Why is it that people can do a lot of inner work and still have immensely unconscious responses in their intimate life where they shut down, avoid, or cling, and cannot seem to stop being triggered when facing a moment of tension?
You know everything there is to know about your wounding. And still, when faced with your fear of rejection and your abandonment wound, you fall into the same cycle. The same unconscious behaviors and patterns.
Knowing something doesn’t mean shifting something.
And there’s a trap that catches the most self-aware people the hardest:
When you know exactly where your wound comes from and you fall into it anyway, the knowledge turns into a voice. A shaming observer who watches you fall and says: I know better, and yet here I am doing it again. What is wrong with me?
Your awareness became part of your inner critic.
And underneath that, a story forms: No matter what I do it just doesn’t work. It is hopeless. A victim narrative so subtle you don’t even notice you’re living inside it.
So if knowledge of your past pain is all you seek, it might actually make things worse. Because now you know exactly what is happening. You shame yourself for it. And you feed an identity that says: With me it is different. The wound is too strong.
But what if that is just a story?
Who would you be without the shame? Without being so hard on yourself? Without feeding the narrative that somehow you are the exception and that the situation will never change?
What emotions and experiences would become available to you?
Because when you stop shaming yourself, something shifts. You may still experience discomfort, but underneath it a truth glimmers: I’ve got this. It is okay. I will recover.
When you stop reinforcing the story that all hope is lost, that your wound is too strong, the whole experience of falling back into old conditioning changes.
It becomes an opportunity for self-compassion instead. The voice starts to sound more neutral: I fell back into it. I will not shame myself. I will not build a story where something is wrong with me.
So you fell back into it. Is it truly the end of the world, or does the shame and the internal narrative make it so?
Really sit with that. Because both can hold true – that it is uncomfortable AND it is not the end of the world.
The people who truly shift their lives don’t stay stuck in shame or a limiting story. They have the same pain and the same challenge, but they choose to not stay there for long and to start again. And again.
I invite you to journal right now:
If there were no shame, no inner critic, and no story about how hard it is to overcome this moment, how would things be different?
The answer to that is your truth. And the most aligned next step.
If you’re ready to go deeper, click here to see my upcoming training courses or click here to access past recordings.
I became a man at my father’s funeral