Many people are still living out of the shadow of their biggest fears and deepest wounds, by trying really hard to do the opposite of them.
Like the kid who got picked on and called ugly, and grows up to be obsessed with fitness and beauty. Or the kid who grew up, feeling unworthy because of poverty, and grows up to be obsessed with wealth and success.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with beauty or fitness or wealth or success. The point I’m trying to make, is that in both of these scenarios, the actual wound isn’t being addressed.
If all we do is create a life for ourselves filled with the opposite of what we fear, then we haven’t actually healed.
This is common and relevant in coaching spaces and especially men’s work, where a lot of people are still operating from a wounded place, a young place, that is still trying to prove to the world that they are worthy.
There the “still have healed my teenage rejection by girls and obsessed with creating super hot polarity and devotion” type of men’s work.
There’s the “still haven’t healed my boyhood feelings of being powerless or fantasies of being a hero, obsessed with being a sacred warrior” kind of mens work.
There’s the “still haven’t healed sexual shame and repression, obsessed sexual purity and attacking porn” kind of men’s work.
But becoming wealthy doesn’t heal my fear of being poor, nor does becoming powerful heal my fear of being weak.
In fact, to the degree that one has t healed the core wounds that plague them, any successful attempts to fill that space with its necessary opposite, being an even deeper darker prison than before.
God forbid I ever lose this wealth or beauty.
I again become the very thing I still hate.
This is a phase, and perhaps is unavoidable.
But the deeper work lies in turning towards yourself with love and acceptance, despite any of these conditions. Turning towards the layers and layers of internalize judgment and shame that we carry for not being enough of this thing or that things.
Because all of the first approach is about unconsciously putting love, acceptance and worthiness outside of yourself and still trying to successfully achieve it.
But anything that can be gained, is folly.
The second approach, is in fully realizing that love, acceptance and worthiness belong to you, no matter what.
You can’t earn them. You can’t lose them.
The more I heal from shame and internalize self-judgment, self-criticism and self-loathing, the more this becomes viscerally true for me.
Not some nice sounding story.
But deep embodied truth.
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