Is It Possible To Start From Scratch Without Hurting Others?

Leaving without leaving an address … Such an idyllic option?

Thousands of people choose to change their lives each year, leave their home or distance themselves from their family. Others doubt whether to do it or not, due to their responsibilities, fear of the unknown or existential emptiness.

What is the motivation to disappear? How do these people rebuild their lives without starting from the past? What are the consequences of this abandonment on the people around them?

Although at first the idea of “leaving everything” and “starting from scratch” can be very attractive for some people who live in extreme situations; the reality is that rebuilding a full life in totally new conditions is tremendously difficult.

Deciding on such a radical change without working on some bases of the history and personality of each one, will only increase the feeling of being adrift and repeating the same patterns of behavior that have already led to unhappiness in the past.

The most frequent reasons why people tend to make the decision to cut off all ties to their past are:

• Fear of commitment.
• Excess of responsibilities (acquired or imposed).
• Feeling of living a meaningless life.
• Not feeling comfortable with themselves.
• Traumatic events.
• Family difficulties.
• Economic crisis.
• Rediscover themselves.
• Abandon dysfunctional affective relationships.
• Search for emotions.
• Desire for job advancement.
• Take back control of your life.
• Search for anonymity, free yourself from labels.

Change your life without breaking with everything

An option with less vital impact, but with greater guarantees of stability is to change your life without breaking everything.

Many individuals have the same desire to break with everything, but still do not do it and opt for a less drastic change, but no less profound in themselves and their environment:

-They have the same motivations to make a radical change, but they consider that this should not imply leaving their entire work and family environment.

-They begin to explore new sources of motivation and novelty in their environment, trying to carry out different activities, meet new people and not frequent the same places as before.

-In the labor field they seek a promotion, change of sector or the possibility of greater geographical mobility. If this cannot happen, they can choose to change their job but not their domain.

-In the face of emotional difficulties, you can opt for the help of a professional who helps individually, in couples therapy or in family therapy.

-If they finally decide to break a relationship, maintaining emotional ties and responsibility but breaking ties of coexistence is something more balanced for themselves and others.

The way you change your life influences your immediate environment

Everyone has the right to change their life if it does not satisfy them; But taking into account the feelings of the people who make up your family, social and work circle can make the difference in carrying out a personal change more or less harmful for others:

• For people who are abandoned suddenly and without explanation, this departure of the loved one can become a traumatic event.
• They are not only questioning the fact of the departure, but they begin to question themselves with a very marked sense of guilt and anguish.
• They cannot mourn that separation in a sensible way, but there is a feeling of condemnation about themselves, a feeling of not being able to forget, an irreparable mystery full of doubts and reproaches.

Therefore, changing in a way that implies the total abandonment of your loved ones without giving explanations or time to assimilate and understand, engenders a double pain: that of the one who starts and that of the one who is abandoned.

Let us therefore try to do as little damage as possible, even if we believe that our rupture and departure is justified.