my life, even though I knew I was dying on the inside. I had all the “Life Happens” excuses in the world.
Then I found myself holding my dying father in my arms, as he pawed at my shirt, begging me to let him die. Pleading for me to take him out in the hospital parking lot to shoot him in the head like a dog. Because he couldn’t stand to live with what was left of his life.
He looked at me dead in the eyes, clinging to his last moments of sanity and said, “One day this will be you.”
It was the last intelligible thing he ever said. And something that laid an icy cold hand of truth on my heart in that moment.
The day after his funeral, I found myself on my knees in the shower. Water running cold like the truth we all try to run from inside, and I knew he was right. The path I was on would lead to that same place of desperate regret at the end, and I found myself at that Shawshank Redemption moment where I had to “Get Busy Livin’ or Get Busy Dyin.”
I just want you to understand that I’m not delivering this Imperfectly Healed series of articles talking to you from on high. I’m talking to you as a dude who’s been laid low, and found the way out, through doing the hard work.
Stealing the Enemy’s Heart
There’s this moment in every Rocky movie where the bad guy womps the Italian Stallion with a thunderous blow. Rocky hits the canvas like a sack of rotten potatoes, and the bad guy does a little grandstanding to celebrate his big brass pair.
Then someone who loves Rocky, like Adrian, Mick, or his own inner voice says, “Get Up!”
Rocky dramatically pushes himself up on his hands and knees. Drags himself to his feet, wobbly-legged. Takes a deep breath to steady himself, then looks at the enemy across the ring with cold, dead eyes as if to say, “Is that all you got?”
In that moment, the bad guy’s face goes slack with doubt. Because deep down in his terrified little heart, he knows he just hit Rocky with his absolute best shot. And Rocky, getting back up, has turned the tables, stealing the enemy’s heart by proving that even his best shot can’t keep him down.
So, I got up off my knees in that cold shower, and stared at the enemy in the mirror, and told myself, “Get Up!”
Staring Down the Enemy Within
This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that after my cold shower revelation, I quit drinking, started pumping iron, power walking. And that is exactly what I did.
I got out of that shower, trembling with hypothermic grief, to look at the wreckage of the man in the mirror. Exposed in the naked truth that I was soul-sick. Not just from losing my father, but from years of ignoring self-care and leaning into bad choices.
Everything I’d built in my life in tatters. The friends I’d loved like brothers lost in the bottom of a bottle like I was. And other than a daughter who needed me, and a dementia-addled brain-dead mother staring blankly at the wall, I was alone in the world.
God sometimes blesses me to see people through his eyes. And the broken dude he let me see staring back at me was just existing. Stumbling toward an early grave and an ending that people would find sad for a few minutes before getting on with their lives.
I’ve learned that life will throw turning point moments at you. Times when you’re at the crossroads, and if you don’t choose the hard path, the motion of the world will force you down the wrong one.
Now this is where I’m supposed to tell you that I grabbed some dumbbells or went for a good long run. Did some serious journaling in my safe space and watched a long, slow sunset for inspirational purposes before crying in my herbal tea.
Instead, I chose to confront myself.
The Art of Self-Confrontation
One of the most important, difficult and painful early stages of the healing journey starts with identifying your self-inflicted wounds. This is scientific method stuff; you have to clearly identify the problem before you can start to solve it.
Except you, like I was then, are probably in this laid-low place, and don’t really have the tools to see the problem within you. The original wound within is buried under heaps of regrets, maladaptive coping mechanisms, ego, and victim-mindset.
The trick is to start small. And I think there's a prep stage here that you need to understand first to help reframe who is really in control of your life.
Internal vs External Locus of Control
I know it sounds like I picked the term Locus of Control just to sound smart, but really, I want to introduce these abstract terms to you so you can do a little research on your own. There's more here than I can unpack in a single H2 heading.
Yet the locus of control you ascribe to has a major impact on every element of your life. And its fluid, you're not locked into one, but the way you grew up will make you more prone to one over the other. Understanding the difference between the two will help you better understand your choices, your direction, and where you find validation.
External Locus of Control
When I started this healing journey I had an external locus of control. Woe is me, I'm fat, weak, and sickly because I'm getting old and God stopped putting good things in my life.
Most people with a victim mindset have an external locus of control. That's not to say it's only negative.
A lot of alcoholics are told that they’re powerless against their disease. Many people who have things go right for them talk about how God gave it to them.
I'm not trying to piss in anyone's locus cornflakes or belittle the value of anyone’s religion. Whatever helps you get sober is what you need to do as your starting point. Be that religion, a 12-step program, or livestreaming panda mating videos 24/7.
Whatever you need to get sober or break the pattern is great.
The thing you have to beware of is who you’re giving the control to in the long run. Because what happens if you spend a year crediting God for getting you sober, and then you slip up and have a drink?
Now, was that God letting you down? Was it the Devil messing with your head one last time? Or was it because you were going to the bars to “Listen to the live music,” putting yourself in unhealthy situations and not building a strong support system?
I’ve learned that when you’re in a wounded place in your life, having an external locus of control is easier, because something other than you has to be to blame. The dirtbag ex who hurt you while you were a perfect little angel. The system that screwed you over on your taxes.
Then the external locus of control balances it out by looking humble when things go right. Praising God for their sobriety and thanking their lucky stars for getting that new credit card approved.
I get it. I've been there and I know how comfortable it feels to duck out on accountability and guilt. Yet you can’t really identify the root causes of the problems in your life and what you need to do to fix them if it’s always caused by someone else or something else.
Internal Locus of Control
To put it briefly, having an internal locus of control means you stop looking outside yourself for the answers to everything happening in your life and start recognizing the role you play in shaping it.
When you’re in a wounded place, like I was, it takes a painful level of personal accountability.
Yes, life will always deal you some bad cards, and into every life a little rain must fall. There are always going to be people who hurt you, and there will be times when life kicks you when you’re already down.
When you embrace an internal locus of control, you gradually start to realize that your power is in how you respond to those things. The choices you make, the habits you build, and the people you allow into your world. You stop waiting for God, the government, or a winning lottery ticket to make the best of the life you were given.
You start looking at the man in the mirror and asking what the hell he's going to do about it. Rather than crying woe is me, or waiting for someone else to come along and help you pick up the pieces. Not because everything is your fault, but because your life is too important to keep handing the keys to someone or something else.
Now I want you to take a moment with that person in the mirror to really consider what I’m about to say. I want you to hear the gravel in my voice when I tell you this.
Deep down, a lot of the angst you feel, and the fear that keeps trying to suffocate you, probably comes from feeling out of control in your life. Your job, your ex, your sketchy clients, your toxic frenemies, all have sway over how you feel and that swings how your life goes.
For me, that moment in the cold running shower when I got up, looked at the sonuvabitch in the mirror, and challenged myself to do better. That was the turning point where I embraced an internal locus of control, and all the ugly accountability that came with.
And yes, it hurt.
Before Taking the Next Steps
Now, I don’t want to blow my whole philosophical load in one article, and there’s a whole hell of a lot more to this story. Most importantly, we need to look at the tools I found, and that you need to find, to not just break the pattern of maladaptive coping mechanisms in your life.
We’re also going to look at how to get on a healthy path and stay on that healthy path consistently. The roadmap will change, and the details of the healing journey are different for everyone.
So, don’t think of the articles that come next as being the hard and fast only answer to a healing journey in your life. Instead, we’re going to look at common themes and tools to cultivate a growing sense of awareness and accountability, as well as challenges you’re going to face along the way.
The next step on this journey is mining down to the original wound.
If you'd like to learn more about the Imperfectly Healed series, you can follow along at Eric Beuning's Author Page.
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