For the longest time, I thought I just had bad habits.
I thought I was lazy.
I thought I was avoidant.
I thought I was too emotional, too detached, too reactive… or too numb.
I didn’t realize those “bad habits” weren’t flaws in my personality—they were protective layers built around pain I hadn’t fully faced.
Because the truth is:
Bad habits come from deeper wounds.
They’re not random. They’re rooted.
When Survival Becomes a Pattern
Growing up, I learned how to wear a mask.
Not because I wanted to lie, but because I didn’t feel safe showing how I really felt. I smiled when I was crumbling. I performed when I was empty. I tried to be perfect because, deep down, I feared that being flawed meant being unlovable.
So I avoided hard conversations.
I overthought every word I said.
I stayed silent in rooms where my soul was screaming.
Later in life, that looked like people-pleasing. Like needing validation. Like staying too long in a karmic relationship with someone who mirrored back my wounds instead of my worth.
But those weren’t just “bad choices.”
They were coping mechanisms—built to survive, not thrive.
Not Lazy—Just Tired of Carrying It All
The days I couldn’t get out of bed weren’t because I lacked discipline.
They were because I was carrying years of self-doubt, unspoken grief, and emotional exhaustion.
The nights I over-scrolled or over-ate weren’t because I was weak.
They were my nervous system trying to soothe itself after years of chronic emotional tension.
I wasn’t lazy.
I was burnt out from holding it all together.
Healing Means Rewriting the Pattern
I used to try to fix the habit—start a new routine, break the cycle, punish myself into change.
But real transformation didn’t come from behavior modification.
It came from asking deeper questions:
- What is this habit protecting me from feeling?
- What part of me is still in pain?
- What wound is still open beneath this reaction?
Only then could I meet myself with compassion.
Only then could I stop fighting myself and start healing myself.
I’m Not That Wounded Girl Anymore
The girl who learned to hide, to please, to shrink herself—she did what she had to do.
She deserves love, not judgment.
But I’m not her anymore.
I no longer want to build my life on old pain.
I want to build it on truth.
On gentleness.
On clarity.
That means acknowledging the root before I try to change the symptom.
That means forgiving myself for the survival tactics that no longer serve me.
If you’re stuck in patterns you don’t understand, pause before you shame yourself.
Look deeper.
Your bad habit may be a younger you, still trying to protect you the only way they know how.
Speak to them with love.
Because healing begins not when you control yourself better,
but when you understand yourself deeper.
