The Hidden Survival Patterns I Mistook for Brokenness

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” ~Rumi

I grew up in a council house in the 1970s, in a world where children were seen and not heard.

We were kicked out in the morning and told to come back when the streetlights came on. On the surface, it looked normal. But what was happening behind closed doors didn’t feel normal at all.

I didn’t have the words for it then, but I always felt different.

People thought I was shy. And I was. But it was more than that. Being around people felt overwhelming, like I was constantly on edge, scanning for something I couldn’t name. I didn’t feel safe, even when nothing obvious was wrong.

When I was six, my parents divorced.

My mum left and started a new life with my sister. I stayed behind with my dad. I didn’t understand the full picture at the time—only that everything had changed overnight.

Before she left, my dad told me that if I went with her, he would kill himself.

I believed him.

As a child, you don’t question those things. You take them in as truth. So I stayed, carrying a weight that no child should ever have to carry—the belief that someone’s life depended on me.

Looking back, that’s when the fear really took hold.

My dad was deeply hurt by the breakup. He drank heavily and didn’t work for long periods. I didn’t understand his pain at the time—only how it showed up.

Anger.

I became the place where that anger landed.

Some days, he would be waiting for me when I got home from school. If I was even a few minutes late, I would be hit. It wasn’t a one-off. It became a pattern. Something I learned to anticipate, even when I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.

You start to live differently when you grow up like that.

Always alert. Always careful. Always trying to get it right.

And somehow always feeling like you didn’t.

My dad wasn’t a bad man. I can see that now. But he wasn’t capable of being a father in the way I needed. There was no warmth, no reassurance, no sense of safety.

I wasn’t allowed to sit in the living room.

Most days, I stayed in my bedroom with nothing to do but look out the window and imagine a different life. I built entire worlds in my head just to escape the one I was in.

I had friends, but I was always on the outside. I couldn’t go out as often as they did. Slowly, I got left behind.

At night, the fear would come out in ways I didn’t understand. I wet the bed until I was around twelve. I carried shame without knowing why.

Something in me already felt… wrong.

By the time I was eleven or twelve, I found my first escape.

Butane gas.

I used to steal lighter refills from a local shop. The shopkeeper left a small window open behind the till, and I’d reach in and grab them. I’d spray it into my jumper and inhale it.

For the first time, I could leave my head.

It didn’t stop there. Glue. Petrol. Then cannabis and amphetamines by the time I was fourteen.

It wasn’t about getting high. Not really.

It was about not feeling what I was feeling.

That became my life for the next twenty-five years.

Getting out of my head wasn’t just something I did—it was something I needed. Substances became a daily habit, and eventually, they took over everything.

I lost friends. I lost direction. I lost any sense of who I was.

But in a strange way, I also found something I’d never had before.

Belonging.

The people I used with became my world. In that chaos, I felt understood. There were no expectations. No pressure to be anything other than what I was.

For the first time, I didn’t feel like the odd one out.

And that made it even harder to leave.

Because how do you walk away from the only place you’ve ever felt accepted?

Then in the late eighties, something changed again.

Ecstasy arrived.

And with it came something I had never truly experienced before—what felt like love, connection, openness. For the first time, I felt close to people. I felt part of something.

It was overwhelming in a different way.

Beautiful. Powerful. Addictive.

I didn’t want it to end.

But it wasn’t real—not in the way I needed it to be. It was a chemically created version of something I had been searching for my entire life.

And once you’ve felt that, even artificially, it’s hard to go back to emptiness.

So I stayed.

For years.

It took a long time before something began to shift.

There wasn’t a single moment that changed everything. It was slower than that. Subtle. Almost unnoticeable at first.

But somewhere along the way, I started to see that the life I was living wasn’t the only option.

That maybe… just maybe… there was something else.

And more importantly, that I had been ignoring it.

Life had been trying to show me another way for a long time. But I wasn’t ready to listen.

As soon as I did, things began to change.

I began to change.

Stepping away from that world was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Not just because of the substances, but because I had to face everything I’d spent years trying to avoid.

The fear. The loneliness. The sense that I didn’t quite belong anywhere.

And the truth that along the way, I had hurt people who cared about me.

That’s something I had to sit with.

But I don’t carry regret in the way I once did.

I carry understanding.

Because something unexpected happened when I stopped running.

I began to understand myself.

I started to see that I wasn’t broken.

I had simply adapted to an environment that didn’t feel safe.

The anxiety, the withdrawal, the need to escape—it all made sense when I looked at it through that lens.

My body had been trying to protect me all along.

That realization changed everything.

Because when you stop seeing yourself as the problem, you can finally start working with yourself instead of against yourself.

Now, at fifty-six, my life looks nothing like it did back then.

I live on the other side of the world. I have a family I never believed I’d have. I’ve built something meaningful out of experiences I once thought had ruined me.

But more importantly, I feel something I didn’t think was possible.

A sense of safety within myself.

That doesn’t mean life is perfect. It isn’t.

There are still hard days. There are still moments where old patterns try to creep in.

But now I understand where they come from.

And that changes how I respond.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:

What looks like “brokenness” is often adaptation.

The things we judge ourselves for—the anxiety, the coping mechanisms, the ways we try to escape—often began as ways to survive.

And survival is not something to be ashamed of.

It’s something to be understood.

My story is a success story—but not because everything turned out perfectly.

It’s a success because I can now see a way through.

And if you’re in a place where it feels like there isn’t one, I want you to know this:

There is.

Your life can improve when you begin to empathize with yourself and take even small steps toward change.

And when you do, something begins to shift.

You begin to move.

You begin to heal.

And eventually, you begin to build a life that feels like your own.

About Matt Little

Matt Little is the founder of Pesona Jiwa, a private wellness retreat in Bali focused on nervous system healing and trauma recovery. After overcoming decades of addiction and emotional struggle, he now supports others in reconnecting with a sense of safety and self. Learn more at pesonajiwa.com/nervous-system-regulation/ or explore more at pesonajiwa.com/

• Web
|
• More Posts