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If you commit to doing the work every day, there will come a time when you will look in the mirror and feel awestruck by the person looking back at you.
Healing is a conscious process that can be lived daily through changes in our habits and patterns.
Just the act of choosing will help you connect more deeply to your intuition and your authentic Self.
Truly comprehending your past, listening to it, witnessing it, learning from it, is a process that enables deep change.
Healing rarely comes without difficulty. It’s painful at times and terrifying, too. It means letting go of narratives that hold you back and harm you. It means letting a part of yourself die so that another part of you can be reborn.
There is comfort in knowing exactly what your life will look like, even if that reality is making you sick.
Almost all of them worried about how this “stuckness” was perceived by others and often obsessed about the many ways everyone in their lives perceived them. Most shared a deep-rooted belief that their consistent inability to sustain change reflected evidence of deeper, intrinsic damage or “unworthiness”—a description used by many.
There is tremendous freedom in not believing every thought we have and understanding that we are the thinker of our thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.
I never appeared overwhelmed. They called me the aloof one, the laid-back, chill child who was easy and go-with-the-flow.
These adults often defined successful parenting as the fulfillment of basic survival needs with little energy or attention left for emotional needs. The effects of this survival-based parenting style have been passed down through inherited trauma and we are living with its long-term consequences.
In my therapy practice I heard frequent historical reports of a parent-figure’s reading of a childhood diary. This violation of private space often resulted in a shaming confrontation for the child and sometimes even punishment based on what was read (as happened to me).
Self-preservation leads to self-betrayal.
I’m not always shiny and clearheaded, and I still lose my shit sometimes. When I do, I offer myself grace and compassion. I see the reactions for what they are: the results of an overtaxed autonomic system that feels threatened.
If you believe you’re unworthy, you’ll see a job promotion as something that happened by mistake knowing it’s only a matter of time before you’re discovered to be the impostor you really are. When you make a mistake at work, either by happenstance or self-sabotage, it will be filtered through the lens of inevitability: Of course, I slipped up. I’m not worthy.
Give your inner child the gift of acknowledging its wounds. Accepting that you have an inner child with wounds will help you remove your shame about and disappointment in your inability to change, the “stuckness” that we’ve discussed.
This is why judging others is so addictive; it relieves us from the ego’s internal struggle with shame. When we identify the faults of others, we can ignore our own and even convince ourselves that we are superior. None of this is actually wrong or bad (this is egoic speak!); it’s just part of being human.
your goal is not “ego death.” Your ego will always be with you, even when you feel you’ve mastered it (which is in and of itself an ego statement!).
This can look like not being able to ask for things or say “no” out of fear or shame. As a result of a lifetime of unmet needs, you may consistently feel resentful, unfulfilled, or needy.
When you don’t trust yourself, you outsource your worth to others. When you outsource your worth, you become chronically dependent on other people’s perceptions of who you are.
allowing another person to validate or invalidate your reality. This becomes a vicious cycle that leaves you feeling constantly destabilized—some people describe it as feeling “crazy”—and continues your disconnection from the inner guidance of your authentic Self.
We are always subconsciously seeking to relive our past because we are creatures of comfort, who love to be able to predict the future, even if that future is certain to be painful,
As long as you are unaware of these conditioned patterns, even if you do find the “perfect” (whatever that means for you) partner with zero red flags, you’ll still feel as though the relationship is missing something essential.
This is the essence of authentic love, when two people allow each other the freedom and support to be fully seen, heard, and Self expressed.
Authentic love feels safe. It’s rooted in the awareness that the other person is not property, not something to be owned, and that your partner is not your parent-figure, not someone who can fix or heal you.
You do not need to perform in a certain way or hide parts of yourself to receive love. You will still feel bored or unsettled. You will still find yourself attracted to other people and may even mourn the loss of the single life.
Choice is pivotal; it’s the understanding that your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are your own and you can decide if you want to share them with everyone or with no one.
Meeting all of someone’s varied and unique needs all the time is almost impossible.
Emotional immaturity results from a lack of emotional resilience, the ability to process emotions, communicate boundaries, and return our nervous system to balance.
We will not fall apart if we take a day to rest.
Psychiatrist Stuart Brown, author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, called play a “public necessity”
Your reality is valid because you’ve experienced it, not because someone or something external has said so.
Some of us hit maturity levels that exceed those of our parent-figures before we hit puberty—and some emerge from the womb more mature than our parent-figures. (I’m only half kidding.)
Those of us raised in homes where free self-expression was not supported may find ourselves overly focused on what others think or feel about us. This was a common experience for many of us, and I believe it is one reason why social anxiety is such an epidemic today. We see social anxiety and an overfocus on appearance playing out in the new virtual arena of social media that many of us engage with daily—our obsession with “views” and “likes” being driven largely by our unmet need to be seen and heard. Most of us spend loads of mental energy trying to be understood.
One of the major achievements of emotional maturity is learning how to be at peace with these misunderstandings or with being misunderstood.
Emotional maturity is not a goal to check off a list, like reaching the next level in a video game (now you’re a fully realized human, you win!). It’s not a magical state.
To experience authentic relationships, you need to work on being one with your own authenticity.
When we foster our supportive connections while engaging consciously with our inner world, everyone benefits. It’s the essence of reciprocity. That essence binds all of humanity. There is no “us,” and there is no “them.”
