Ending the War Within

There is nothing wrong with me and there never was.

By Donna Zajonc
For the last decade or so, I have been aware of my ongoing deficiency story that quietly but clearly operates in the background of my consciousness. It sounds like this:

“When am I going to get this figured out?”

It’s not a loud or dramatic thought. It’s more like a low-grade pressure that hums in the background of my mind. It is a constant sense that I should know more by now.

What makes this an inner war isn’t that I don’t know enough. It’s that my self-judging mind quietly decided I should know more by now.

The cost is that I push myself—sometimes to the bone—trying to think my way into feeling worthy, confident, and being a contribution in the world.

The mind’s job is to make sense of life. It’s constantly scanning, sorting, comparing good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure. Did I meet my expectations? Did I fall short? Am I ahead or behind? The divided mind is at war with itself and as a result makes itself a Victim to its own thinking.

The position of being stuck in the Victim mentality is a position of loss of power.

Most of us live with an almost nonstop stream of thinking running quietly in the background. And because those thoughts arise inside us, we assume they must be true. We react to them. We organize our lives around them. We feel anxious, driven, or defeated—not because of what’s actually happening, but because of the story our mind is telling us about what’s happening.

In my case, the story went something like this: If I could just figure things out—understand more, see further, make quicker and better decisions then I would finally feel okay – even worthy.

That belief put me in a constant state of effort. And effort, over time, turns into exhaustion.

What I’ve come to see is that this inner war is fueled by a set of invisible “shoulds.” I shouldn’t feel this restless. I shouldn’t be struggling with this again. I should have resolved this by now. I should be better at this.

Those “shoulds” don’t come from thin air. They’re often inherited—absorbed from parents, teachers, bosses, partners, cultural expectations, or earlier versions of ourselves. Somewhere along the way, we give these voices authority. We treat them as if they know something essential about who we should be. In this view of ourselves we give our personal power away to an imaginary inner war.

That belief splits us in two. There’s the “me” who is here now, and the imagined version of myself who should be further along. When we live from that split, we abandon ourselves. We stop listening to our own inner authority and instead chase an idealized future self who never quite arrives.

But when I began to look closely, I realized something quietly radical: there is no external authority running my life—only the ones I’ve imagined and created in my own thinking.

Seeing that didn’t magically calm my inner war with myself but it did soften it. It gave me the courage to tell myself the truth: I am at war with myself because I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with being exactly who and where I am right now.

This is the heart of Victim consciousness. When life feels “out there” and I am “in here,” trying to catch up, prove myself, or get it right, I’m no longer rooted in my own innate wholeness.

No wonder it feels like a war within myself!

Ending the war within doesn’t mean stopping the mind from thinking. The mind will always think, judge, plot and project. That is what it does. Therefore, the mind that tries to silence itself simply creates another internal battle.

I’m learning to see that the war within is all made up. When I stop assuming that I will ever get anything figured out, my inner Persecutor can rest and suddenly there’s some room for my true self, my Creator essence, to emerge. I’m no longer fighting my own experience.

I won’t say that my inner war has ended totally. But with a stronger Creator presence I’m appreciating my mind for its hard work all these years. It’s okay for her to wave the white flag and relax for a while.

My deficiency story has been transformed from, “When am I going to get this figure out?” to “There’s nothing to figure out.” I can say that now with a smile, and even a chuckle sometimes, that I caused myself so much suffering.

As I practice meeting my experience as it is—my worries, my doubts, my unfinished—I discover something unexpected: there is nothing wrong with me and there never was. Life now can be an amazing and mysterious experience happening through me, as me. And at that stopping, I am not someone who has finally figured life out, but as someone who no longer believes I need to.

I am curious to know if you have identified your inner deficiency story that keeps you at war within yourself. How are you transforming it, or have you already transformed it? Please share your journey if you wish. Until next time,

Here’s to the Creator in you,

Donna

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