How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

When our needs are consistently unmet, our pain and disconnection are compounded. Self-preservation leads to self-betrayal. It’s a loop we can easily get stuck in. The cycle of unresolved trauma, repetition of maladaptive coping behaviors, and consistent denial of Self allows the pain to live on in our mind and body, where it can eventually make us

Michelle, who is contending with the same pressures, may use substances to zone out and escape reality. Though she may feel better in the moment, when she wakes up the next morning, she feels foggy, unfocused, and miserable.

We all carry unresolved trauma. As we’ve seen, it’s not necessarily the severity of the event itself but our response to it that determines the imprint it makes. Resilience is learned through conditioning; if we didn’t see it modeled by our parent-figures when we were young, we may have never learned it. When we do the work of resolving trauma, we

going to the gym regularly to help channel her stress

We’ve all heard the saying “Children are meant to be seen, not heard.” It was a slogan of sorts that summed up our older generations’ mindset around raising children. This mindset was born out of an understanding that the only needs children had were basic, such as food and shelter. Resource scarcity was a reality for many members of these generati

How we cope with a particular environment has less to do with the environment and more to do with our conditioned coping strategies around stress.

My father played along with my mother’s silence, though he still spoke to me. This was the trauma of my childhood fully realized. I was so unworthy, so unlovable. I didn’t exist. It was almost a relief to become the physical manifestation of what I so feared. It was what I was training for my whole life. It was my “spaceship” in action.

This can also be observed on a larger scale when parent-figures behave a certain way outside versus inside the home, training the child to see that humans can have “pseudoselves.” An example of this is family members who are constantly bickering or yelling inside the home but once in public speak and act lovingly or at least politely, upholding per

It is painful not to be heard. It is upsetting to be ignored. It is confusing to learn that we must hide our true Selves in order to be loved. Being acknowledged is one of the deepest human needs. If your childhood thoughts or ideas are not “heard,” your mind feels dismissed. If your childhood Self-expression is not “seen,” your soul feels diminish