Glass Children – The Invisible Siblings of Trauma

When a child grows up in a household where one sibling has a serious issue—chronic illness, mental health challenges, addiction, or developmental disabilities—the family’s energy often centers around the “identified” child. Meanwhile, the other children in the family, though outwardly “fine,” may quietly slip into the background. These are known as glass children.

What Is a Glass Child?

The term “glass child” was coined to describe children who grow up in families where a sibling’s needs are so intense that the other child becomes emotionally invisible. The word “glass” refers not to their fragility, but to the way adults and caregivers often look through them—focusing instead on the sibling in crisis.

These children may:

• Suppress their own needs to avoid adding stress to the family.

• Take on caregiving or emotional support roles far too early.

• Overachieve or become “the good child” in hopes of receiving attention or approval.

• Experience deep guilt for resenting their sibling or feeling neglected.

The Emotional Landscape of a Glass Child

Glass children often present as mature, empathetic, and responsible beyond their years. But beneath the surface, many wrestle with complex emotions:

• Guilt: For feeling jealous, angry, or frustrated.

• Grief: Over the childhood they didn’t get to have.

• Loneliness: From feeling unseen, even in their own family.

• Confusion: About their role—Are they a child? A helper? A background character?

The Long-Term Impact

As adults, glass children may struggle with:

• People-pleasing and codependency.

• Difficulty expressing needs or setting boundaries.

• Low self-worth stemming from years of emotional invisibility.

• Compassion fatigue or burnout from continued caretaking roles.

Often, they don’t recognize these patterns as rooted in childhood. After all, they weren’t the one with the “problem.” They may even minimize their own pain, believing it wasn’t valid.

Healing as a Glass Child

Healing begins with acknowledging the wound. Emotional neglect—especially when subtle—can be just as impactful as overt trauma. If you were a glass child, here are some paths toward healing:

1. Name your experience: Recognition brings validation. You were not "too sensitive"—you adapted to survive.

2. Grieve what was lost: Allow yourself to mourn the space, attention, and care you didn’t receive.

3. Reclaim your needs: You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to ask for help.

4. Seek support: Therapy can help unpack internalized beliefs and create new relational templates.

5. Reconnect with joy: Explore what lights you up—creativity, play, spontaneity. You’re not just a helper. You’re a whole person.

For Parents and Therapists

If you’re raising or working with children in a family impacted by illness or trauma, don’t overlook the “okay” sibling. Check in. Offer individual attention. Give them space to express complex feelings without judgment.

Even when a family is in crisis, all children deserve to be seen.

Glass children aren’t broken. They’re brilliant and brave. But they, too, need light, love, and room to grow.

Who Am I Without My Trauma?

The Identity Void After Healing

Healing from trauma can feel like climbing out of a burning building — painful, necessary, and often life-saving. But what happens when the fire is out? When you’ve done the therapy, untangled the past, and begun to feel… calmer?

Survivors are often surprised by an unexpected wave of confusion:
“If I’m not surviving anymore… who am I?”
This is the identity void after healing — a space of disorientation that can feel as unsettling as the trauma itself.

When Trauma Becomes Identity

For many, trauma isn’t just something that happened. It becomes woven into the very sense of self.

You might have built your identity around being:

• The strong one

• The anxious one

• The fixer, the empath, the overachiever

• The one who’s always in pain

• The survivor

These roles are adaptive. They keep us safe, loved, needed. But over time, they become the lens through which we see the world — and ourselves. They shape how we relate, what we expect, and what we believe we’re worth.

So when healing begins, it’s not just about releasing pain.
It’s about releasing who we thought we were.

The Void Is Part of the Process

It’s normal to feel lost after letting go of trauma identities. It’s like clearing out a room you’ve lived in for decades. The space feels echoey. Unfamiliar. Even lonely.

This phase isn’t a failure. It’s a threshold — a necessary pause before new aspects of self begin to emerge.

Some people fear this void and try to fill it quickly with productivity, new roles, or spiritual bypassing. But if we can stay with the emptiness, we often discover something deeper underneath: freedom.

Common Experiences in the Identity Void

• Disorientation: “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

• Emotional flatness: Life feels strangely neutral without constant drama or urgency.

• Grief: Mourning the loss of your old self or coping strategies.

• Fear of being uninteresting: “Who am I if I’m not broken?”

• Resistance to joy: Feeling guilty for being okay.

• Longing for intensity: Calmness feels boring or unfamiliar.

These are not signs you’re going backward — they’re signs you’re crossing into something new.

What Can Help

1. Name the Void
   Simply acknowledging “I’m in the in-between” can be grounding. You’re not regressing — you’re recalibrating.

2. Slowly Reclaim Interests and Joys
   Try revisiting activities from before trauma (if there was a "before") or experimenting with new ones. What feels authentic now?

3. Explore New Identity Without Pressure
   Instead of rushing to become someone new, stay curious. Who are you when you’re not performing, pleasing, or protecting?

4. Let Yourself Grieve
   Even identities that were painful served a purpose. Letting go of them deserves compassion.

5. Seek Support
   A therapist can help navigate the existential questions that arise post-healing — especially if old patterns try to creep back in.

Who Are You Without the Pain?

This isn’t a question to answer with words — it’s one to live into.

Maybe you are more than the sum of your coping mechanisms.
Maybe your worth isn’t in how much you’ve endured.
Maybe your identity is less about labels and more about presence.
Maybe you’re not just who you were after the trauma — but someone new who is still becoming.

And that becoming isn’t a problem to solve.
It’s a mystery to honor.

Final Thought
The path of healing is not a return to who you were before trauma. It’s an emergence into who you are beyond it.

So if you’re standing in the strange, silent space between old and new — take heart.

This isn’t the end of your story.
It’s the clearing where your truest self has space to emerge.

Survivor Guilt in Relationships: Feeling Too Much, Too Often

Why Some of Us Carry Shame for Simply Being Loved

For many trauma survivors, love doesn’t feel safe — it feels confusing, overwhelming, or even painful. One reason for this is survivor guilt, a hidden emotional undercurrent that shows up not just after tragedy, but in everyday relationships.

You might find yourself thinking:

• “I don’t deserve this kindness.”

• “Why am I the one who got out?”

• “I feel guilty being happy when they’re still suffering.”

• “I must give back more than I receive.”

Survivor guilt doesn’t just happen after accidents or war zones. It’s common among those who’ve lived through childhood trauma, family dysfunction, neglect, abuse, or oppression. And it can quietly shape how we show up in love, friendship, and even therapy.

What Is Survivor Guilt?

Survivor guilt is the deep, often unconscious belief that if we made it out — if we are safe, loved, healing, or simply okay — and someone else isn’t, then we don’t deserve it.

This might come from:

• Being the sibling who was less harmed.

• Growing up in a household where your parents suffered, and you did okay.

• Leaving a toxic relationship that others are still stuck in.

• Escaping poverty, addiction, or trauma that others you love didn’t.

• Feeling joy while others are in pain.

We internalize a kind of empathy burden. And with it, we carry shame.

How It Shows Up in Relationships

Survivor guilt can subtly shape our behaviors and beliefs. You might notice yourself:

• Overgiving or overfunctioning — because receiving feels undeserved.

• Avoiding intimacy — love feels “too much” or unsafe.

• Sabotaging good things — a relationship that feels stable might trigger discomfort.

• Struggling with boundaries — saying no feels selfish when others are struggling.

• Feeling emotionally flooded — guilt and gratitude swirl into overwhelm.

• Staying small — success or joy feels like a betrayal to your past or your people.

Underneath it all is a haunting message: “Why me?”

Why Survivor Guilt Happens

Guilt is the brain’s way of maintaining a sense of order and responsibility. When trauma strikes, especially in relationships or groups, we try to make sense of it. “If I suffer, it makes sense. If I’m okay, someone else had to pay.” It’s a false trade-off, but it can feel true.

For children especially, this guilt can be fused with identity:

• “I was the golden child while my sibling took the brunt.”

• “I had it easier, so I shouldn’t complain.”

• “They stayed. I left. I abandoned them.”

This unconscious guilt often persists into adulthood, long after the actual danger is gone.

Healing Survivor Guilt in Relationships

1. Name It
   Bringing survivor guilt into awareness is the first step. Notice where you feel undeserving of care, rest, love, or peace. Trace it back. Where did that message start?

2. Challenge the Logic
   Survivor guilt often assumes we can or should take on others’ suffering. Remind yourself: You didn’t cause their pain. You don’t have to suffer to be loyal.

3. Let Love In
   Practice receiving — compliments, help, kindness — without repaying or shrinking. Letting love in without a price is healing.

4. Talk About It
   Therapy can be a safe place to explore survivor guilt. A relational space where you’re allowed to be the one who made it — and not feel bad about it.

5. Honor Without Guilt
   You don’t have to suffer to remember those who still are. Living fully can be an act of honoring. Joy doesn’t erase pain; it can exist beside it.

Final Thoughts

Survivor guilt isn’t selfish — it’s sensitive. It shows that you care deeply. But when guilt becomes a barrier to love, rest, or safety, it’s time to offer compassion inward.

You are allowed to be okay.
You are allowed to heal.
You are allowed to feel joy — even if others haven’t yet.

Healing doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten the pain. It means you’re learning to carry it differently — with tenderness, not guilt. And that, too, is a form of love.

Therapy as a New Relational Template

Why the Relationship Itself Is Part of the Healing

When most people think of therapy, they imagine talking about problems, analyzing the past, or learning coping skills. While these are often part of the process, they miss something essential: therapy isn't just about what is said — it's about what is experienced in the therapeutic relationship itself.

At its core, therapy offers a new relational template — a different kind of relationship than many of us have ever known. And it is this felt experience that can bring about deep and lasting change.

Why Relationships Wound — and Heal

For many people, emotional wounding happened in relationship. Perhaps your caregivers were distant, unpredictable, critical, overwhelmed, or unsafe. Over time, you may have developed patterns to survive: shutting down, people-pleasing, mistrusting, withdrawing, or hyper-independence.

These survival strategies make sense. They helped you adapt to the relationships you were in. But they can also become invisible walls between you and others later in life — even those who want to love you.

Healing, then, often happens in relationship too — not through logic or insight alone, but through a safe, consistent, attuned connection with another person.

What Makes the Therapeutic Relationship Different?

1. Consistency and Boundaries
   Therapy offers a space that is consistent, boundaried, and predictable — perhaps for the first time. You know when it starts, when it ends, and what to expect. This kind of reliable holding can help your nervous system slowly begin to trust.

2. Attunement Without Agenda
   A good therapist listens deeply — not to fix, judge, or rescue, but to witness and understand. You are not "too much." You are not a burden. Over time, this can rewire internal beliefs about your worth.

3. Emotional Safety
   In therapy, it's safe to be angry, scared, messy, or sad. You don't have to perform. This emotional freedom is a corrective experience that allows the parts of you that were silenced to finally speak.

4. Repair After Rupture
   In many relationships, conflict means withdrawal or escalation. But in therapy, ruptures can be repaired. If something feels off, it can be named and worked through — modeling a new way of being with others.

5. A Mirror for Your Patterns
   Therapy reflects back the ways you relate to others: your fears, defences, hopes, and longings. With care, these patterns can be brought into awareness — not as flaws, but as adaptations — and gently transformed.

Relearning Relationship from the Inside Out

Therapy doesn’t just teach you how to have better relationships. It is the relationship. It’s the experience of being met where you are, without judgment or conditions, again and again.

Over time, the internalized messages you carry — “I’m too much,” “No one stays,” “I have to be perfect,” “My needs don’t matter” — begin to soften.

You start to trust connection, even when it’s vulnerable. You learn to express needs. To say no. To be seen. To feel safe.

From Template to Transformation

Eventually, the new relational blueprint you experience in therapy starts to carry over into the rest of your life. You might notice yourself:

• Taking more emotional risks in relationships.

• Asking for what you need.

• Recognizing red flags sooner.

• Setting healthier boundaries.

• Letting others in — slowly, but more deeply.

These shifts aren’t forced. They emerge naturally when the old wounds begin to heal.

Final Thoughts

Therapy is more than conversation — it's a living, breathing space of connection and repair. The relationship with your therapist becomes a kind of bridge: from old patterns to new possibilities, from isolation to intimacy, from surviving to relating.

For those who have never felt truly safe with another human being, this relationship can be revolutionary.

And from there, everything begins to change.

Boundaries vs. Walls – Learning the Difference

When we’ve been hurt, rejected, or overwhelmed—especially early in life—we learn to protect ourselves. Sometimes we protect ourselves in ways that allow for connection and growth. Other times, our protection keeps us isolated. This is the essential difference between boundaries and walls.

What Are Boundaries?

Boundaries are intentional, thoughtful, and life-affirming. They help us define what we’re comfortable with and how we want to be treated. Setting boundaries is an act of self-respect. It’s how we say, “I matter too.”

A healthy boundary might sound like:

• “I need some quiet time this evening.”

• “I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”

• “Please don’t raise your voice when we’re discussing something.”

Boundaries aren’t about pushing people away. They’re about protecting your energy while staying open to safe connection. They help us remain grounded, clear, and authentic in relationships.

What Are Walls?

Walls are different. While boundaries are chosen, walls are often automatic. They form as protective defences when connection has felt unsafe—especially in the context of trauma, abandonment, or emotional neglect.

Walls might show up as:

• Avoiding vulnerability at all costs

• Not asking for help, even when you need it

• Shutting down emotionally when you feel threatened

• Keeping people at a distance—even people you care about

Walls are built to keep us safe. And sometimes, they’re necessary—especially when someone is actively harmful. But over time, walls can become barriers not just to pain, but to intimacy, trust, and healing.

Boundaries Help Us Connect. Walls Keep Us Isolated.

The key difference lies in openness. Boundaries still allow for connection, trust, and mutual respect. They honour your needs and leave space for the other person. Walls, in contrast, block others out completely. They are shaped by fear, and they limit our ability to grow or heal within relationships.

Boundaries say, “This is what I need to feel safe with you.”
Walls say, “No one gets in.”

How to Move from Walls to Boundaries

Shifting from walls to boundaries isn’t easy. It requires a deep level of self-awareness, compassion, and often support from others. Here are a few ways to start:

• Notice your protective patterns. Ask yourself: Am I avoiding this person or situation because it feels unsafe—or just unfamiliar?

• Acknowledge your history. Recognise that your defences likely formed for a reason. They protected you when you needed it most.

• Practice saying small no’s. You don’t have to leap into vulnerability. Start with gentle boundary-setting and observe how it feels.

• Work with a therapist. A therapeutic relationship can be a safe space to explore your defences and try out new ways of relating.

Final Thoughts

Boundaries are not walls. They’re bridges to healthier relationships—with others, and with yourself. They help you show up fully, safely, and honestly. If you grew up needing walls to survive, there’s no shame in that. But now, you might be ready to build something new—something that honours your past while also inviting connection, growth, and freedom.

Therapy can be a powerful ally in this process. You don’t have to navigate it alone.

The Pathless Path: Trusting the Unfolding

When Letting Go Becomes the Way

In our search for healing, awakening, or simply a sense of peace, it’s natural to want a map. We want steps, stages, and a clear direction. We want to know what’s next, how long it will take, and whether we’re “doing it right.” But at a certain point on the journey—especially the inner one—something unexpected happens:

The path disappears.

This is what many traditions refer to as the pathless path—a movement away from method and toward mystery, from effort toward allowing. It’s not a rejection of structure, but a surrender of control. It’s not passivity, but a deep listening to life as it is.

So what is the pathless path, and why does it matter?

When the Inner Compass Replaces the Outer Map

Many people begin their journey with systems—therapy models, spiritual techniques, wellness routines. These are valuable. They help regulate, stabilize, and give us language for what’s happening inside. They offer orientation when everything feels confusing or overwhelming.

But at some point, you may feel a quiet, growing intuition:

“None of these really capture what I’m experiencing.”
“The more I try to get somewhere, the further away I feel.”
“I feel like I’m losing my sense of direction—but something in me knows this is necessary.”

This is the beginning of the pathless path: a phase where you may feel lost, but more present. Where certainty dissolves, but clarity grows. Where the need to be right gives way to the willingness to be real.

Trusting the Unfolding

Trusting the unfolding doesn’t mean we passively wait for life to “fix” us. It means we stop trying to micromanage our own transformation. We become willing to:

• Follow subtle impulses instead of rigid plans

• Listen to the body instead of overriding it

• Stay present with discomfort instead of rushing for solutions

• Let healing arise in its own time rather than forcing catharsis

• Accept that we might not always know what’s happening—and that this too is sacred

This trust isn’t blind. It’s embodied. It grows over time as we notice: Life has its own intelligence.

Why This Phase Can Feel Unsettling

The pathless path can be disorienting, especially for those of us who relied on structure for safety. It may bring up:

• Anxiety (“Am I doing enough?”)

• Grief (“I thought I’d be further along by now.”)

• Ego backlash (“I need to achieve healing.”)

• Doubt (“Nothing’s happening. What if I’ve lost the way?”)

But the very fact that these questions arise is part of the unfolding. The self-structure that needed certainty begins to soften. What emerges is something deeper: not a destination, but a different way of being.

The Subtle Signs of Real Growth

In the absence of obvious markers, how can we tell we’re growing?

Often, it’s in quiet things:

• You’re kinder to yourself during hard moments

• You don’t chase answers as compulsively

• You rest more easily in not knowing

• You notice beauty more often, even when things are hard

• You cry without needing to know why—and feel lighter afterward

• You no longer need your pain to justify your worth

These are signs that something real is shifting. Not in your thoughts, but in your being.

Practices That Support the Pathless Path

While there may be no clear steps, there are ways to stay resourced:

• Meditation without agenda: Just sitting, just being

• Time in nature: Letting the rhythm of the earth restore your nervous system

• Journaling as inquiry: Not to solve, but to reflect and deepen awareness

• Therapy or spiritual companionship: Someone to witness your unfolding without fixing

• Creative expression: Letting something deeper speak through art, sound, or movement

• Rest: True rest is radical in a world obsessed with becoming

These aren’t strategies. They are invitations to return to presence—again and again.

Final Thoughts: You Are the Path

The great paradox is this:

There is no path.
And you are walking it.

You are not behind.
You are not broken.
You are not lost.

You are unfolding, exactly as you need to. Not always neatly. Not always joyfully. But honestly.

The pathless path is not about arriving. It’s about remembering what you are beneath the striving:

Life itself, in motion. Love, uncontained. Presence, already here.

All you need to do is stay close. To yourself. To this breath. To this moment.

And trust what comes next.

Ego, Essence, and the Layers of the Self

Exploring the Inner Architecture of Identity and Being

In therapy, spirituality, and self-inquiry, we often encounter questions like:
“Who am I, really?”
“Is the ego bad?”
“How do I live from my essence?”

These questions hint at something deeper than personality, and point toward an inner journey—a peeling back of layers to discover what lies beneath our surface identities. In this blog post, we’ll explore the concepts of ego, essence, and the layers of the self, and how understanding them can support healing, integration, and awakening.

What Is the Ego?

The ego isn’t inherently negative. In psychological terms, ego refers to the part of us that manages our sense of self in the world—how we navigate roles, form relationships, and keep ourselves safe. It's the part that says "I am this, not that."

From a therapeutic perspective, the ego develops as a survival structure. As children, we create beliefs, behaviors, and identities in response to our environment. We adapt to what’s expected, avoid what’s dangerous, and strive to get love or avoid rejection.

The problem isn’t ego itself—it’s when we believe that’s all we are.

What Is Essence?

Essence is a word used in the Diamond Approach and other transpersonal teachings to describe our true nature—who we are beneath conditioning, roles, and defenses.

Essence isn’t an idea of the self. It’s an experience. It might feel like:

• Deep peace that arises for no reason

• A grounded sense of presence

• Spaciousness, joy, or inner stillness

• Love not tied to any object

• A quiet knowing of “this is me, and I’m okay”

Essence is not something we create—it’s something we uncover.

The Layers of the Self

You might imagine the self as layered:

1. Ego Structures

   • Personality traits

   • Defense mechanisms

   • Conditioned beliefs and trauma adaptations

2. Core Wounding

   • Feelings of shame, inadequacy, or abandonment

   • Early unmet needs

   • Internalized messages from caregivers or culture

3. Authentic Self or Essence

   • Innate aliveness, presence, and wholeness

   • Not dependent on external validation

   • Feels real, timeless, and deeply you

The journey of healing and spiritual growth often involves moving down through these layers—not by rejecting the ego, but by meeting it with compassion and curiosity.

Ego Is Not the Enemy

A common misunderstanding in some spiritual circles is that ego must be destroyed. But in therapy and integrative spirituality, the ego is more like a shell that once protected you. It needs to be understood, not attacked.

Trying to bypass ego structures too soon can create spiritual dissociation—where we cling to transcendent states while avoiding unresolved pain.

Instead, we bring awareness through the ego. We begin to notice:

• “Oh, that’s my achiever part trying to prove my worth.”

• “That’s my abandoned child self panicking about being left.”

• “That’s my inner critic attacking to keep me safe.”

In recognizing these patterns, space opens. Essence can begin to emerge not in spite of the ego—but through it.

How This Relates to Healing

Whether you're working with trauma, self-esteem, identity loss, or spiritual crisis, understanding ego and essence can support your process.

• In therapy, we learn to see through false beliefs, integrate inner parts, and reclaim buried aspects of ourselves.

• In spiritual work, we learn to rest in the awareness that holds it all—the one that doesn’t need to prove or protect.

Together, these paths can help us become more whole—not by becoming someone new, but by remembering who we already are underneath it all.

Final Reflections

You are not just your story, your thoughts, or your roles.
You are not just the mask you wear, or the pain you carry.

And yet, all of it belongs.

The ego is the map. Essence is the terrain. The journey is not to destroy the map, but to recognize its limits—and then walk into the living land of who you really are.

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
— C.G. Jung

And who you are… is far more than you’ve been told.

The Fluid Self: Identity Beyond Labels

Embracing Who We Are When Definitions Fall Away

In a world that often asks us to define ourselves—by gender, career, beliefs, diagnosis, even healing style—it can feel both empowering and limiting to claim an identity. Labels can offer clarity, community, and a sense of belonging. But what happens when those labels begin to feel too small? What if who you are can’t be contained in a neat description?

Welcome to the experience of the fluid self—a deeper recognition that identity is not fixed, but unfolding, layered, and ever-changing.

Why We Seek Labels

Labels serve a purpose. In psychology and therapy, they can help us make sense of our experience. In social and cultural spaces, they can foster connection. Many people find healing in naming their trauma, diagnosis, neurotype, or gender identity. Naming can bring relief.

But sometimes, what began as a helpful framework starts to feel like a cage. Especially during times of growth or spiritual exploration, we may begin to question the very structures we used to define ourselves.

“I’m not sure who I am anymore.”
“None of these labels feel right.”
“I used to be that, but now… I’m not so sure.”

These are not signs that something is wrong. They’re signs that something is moving.

Identity and the Trauma Lens

For those healing from trauma, especially relational or developmental trauma, identity can be deeply tied to survival roles: the caregiver, the achiever, the rebel, the pleaser. We often shape who we are to stay safe or be loved.

Healing invites us to ask:
Who am I without my defenses?
Who am I when I’m no longer surviving?

At first, this can be terrifying. But it also opens a doorway into something more fluid, more true.

Beyond Binary Thinking

Much of our world runs on binary systems: male/female, right/wrong, introvert/extrovert, traumatized/healed. But human experience is rarely that clean.

Identity may shift across time, relationships, or inner states. We may feel spiritually expansive one day and rawly human the next. We may align with a label for years, then quietly let it go.

This is not inconsistency. It’s evolution.

The Fluid Self in Practice

Living from a fluid sense of self means staying open, curious, and kind toward the parts of you that are changing. It involves:

• Self-Inquiry: Who am I today, in this moment?

• Letting Go: Releasing the need to define yourself once and for all.

• Compassion: Meeting past identities with tenderness, not shame.

• Presence: Living more from your current truth than past conditioning.

It also means giving others the space to change. Just as you’re not static, neither are they.

The Paradox of Identity

In spiritual or transpersonal traditions, there’s often a deeper invitation: to discover what remains when all identities fall away. Awareness. Presence. Being.

You are not your name, your job, your past, or even your personality. You are something more intimate than all of it.

And yet, we still live in a world where some amount of identity is useful. The dance, then, is learning to hold our labels lightly—to wear them like clothing, not skin.

Final Thought

You don’t have to be one thing forever. You don’t have to make perfect sense to anyone—not even yourself. Identity can be a tool, not a trap. And freedom may begin not when we finally discover who we are, but when we stop needing to define it at all.

Why Healthy Relationships Can Feel “Boring” After Trauma

Understanding the Nervous System’s Role in Attachment, Safety, and “Spark”

For many people who’ve experienced relational trauma—whether from childhood neglect, inconsistent caregiving, or toxic adult relationships—the idea of a healthy, stable connection might sound good in theory… but feel oddly disappointing or even “boring” in practice. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone—and there’s a deeper reason rooted in both psychology and the nervous system.

Trauma and the Familiarity of Chaos

When we grow up in environments that are unpredictable, emotionally volatile, or lacking in safety, our nervous systems adapt. Hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, people-pleasing, or shutdown responses become survival strategies. Over time, these states can feel familiar—even comforting.

Uncertainty and drama may come to define what love “feels like.”

So when we later meet someone who offers stability, attunement, and calm, it can feel emotionally flat or even dull. There’s no spark—not because the relationship is lacking, but because your nervous system is still calibrated to expect danger or intensity. Safety can feel unfamiliar. And unfamiliarity often feels unsafe, at least at first.

The Missing “Spark” Isn’t Always What You Think

That “spark” many associate with attraction is often a nervous system response—especially in trauma survivors. It may be chemistry, yes—but it may also be anxiety, activation, or a subconscious recognition of familiar dysfunction. We may be drawn toward people who echo the patterns we learned in early life, even if those patterns hurt us.

In contrast, someone grounded, respectful, and emotionally available may not set off those inner alarms. And in a nervous system used to drama, that neutrality can feel… boring.

But boring might actually be peace.

What Healing Looks Like

If you’re in therapy or doing inner work, part of the healing journey involves recalibrating your nervous system to recognize calm as safe, and safety as desirable. This doesn’t mean settling for a connection that’s dead or lifeless—it means learning to differentiate between healthy stability and emotional numbing.

Some key shifts might include:

• Noticing how your body responds to calm, stable relationships.

• Learning to stay present in situations where you're not “on guard.”

• Practicing slowness and stillness, and observing what feelings arise.

• Exploring what intimacy means to you beyond chemistry or adrenaline.

Choosing Peace Over Patterns

Healing doesn’t mean you stop wanting excitement or passion. It means those desires get to be met in ways that don’t cost your sense of self or safety.

A healthy relationship might feel quieter, slower, and less dramatic—but also more honest, mutual, and nourishing. Over time, what once felt boring may begin to feel like home.

Final Thought

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Why do I feel nothing with someone who treats me well?”—it’s not that there’s something wrong with you. It’s likely that your body is still learning what safety feels like. Be patient with yourself. Love, like healing, often begins where the noise ends.

Spiritual Emergencies: When Expansion Feels Like Breakdown

“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” – Joseph Campbell

When the Inner Path Feels Like Too Much

Not all spiritual growth feels gentle or blissful. Sometimes, what begins as an awakening—an expanded state of consciousness, a powerful meditation, a sense of union or insight—can unravel into chaos, confusion, or emotional overwhelm.

This isn’t failure. It might be what transpersonal psychologists call a spiritual emergency.

In these moments, the soul is stretching, shedding old identities. But without the right support, what could be an initiation may instead feel like a breakdown.

What Is a Spiritual Emergency?

Coined by Stanislav and Christina Grof, the term “spiritual emergency” refers to a critical point in a spiritual process where powerful psychological and energetic shifts become destabilizing.

These are not just psychological crises. They are spiritual in nature—but because they destabilize the ego and nervous system, they often look and feel like mental health breakdowns.

Signs of a Spiritual Emergency

• Emotional intensity or overwhelm

• Sleeplessness, sensory sensitivity, or racing thoughts

• Feeling fragmented or dissociated

• A sense of spiritual “downloads” or expanded perceptions

• Visions, symbols, or archetypal imagery

• Loss of sense of self or ego dissolution

• Difficulty functioning in daily life

• Fear of “going crazy”

Not all of these are necessarily pathological. In fact, they often point to a deep and meaningful transformation—but one that’s moving too fast, or without grounding.

What Causes a Spiritual Emergency?

Spiritual emergencies can arise spontaneously, or be triggered by:

• Intense meditation, breathwork, or psychedelic experiences

• Trauma surfacing during spiritual practice

• Sudden spiritual awakening (e.g. kundalini rising)

• Grief, illness, or existential crisis

• Deep therapeutic work that loosens identity structures

They occur when the ego is not ready—or not supported—to integrate what’s being revealed.

Is This a Breakdown or a Breakthrough?

That depends on how it's held. Without support, a spiritual emergency may look like psychosis or severe anxiety. With care, it can be a transformative rite of passage.

What distinguishes a spiritual emergency from mental illness is the content and context:

• The person is often oriented, insightful, and aware that something meaningful is happening—even if it's distressing.

• The experience has a strong symbolic or existential quality.

• There is a desire to grow, heal, or awaken—despite the suffering.

Still, it’s important not to romanticize distress. What’s needed is compassionate, integrative support.

How to Navigate a Spiritual Emergency

1. Slow Down
   Pull back from intense practices. Rest, nourish your body, and simplify your life.

2. Ground Yourself
   Eat, walk, sleep. Connect with nature and your physical body.

3. Find a Skilled Therapist
   Look for someone with experience in spiritual emergence, trauma, and somatic grounding. Not all therapists are equipped for this terrain.

4. Normalize the Experience
   You are not broken. Others have walked this path. Read, listen, and connect with those who understand.

5. Set Boundaries Around Input
   Too much spiritual content or stimulation can fuel the fire. Choose your sources wisely.

6. Anchor in the Ordinary
   Laundry, meals, relationships, and simple presence are not distractions—they are medicine.

Why Support Matters

One of the hardest parts of spiritual emergency is feeling alone. Friends may not understand. Doctors may misdiagnose. And the spiritual community may urge you to “surrender” when what you need is containment.

This is where therapists who are trauma-informed and spiritually literate can help. They won’t pathologize your experience—but they will help you ground, regulate, and integrate.

When the Breakdown Becomes a Breakthrough

If you are experiencing something like this, know that you’re not failing at being spiritual. You are waking up—and it’s more raw and real than you expected.

What feels like falling apart may be the crumbling of what no longer serves you.

With time, support, and kindness, what begins as a crisis can deepen into clarity. What once shattered you can slowly become the ground for a more whole, embodied presence.

Healing doesn’t always feel good—but it can lead to something real. Not just bliss or insight, but a deeper, truer way of being in the world.

Mystical Experiences in Therapy: When the Transpersonal Emerges

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” – Aldous Huxley

When Therapy Becomes More Than Therapy

Therapy is often seen as a space for healing trauma, understanding patterns, or managing anxiety and depression. But for some, especially those on a deep inner journey, something else begins to stir—something harder to name.

A client may speak of profound stillness, light, or unity. They may describe feeling outside time, sensing the presence of something vast and loving, or losing the usual boundaries of self. These aren’t symptoms. They’re often glimpses into what’s called the transpersonal or mystical dimension of human experience.

When this arises, therapy becomes more than psychological—it becomes sacred.

What Are Mystical or Transpersonal Experiences?

Mystical experiences are states of consciousness that transcend the personal self and connect us with something greater—whether that’s described as God, Source, the Universe, Emptiness, or simply presence.

They can include:

• A sudden, direct sense of unity with all things

• An experience of boundless love or compassion

• A feeling of timelessness or expansion

• A collapse of the sense of “I”

• Visions, archetypal symbols, or inner guidance

• A quiet but profound inner knowing

These states may emerge spontaneously, during meditation, breathwork, bodywork, or even in the stillness of a therapy session.

Are Mystical Experiences Relevant in Psychotherapy?

Yes—when held with care. While psychotherapy has traditionally focused on the personal self, integrative and transpersonal approaches recognize that healing doesn’t always stop there. Sometimes, in the deep safety of the therapeutic relationship, the psyche opens beyond its usual limits.

This doesn’t mean the therapist becomes a guru. It means the therapeutic space becomes more expansive, capable of holding both wounds and wonder.

Why Do These Experiences Arise?

There are many reasons mystical experiences can emerge in therapy:

• Healing of core wounds may create space for deeper awareness.

• The nervous system settling can allow altered states of consciousness to emerge.

• Reconnection with the body and emotions may clear pathways to intuitive or spiritual insight.

• Grief and existential questioning can open doors to the numinous.

• Letting go of ego defenses can reveal a deeper ground of being.

For some, these experiences are spontaneous. For others, they are part of a long inner search.

Integrating the Mystical

While profound, mystical experiences can also be disorienting. People may question their sanity, struggle to describe what happened, or feel alone in trying to make sense of it.

That’s why integration matters.

A skilled therapist can:

• Help distinguish between spiritual emergence and psychological disturbance

• Offer grounding and context, especially when ego structures are softening

• Encourage healthy skepticism without pathologizing genuine experiences

• Support the embodiment of insight into everyday life

• Normalize the sacred—without needing to explain it away

The Importance of a Transpersonally-Informed Therapist

Not all therapists are trained to navigate the transpersonal. When working with spiritual experiences, it helps to find someone who:

• Understands both psychological and spiritual development

• Respects your language and worldview (whether religious, agnostic, mystical, or nondual)

• Can stay present without needing to control, interpret, or minimize your experience

• Honors both your psychological story and your deeper being

When the Sacred and the Psychological Meet

Therapy doesn’t need to force mystical experiences, nor should it. But when they emerge naturally—whether through stillness, surrender, or grace—they can be honored as part of the healing journey.

They remind us that we are not just wounded stories or isolated minds. We are also mystery, depth, and presence.

In this sense, mystical experiences don’t take us away from being human—they deepen our humanity.

Therapy can be a container not only for healing the self, but for remembering what lies beyond it.

Post-Awakening Integration: Grounding After Non-Dual Realizations

“Enlightenment is just the beginning. It is not the end.” – Zen saying

Awakening Is Not the End of the Journey

Many seekers spend years—or lifetimes—pursuing awakening: that clear, sudden, or gradual realization that there is no separate self, that we are not our thoughts or stories, and that reality is not what we’ve been conditioned to believe.

But what happens after the “aha”? After the moment of clarity, the flood of stillness, the collapse of identity?

Often, there’s a surprising truth waiting just on the other side: the real work begins after awakening.

This is the phase of post-awakening integration.

The Challenge of Living the Realization

Realization can be liberating. You may experience timelessness, unity, or emptiness. But daily life doesn’t always conform to these spacious states. Bills still arrive. Emotions still surge. Old trauma still surfaces.

In fact, after awakening, unresolved psychological wounds often come to the surface more strongly. Why?

Because the structures that once repressed them (ego defenses, identification, narrative self) may have softened or collapsed.

Integration is about embodying awakening—not as a fleeting experience, but as a way of being.

Common Post-Awakening Experiences

• Emotional turbulence – Deep grief, old fear, or anger may arise.

• Disorientation – A loss of meaning or identity; confusion about how to “be” in the world.

• “Dark Night” phases – A sense of spiritual dryness, disconnection, or existential fatigue.

• Hyper-spiritual bypassing – A temptation to avoid painful emotions by clinging to bliss or “emptiness.”

• Longing for integration – A deep yearning to bring the realization into relationships, body, and everyday life.

Grounding Practices for Integration

Awakening is not just about transcending the self—it’s also about returning to the human experience with more compassion, clarity, and presence.

Here are some ways to support the process:

1. Trauma-Informed Therapy

Working with a therapist who understands both trauma and spiritual emergence can help you metabolize old wounds without re-identifying with them.

2. Embodiment Practices

Yoga, Qigong, breathwork, dance—these reconnect you with your body and help you stay grounded in the here and now.

3. Meditation with a New Lens

Post-awakening meditation is often less about striving and more about resting in awareness. Let your practice become about inclusion, not escape.

4. Connection with Others

Isolation is common post-awakening. Trusted relationships and spiritual community (sangha) can reflect, mirror, and anchor your growth.

5. Nature and Simplicity

Time in nature helps attune the nervous system and reminds us of a deeper rhythm. Gardening, walking, and silence can be more valuable than concepts.

Awakening and Shadow

Awakening does not erase the shadow. It illuminates it.

Old patterns may no longer dominate, but they don’t vanish overnight. Integration involves meeting the leftover pieces with honesty and love.

This is why many spiritual teachers emphasize humility, compassion, and continual inquiry.

Living the Realization

True realization wants to express itself in how you speak, relate, listen, and serve. It’s not just about a private state—it’s about how you show up in the world.

Post-awakening integration is where mysticism meets maturity. Where realization becomes relationship. Where clarity grows roots.

In the end, awakening is not an escape from life—it’s an invitation to live it fully, openly, and deeply.

Waking Up vs Growing Up: Why Both Matter in Healing

In both psychological and spiritual circles, people often talk about transformation, awakening, and personal growth. But there’s a crucial distinction that’s sometimes overlooked: the difference between waking up and growing up.

Understanding these two movements—and how they complement each other—is key to deep, sustainable healing.

Let’s explore what they mean and why both are essential.

What Does It Mean to “Wake Up”?

“Waking up” refers to spiritual awakening—a shift in identity from being a separate self to recognizing yourself as awareness itself. In this moment of awakening, the usual sense of “me and my life” gives way to a more spacious, unified, and timeless presence.

It might come as:

• A glimpse of peace beyond the mind

• A realization that thoughts and emotions are not the whole of who you are

• A deep knowing that all things are interconnected—or even not separate at all

Awakening can happen gradually or suddenly. It can be gentle or profound. But however it appears, it tends to dissolve the illusion of separateness. Life is no longer something happening to “me”—it’s something unfolding as this very presence.

And yet…

Many people who’ve had powerful spiritual awakenings still struggle in relationships, emotions, and daily life.

Why?

Because waking up is not the same as growing up.

What Does It Mean to “Grow Up”?

“Growing up” refers to psychological and emotional maturity—healing trauma, integrating emotions, setting boundaries, developing healthy relationships, and living with integrity and accountability.

It involves:

• Facing the wounds of childhood and attachment

• Learning to regulate your nervous system

• Naming your needs and feelings

• Developing empathy for yourself and others

• Becoming responsible for your choices

While awakening can dissolve egoic identity, it doesn’t automatically resolve how that ego learned to cope. Even after waking up, you might still fawn in relationships, dissociate under stress, or avoid intimacy.

This is why personal development—therapy, somatic work, inner child healing, shadow work—is still necessary, even (or especially) after awakening.

Why Both Are Important

If you only wake up without growing up, you might:

• Use spiritual language to bypass unresolved pain

• Feel detached from life or relationships

• Struggle with boundaries or emotional intimacy

• Mistake non-attachment for disconnection

If you only grow up without waking up, you might:

• Keep identifying with your story and pain

• Constantly seek to fix or improve the self

• Miss the deeper truth of who you really are

• Feel stuck in self-improvement with no end

Healing is most powerful when both are included.
When you grow up, your human self becomes more integrated, resilient, and capable of love.
When you wake up, you realize you were never just the human self to begin with.

The Dance Between the Two

In reality, waking up and growing up aren’t separate. They weave through each other like two threads of the same cloth.

• Sometimes deep spiritual insight will bring up old emotional pain that needs integration.

• Sometimes trauma work will clear space for a spontaneous glimpse of awareness.

Many find that therapy softens the defenses that block awakening. Others discover that awakening illuminates what still needs to heal.

It’s not a competition—it’s a collaboration.

How to Work with Both

You don’t have to choose between therapy and spirituality. You can honour both by:

• Practicing self-inquiry or meditation to explore the nature of awareness

• Going to therapy to explore patterns, trauma, and emotional needs

• Doing shadow work—facing the parts of you you’ve disowned

• Cultivating self-compassion alongside insight

• Being in authentic relationships, which reflect your wounds and your wholeness

• Allowing space—neither rushing healing nor clinging to awakening

There is no fixed path. What matters is sincerity and integration.

Final Thoughts

Healing is not only about waking up from illusion, nor only about growing up into adulthood. It’s both. It’s remembering the vastness of your true nature while also tending to the very real, tender, vulnerable human you are.

To awaken is to know you are more than your story.
To grow is to honour the story you’ve lived—and reshape it from a place of love.

Let both be part of your journey.

The False Self: Psychological Defence or Spiritual Veil?

We often hear phrases like “be your authentic self” or “live your truth,” but for many of us, the question arises:
Who am I, really?
And what part of me is just trying to stay safe?

The concept of the false self appears both in psychological and spiritual traditions—but with different nuances. In therapy, it’s seen as a defence mechanism. In spirituality, it’s sometimes described as the ego or a veil obscuring our true nature. Both perspectives point to the same underlying truth:
The false self is not who we truly are.

Let’s explore how psychology and spirituality each approach the false self—and how understanding both can support deep healing.

The Psychological False Self

The term false self was introduced by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. He described it as a kind of mask a child develops in response to emotional neglect, trauma, or a lack of attuned caregiving.

When a child’s real needs, emotions, or expressions are consistently ignored or rejected, they learn to shape themselves around what others want or need them to be. They become:

• The good girl or the golden boy

• The achiever

• The caretaker

• The peacekeeper

• The tough one

This adaptation is intelligent. It helps the child survive by avoiding rejection, criticism, or danger. But over time, the person may lose touch with their real feelings, desires, and sense of self.

In adulthood, the false self can feel like:

• Saying “I’m fine” when you’re not

• Feeling disconnected from your own preferences or needs

• Living to meet others' expectations

• Being high-functioning but emotionally numb

• Feeling like an impostor—even in your own life

Therapy helps us begin to unmask the false self—not to destroy it, but to understand the role it played and reconnect with the authentic self underneath.

The Spiritual False Self (The Ego)

In spiritual teachings—especially in non-dual traditions like Vedanta, Zen, or the Diamond Approach—the false self is often equated with the ego or the separate self-sense.

Here, the false self isn’t just a psychological adaptation—it’s a mistaken identity altogether. It’s the illusion that I am this body, these thoughts, these emotions, this history. It’s the sense of being a separate “me” navigating a world of “others.”

From this perspective, the false self is what veils our direct experience of true nature, pure awareness, or spirit. It's not bad or wrong—it simply isn’t the whole truth.

Spiritual practice, then, is not about fixing the false self, but seeing through it. The aim is not to become better versions of our personas, but to awaken to what we are beneath them.

False Self as Both Defence and Veil

Psychological and spiritual views of the false self might seem different, but they actually complement each other.

• Psychologically, the false self protects us from emotional overwhelm and relational danger.

• Spiritually, it protects us from the direct encounter with truth—which can feel equally threatening to the ego.

In both cases, the false self forms around fear.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of being “too much.”
Fear of not existing at all.

And in both cases, healing comes not by attacking the false self, but by meeting it with compassion, understanding how it formed, and gently loosening its grip.

Signs You’re Operating from the False Self

• You feel emotionally flat or “not quite here”

• You struggle to make decisions based on your true desires

• You feel a persistent sense of fraudulence

• You’re more concerned with image than inner experience

• You identify with roles, labels, or achievements

• You fear being truly seen

These are not signs of failure. They are invitations—to begin the journey back to who you really are.

Returning to the True Self

Whether through therapy or spiritual practice—or both—the way home involves:

• Inner listening: What do I really feel?

• Grief work: Mourning the years spent performing or hiding

• Somatic awareness: Reconnecting with the body’s truth

• Meditation and inquiry: Seeing beyond identification

• Safe relationships: Healing in connection, not isolation

The true self is not something you have to create. It’s what remains when you stop performing. It’s always been here—quiet, resilient, and whole.

Final Thoughts

The false self is not the enemy. It’s the part of us that learned to adapt, survive, and protect the vulnerable places.
But it is not the whole story.

When we approach it with compassion and curiosity, the armour begins to soften.
And slowly, what’s real can begin to shine through—not as a performance, but as presence.

What Is Spiritual Bypassing?

The term spiritual bypassing was coined by psychologist John Welwood. He described it as:

“Using spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”

In other words, it’s when spirituality is used not to heal, but to avoid uncomfortable feelings, trauma, or reality itself.

Spiritual bypassing isn’t always conscious. Most people who do it aren’t being malicious—they’re just trying to survive. But left unexamined, it can become a way of numbing ourselves, denying our humanity, or staying stuck in patterns that harm ourselves and others.

Common Signs of Spiritual Bypassing

• Minimizing pain with spiritual platitudes ("You chose this life," "It’s all karma")

• Avoiding anger or grief because it’s seen as “low vibration”

• Judging others for not being “positive enough” or “enlightened”

• Detaching too quickly from difficult emotions by going into meditation or “oneness”

• Over-identifying with the higher self while neglecting the wounded inner child

• Using spiritual status to avoid accountability ("I’m beyond that now")

• Bypassing trauma work in favor of transcendence or bliss

These strategies can feel soothing in the short term—but over time, they create disconnection from self, others, and the messy, beautiful reality of being human.

Why “Love and Light” Isn’t Always Enough

Love and light can be powerful forces. But when they’re used as a shield against discomfort, they lose their depth.

True love includes grief, anger, heartbreak, and shadow.
True light doesn’t blind—it illuminates what’s been hidden.

A healing path includes joy and sorrow, clarity and confusion. Skipping over the hard parts doesn’t bring us closer to wholeness—it fragments us further.

What’s the Harm in Bypassing?

While it may feel like progress, spiritual bypassing can:

• Delay real healing by suppressing unresolved trauma or emotions

• Create shame around feeling “negative” or “unenlightened”

• Alienate others who are still in pain and need empathy, not correction

• Reinforce spiritual superiority that isolates rather than connects

• Undermine therapeutic work by dismissing the psychological roots of suffering

And perhaps most importantly, it prevents us from knowing and loving our whole selves—not just the polished or peaceful parts.

Moving Toward Real Integration

Healing isn’t about choosing between psychology and spirituality—it’s about allowing them to meet.

To move beyond spiritual bypassing, we need to:

• Feel our feelings fully—even the “ugly” or “unspiritual” ones

• Grieve what needs grieving

• Hold ourselves accountable without shame

• Work with a grounded therapist or guide who welcomes your full humanity

• Integrate the body, not just the mind or spirit

• Welcome the shadow, not just the light

This is what real spirituality looks like: messy, embodied, grounded, and rooted in compassion.

Spirituality That Heals, Not Hides

True spiritual practice invites us to face—not flee—what hurts. It teaches us that pain is not a sign of failure, but a doorway to greater depth and authenticity.

We can hold both love and rage. Both wisdom and wounding. Both the divine and the deeply human.

The goal isn’t to “rise above” life.
It’s to enter it more fully.
With open eyes. With an open heart.
With truth, not bypass.

Healing the Inner Critic: Where It Comes From and What It Needs

Most of us know the voice well.
“You’re not good enough.”
“Why did you say that?”
“You’ll mess it up.”
“Everyone will see right through you.”

This voice, relentless and familiar, is often referred to as the inner critic. It’s the harsh, shaming, doubting part of us that speaks in absolutes and keeps us small.

But where does it come from? And—importantly—how do we begin to soften it?

Let’s take a closer look.

What Is the Inner Critic?

The inner critic is a psychological survival strategy—an internalized voice that evolved to keep us safe. It often forms in childhood when we try to make sense of pain, rejection, or unmet needs. Rather than risk the unbearable experience of abandonment or punishment, we turn on ourselves.

In other words, the inner critic says:
“If I criticize myself first, maybe no one else will.”
“If I’m perfect, I won’t be rejected.”
“If I keep myself small, I’ll avoid danger.”

It’s not your fault. It’s a learned response from a time when you were trying to stay emotionally or physically safe.

Where Does It Come From?

The inner critic often reflects:

• Critical or emotionally unavailable caregivers
  (“You’re too sensitive,” “You’ll never succeed,” “Why can’t you be more like...”)

• Cultural or societal pressures
  (Messages about beauty, productivity, gender roles, or success)

• School or early social experiences
  (Shame around getting things wrong, being different, or feeling left out)

• Trauma or chronic stress
  (Especially when we’ve learned to be hypervigilant to avoid danger or judgment)

What starts as external criticism eventually becomes internalized. We carry it with us, believing it keeps us safe—but in adulthood, it often holds us back from connection, authenticity, and growth.

How Does It Show Up?

The inner critic can take many forms, including:

• Perfectionism: Believing you must get everything right to be okay

• People-pleasing: Silencing your needs to avoid disapproval

• Imposter syndrome: Feeling like a fraud, no matter your success

• Shame spirals: Reliving mistakes or perceived flaws on a loop

• Emotional numbness or burnout: As a result of constant inner pressure

It doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it whispers. But its tone is nearly always rigid, unkind, and fearful.

What the Inner Critic Actually Needs

Though it feels like an enemy, the inner critic is often a part of you that’s scared and trying to help. It’s protecting an inner child who was once vulnerable or hurt.

What it needs isn’t more silence or shame—it needs relationship.

You can begin to heal the inner critic by:

• Listening with curiosity: “What are you trying to protect me from?”

• Setting boundaries: “I hear you, but I choose not to follow that belief anymore.”

• Offering compassion: “Of course you’re scared. That makes sense. But I’m safe now.”

• Inviting your inner nurturer: A wiser, kinder voice that speaks with care rather than judgment

You’re not trying to eliminate the critic. You’re learning how to relate to it differently—with boundaries, empathy, and choice.

Practices to Soften the Inner Critic

1. Name the Critic: Giving it a character or name helps create separation. It’s not you—it’s a part of you.

2. Write Dialogue: Journal a conversation between your inner critic and your inner nurturer. What do they each say?

3. Use Somatic Awareness: Notice how the critic feels in your body. Is there tightness, heat, tension? Can you breathe into it?

4. Reconnect with the Inner Child: Visualize or reflect on the younger part of you the critic is trying to protect. What does that child need right now?

5. Therapy: A safe therapeutic relationship can help you explore the roots of your critic and develop new, compassionate inner voices.

You Are Not Your Inner Critic

That voice may have been loud for years. But it is not your truth. Beneath it is someone worthy of care, connection, and rest.

You don’t have to earn your right to exist.
You don’t have to be perfect to be loved.
And you don’t have to believe every voice in your head.

Healing the inner critic takes time, patience, and tenderness. But with practice, it is possible. You may even begin to hear a new voice within—one that says:

“You’re doing your best.”
“You’re allowed to rest.”
“You are enough, just as you are.”

What Does a Secure Attachment Feel Like?

We hear a lot about insecure attachment styles—anxious, avoidant, disorganised—and how they impact our relationships. But what does secure attachment actually feel like? If you didn’t grow up with it, it might be hard to imagine. You might even wonder whether it's possible for you.

The good news is: secure attachment isn't just something you're born with. It can be developed later in life through consistent, caring relationships—sometimes for the first time in therapy.

So let’s explore what secure attachment really looks and feels like.

Secure Attachment Is a Felt Sense of Safety

At its core, secure attachment is the deep, embodied knowing that:

• You are worthy of love and care.

• Others can be relied on.

• You can be yourself without fear of abandonment or rejection.

• It’s safe to connect, to trust, to feel, and to ask for what you need.

This isn’t about perfection. People with secure attachment still feel hurt, disappointed, or anxious in relationships. But they recover from those ruptures more easily—and tend to trust that repair is possible.

How Does It Feel in the Body and Mind?

People with secure attachment often describe feeling:

• Calm and grounded around loved ones

• Able to relax without hypervigilance

• Open to both giving and receiving love

• Comfortable with closeness, but also with space

• Willing to be vulnerable, knowing it doesn’t make them weak

• Able to speak up about their needs without guilt

In a securely attached relationship, your nervous system doesn’t have to stay on high alert. There’s a natural ebb and flow—connection and independence, closeness and spaciousness—that feels safe rather than threatening.

Secure Attachment in Relationships

In adult relationships, secure attachment might look like:

• Trusting that your partner loves you, even when you disagree

• Not taking things personally when someone needs space

• Being able to express hurt without attacking

• Feeling comfortable being emotionally intimate

• Letting yourself depend on others and knowing you can stand on your own

• Welcoming repair after conflict rather than fearing disconnection

There’s space for both people to be human. You don’t feel like you have to perform, chase, withdraw, or prove your worth. You feel accepted and emotionally nourished.

Can I Develop a Secure Attachment If I Didn’t Grow Up With It?

Yes. This is one of the most hopeful truths in relational healing.

Attachment patterns are not fixed. Through therapy, self-work, or nurturing adult relationships, people can move toward secure attachment later in life. This process is sometimes called “earned secure attachment.”

This may include:

• Learning how to self-soothe and regulate your nervous system

• Practicing setting boundaries and expressing needs

• Letting yourself experience consistent, safe connection over time

• Healing early relational wounds through inner child work or therapy

In other words, secure attachment becomes possible as you give yourself the experiences you didn’t have as a child.

If This Doesn’t Feel Familiar to You

That’s okay. Many people with childhood trauma, neglect, or inconsistent parenting have no real model for secure attachment.

It may feel foreign at first—boring, even. The drama of anxious or avoidant dynamics can be hard to let go of. But with time, consistency, and compassion, your system can begin to trust a different kind of safety.

Secure attachment isn’t a destination—it’s a capacity. A way of relating. A new rhythm for your relationships and your nervous system.

You deserve relationships where you feel safe, seen, and supported.

The Parentified Child: When You Grew Up Too Soon

Some children become adults long before their time—not by choice, but by necessity. They take on responsibilities far beyond their years, caring for siblings, soothing emotionally volatile parents, or managing household duties. This experience is known as parentification.

Being a parentified child can leave lasting impacts on a person’s identity, relationships, and sense of self. What looks like competence and independence on the outside often hides deep exhaustion, unmet needs, and an internal belief that love must be earned through caregiving.

What Is Parentification?

Parentification occurs when the roles between child and parent become reversed. Instead of receiving age-appropriate care and support, the child becomes the caregiver—emotionally, physically, or both.

There are two main types:

• Instrumental Parentification: The child takes on practical duties—cooking, cleaning, managing finances, or raising siblings.

• Emotional Parentification: The child becomes a confidant, therapist, or emotional regulator for a parent who is overwhelmed, absent, depressed, addicted, or unstable.

Some children experience both forms simultaneously.

Why Does It Happen?

Parentification isn’t always intentional. It can happen in families where:

• A parent is ill, mentally unwell, or struggling with addiction.

• There is divorce, death, or absence of a caregiver.

• Cultural or generational norms expect children to “step up.”

• Emotional immaturity or trauma prevents parents from being reliable caretakers.

The child learns early that being needed earns them connection or stability. But this need-based bond often comes at the cost of their own development.

The Long-Term Impact of Growing Up Too Soon

While parentified children often become highly responsible and capable adults, they may struggle silently with:

• Chronic guilt or anxiety when putting their own needs first

• Difficulty trusting others to care for them

• Burnout from always being the helper

• Perfectionism or people-pleasing

• Resentment that feels unsafe to express

• A core belief that love must be earned through usefulness

They may be praised for their maturity, empathy, or strength—yet internally feel unseen, unsupported, or emotionally hungry.

Healing as a Former Parentified Child

The healing process often includes:

1. Naming the Experience

Many adults don’t realize they were parentified—it felt normal at the time. Recognizing that you carried adult responsibilities as a child is the first step toward healing.

2. Reclaiming Your Needs

Parentified children often suppress their needs or feel selfish for having them. Learning to identify, express, and honour your own needs is foundational.

3. Inner Child Work

Connecting with the younger version of yourself who needed comfort, fun, and protection—but didn’t receive it—can be deeply healing. You may begin to offer yourself the nurturing you never had.

4. Therapy or Support Groups

Relational trauma is often healed in relationship. A trauma-informed therapist can help untangle patterns of over-functioning, guilt, or avoidance of vulnerability.

5. Redefining Roles

As an adult, you no longer need to be the emotional caretaker for everyone. Learning to say no, set boundaries, and receive care without shame is part of the process.

You Deserve to Be Held Too

You don’t have to earn your worth by carrying others. You’re allowed to rest. You’re allowed to ask for help. You’re allowed to be supported, nurtured, and loved—not for what you do, but for who you are.

Growing up too soon doesn’t mean you missed your chance to heal. That child still lives in you, and it’s never too late to let them be seen.

Inner Child Work: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

Many of us carry invisible wounds from childhood—pain we’ve long since buried, minimized, or forgotten. These early experiences can quietly shape how we think, feel, and relate as adults. Inner child work invites us to reconnect with the parts of ourselves that were once hurt, unheard, or neglected—and offer them what they needed all along.

It’s not about staying stuck in the past. It’s about healing the parts of us that still live there.

Who Is the “Inner Child”?

The inner child is a psychological concept referring to the younger part of yourself that still lives within you. It includes your earliest feelings, needs, memories, and beliefs about yourself and the world.

This inner child might carry:

• Joy and creativity

• Longing and loneliness

• Fear and shame

• Wonder and vulnerability

If your needs weren’t met consistently—emotionally, physically, or relationally—your inner child may have gone into hiding or developed coping strategies to survive.

Why Inner Child Work Matters

Childhood isn’t something we “get over” just because we grow up. Unhealed emotional wounds can influence adult life in surprising ways:

• People-pleasing and codependency

• Difficulty trusting or setting boundaries

• Fear of abandonment or rejection

• Chronic shame or low self-worth

• Emotional numbness or outbursts

Inner child work helps us trace these patterns back to their origin. When we stop blaming ourselves for the ways we learned to cope, we begin to understand—and heal.

How Does Inner Child Work Actually Work?

Inner child work is a process of reconnection and reparenting. It invites you to turn inward and offer your younger self what they didn’t receive:

• Safety

• Validation

• Nurturing

• Protection

• Unconditional love

This can happen through:

• Visualization: Imagining your younger self and having a compassionate dialogue

• Journaling: Writing letters to and from your inner child

• Therapeutic support: Working with a therapist who can guide and witness the process

• Creative expression: Drawing, painting, or engaging in play

• Body awareness: Noticing where emotional memories live in your body

The key is to relate to your inner child not as a concept—but as a living presence inside you, still needing care.

Signs Your Inner Child May Be Calling for Attention

• You react disproportionately to small triggers

• You often feel not good enough, no matter what you achieve

• You fear abandonment or feel uncomfortable with closeness

• You self-sabotage when things are going well

• You struggle with self-care or self-compassion

These aren’t signs of weakness. They’re signs of unmet needs trying to be heard.

Is Inner Child Work Always About Trauma?

Not always. While inner child work is often used to heal childhood trauma or neglect, it can also reconnect you to:

• Spontaneity and playfulness

• Creativity and imagination

• Emotional sensitivity and authenticity

It’s not only about what hurt you—it’s also about reclaiming the parts of yourself that were lost or silenced.

Final Thoughts: You Can Be Who You Needed

One of the most powerful realizations in inner child work is this: you can become the loving presence your younger self never had. You can listen with tenderness, set boundaries with strength, and create safety from within.

This isn’t regression—it’s restoration.

You’re not broken. You’re becoming whole.

Anxious vs Avoidant Attachment: Patterns in Adult Love

Have you ever felt like you care too much in relationships—or like you can’t quite let someone get too close? These patterns may be rooted not in who you are today, but in how you learned to relate early in life.

Understanding attachment styles, particularly anxious and avoidant, can bring clarity to confusing relationship dynamics. It can also help us move toward healthier, more secure connections.

What Are Attachment Styles?

Attachment theory suggests that the way we bonded with our caregivers in childhood shapes how we connect with others as adults—especially in close, romantic relationships.

Two common insecure styles are:

• Anxious attachment

• Avoidant attachment

They may look like opposites, but they often mirror and reinforce each other in relationships.

Anxious Attachment: “Do You Really Love Me?”

People with anxious attachment crave closeness and fear abandonment. Their emotional world is intense, and their inner dialogue often sounds like:

• “Why didn’t they text back yet?”

• “Did I do something wrong?”

• “I need to fix this right now.”

Behaviours may include:

• Over-analyzing messages or interactions

• Seeking constant reassurance

• Struggling with trust or jealousy

• Feeling “too much” but unable to stop reaching out

At its root, anxious attachment often comes from inconsistent caregiving—where love and attention felt unpredictable or conditional.

Avoidant Attachment: “Don’t Get Too Close”

Those with avoidant attachment value independence and tend to pull away when relationships get emotionally intense.

Their inner voice might say:

• “I need space.”

• “This is too much.”

• “They’re being needy.”

Common patterns include:

• Withdrawing emotionally during conflict

• Downplaying feelings or needs

• Feeling suffocated by closeness

• Being uncomfortable with vulnerability

Avoidant attachment can form when caregivers were emotionally unavailable or discouraged dependence.

Anxious + Avoidant: The Push-Pull Dynamic

When an anxious and avoidant partner pair up (which often happens!), it can create a painful dance:

• The anxious partner pursues, needing closeness.

• The avoidant partner withdraws, needing space.

Each person's strategy activates the other's core wound. The more one reaches, the more the other retreats.

Without awareness, this cycle can feel exhausting and even traumatic.

Can Attachment Styles Change?

Yes. Attachment styles aren’t life sentences—they’re learned patterns, and they can be unlearned.

Healing often involves:

• Therapy that fosters emotional safety and awareness

• Relationships that model secure connection

• Learning to regulate your nervous system

• Rewriting core beliefs about love and worthiness

You don’t have to become “perfectly secure” to have healthy relationships. Small steps toward understanding your patterns—and your partner’s—can create big shifts.

What Secure Love Looks Like

In secure attachment, there’s room for both closeness and space. You can disagree without fearing abandonment. You can share feelings without fearing overwhelm.

Secure love feels like:

• Trust that you're loved, even in conflict

• Ability to express needs without shame

• Comfort with intimacy and independence

• Repairing ruptures instead of avoiding them

Final Thoughts

Understanding whether your attachment is more anxious or avoidant isn’t about labelling yourself—it’s about compassion. These patterns are survival strategies. You did what you had to do to stay connected or safe.

But now, as an adult, you have the power to change the dance.

And that change starts with awareness.