The more open with myself and others I become, the more I expand in personal awareness, the more aware I am of how vividly and vastly I’ve deceived myself as to who I really am and what I’m actually feeling.
Lying to Yourself: Life as a Mirror
I’m experimenting with this concept: Life is a mirror showing each of us the exact emotions we’ve repressed from childhood.
The hypothesis is that when reality offers me an event, it’s a catalyst to get me to feel into something that I’ve refused to feel or acknowledge from my past.
That past event, until I feel it, is now superimposing itself onto the way I perceive reality.
Every trigger is a teacher. Every frustration points to something unresolved. The pattern keeps showing up until I finally see what it’s trying to reveal.
The Release
Until I heal and release those repressed emotions, reality will continue to give me catalyst events which are designed to inspire that emotional release.
When we feel and release root emotions which we’ve been repressing, life no longer has to give us events designed to trigger that release. Because the release has already happened and is no longer necessary.
Meaning: when I heal emotionally, reality will reflect back at me anew. My life will shift and change for the better.
I’ve watched this happen in real time. Relationships that were stuck suddenly shift. Opportunities appear that weren’t visible before. The external world reorganizes to match the internal work.
Going Deeper
If you feel as though you’ve been crying and crying and feeling your feelings and doing all the work and life is still giving you the same stagnant or frustrating or catalyzing events, then perhaps you’re not getting deep enough into your true emotional state?
Perhaps you’re lying to yourself and doing a brilliant job of it.
This was hard for me to accept. I thought I was doing the work. I was going through the motions of emotional processing. But I was skimming the surface while believing I was diving deep.
My Facade
For myself, I had built such a masterful facade that I was able to completely deny my true emotional repression and somehow call it, and believe the attention to that facade to be, personal growth!
Now, I’m dismantling that facade and life is moving quickly. There are white squalls and towering rapids and sinkholes. Every day feels like I’m in an Indiana Jones narrative. It’s both terrifying and incredible because my facade, thick as it was, is melting away.
The facade was sophisticated. It looked like self-awareness. It used the language of healing. But it was just another layer of protection preventing me from feeling what actually needed to be felt.
Your Invitation
If you’re feeling stuck or depressed or unheard or unloved or needy or out of integrity or anything other than brilliant expansion, perhaps you’re suffering from a similar affliction as I was: massive self-deception.
Lying to yourself is so sophisticated that you don’t even know you’re doing it. That’s the trap.
My encouragement would be to listen with an open mind and try this on as a life hypothesis and experiment.
What if everything showing up in your life is showing you exactly what you’ve refused to feel? What if the solution isn’t trying harder, but feeling deeper?
My results have been intensely life-changing.
Godspeed.
This is shadow work in action.
If you’re ready to stop lying to yourself, explore the Shadow Work practices.