Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves. -Gandhi

The other day I got upset over something silly that triggered difficult feelings with deep roots from my past.

In short, someone I love made a reasonable request that, for various reasons, I didnt want to honor, partly because I felt this person wasnt taking my feelings into account. But I had no good reason to suspect this.

I thought this because its a pattern for me.

For most of my young life, I believed my needs wouldnt be met if I didnt push and fight for them.

I saw everything as a battleit was everyone else against me. Though Ive learned to see others as on my side, and I know that Im on theirs, I still worry that people arent looking out for me at times.

In the aftermath of this recent altercation, I talked through my feelings with my boyfriend.

I told him I understood my emotional response, and I knew where it came fromwhen I first felt this way and why and how its been a pattern in my life.

Then I posed a question: In recognizing where and how I learned this behavior, am I blaming people and circumstances from my past or merely being self-aware? What, exactly, is the difference?

I think its an important question to ask, because weve all been wronged before.

We do ourselves a disservice if we sit around blaming other people for our maladaptive reactions and behaviors, but sometimes were better able to change when we understand how we developed in response to former relationships and prior events.

Ive spent a lot of time learning to let go of victim stories, which is a big part of why I dont write about some of the most painful events of my life. Still, for better or for worse, they shaped who I am.

When I allow myself to look back and acknowledge wrong-doing, I reinforce to myself that I did not deserve to be mistreated, and that its not my fault that I struggle in certain ways as a result.

I know, however, that it is my responsibility to change my responses and behaviors. And that, right there, is the difference between self-awareness and self-victimization.

Self-awareness allows us to understand whats going on in our heads and why; self-victimization prevents us from accepting that were responsible for it, and for what we do as a result.

Expanding on this train of thought, self-victimization includes:

As someone whos done all of these things in the past, I can attest that this is often the result of immense pain.

Sometimes we play the victim because we were victims. We learned that we didnt have control and then adapted to that. Because we once felt powerless, we learned to give our power away.

On the other side of the spectrum, self-empowerment includes:

This requires self-awareness, which brings me back to my initial question:

What does self-awareness look like, when it involves acknowledging pain from the pastand how does it differ from self-victimization?

Self-awareness includes:

The fundamental difference between self-awareness and self-victimization, when it pertains to acknowledging weve been hurt: Self-awareness is about observing our response to what happened; self-victimization is about feeding into the story of what happened.

This isnt always easy to do. Sometimes the mere act of remembering something painful can bring up all kinds of old feelings. It helps if we learn to immediately redirect our thoughts to a positive, empowering affirmation.

This means that next time I find myself questioning whether the other person really has best interests at heart, when I have no reason to believe they dont, I can tell myself something like this:

I give people I love the benefit of the doubt. I release my instinctive emotional response from the deepest root cause and do my part to create happy relationships.

In changing my thoughts, I can change my feelings and then effectively redirect my actions.

This process can apply to all kinds of unhealthy relationship patterns that stem from former relationships, but it requires us to work at developing self-awareness.

One way we can do this is by journaling about our feelings and triggersif, for example, you tend to feel mistrusting, or defensive, or angry when specific events occurand then come up with affirmations to use when we get caught up in those patterns.

Some examples of situations and affirmations:

If you frequently mistrust someonesolely becausesomeone else formerly abused your trust, you could use this affirmation when those old feelings arise:

This is a new relationship. I release my instinctive emotional response from the deepest root cause, and accept that I can change it and improve my relationship by trusting.

If you frequently feel guilty in your relationship, in large part because you were emotionally abused in a former one, you could use this affirmation when those old feelings arise (assuming youre in a healthy relationship now):

I choose not to blame myself. I release my instinctive emotional response from the deepest root cause, and free myself from shame and self-judgment.

Whatever the pattern, we can challenge it and eventually change it by changing our thoughts and beliefs.

If were willing to be self-aware, we can empower ourselves, and transform our relationships and in our lives in the process.

Two great, related resources:

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Develop Self-Awareness and Improve Your Relationships