The Weight of Invisible Battles

Bound by time. Consciousness trapped within mortal flesh. We strive for meaning, each of us seeking in our own way. Our true form crying out to be heard, yet silenced through trauma and conditioning. The weight of invisible battles dragging us ever downward. Stifled by fear and insecurity. Longing for recognition. To feel known. Not from outward appearances and performance, but an internal knowing, an acceptance of the self, regardless of the pain or chaos writhing within.

Some fight the weight. They strain, push, and pull, looking for freedom; never satisfied with where they are, knowing there’s something more, something deeper inside. They limp through the fatigue of a familiar life; their mind's eye shows them something larger than themselves lurking in the distance. With this vision, they race forward, refusing to accept what is in an effort to grasp what could be. 

Others accept the weight. Relinquishing themselves to the inevitability of the pain lodged within. Some, in quiet desperation—afraid to move beyond the struggle—always living as if imprisoned behind bars of insecurity. Resentment building as each day passes. Never daring to speak for fear of judgment.

Some wrestle in stoic silence. Living by the mantra “Boys don’t cry.” They accept the hurt and harden themselves through suffering. Any emotional vulnerability is discarded and viewed as a crutch. Yet they never understand vulnerability is the way to freedom. 

To many, the invisible battles raging within feel unwinnable. They feel overwhelming, and you reel in the pain and frustration of not “getting better.” You’ve been fighting for so long, with no end in sight, and you succumb to the idea that this is just who you are. It’s always been this way, and always will be. 

The Nature of Invisible Battles

These invisible battles are the ones we struggle with every day. For some, it’s a sense of deep shame. For others, guilt. Still others fight through resentment, bitterness, or feelings of unworthiness. We fear we’re not doing enough, or not good enough. Instead of confronting the pain, we often silence our inner voices. We shove them down into the darkness, pretending they don’t exist, as they leave their wounds and eventual scars. 

We strive to push through, rejoicing in life. We smile. Laugh. Though the joy never reaches our eyes. Instead, they reveal the truth hidden within, the frustrations, hurt, and trauma that have been covered up through years of perpetual silence around our buried pain. We’re taught to fight the pain rather than to accept it. Ignore it. Stuff it down. After all, the bullies on the playground will only use your vulnerability as fuel for the fire. As a result, we teach ourselves how to hide the hurt. We pretend to be fine, but inside, we’re consumed by anger, dread, and fear in all its forms. 

Society used to pat you on the back for covering your trauma, though in recent times, dealing with your inner demons is slowly being normalized. However, there’s still a stigma around bearing your soul and performing emotional surgery to remove the cancerous blight tethering your consciousness to the ground. 

The reality is that fear holds you back, and silence keeps you trapped.

The Silence That Kills

Rather than addressing the deeper issues, we tend to run from them. The fear of vulnerability pulls us further into the shadows of self-isolation, worried that in being real, we’ll open ourselves to undue scrutiny, bringing laughter or scorn upon our heads. As insecurity sets in, the thought arises, “What will people think of me?” We worry that we’ll be rejected for our flaws, that we will be ridiculed and shamed because we think we’re the only ones struggling through something difficult.

Others might view silence as a source of pride. They labor through the pain as if whoever carries the burden the longest wins the biggest prize. The quintessential idea of a man’s man. A lone wolf. Someone who doesn’t need help from others. 

In the darkness, in the recesses of your soul, you continue to cry out. Silent suffering becomes normalized until it feels as if it’s all you’ve ever known. However, silence only amplifies the suffering. The unspoken trauma, wounds, and pain begin to fester. They multiply and magnify until they feel overwhelming—like a monster you’ve trapped in the closet; its gnarled hand reaching through the crack in the door, groping for flesh as you desperately attempt to contain it within the confines of darkness. 

Yet, in our fight for secrecy, we forget that we’re only human. We forget that we all struggle.

The Shared Human Condition

Everyone has their battles. It’s the illusion of isolation that convinces us we’re alone. We become myopic to pain until it’s the only thing we can see, forgetting that each of us struggles with something. 

During my own struggles with depression, and as I learned how to move beyond that place, I came up with a simple quote to remind myself of this truth:

This expression may tempt you to write it off as stupid or too simple. But when you’re dealing with a deep sense of hurt, you don’t realize you’re focusing on that hurt so much it engulfs your entire life. When you’re alone, when you’re silent, that pain forces its way to the surface, and the human tendency is to obsess over why things are so bad. 

Even when we see people living on the streets, lonely and broken, we rarely consider how difficult their lives have been. Most didn’t choose that path; they simply don’t know how to escape it. Yet we drive by and wonder why we have it so bad.

This isn’t to say people in their cars and homes don’t have it bad. Everything comes down to perspective. The thing about humans, though, is that we have the capacity to decide to change. But you must be willing to do what’s needed to win that invisible battle raging within. 

Choosing to Face the Battle

I could write an entire article on the many ways we suffer internally and how that affects our lives: We ruin relationships, or strive endlessly full of ambition, thinking it will fulfill us; we sabotage ourselves because we don’t feel worthy; some develop an egotistic personality allowing them to feel superior to others; while others succumb to depression, or lose themselves to drugs and alcohol. The list of how miserable we can become is endless. 

The paradox most don’t realize is that the stronger you pretend to be, the weaker you actually become. This is because the more you suppress, the larger the internal battle becomes; the suppression acts as a slow erosion of the core of your being.

The answer isn’t to force everything downward, but to learn to become vulnerable in a productive manner. I say that because people often think vulnerability means opening up to anyone and everyone about their problems. It’s not just people talking about how terrible their lives are; it’s the act of regurgitating their issues in a way that gives them momentary relief while dumping their pain onto others. It’s pseudo-therapy. They get their feelings off their chest, which provides them with momentary relief, but since they aren’t putting in the work, the issues crop right back up. It’s like pulling weeds after the seeds have already fallen to the ground. Once they hit the soil, they cultivate and sprout as tall as ever—a never-ending cycle of misery.

Misery, however, does not need to be an all-encompassing experience in your life. There are things you can do to learn how to overcome.

Recognition, Recognition, Recognition

The first step to experience change in everything we do comes in the form of recognition. Without recognition, nothing about your life or the world at large would change. The only reason someone starts a successful business is that they’ve recognized a problem and found a solution. Many people start businesses solely for profit, but they often fail to identify a problem to solve, which is why their businesses usually suffer.

The same is true for your emotional life. If you don’t recognize what’s actually going on within you, how can you expect to change? Simply stating, “I’m this,” “I’m that,” isn’t recognition. Recognition goes deeper than that.

Recognition of the Problem 

First, you must become aware of what’s broken or unhealed. Truly aware. You can’t just say, “I’m depressed” or “I struggle with anxiety”. Those are symptoms of the underlying problem. Recognition is understanding why the symptom is occurring in the first place. 

This doesn’t mean you need to go back and relive all your trauma. It means being honest with yourself and admitting, “I feel this way because…” and accepting that it’s because of the various traumas you’ve experienced in your life. Instead of running from the hurt, you allow yourself to embrace it. Some people can do this on their own, while others may need a guide. 

Personally, I thought I could do it on my own until it felt like my life was falling apart, and I slowly, albeit stubbornly, realized I needed help from the outside. For me, as a man, that was a hard pill to swallow. I didn’t want help. Looking back, I wish I had sought help much sooner because it made a huge difference in the long run. 

Recognition in Real-Time

Second, you must become aware of the issue while it’s happening. Not just “I’m feeling anxious.” No. It’s, “I’m starting to feel anxious. I can feel it in my chest right now and it’s because I have to go tell my boss something he or she isn’t going to like.” or “I feel anxious because I’m not sure how I’m going to pay this bill that’s due. I feel it in my stomach and feel uncomfortable in my legs.” or “I feel anxious about confronting my partner about something that’s been irritating me for the past couple of weeks. I feel breathless, and my palms are sweating. My knees feel weak, like I need to sit down.”

Of course, these are limited examples; the gamut of emotions spans an endless spectrum. But it’s understanding that emotions are living experiences. They’re not just thoughts trapped in your head. They have essence and agency in your body. The recognition in real-time is becoming deeply aware of what you’re thinking and how you feel simultaneously. When you become skilled at it, you can often sense the emotion before the conscious thoughts. 

Recognition of Your Power to Change

Third, you must become aware that you have the power to change within you right now. You can think and act differently at this very moment instead of remaining trapped. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. Many times, you’ll find that you’ve had years to practice feeling the way you do. In many cases, you’ve spent decades creating the persona of You. Some people spend their entire lives creating an identity around their emotional trauma. 

As a result, change can be profoundly challenging. You’ll work on it for a while, but when it feels like nothing is working, you give up. Six months later, you try again for a few weeks before giving up. Then again, a year later, and on it goes. But…if you can allow yourself to believe you have the power to change, then you can. The problem is that most people think they can’t, so when they butt up against the hard edge of change, they fold and go back to their usual way of life. 

But recognition means nothing if you don’t take responsibility for what you now see.

Responsibility

The next step is taking complete responsibility for your life. This can be hard to do because, after all, there are many things you’ve experienced that are out of your control. You can’t control what people may say or do that causes hurt, pain, and discomfort. And more often than not, you begin to embody the verbal or physical experiences and assign blame to others for what’s wrong in your life. However, most of those experiences reside in the past, yet your body and mind drag them into your present. 

There is a living memory within your sensory organs, convincing you that what happened then is happening now. But for many of the problems you struggle with, that just isn’t true. Instead, you manufacture the experience through thought alone. It’s an identity created through repetition. Something you practice daily. This is what you must take responsibility for. 

You must take responsibility for your thoughts and feelings about the issues you struggle with—the perpetual thoughts that plague you and the emotions that hijack your system without you even realizing it. You must take responsibility for giving in instead of standing firm, for blaming others instead of forgiving. You have to get to the place where you understand that while others may have wounded you, you hold the power to decide whether that wound becomes your identity.

Taking responsibility can be an entire process of its own, depending on what you’ve been through. There may be multiple stages you need to navigate before you feel like you’re able to take full responsibility for your thoughts and feelings around specific wounds or trauma. The goal isn’t to take a magic pill that makes you better, but to work through things steadily, one day at a time.

From Weight to Strength

Sometimes, the invisible battles you fight through seem so overwhelming that you can’t even imagine a light at the end of the tunnel. I know this from first-hand experience and dealing with extreme depression. Trapped in emotional pain, feeling like there’s no escape. No hope to be had. Just the grueling, grinding weight threatening to topple you at any moment. 

The truth, though, is there is hope. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Love and joy are waiting for you. So don’t give up. This work can be challenging, which is why finding someone to work with can be very beneficial. And when you start to face those things that weigh you down, they can become the very things that strengthen you. 

If you’re reading this, and working through your issues, I’m proud of you for having the courage to keep going—that alone means you’re already changing.

Until next time,

Josiah

For more information and resources, visit josiahthibodeau.com