The post Unstuck: Uncover the Truth Behind Your Emotional Paralysis appeared first on Joe Ryan.

Trauma manifests itself into a false self to minimize abuse by conforming to our abuser’s vision of whom they need us to be to feel loved. The false self is made up of layers of protection to keep us from feeling the shame and humiliation we endured. We portray a false image of ourselves to the world, in need of receiving the positive mirroring faces we need to experience as a child. We use external validation in an attempt to heal our emotional wounds.

Authenticity becomes the process of peeling away the layers of defenses, exposing ourselves to ourselves by confronting the false self. Abandoning the family system and the role we played in that system. We challenge the beliefs we adapted to survive. We call ourselves out when we are not genuine. We look at the patterns we have developed to get our needs met by others and ween ourselves off the external validation and numbing out.

We strip ourselves down to the feelings we have been avoiding, find that hole in our soul, and learn how to start filling it independently. We do this by the practice of self-soothing. By not mood-altering and self-abandonment, we get in touch with the feeling we need to heal. It is through these feelings we find the path to authenticity.

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Blame Keeps People In A Victim Role. Being A Victim Has A Sadness To It, Which Over Time, Turns To Anger And That Anger Becomes An Excuse Not To Take Responsibility For Your Own Life—always Having Someone Else To Blame. Absent Of Self-responsibility, Anger Will Take The Path Of Least Resistance And Will Align With Others Who Share The Same Victimhood; A Mob Mentality Will Form To Express The Collective Outrage.

A Sense Of Empowerment Forms To Replace The Feeling Of Helplessness That Fuels The Victim’s Role. No Longer Feeling Powerless, Anger, And Violence Now Becomes The New Identity That Will Gain Strength And Momentum With The Growing Numbers Who Join The Anger Movement As Not To Feel Alone And Victimized.

There Are More Than Enough Resources On This Planet That No One Needs To Go Without. Spending More Time On Emotional Well Being, Physical Health, Community, Caring For Themselves, Their Neighbors, And Emotional Intelligence Rather Than Raising Children To Value Wealth While Crushing Anyone In Their Way As They Feed The Corporate And Governmental Machines Driven By Ego And Self-serving Desires.

We Share One Planet; We Are All Connected And Share One Collective Consciousness. The Actions Of One Affect Us All. Like Throwing A Rock In A Still Pond, The Ripple Effect Of One Stone Thrown Touches The Entire Body Of Water. The Type Of Stone You Throw Is Your Choice, Will It Be A Stone Of Love Or Rock Of Hate. Whichever You Choose Affects All Of Us. Choose Wisely. 

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Pain motivates, pain inspires, pain hurts.
Pain breeds and festers.
pain can be hidden and buried
pain has to be released
Pain hides in the deepest recesses of our minds.
Buried where it can’t be found.
Hidden by our fears.

Pain is our controller.
It moves us in unquestionable directions.
Pain determines who we are,
how much we can grow.
Unreleased pain paralyzes
our will to be free.

Pain unreleased is crippling,
a straight jacket holding us
sheltered and enclosed.
Afraid to reach out, afraid to feel,
Terrified to be real.

Paint released
-ah but how
-our little rituals
-ah temporary relief
-relief or our little distractions.
Like an aspirin for a broken heart,
a placebo for the mind.
Mend your ways to break the chains
that hold your pain.

Driven by an uncontrollable force,
we are powerless to question the reasons,
for the fear of knowing.

The force is driven from the pain
that has left the void in our soul.

To abandon our rituals,
to question our force
leaves us with the greatest
pain of all -emptiness.
We are driven never to abandon the rituals
to keep us from feeling.
To feel is to hurt.

Silence is pain and pain is silence.
To avoid the silence we must create.
But what do we create?
An endless paradox.
A never-ending nightmare
an endless loop of confusion.
Like a dog chasing his tail,
we are hidden in our insanity
which makes us sane.

The crippling paradox that once had
saved our soul now destroys us.
Manipulated, unable to ask
for our basic needs.
The pain of rejection and unacceptance has
tricked the mind to play
the games of the unwanted.

Passing your unwanted pain to another
is a never-ending process.
People who can’t feel their own pain
will take the pain of others.
It gives them life, it makes them feel.
There is now a purpose to their existence.

To fear your silence
sends you out of yourself.
You’re on a blind and endless search
to find the one thing,
that I now know doesn’t exist,
that will end your eternal pain.

The addiction from within,
the fear of ourselves,
always driven never content.
The void in our soul is never silent.
It yearns to be whole,
it will drive you to an insane paradox
that will never stop.

It starts out small giving
you an escape to salvation.
As you grow so does the void,
as the void grows so does the addiction.
Your addiction like weeds in a garden,
they multiply and spread covering the ground.
Taking all the water and nutrients
away from the plants.
Their roots wrapped around the plant
slowly choking the life out of it.

As the years go on you just seem to loose
interest in your garden and come to
realize that your addiction is
more powerful than your will.

As all hope seems lost
you give up on your garden
and start turning to someone else’s.
If I can weed your garden then
I can figure out how to weed mine.

Your addiction has taken over,
you now have no control,
no understanding of your ways.
Unable to live,
driven by your void trying to be filled.
An endless charade never put to rest.
All this insanity just find the acceptance
from others that you couldn’t find in yourself.

From My Book 'Coming Full Circle'.

The post Pain Of Knowing appeared first on Joe Ryan.

Time does not heal all wounds. Time puts distance and space between us and the loss, but time does not take it away or heal us. The thoughts and feelings that once crippled us slowly subside into our subconscious. Gaining unknown power over us, making decisions on our behalf as to protect us going forward to never experience that emotional overload again.

Time doesn’t heal it, reliving it emotionally heals it. That doesn’t mean that it will ever go away completely, there will always be a scar. An open would is so much more limiting and controlling than a scar. How much of our ability to love, our future emotional growth and capacity to feel joy is affected by the loss as we move forward in life is determined by how much we can reexperience the emotional pain and the new fears it has introduced into our being. You can’t know joy again until you relive, process, grieve and accept what took away your joy………..

Winds of change tore us apart.
It’s a once in a lifetime part
Our souls danced like we were never apart
Life had meaning, where do I start
Today we begin our journey to never be apart
Perfection of the heart

Standing on fire
Walking on a wire
Working without a net
Free to be
Open, not guarded
Vulnerable yet strong

Speaking in commitment
Our future planned
In unison, two as one
Together until the end

Who could have seen
How can you know
Rewind
Frozen in time
The path once shared, now walked alone.
Life’s new tone

The difference in reality
The memory of perspective
-or lack thereof
Eternal divide

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Recovery is about change. Change from who you were told you had to become to be accepted, valued and to survive in your environment, to the true person you were born to be. 

The parts of us that were not accepted were split off from us, hidden way in our subconscious. The awareness of the cut off parts shows themselves when our subconscious recognizes a familiar situation that had caused us pain in the past. Since we are ‘not allowed’ to access these emotions that we have cut off, we react. Our reaction is without though, but with a primal protection response. Knowing on some level that we cannot access the cut-off emotions to convey a proper response, we go into protective mode. Be it anger, defensiveness, withdrawal, violence, isolations, the response is how we learned to survive. We are reacting to events that happened a long time ago and most times it’s not an appropriate response to what is taking place at the moment.  This response caused the loss of love, friendships, jobs, and relationships. 

Not having access to your full range of emotions leaves us unprotected, reactive, untrusting and fearful, as we are always on guard to protect against the trauma response. This is an exhausting way to live. 

Pausing at the trauma response and not reacting is as difficult as someone pointing a gun at you and not feeling frightened. The moment you feel the fear and you don’t react is the moment healing starts. Our first reaction is to blame, either ourselves or the person/situation that caused the cut-off part of us to surface. Blame is the easiest way to stay in the victim role. Blame takes away our responsibility and puts the responsibility on to someone else. “They made me feel bad, it’s their responsibility to never make me feel bad”  

If we don’t take responsibility for our own emotions and reactions we will never heal. We will live this endless loop of blame and victimhood. We will find our world getting smaller and smaller, experience less joy, and become more reactive over time. Living life as a walking reaction is no way to live. 

Pausing at the moment of the trigger response and not reacting is the first step in taking ownership of the parts of us that we cut off. When we pause and don’t react, we are forcing ourselves to sit with the feelings that we fear. Feeling, facing, experiencing, forgiving, grieving, and owing the feelings we fear is the way to heal yourself.

The more exposure to the feelings we fear the less we fear them, the less power and control they have over us, the more space we will have inside for joy to thrive.

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I struggle with allowing time and space to open up, to allow what I need to face next to arrive in its own time versus wanting to get through it now. 

I can feel what will be present to me next, it’s just below the surface and rising up to my consciousness. I know exactly what it is and what I need to do. 

An obstacle that I must pass through if I want to grow closer to the freedom I desire. 

Am I fighting the urge to force it or am I just afraid to face it? Is it procrastinating or accepting that I’m not strong enough yet?

I’m in that comfortable place between layers and I don’t want to leave here right now, but what if I’m just avoiding going to that painful place out of fear. 

It’s my struggle always, allow it to come on its own or take control and make myself face it today. In the end, it’s going to happen either way and my life will change forever no matter which route I take. I’m wondering how different my life will be going forward depending if I wait or do it now. 

I can no longer wait for strength to come, I must find it. And find it I did. 

The longer you put off recovery the longer you stay in the victim role.

The post Hurry Up and Wait appeared first on Joe Ryan.

As you go deeper and peel away another layer you will feel the vulnerability and urge to hide.

Uncovering a layer is removing emotional armor that no longer serves you. It takes time to get comfortable with the vulnerability of your new skin, don’t rush it. This exposed layer will become worn in time and you will no longer need to wear it as protection. You will own the vulnerability as a part of your foundation, as your strength, as part of the real you.

When the vulnerability turns to strength another layer will be peeled away and the process will start over. This can be extremely painful at first, but with each layer exposed, it becomes easier,  to the point where we look forward to the next one, knowing growth, strength, and confidence is being built.

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Living with abuse is lonely and isolating. The steps you take to move from victim to survivor is even more isolated and more painful. You are going back in time to relive the abuse, to experience the pain and terror now, just as you felt it then. Accessing all the torment, you have been avoiding. Facing all that you feared. Look yourself right in the face and acknowledge your reality. No more difficult thing you can ever do, and also the best thing that could happen in terms of recovery.

Never knowing why your world never felt right. You will now have cause and effect. You can now connect the dots of what happened, how it affects you now, and what you need to do to get yourself out of the victim role.

Abuse is a loss, a loss of trust, love, self-respect, identity, and healthy shame. All loss needs to be grieved to heal. Without grieving you stay stuck in the victim role, you do not heal because you can’t grieve.

You don’t know why you feel the way you do. You think there is something wrong with you. What’s wrong is that you don’t know what you need to grieve. Without grieving, you stay stuck in eternal mourning. You are trapped in grief with nowhere for it to go. So you avoid them, drink them, drug them, work them, sex them, gamble them, everything but feel them.

Facing all the abuse again as an adult, you are better equipped to feel them, understand them, process them, and fear them less. The less you fear them, the less you need to avoid them, the more you face them, the more power you gain over them. This is the place where healing starts. You lost something inside of you, only you didn’t know it, you felt it. You needed to grieve the loss, to move on. It’s not until you know what the loss is that you be able to face it, to start the grieving process

Grieving is the art of forgiving yourself emotionally.

Grieve Gently

Soon you will be building boundaries

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The source of a person’s pain alters their life in unknown ways. The greater the pain the more powerful the feelings the more the subconscious hides us from the trauma, but not completely. That pain comes out sideways, often in the form of addiction, anger, self-sabotage, and victimization.

When a child’s trauma is so great, the child must check out to survive. The child is not equipped to process the trauma and or fight back. So the child must put these unwanted and frightening emotions somewhere. The child’s subconscious puts a wall around its heart to never allow that pain to be felt again and the child’s mind will hide their own memories from themself.

For the rest of that child’s life, they will unconsciously avoid any situation that even closely resembles the feel of the original pain. It’s like an imaginary line that can never be crossed. The anxiety and fear will start to surface and they will not understand why. The avoidance of anything that brings on these feelings becomes their path. Their world becomes smaller, freedom to be who they are and what they want gets smaller as they look through the rearview mirror of their life.

Their life is spent as a victim. Only they don’t know that they have adopted the victim role and become stuck as their emotional development stopped at the time of the abuse. They live in constant fear, defenseless without a voice. Everywhere in life, they are unknowingly the victim, their identity is for the world to use and abuse them because that’s what they learned….. to be loved you must be the victim, to be loved is to allow yourself to be abused. The most attention they received is when they were being abused. The feeling is that they have no human rights, they feel as if they were property, without personal boundaries, have no right to say no, to protect themselves, or leave abusive relationships.

Children internalized the abuse. They feel not as if they did something wrong to deserve the abuse, they feel they are wrong. Not that they made a mistake, that they are a mistake.

Abuse is the transfer of shame. The abuser is filled with shame and instead of dealing with their own shame they beat, humiliate, molest, and torture the child enough that it now carries the abusers shame as if is their own.

That child will carry the abuser’s shame for the rest of their life. Always knowing that something within them isn’t right, but not quite knowing what. Not knowing the origin of the shame they carry, they don’t even know that it’s the shame they carry that is slowly destroying their life.

A shame-based person is always in hiding, they hide their true feelings not only from the world but also from themselves. feeling unloveable they spilt off from themselves, from the shame and create a false self and spend the rest of their life never knowing who they are because at the core they have internalized the shame, hate, and abuse and come to hate themselves. They live in darkness, closed off from love, joy, and trust, and spend their life Isolated, always on guard so as not to be betrayed again.

How does one heal these wounds? It will never go away on its own, it will never just pass through you or dissipate. To move from victim to survivor action must be taken. For many, the time to take action is when they can’t avoid or mask the pain anymore. When the drinking, drugging, sexing, working, hiding, gambling, or whatever the addiction of avoiding no longer works to temporarily take the pain away. When nothing outside of yourself gives you temporary relief from the shame you carry. When there is nowhere outside of yourself to look, that’s when it’s time to go inward.

The only way out is through. Don’t avoid the pain any longer, face it, stand up to it. Go back into the darkness, put yourself back there as the helpless victim, and feel the fear, helplessness, and trauma. By feeling the original feelings we release the shame that has been stored up inside of us. The more you go back and feel it, face it, and release it, the less power it has over you, the freer you are. Joy and shame cannot occupy the same space within. The less shame you carry the more room for joy to occupy the space shame once did.

You can not know strength unless you are willing to be vulnerable. With self vulnerability, comes self-understanding, with understanding comes self-compassion, and with compassion comes self-forgiveness. By forgiving yourself you are giving back the shame you carried back to your abuser.

It’s time to take your life back. Move from victim to survivor, to empowerment, to freedom.

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