#26: Loosing Face as Part of Healing: The Journey from Personality to Essence
Hi everyone. On January 19, 2024 I was in the middle of drafting this and accidentally hit publish. So those of you who are subscribed to receive an email every time I write and publish, you have received an unfinished, probably confusing piece, lol. Here is the completed version. Enjoy!
Suffering comes from your attitude.
Somewhat. Not entirely. But ‘how long’ you choose to suffer is entirely up to you. In the end, it’s a choice. Yes, there are bad people out there. People who hurt. Who just don’t get what they are doing to you. Who have no empathy, no remorse, no conscience. They truly don’t care about the impact and consequences on others. I experienced my fair share, thus this blog. But just because it happened, doesn’t mean you have to suffer for the rest of your life. You can continue blaming others for how you feel.
Or, 1) you can look at your own self-sabotaging patterns and start exploring where you’ve been betraying yourself for so long — as in your personality doing the betrayal (I’ll explain).
And, 2) you can re-configure the concept of self regardless of what happened to you — as in your attitude (beliefs you formed, and associated emotions).
It just depends on your spirit’s drive, and commitment to self. Because the concept of self is just that, a configuration of your mind. You get to use it both ways:
- Holding on to a victim mindset, which is rather a miserable existence. Whatever happened, being the victim of “something” doesn’t have to be the last chapter in your book of life.
- Or 2) you can explore and and reconnect to your own truth, re-configure all the meaning and stories you created around what happened to you and start writing your next chapter of life. It takes profound effort, but is well worth the journey. It’s the Hero’s Journey to individuation, arriving at one’s own truth. It doesn’t have to be this infinite, long search for your own truth either. In the end, the path is pretty simple. Not sure why everyone makes it so complicated. Ultimately, it’s a matter of choice and attitude. It will take commitment towards yourself. It will require compassion towards yourself. Certainly grit. Dedication, and a sense of adventure and excitement as you take off exploring the nuggets beyond the personality you have been identifying with, unearthing the treasures buried deep within.
I’m currently registered in Dr. Gabor Mate’s short course on Compassionate Inquiry. I’m also part of the Compassionate Inquiry Circles, a group that meets for 10 weeks, once a week for 2 hours via zoom. It’s my commitment to myself to continuously learn, grow, heal and nurture my soul.
Dr. Gabor Mate says there is three levels of trauma. It’s a little bit more complex than that, but it works as a framework to get the conversation started and have something to work with:
- The first trauma is the disconnection from the caregiver.
- The second trauma is the actual event of what happened to you.
- The third trauma and “real trauma”, he says, is the disconnection from the Self.
I’ll do my best in representing his approach, but I’m adding my own spin to it all, especially as it relates to the interconnectedness of the three:
- The first trauma is the disconnection from the caregiver. Meaning you weren’t necessarily held in a way you needed to be held, nurtured and cared for when growing up (physically and emotionally speaking). Aside from food and shelter, in an ideal world our caregiver should provide a secure, loving and nurturing connection (to establish a secure attachment as a kid and then as an adult in relationships), all the while holding space to help us explore and develop our own sense of self (healthy development, sense of autonomy, individuation, authenticity). But often that’s not the case. Somehow unconsciously, the child ends up facing the Dilemma of Attachment versus Authenticity. It marks the beginning of betraying oneself in exchange for the desperate need for love and connection (ding ding, think of your intimate relationships later on in adulthood). Or as I like to call it:
A) The paradox of “Connection to Others” versus “Connection to Self”.
It’s the tension between the need for love, connection and attachment to others AND the desire for authenticity and self-expression of your own individuality that’s in the forming during childhood.
It seems that somehow “connection to self” and the expression of it often gets jeopardized by the need for “attachment and connection”, aka physical survival” in the early stages of life. Many caregivers are stressed out, overwhelmed, dealing with and operating from their own life traumas and, thus not able to be responsive or even aware to the development of a child’s way of self-expression and forming of individuality. And let’s be honest, there are definitely people out there who should never had kids. Well, life dealt each one of us the cards it did, and we gotta work with just that.
With this background in mind, it makes sense that many of us didn’t get to develop a strong, healthy and confident sense of self, and abandoned trusting our own innate sensations and perceptions, including the need to express just that. Voila, the suppression of the self.
It makes sense when looking at my own life. Exploring my patterns I found one strong common desire throughout my adult life. Starting in my late teens/early 20’s I developed a strong need to “find myself”. Makes sense, my upbringing didn’t cultivate the development of being rooted in a strong sense of self. I was in a state of constant “seeking”, looking for answers, driven to discover and understand “the me””, and committed to give it expression. Still to this day, you better not get in my way of self-expression :-)!
Anyhow, blaming our caregivers or whatever the circumstances were doesn’t really change anything for us in the present. Yes, awful things happened to lots of people. The thing is, we can’t change it. Life is what it is. The past is the past. The power lies in accepting our Human Journey, and maybe that’s the story of being a human: Human disconnects from self, or never connected to begin with. Human needs to learn to accept what happened, take responsibility for own healing and development, delve deep within, reconnect and find one’s own jewels. And in doing so, we may just break the cycle of generational and personal trauma.
According to Dr. Gabor Maté, there’s another layer of disconnection when trauma occurs during childhood. “Who did you turn to as a child when “this” happened”, he asks. Did you share it with anyone, and if not, why not? Dr. Maté describes this as a rupture in the connection, trust, and safety within the pool of caregivers, leading to a disconnect to those caregivers. Aka, you were left to deal with it alone, or didn’t get exposed to the nurturing and resources needed. Which in turn then contributes to the disconnection to self. The pain is too horrific. You gotta push it down. It’s better not to feel it. If you didn’t experience safety and security with your caregiver to process tragic events, how then did you process these events? Most likely, you didn’t. Welcome to the spectrum of maladaptations, limiting meaning and belief-making that now color the way you see the world and yourself, protection mechanisms, addictions, extreme independence, twisted co-dependence, or unhealthy people pleasing patterns, you name it. In short, this forms what we call your “personality”.
ChatGPT:
Maladaptations refer to behaviors, thought patterns, or coping mechanisms that individuals develop in response to challenging or traumatic experiences but are ultimately dysfunctional or counterproductive. These adaptations may have been useful or necessary at the time to survive or cope with difficult situations, but they can become problematic in the long term. Maladaptations often hinder personal growth, healthy relationships, and overall well-being. They are ways of adapting to difficult circumstances that may have served a short-term purpose but are no longer beneficial or appropriate in one’s current life.
Realizing that you are not your “personality” is pretty earth shattering. Kinda, hey, the earth is not flat, it’s round! Your personality is an adaptation, a coping mechanism. Maladaptations build a barrier to your inner self — it’s like having an armor, a shell, preventing you from accessing your own essence behind it, your authentic self (Mate’s trauma #3).
2. The second trauma is the actual event of what happened to you. This is where many get caught up, and depending on your spirit, you may remain in a victim mentality. Trauma (small or big) form beliefs about the world and ourselves, which generates a cascade of emotions in our nervous system and brain until hardwired, and now it’s really difficult to change. It appears we are at the mercy of our bodily chemistry. Good news: there’s brain plasticity. The brain is capable of reorganizing itself and form new neural connections. In short, where the is a will, there is a way. I do believe that. It’s a matter of exposing yourself to healing and growth modalities you resonate with and help you re-adjust.
After my “grand breakup” in March of 2023 from the toxic, narcissistic abusive relationship, I still had to deal with the trauma bond. My nervous system was completely dysregulated. I also didn’t find much satisfaction from the various therapists I had worked with throughout the prior 3 years. I decided to seek resources online. Still deeply isolated as a result from this manipulative, abusive relationship in combination with the pandemic, YouTube became my best friend. I immersed myself in knowledge, education, and information to help rewire my neural network, and thus impact my thinking, emotion and nervous system. It was a period of brainwashing myself back to health by watching and listening to conscious content. I bench-watched the following until I started getting a grip on my thoughts and emotions (click on names for link):
Dr. Ramani Durvasula (great resource on understanding NPD — Narcissistic Personality Disorder)
Dr. Joe Dispenza (scientist, teacher, lecturer, and author on the body and brain connection)
Dr. Gabor Mate (Canadian physician, author on trauma and addiction)
Dr. Thema Bryant (Psychologist)
Lee Hammock (self-aware clinically diagnosed narcissist)
Irene Lyon (nervous system and somatic neuro-plasticity specialist)
Dr. Kim Sage (clinical psychologist)
Arian Samouie (Healer, Intuitive Trauma Coach)
Dr. Shahida Rahabi (researcher on narcissism)
I also came across people who offer great snippets of wisdom on Instagram. Seriously, today we truly have a lot of resources at our fingertips. You still gotta discern the bullshit though, but there are some great free resources out there.
3. The third trauma and “real trauma”, Mate says, is the disconnection from the self. Basically, the real trauma occurred by not having had a safe source or not the right people to process the event in and of itself, as mentioned earlier. Of not having had the safety and support. In this, we somehow lose connection to our essential worth, which severed the connection to self. Or as Mate states it:
It’s not what happened to you. It’s what happened inside of you as a result of what happened to you.
So are we all doomed? Like I said earlier, where there is a will there is a way. Healing is a personal process. But you gotta drop the victim mentality, the attitude you developed, and get in action.
Coming to an understanding that we are not our personality is a big deal. It’s just a bunch of adaptive behaviors we’ve accumulated along the way.
Redefine yourself. Leave that toxic relationship, there is no other way around it. You gotta leave or start working on an exit strategy if circumstances don’t allow you to leave just yet. External changes of our circumstances require internal changes in our soul. Then your healing process can start. My sympathetic nervous system was so stirred up and activated, I couldn’t heal until I was out of this relationship. It’s a tough journey. But I also find it tremendously exciting to reconnect to myself, and explore who I am “under the layers of my personality”. For those who resist to change, it might require a “crises”, complete destruction, the earth shattering, the towers crumbling. How extreme does it really have to get for you to wake up?
So, then who are you, beyond the maladaptions of your personality?
Welcome to the journey of individuation. It’s time to wake up and start living in alignment to your own essence. Yeah, it requires introspection, certainly developing self-awareness. Without consciousness it’ll be hard to transform. Consider it growing pains towards a path of your individuation. But well worth the journey. Drop the story and victimhood. Wake up. To yourself. Ask yourself, do you truly want to live like this for the rest of your life? Start your journey to the self beyond the shell of your personality. Analyze the patterns of your personality. Where have you been inauthentic to yourself? That’s what I mean by losing face. In reality, you are not losing anything. You are shedding the persona you are not, so that you can step into your own essence. Where do you abandoned yourself? No wonder you are unhappy, dissatisfied, resentful, in pain, angry, or sick. Waking up to yourself means looking at your own self-sabotaging patterns and explore where you have betrayed yourself, for too long now. No one is coming to your rescue you. It’s all you baby! You have to get involved in your own transformation. You gotta get real about it.
I hope today’s writing provided some insight. May it bring courage to you to reflect, and hopefully spark a fire within you to embark on your own journey of self-discovery and healing.
Keep going. You are doing great. You can do it.
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>> Continue Reading — #27: Life After Toxicity: Salsa Steps from Cuba to Colombia
