This Is How You Truly Move On From Everything That Caused You Pain

You don’t move on overnight. Things don’t automatically stop triggering you. You don’t wake up one day and feel alive again. Instead, it happens slowly, perhaps when you’re not even aware you’re doing it. It happens when you’re openly talking about your pain and you don’t feel defined by it anymore. You’re talking about it like a distant memory or a lesson of the past you’re going over. It happens when someone asks you about your parents and you don’t flinch. It happens when someone asks you about your ex and you smile because somehow you have forgiven them. It happens when instead of living in your victim mentality, you learn how to become a winner—a person who has endured tough times and has been bruised and broken but is still very much alive, hopeful, and eager to live and try everything again like it’s the first time.

You don’t move on by reading a book or watching an inspirational video or getting advice from your friends. It’s not a one-time thing. You move on when you repeatedly work on your problems and commit to fixing yourself instead of relying on others to do so. When you become more aware of certain patterns and triggers that this pain has caused you and realize that you need to do some extra work to get rid of it. It happens the first time you go to the therapist’s office and you don’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong. It happens when you start addressing all those issues that you swept under the rug because you didn’t want to deal with them. It happens when you’re no longer trying to hide your pain and you’re no longer diminishing it. 

You don’t move on just because someone tells you that you should. You move on when you realize that your past is holding you back from truly enjoying your present. You move on when you realize that there’s a better life out there for you that you can create for yourself. When you realize that there are better people out there for you than the ones who hurt you. When you realize that no one else is responsible for fixing you but yourself. You move on when you realize that moving on is your job and your responsibility and that you’re very qualified to do so. 

You don’t move on suddenly and it doesn’t happen in two weeks or two months. To truly move on from the parents who let you down or the partners who broke your heart or the friends who betrayed you, you’re going to have to invest years in this process. It happens slowly and sometimes unconsciously when you are truly determined to move on but it will change everything else.

You won’t listen to the same songs or watch the same movies anymore. You may change your inner circle or who you spend most of your time with. You may start attracting people who weren’t really ‘your type’ before. You may start saying things or doing things that could shock some people but this is what moving on is all about. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it changes who you are from within which in turn changes everything else around you.