It seems that 2025 has been, for many of us, a time of emotional reckoning. Something about this new year has served as a sacred disruptor—ushering in wounds that feel both shocking and strangely familiar.
I’ve been revisiting the endings of past relationships, noticing how often they seemed happy, loving, and connected one day and were over the next. In a moment of emotional whiplash, someone I loved was simply gone. I was left not only grieving the loss but also struggling to reconcile the person who once felt safe with the one who disappeared.
This experience is far from unique. As many of us explore abandonment wounds from our past, we find ourselves asking destabilizing questions like: What was the truth? Did I ever matter to them? Which version of them was real, and which was the imposter?
Timeline Shift and Cognitive Dissonance
This phenomenon—often described in spiritual spaces as a timeline shift—can leave us disoriented, grasping for clarity in a reality that no longer feels familiar. Psychology refers to this as cognitive dissonance: the mental stress we experience when two versions of reality—both of which feel true—can’t be reconciled (Festinger, 1957).
In one timeline, we remember the warmth of love, trust, and connection. In the other, we’re left with the cold aftermath of rupture, betrayal, or abandonment.
Psychologically, this dissonance disrupts narrative memory, challenges our identity, and destabilizes our internal attachment models. We try to process today’s pain through yesterday’s emotional logic—and it simply doesn’t compute.
It can feel like going to sleep in one world and waking up in another. And in that disorienting moment—when nothing makes sense—what I call the mental terrorist steps in, offering a harsh but seductive explanation.
The Mental Terrorist Tries to Bridge Timelines
Relational pain often arrives in two waves. The first wave is external: hurt caused by another person’s actions or abandonment. The second wave is internal, ushered in by the frantic conclusions of the mental terrorist.
This inner part fixates on the dissonance between the before and after and tries to resolve it by landing on one of two painful narratives: (a) none of it was real, and we never mattered, or (b) we are to blame—despite all evidence to the contrary.
Viewed through the lens of Internal Family Systems (Schwartz, 2021), the mental terrorist is an extreme protector part: a well-meaning but harsh internal voice tasked with keeping us safe by controlling the narrative. When we’re lost in confusion, this part offers us certainty—even if it’s cruel—because certainty feels safer than ambiguity.
It chooses a protective delusion over a painful, ambiguous truth. And this is where the second pain begins.
Silencing the Terrorist and Forging a Path to Healing
To heal in a way that transforms, we must learn to quiet the mental terrorist. That begins with accepting a few grounding truths:
- Shifting timelines—and the cognitive dissonance that follows—is a normal part of grief and betrayal.
- Both versions of the person we loved may have been real. We probably did matter. They probably did care. But they also chose to hurt us. We can honor the part that loved us and release the part that didn’t.
- We don’t have to accept the story the mental terrorist tells us—especially when it erases goodness or casts us as the villain.
The Invitation of the New Timeline
We don’t always get to choose when a timeline ends. People change. We change. Sometimes, the rupture is sudden; other times, it unfolds quietly until the old reality no longer fits.
What we can choose is whether we keep one foot in the past, trying to decode something that no longer exists—or gently, intentionally, plant both feet in the now.
This is the invitation of the new timeline: not to deny the beauty of what was, but to stop trying to live there.
It may feel raw. It may feel unfair. But it is also the beginning of a deeper kind of healing—the kind that says: I can honor the love that lived in that old world while choosing to live fully in this one.
The new timeline doesn’t always arrive with fireworks. Sometimes, it comes like a breath. A moment of clarity. A decision not to text back. A deep exhale when you realize: I’m not confused. I’m healing.
This moment isn’t the end of something fake. It’s the beginning of something true.
Maybe 2025 is the portal to that new timeline—a new you, a new mindset, a new chapter—where the mental terrorist no longer leads. And where your path forward is steady, true, and safe.
