Why it’s important to let go of needing to know why
Photo by AZGAN MjESHTRI on Unsplash
If you’re struggling with dysfunctional family dynamics, one thing that keeps you stuck is needing to know why. You believe that answering the question of why family members treated you the way they did will give you some kind of closure.
What if I told you that closure is a myth and you may never get the answers you seek? Believing your healing depends on you figuring out the past is a costly mistake.
As a child you suffered the pain of abuse, neglect, or inconsistent parenting. As an adult, however, you compound that pain with frustration when you try to work out why people did the things they did.
Because subconsciously you think if you can figure them out, maybe you can make them understand you. Perhaps you can get through to them finally if you know what makes them tick.
This is a remnant from childhood when you believed you could find a way to win their love. If only you knew what they needed from you, you’d give it to them.
You still believe deep down you can only move forward once you get through to them. In this way, you are placing your power in the hands of people who will never give you what you’re asking for.
Because there was never anything you could have done to create a different outcome. It was never about you but about them and their limitations.
Still, you busy yourself finding reasons for your parents’ bad behavior toward you. Something that will make it okay and give you a rational explanation you can live with.
Needing to know why holds you back
However, the key to your freedom lies not in figuring out the past. It rests instead in giving up needing to know why and focusing on your present and future instead.
This is not the same as the dismissive “letting go” that denies your experience and asks you to forgive and forget. Instead, it is a conscious decision to place your energy where it can do good.
Because when you put energy into needing to know why people treated you a certain way, it’s wasted. There is no answer that will satisfy you because no good reason exists.
Perhaps your caregivers were incapable of love because of their own trauma. Maybe they were doing the best they could, as the culture loves to convince us.
Ultimately, you have no way of knowing why they did what they did. And, guess what? They don’t know, either.
And even if they did, you would be hard-pressed to get a straight answer from them. Dysfunctional families operate from a fount of deep dishonesty.
Maintaining the status quo requires denial, gaslighting, and making you look crazy for seeking the truth. Instead of accepting this, you project onto others your own desire to heal and live authentically.
More often than not, these people have no interest in healing. In fact, your journey of transformation is more fodder for them to perpetuate the myth of you as the broken one.
It’s hard to believe, but toxic families would rather maintain their current system than live free. They prefer the prison that’s familiar to them than the scary unknown outside the cell walls.
Free yourself from the self-imposed tyranny of needing to know why anyone did what they did. You may never know, and believing any different will keep you from the life you deserve and desire.
