There is another side to all of this that has less to do with the people around me and more to do with what I have learned to do with myself. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how my upbringing might affect me in the future, not just in obvious ways, but in the quieter patterns that might eventually show up in friendships, relationships, work, or everyday decisions. I've wondered what lessons I absorbed without realizing it, what assumptions I have about myself, how I respond to conflict, what I expect from other people, and perhaps most importantly, what I expect from myself.
At one point, I became almost obsessed with figuring all of this out. A year or two ago, I had this intrusive need to understand everything. If my family had shaped me in certain ways, I wanted to know exactly how. If there was a pattern in my behavior, I wanted to find its origin. If something was wrong, I wanted to solve it. I knew even then that it was impossible to completely map out every influence that had shaped me, but knowing that didn't stop the thought. In some ways, having a problem to solve was easier than accepting that there might not be a complete answer.
I don't have quite the same obsession now. I don't feel like I need to uncover every single thing about myself before I can move forward. But I still think about the future, particularly when it comes to relationships I haven't had yet. I've never had a romantic relationship, and I haven't had many close friendships, so there is an uncertainty there that can be difficult to explain. Part of me worries that I have somehow missed lessons that other people learned naturally. What if I don't know how to be a good friend? What if I push someone away? What if I misunderstand someone's intentions? What if I bring unhealthy patterns into a relationship without even realizing it?
My instinctive response to that uncertainty is to try to solve it before it happens. I think, I need to figure myself out first. I need to understand how my family affected me, identify every unhealthy pattern, change the way I think, and somehow make sure I don't bring any of those problems into a future relationship. It sounds reasonable until I actually examine what I'm asking of myself. How am I supposed to identify every problem I've never encountered? How am I supposed to know how I will respond to a situation I've never experienced? How am I supposed to guarantee that I won't hurt someone's feelings, become defensive, miscommunicate, or make a mistake? I can't.
And yet some part of me still wants that certainty.
I think this connects to another pattern I've noticed in myself: I have a difficult relationship with starting things when I can't guarantee that I'll finish them. There are things I want to do that I sometimes avoid because I'm afraid of becoming inconsistent. If I want to learn a new language, for example, part of me doesn't simply think, "I'll try learning this." Instead, the thought becomes, "What if I start and then stop?" If I stop, I'll be disappointed in myself, so sometimes the safest option becomes not starting at all. If I never officially begin, I can't technically quit.
Of course, that logic falls apart when I look at it objectively. Not starting guarantees that I won't accomplish the thing. Starting gives me at least a possibility. But the automatic thought isn't really concerned with long-term logic. It is trying to protect me from disappointment. If I don't try, I can't fail. If I don't commit, I can't become inconsistent. If I never give myself the opportunity to fall short of the expectation I created, I don't have to experience the feeling of having disappointed myself.
I've noticed the same kind of thinking in much smaller situations. I can turn something that should be simple into an entire chain of requirements. If I need to go to the store, my brain can immediately turn that into needing to shower first, then maybe do laundry, then get gas, and perhaps take care of another errand while I'm already out. None of those things are inherently unreasonable, but suddenly the original task isn't one task anymore. It has become five. Once I see all five things at once, I become overwhelmed, and then I end up doing none of them.
The content of those examples isn't really the important part. The important part is what they reveal about how my brain approaches things. A simple action becomes a larger obligation. An imperfect attempt becomes a potential failure. A decision becomes a commitment to an entire future. Something that could be done imperfectly starts feeling like something that needs to be done completely or not at all.
I also see this in the way I think about exercise. If I decide I should walk more, my brain can immediately create a rule that the walk needs to be an hour to really count. Anything less can feel pointless. But walking for an hour can sound incredibly boring, so I don't go. Thirty minutes would have been perfectly reasonable, but my brain doesn't always care about reasonable. It cares about complete.
The frustrating part is that I know what is happening. I can identify the pattern while it is happening. I can explain exactly why the thought isn't logical, and I can still have trouble stopping it. That has been one of the hardest things for me to understand. I think I used to believe that awareness should automatically lead to change. If I knew something was unhealthy, why would I continue doing it?
But understanding a behavior intellectually doesn't necessarily erase the emotional reason behind it. An automatic thought can develop through years of repetition. It can become a shortcut that your brain takes before the logical part of you even has time to catch up. So when I say that I want to "rewire" my brain, I don't think I actually mean that I expect to become an entirely different person. I think I want my first reaction to stop having so much authority.
Maybe that's a more realistic goal. The first thought might still be, "Anything less than an hour doesn't count." The difference is that the second thought becomes, "I know that's what my brain is telling me, but thirty minutes is still worth doing." The first thought might still be, "What if I quit?" The second thought can become, "Then I'll have learned something. I don't have to predict the future before I begin." The first thought might still turn one errand into five. The second can become, "No. Right now, I'm just going to the store."
The first thought doesn't necessarily have to disappear for me to make a different decision.
That has been difficult for me because I have spent so much time wanting to eliminate the problem entirely. I don't want to have the automatic reaction anymore. I want to reach some point where the unhealthy thought simply doesn't appear. But that may be an unrealistic expectation, especially when the thought has been reinforced for years. Maybe change isn't about making the original reaction disappear. Maybe it is about creating enough space between the thought and the action that I get to choose what happens next.
There is an uncomfortable stage of self-awareness where you can recognize the problem but haven't yet learned how to consistently change it. You see yourself doing exactly what you said you didn't want to do. Before, you simply weren't doing the thing. Now you know why you aren't doing it, and you're still not doing it. That can almost make self-awareness feel worse because now you have another reason to criticize yourself: I know better.
I think that's where I need to be careful. If I turn self-awareness into another reason to shame myself, then awareness isn't actually helping me. It is simply giving me more vocabulary with which to criticize myself.
I don't want to replace one impossible standard with another. I don't want to go from, "I need to be perfect," to, "I need to be perfectly self-aware and fix every problem I've ever had." That would still be perfectionism. It would just be wearing a more psychologically sophisticated disguise.
This becomes especially obvious when I think about relationships. I could decide that before I have a healthy friendship or romantic relationship, I need to understand every way my family affected me. Then I need to fix every unhealthy pattern. Then I need to learn perfect communication. Then I need to make sure I never become defensive, never misinterpret someone's intentions, never withdraw, never say the wrong thing, and never hurt anyone.
At what point would I actually be allowed to have the relationship?
Probably never, because there would always be something else to fix.
That is where I think my desire to understand myself can become another form of avoidance. It feels productive because I'm thinking deeply. I'm analyzing. I'm identifying patterns. I'm trying to prepare myself. But sometimes understanding becomes a substitute for experiencing. I can spend years preparing to have relationships instead of allowing myself to actually build them. I can spend years planning the perfect version of my future instead of taking imperfect steps toward it. I can spend so much time worrying about whether I'll fail that I never give myself the chance to find out what happens if I try.
This is part of why the different things I'm pursuing now feel important to me. For a long time, I put off things I cared about because I thought I needed to know that I could succeed before I started. Now I'm trying to approach them differently. I'm allowed to experiment. I'm allowed to learn. I'm allowed to discover that something isn't right for me. I'm allowed to change direction. I'm even allowed to fail.
None of those things have to become a verdict on my character.
I think that is one of the biggest lessons I'm still trying to absorb. A decision can be wrong without making me a failure. A project can end without proving that I can't commit. A relationship can end without proving that I am incapable of being loved. A mistake can be something I made without becoming something I am.
That distinction seems obvious when written down. It is much harder to believe when the old patterns are active.
Maybe that is what changing actually looks like. Not waking up one day and realizing that every unhealthy thought has disappeared, but gradually becoming better at recognizing which thoughts deserve to be acted on and which ones don't. Maybe confidence isn't the absence of doubt. Maybe it is being able to have doubt without letting it make every decision for you.
I can have an automatic reaction without automatically obeying it. I can feel afraid of disappointing myself and still begin. I can feel like something isn't enough and still let it count. I can become overwhelmed by everything that needs to happen and still choose the one thing that needs to happen now. I can be aware of patterns I inherited without believing that they determine who I have to become.
That last part matters to me because I don't want my family history to become another kind of destiny. I want to understand how I've been shaped without assuming that being shaped means being permanently defined. There is a difference between recognizing where a behavior came from and deciding that it can never change.
I also don't want to approach future relationships as though another person is going to receive a finished product. Nobody is finished. Everyone brings history into a relationship. Everyone has insecurities, habits, assumptions, and things they are still learning. The important question isn't whether I will have flaws. I will. The important question is what I do when those flaws become visible.
Can I listen when someone tells me I've hurt them? Can I admit when I'm wrong? Can I apologize without immediately explaining why I did what I did? Can I recognize when an old reaction is coming from an old wound rather than the situation in front of me? Can I change my behavior? Can I give another person the same grace I want them to give me?
Those questions feel much more useful than trying to predict every possible problem before it happens.
Maybe relationships aren't something I need to be completely prepared for. Maybe they are one of the places where I'll continue learning who I am. That doesn't mean I want to hurt people and use growth as an excuse afterward. Responsibility still matters. Self-awareness still matters. Working on yourself still matters. But perfection isn't the requirement.
Growth is.
And growth is rarely linear.
Sometimes I will recognize a pattern and still fall into it. Sometimes I'll know what I should have done and realize it too late. Sometimes I'll make the same mistake twice. That doesn't erase the progress, because the next opportunity still exists.
I think that's the part I've been missing. I've been treating change like a test I either pass or fail. But maybe it's closer to writing.
You don't write one perfect draft and never touch it again. You write something, reread it, notice what doesn't work, change it, keep what does, and continue. Some parts stay. Some parts get rewritten. Some parts make more sense years later. Some parts remain unresolved because the story hasn't reached them yet.
That's probably a better way to think about myself, too.
I don't need to understand every reason behind who I am before I can move forward. I don't need to fix every problem before I deserve connection. I don't need to know exactly where every decision will lead before I make it. And I don't need to eliminate every uncomfortable thought before I can trust myself.
Maybe I just need to become better at noticing what happens and deciding what comes next.
The manuscript is unfinished because I'm still writing it. Not because I have failed to finish becoming a person. Not because there is some perfect version of myself waiting somewhere in the future. Not because I need to solve every problem before the next chapter can begin.
It is unfinished because there are still pages left.
There are things I haven't tried, people I haven't met, relationships I haven't experienced, mistakes I haven't made yet, and lessons I haven't learned. There are parts of myself I haven't discovered. And maybe that's okay.
Maybe the goal isn't to reach a point where I finally know myself completely. Maybe the goal is to become someone who can keep discovering things without being afraid of what they might find.
Someone who can recognize a pattern without immediately deciding that something is wrong with them. Someone who can say, "I don't know yet," without feeling like that means failure. Someone who can make a decision without needing everyone else to approve it. Someone who can begin without guaranteeing the ending. Someone who can make a mistake without turning it into an identity. Someone who can meet another person without presenting a perfectly finished version of themselves.
And maybe, most importantly, someone who can understand that knowing the problem isn't the same as knowing how to change it.
Sometimes awareness is only the beginning. Sometimes the solution is a small choice made differently than the last one. Sometimes the first thought stays, but the second thought changes. Sometimes the fear doesn't disappear, but you do the thing anyway. Sometimes you don't know whether the decision you're making today will still be the decision you want a year from now, and you make it anyway because it is the best decision you can make with what you know today.
Maybe that is what it means to be unfinished.
Not broken. Not behind. Not waiting for permission.
Just still becoming.