How to Be a Lobster- 5 Signs To Healing

Everyone has experienced some type of pain. If they say they never have, they’re lying. We’re human. We all have feelings with emotions. At some point we have all loved and you have lost. Healing is not easy. Healing is one of the most challenging parts of finding yourself on your own once again. Healing is painful. There are no shortcuts. You will break, you will experience a certain amount of physical and emotional suffering. It’s difficult to believe, when you are mired in so much emotional chaos, that one day you actually won’t feel that anymore.

We’re Human. We all have feelings with emotions. At some point we all have loved and lost.

 There will always be a part of you that is changed forever. This is part of the healing process. Most people who are dealing with loss or grief in one form or another have been confronted by these stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. 

These days, I have healed.  I no longer wake up with that ball in my throat. I no longer have the urge to try to change the past. I no longer miss these people that I grieved. Sure I miss our memories. I missed the happiness behind those moments we shared. I have lost everyone in my life. When I say everyone, I mean absolutely everyone. Mother, Sisters, Brothers, Step Father, My ex husband, my family home and dynamic, and friends. I grieved, I cried, I prayed, and begged god to take it all away. To take away all the pain that ran through every vessel in my heart and bled them dry.  Now, let’s rewind to my last prayer with my god.  The last prayer to him I was so angry with him. It was the day of that marked our one year mark (Divorce anniversary/ my Ex’s Birthday). I can honestly say I’m still having a hard time connecting back with my spiritually, After that last prayer with my god that was suppose to protect me and my family, he fell short. He knew my heart. He knew my loyalty and he allowed it all to happen. He knew my pain, and it was then I called my estranged mother. I need comfort.  I was so broken to nurture myself back to reality.

I think it was then he gave me the wisdom and strength to let something die in me so I can allow myself to be reborn.

I made healing my only priority (aside from my children). I wanted to know what I did wrong loving as hards as I did. Or loving and protecting myself and my family was completely misunderstood. I wanted to know why my feelings and thoughts had no desire to be validated.

I’m passionate, I’m vocal. I’ll be the first person to fight for someone I love before protecting myself. I am emotional and extremely intense. 

I wanted to be the best version of myself for ME and MY CHILDREN.  However, this sounds good on paper. Its not as easy like ordering something off of Amazon on one simple click . Like these stages aren’t a completely devastating process.

For me,  after being codependent on someone for such a long time, learning to trust yourself again can be a difficult process. For those of you who are leaving long term relationships, like it or not, you have been dependent on someone else for a long time. You know nothing else. Change might even scare the fuck out of you and it’s no longer about love. Even though you might want to want keeping lying to yourself or protest those feelings too.  I’m not talking financially (although that might be a piece of the puzzle), but emotionally. This emotional bond is one of the most challenging to sever and to find that place where you can rely on yourself once again.

Think back to the last time you were single and independent. I’m sure you were content in your life, even if you wanted to have someone to share your adventures with. You trusted yourself. You relied on yourself. You were your strength, your support system, your own success story.

Then, things changed. You met someone, fell in love, and your lives became intertwined. Don’t be sad about that. Love is beautiful and it’s one of the best aspects to being alive.

Eventually, that love changed. It became a warped version of its once glowing self. It became angry, jealous, possibly abusive, and unfulfilling. It became everything you never hoped it would be. Finally, it ended and you found yourself once again on your own.

One of those challenges will come in the form of trigger.

This time around, however, you’re finding yourself on your own with the challenge of dealing with grief. For me, my partner that I spent most of my life with, died.  Not literally, but he died in my heart.  I have come to terms that  it was the best decision I have ever made, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t come without its own set of challenges. I’m still picking up the pieces of my children’s broke hearts.  

Some people may call this hitting rock bottom.

One of those challenges will come in the form of triggers. Triggers are those things that bring up painful memories and have a way of truly manifesting themselves into your whole being. A triggered memory or emotion is like getting blindsided by a speeding car in the middle of an intersection. You won’t even see it coming, but it will fuck your world up instantly.

It could be a picture, a song, a place, or even a passing scent that will take you back to that place where happy memories get turned into lucid nightmares. Once those memories are triggered, you’re definitely in for a ride on the emotional rollercoaster. It could spark anger, depression, or any number of emotions that will play over and over again on a sadistic loop.

When these emotions are triggered, it feels like you are once again starting over from square one and it you’re living the old adage of one step forward, two steps back. This can throw a huge proverbial wrench in your healing process.

The key to remember here, especially when you are starting to feel overwhelmed, is that this is a process. Like anything worthwhile, it’s going to take time and effort to ultimately get where you want to be.

…these are progress, even if you still feel a little broken.

So, how do you know that you’re on the tail end of this whole shit show? There are certain signs that you are healing. It’s important that you acknowledge these as progress, even if you still feel a little broken.

You Stop Self Destructing

Initially, when you are dealing with your loss and grief, you will start some sort of self-destructive behavior. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the extreme, like alcohol or drugs or sex, but you will engage in behaviors that are out of your normal character.

Some people do go down a pretty dark path. I know that I went down my own more than once during that time. As I’ve started talking to others about their own healing process, I realize that I’m not alone in this type of behavior. It can be difficult to find the right path during this process and you’re going to travel the wrong one more times than you probably want to admit.

Eventually, you will stop these behaviors. Some people call this hitting rock bottom while others might have a different name. Regardless of the semantics behind it, what will happen is that you will stop these behaviors, or at least learn to manage them more productively. For me, this was the most important step in my healing process. I knew I deserved to be better for myself and, once I recognized that positive change, I got myself back on the right track.

Adapting to Your New Life

When your life first gets turned upside down, most people tend to fight their new lives. It’s not what they knew, it’s not the comfort of their past, and it just doesn’t feel right. For those of us with children, this can be an extremely difficult part of the process. Your whole family dynamic has changed and you find yourself really missing those aspects of your old life. You have to realize you left, or it ended, for a reason. Odds are, it was a pretty good reason otherwise you would still be deep in the trenches of your former life.

Once you start to adapt to your new life and accept the realities therein, you will find yourself in a pretty good place. You will start to smile again. You will find joy in things that you didn’t find joy in before. What this means is that you are beginning to trust the process.

Support System

One of the signs that you are making positive strides in your healing process is that you have a strong support system in place. This doesn’t need to be a team of people, but it does need to be a system with your best interests at heart.

For some people it can be an organized group that is more therapy than support. For others it’s their family or friends who they can call at any time and they know someone will be there for them. All it takes is one strong person in your life who only wants to see you happy. Your emotions will never be overwhelming to them, and you can unleash on them without judgement.

I was fortunate enough to have one person who I could count on during this process. This person listened to the same stories, multiple times, and never once judged me. All they wanted was to see me happy. I opened up to this person, cried, yelled, broke down, and this person continued to love and support me. I don’t know where I would be today without this type of support.

Make Yourself Happy

There’s a certain sadism to grief. You reach a point in your process where you almost feel like you deserve to be miserable. It’s a morbid comfort blanket that you wrap yourself in and don’t necessarily want to escape. My theory on this is that grief makes us numb. We get to a point where it seems like if we’re not feeling pain, then we wouldn’t be able to feel anything at all.

When you are able to find a way to make yourself happy once again, you a on a great path towards your healing. You finally feel liberated. All the weight from your grief is lifted off your shoulders. A great part of this is that you really start to see the past for what it was, not what you painted it out to be. The love goggles are off and you finally see through all the smoke and mirrors.

For me, I saw the truth behind the darkest aspects of my marriage, and I was happy to finally be free of the madness. I saw the manipulation, the gaslighting, the disrespect in a new light, and I became proud of myself for having the strength to let that go and seek out the life I knew I deserved and always wanted.

A friend once told me a story about how a lobster grows…

I danced around the house again. Music stopped being a trigger for me and once again became a source of pleasure. I lost myself in my own happiness and was able to really let go of the past. I smiled again. I genuinely laughed and felt the warmth of that laughter wash over me until it was so pure that nothing bad could taint it.

Be a Lobster: You Start to Become the Best Version of Yourself

 A friend once told me a story about how a lobster grows. It needs to be under stress in order to shed the old shell that is too hard to allow the lobster to grow any more. This applies to life. Only through struggle are we able to find out exactly what we are capable of, and, more importantly, exactly who we are.

From this stress you will find the qualities within yourself that are who YOU want to be. Not some watered down version of yourself to fit a role for someone else, or even your identity as part of something else. What you eventually find is that strong person you can trust with your life, and trust that you have your own best interests at heart.

This realization helps to create this best version of yourself. You know what you will and won’t tolerate of people, you know all the great qualities you bring to the table, and you know your own worth. From here, you will be strong enough to give your best to others and will accept nothing less in return. This is the stage where you set the tone for the happiness you will experience in your present and future.

I’m not writing this to fool you into thinking that this process is anything but a total bitch. There are still days I want to give up and still days where I feel overwhelmed with life, but those days are very few and very far between. I am at the end of my healing process, one that I have worked extremely hard to conquer.

I make my healing a priority every day because I never want to feel that lost ever again in my life. I’ve stopped so many of the negative behaviors that were only dragging me down. I stopped drinking and I practice sobriety which keeps me in a positive mindset. I can say with complete confidence that, today, I am the best version of myself.

It’s important to look at where you are in your own healing process and to celebrate the good days. It’s ok to break down and stumble, don’t feel guilty for that. It’s ok to cry. Acknowledge and validate that pain because one day that pain will no longer rule your life. That’s true growth.