Waiting for Permission

⚠️ This might hurt to read. ⚠️

Do you know what the hardest thing to accept in therapy is?

Not that someone hurt you.

But that you could have stopped the circus a long time ago — and you didn’t.

That’s where it really hurts.

Not in the early trauma.

Not in the bad people around you.

But in the moment when you were already an adult, already had resources, already had a way out — and still stayed.

The Victim Role Is Comfortable

I’m not saying this with anger. I’m saying it as a fact.

The victim position is one of the most functional adaptations the human mind has ever created.

It gives you many things at once.

It removes responsibility — if circumstances are to blame, nothing has to change.

It gives you the right to attention — through suffering you can receive what you never learned to ask for directly.

It protects you from risk — if you are powerless, no one expects anything from you.

It gives you moral superiority — the one who suffers is always right.

This is not manipulation in the evil sense.

It is a survival system.

A very intelligent one.

A very exhausting one.

And at some point it completely consumes you.

How It Begins

A small child who cannot influence what is happening is truly a victim.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

Parents drink, shout, ignore, disappear, manipulate — and you can do nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

You depend on them physically and emotionally.

You cannot leave.

You cannot protect yourself.

You cannot even name what is happening — because you don’t have the words, and there is no one who says: yes, this is not normal.

Your nervous system remembers: I am powerless.

Not as a thought.

As a feeling in the body.

As a basic truth about yourself and the world.

And that truth stays — even when everything else has changed.

Years pass. You grow up.

Now there is a real possibility to say no, to leave, to choose differently, to earn money, to have your own home, to close the door.

But your body is still in that room.

Your body is still waiting for something outside to decide what you are allowed to do — and what you are not.

Suffering as Power

There is one thing people really don’t like to hear.

So I’ll say it directly.

Suffering can be used to control the people around you.

Not harshly. Not consciously. But it can.

When you are exhausted and everything about you communicates “I am not okay” — your partner feels guilty and stays.

When you are constantly in crisis — your friends cannot leave you alone, because they are afraid of what might happen.

When you are helpless — someone always steps in to rescue you.

And you are not alone again.

This is not cruelty.

It is a childhood strategy to receive closeness through pain — because direct requests for love once brought nothing.

And as long as this strategy works, there is no reason to give it up.

Even if the price is your entire life.

Control — The Other Side

Often, alongside the victim role lives its sister: hyper-control.

The same person who feels powerless can also try to control everything around them.

Food.

Schedules.

Other people.

Information.

Risks.

Because if I control everything — maybe it won’t hurt.

Maybe nothing will catch me by surprise.

Maybe this time I will be prepared.

Control and helplessness are actually the same thing.

Two different ways of avoiding contact with reality.

Both are exhausting.

Both prevent you from truly living.

The Steering Wheel

People like to say:

“You have the steering wheel of your life.”

It sounds beautiful.

But that sentence rarely changes anything.

Because the problem is not that you don’t know about the steering wheel.

The problem is that you don’t feel like someone who is allowed to touch it.

The steering wheel is not a thinking technique.

It is a feeling in the body that you have the right.

The right to choose.

To refuse.

To want something.

To leave.

To stay.

Without guilt.

Without fear that someone will abandon or destroy you for it.

And this feeling does not come from reading a book.

It comes from experience — slow, sometimes painful experience — when you start acting from your own place.

Not from fear.

Not from guilt.

But from yourself.

What “Doing It Differently” Really Means

It is not a dramatic decision.

Not a 180-degree turn.

Sometimes it is microscopic.

Not answering immediately — because you want to think, not because you are afraid.

Saying “I don’t like this” instead of “It’s fine.”

Stopping yourself before taking responsibility for something that isn’t yours.

Noticing:

Am I doing this out of fear — or out of choice?

The difference between those two is the difference between a drifting boat and a person holding the steering wheel.

No One Will Come With Permission

No one will arrive and say:

“Now you are allowed.”

Because the person who should have said that — didn’t.

And they never will.

That is the bitter news.

And at the same time — the only good news.

Because if there is no one left to wait for,

then you begin.

With what you have.

From where you stand.

Without guarantees.

Without permission.

You simply begin.

Healing rarely starts with certainty. Sometimes it begins quietly, in the middle of an imperfect week, with one small different choice.