Letting Go of Crazy: Rewriting the Narrative That Was Never Mine to Begin With
For a long time, I honestly believed I was crazy. Not in the clinical sense, thank goodness. Not even in the casual way people throw around the word—”you’re crazy!”—when you’re emotional, or sensitive, or perhaps reacting more intensely than they think you should. No, mine was the quiet kind of crazy, and I’ve learned that letting go of crazy and rewriting my narrative has been key to healing trauma in my life.
This quiet kind of crazy lives deep in your bones. It’s the kind you don’t even talk about at brunch or in early therapy sessions, because you can’t quite name it yet.
It’s the kind of “crazy” that takes root when your reality is twisted by the very people you’re supposed to trust. When the things that should never, ever happen to a child or an adult are silently buried under denial, gaslighting, or outright dismissal.
It’s the kind of crazy that whispers you’re too much, you’re not enough, you imagined that, you’re too dramatic, don’t talk about it, you’re making things up, why are you still upset, just move on.
So, what do you do? You learn to function. You learn to pretend. You become “the strong one.” You plaster on a smile. You achieve things. You try so hard to please everyone.
But behind it all is this frantic internal effort to make sense of something that just doesn’t feel right, something you can’t explain. And when it doesn’t make sense—because it can’t—that’s when you start to believe the problem is you. But it’s not. It’s how your brain was trained. And here’s the beautiful truth: you can un-train it.
Feeling Crazy Doesn’t Mean You Are Crazy
Here’s the truth I truly wish I had learned when I was 15: feeling crazy doesn’t actually mean you are crazy. What it often means is that your mind is simply trying its absolute best to survive the unbearable.
When something traumatic or deeply confusing happens, especially in childhood, our brains don’t just forget—they adapt. They form shortcuts, create beliefs, and build protective mechanisms, all meant to help us navigate a world that suddenly feels unsafe. But over time, those same beliefs can eventually turn against us, becoming the very prisons they were designed to escape. This is a crucial part of understanding trauma and healing.
Beliefs like:
- “I can’t trust my instincts.”
- “I can’t make sense of this situation.”
- “If something feels off, it must be my fault.”
- “I must have done something to cause this problem.”
These aren’t facts. They’re simply old, outdated defense systems. And like clunky, old software, they start to crash and cause glitches when you try to live a bigger, fuller, more purposeful life.
Healing trauma means updating that software.
Rewiring Your Brain and Rewriting Your Narrative for Healing
Letting go of crazy doesn’t mean pretending something painful didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean forcing yourself to “get over it,” or burying painful life experiences under a thick blanket of forced positivity.
What it truly means is this: being willing to release the deep-seated belief that you are broken. It means creating a sacred space within yourself for something kinder, softer, and much, much truer to take its place. For me, this profound trauma healing work didn’t happen overnight—and it definitely didn’t happen through sheer willpower alone.
EMDR: A Door to Releasing Traumatic Memories
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) cracked open a door for me. It helps your brain sort through upsetting memories, kind of like tidying up a messy filing cabinet. It works to make those memories stop feeling so heavy, actively creating new, more positive pathways in your brain.
Through EMDR, I could access memories I didn’t even consciously know were stored in my nervous system. It helped me create emotional distance from them—not erase them, but gently unhook from the intense emotional weight they carried. It began the process of rewriting my internal narrative.
Hypnotherapy: Immediate, Lasting Shifts for Subconscious Healing
Then, Hypnotherapy brought immediate, truly long-lasting shifts. Hypnotherapy works directly with your subconscious mind, which is like your brain’s autopilot. It helps you swap out those old, unhelpful thoughts and behaviors for fresh, empowering ones. It’s powerful subconscious healing.
In my hypnosis sessions, I wasn’t rehashing everything over and over again in painful detail. Instead, I was experiencing a new truth in real time. I was literally allowed to rewrite the script—carefully, consciously—and for the first time in my life, I could hear myself think without the constant interference of fear or self-doubt.
For the very first time, I’m now saying “no” to people instead of trying to please them. And saying “no” wasn’t even a conscious decision; it’s something that just pops out of my mouth without hesitation. Strong, clear boundaries are appearing where they simply hadn’t existed before. (Read more about how hypnotherapy helped me set boundaries here.)
I have new, liberating thoughts:
- “I’m safe now.”
- “What happened was real, and it wasn’t my fault.”
- “I’m allowed to trust myself.”
- “My voice matters.”
Hypnotherapy wasn’t a magic wand—but honestly, it felt pretty close to one. (Want to know if hypnotherapy really works? (Read about my first hypnotherapy experience.) Hypnosis offered something that traditional talk therapy couldn’t always reach: the subconscious mind, precisely where so many of those distorted, old beliefs had been stored for decades. It truly helped me in letting go of crazy.
Letting Go Is Not Forgetting Your Past
Letting go of your past isn’t about erasing it. It’s not about pushing things down or pretending everything’s suddenly fine.
Letting go is a slow, sacred process. It’s about gently surrendering the painful beliefs and emotions that never belonged to you in the first place. It’s letting go of a false narrative that was imposed upon you.
It’s about gently reclaiming your true story—not the one that was forced on you, but the one you consciously choose now.
Letting go means loosening your grip on the “what-ifs,” the “should-haves,” and the heavy weight of shame. It means creating ample space for love, understanding, forgiveness, and self-compassion to finally move in.
Letting go means truly living here—in this moment. Not in the past where the damage happened. Not in the future where you’re frantically trying to prevent more of it. But here, now. Where you breathe. Where you choose. Where you heal.
The New Narrative: Architecting Your Future
I don’t feel crazy anymore. Some days, I feel tender. Other days, incredibly strong. But mostly—I feel present. Right here. In this moment. And for me, that’s the real miracle. This is the power of rewriting your narrative and truly healing trauma.
Read my hypnotherapy journal, where I share what happens to me in each hypnotherapy session.
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