Our neurobiology can be unforgiving.

For me, daily bullying during my entire K-12 education made being disdained, relentlessly teased, ignored, isolated, spit at, and harassed in multiple other ways my “normal”.

As a young adult,the long-term relationship I chose recreated that “normal”.

It’s been almost a full decade now since I started taking steps to get healthy and live out a “new normal” for myself.

But I am learning the hard way that changing the situation is not the only thing needed to truly heal from the trauma.

Through a lot of prayer, reflection, and therapy, I recently had a “hindsight is 20/20” moment and realized that some actions and words toward a few people in my life that I love so much were probably some unconscious self-sabotage caused by my stubborn neurochemistry trying to drive me back to old “normal” of being hated and alone.

Though the damage caused to those relationships may never be undone, I thank my Maker for each new day to live and learn and to do whatever it takes to heal and to never again cause such pain.

And I am putting this out there with a hope and a prayer that someone reading this may be spared from learning this lesson the hard way.

Maker God, my old ways haven’t worked my whole life. Please do a new thing in me today!