narcissistic recovery

Navigating the Path from Fear to Love

/ Sheri / 2 Comments
The death of illusion is an opportunity to breathe new life. (Image created using AI on CANVA)

There’s a lot of death these days. No, not the physical death. That’s arriving at some point for all of us. Physical death is constant — a sure thing and like all of life’s cycles on this beautiful planet.

No, I’m referring to a spiritual death. People are losing their souls to the ego to the tender parts of themselves they’ve numbed with everything from downing social media or drowning themselves in the rabbit holes of comparison.

Look, we all do it. We all have an ego. We all spend moments in this precious life Edging God Out (thank you Wayne Dyer). When the pain gets to be too much, we instinctively push it away, deny its presence, rationalize it away. We buy, gamble, watch porn, hashtag until our eyes burn from the blue light drilling a fresh migraine into our skulls.

But at some point, the ego’s armor starts to fall away. The whisper: “You’re off track,” grows louder. 

Right now, the Higher Self knows right from wrong. And the chasm between those who heed their soul’s whisper is growing wider. Fear on one side, Faith on the other. The disparity is stark, maddening as life’s pace ever-quickens.

Humanity is standing on that cliff: the space between authenticity and arrogance, between kindness and cruelty, between self-effacement and self-reflection.

Death is all around me these days. This spiritual death carries the stench of denial. 

Watching those I love fall prey to their ego, to being right over being kind is a bit like mourning. There is a great, palpable grief I feel for those who are encased in the false promise of blame and the temporary relief their denial and control grants them.

The Good News

Whether you are clinging to the cliff of Fear or Love, the spiritual death arrives with good news: transformation and transcendence is on its way.

For those steeped in Fear, they will roll their eyes at my words. Humor is often a way to deny our pain. Their soul will only grow louder, wreaking havoc on their peace until they have no choice but to surrender — even if this means a physical death.

The choice to remain or go to Love can feel like a white knuckle clinging these days. I encourage you to keep clinging. Do not trust the illusion of Fears’ family: blame, control, and manipulation. They are weapons meant to take you down and join them. There’s a reason the aphorism, “Misery loves company” exists. Don’t join their company. Take long walks and deep breaths. 

Hope ironically arrived when I chose to no longer have hope that the fear-based loved ones in my life would ever change. 

Before, Hope caused me to outstretch my arms to Fear only to be hurled stones of Manipulation and Blame.

I’m residing fully in Love now and no longer accepting the breadcrumbs of Fear’s cubic zirconia of love. 

Am I in pain? Of course. Mourning? Absolutely. 

But with mourning, your wounds can start to heal. With death, there is now space to heal and grow.

Freedom is agency within — regardless of what the world is doing without.

Know you are on the right path when you align with the whispers of your Highest Self. The spiritual dying of others often causes many a figurative death rattle of blame and an attempt to shame and diminish you.

Their anger is more proof that they prefer to lash out rather than explore the pain in their heart.

Allow the spiritual death of what could never be in your relationship with those steeped in Fear. You’ll notice the white-knuckling to remain in Love will dissipate and, over time (with heaps of self-compassion), you will be standing with both feet in Love, far away from its edge.

Healing from Childhood Wounds: A Journey of Self-Discovery

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It’s human nature to avoid pain. Yet distraction only takes us so far — especially when it comes to emotional pain. At after half a century of life on this beautiful Earth, I am starting to embrace Rumi’s timeless quote on a much deeper level:

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi

In my 20’s, I didn’t want to look at the wounds. Half the time I didn’t know they were there because I was so busy. 

Distraction is a powerful tool to keep pain at bay.

But the wounds remained, festering within my psyche as I continued to look outward for purpose, validation, and worth.

Looking back, I see that my youth was spent in a quasi-cocoon state: inside I was a gooey mess but outside it looked like nothing special was going on. I worked, I dated, I married.

The gooey mess within would get triggered by something someone would say or do. But instead of addressing the source of the pain, instead of going within to look at that dark goo, I got busier.

Life continued and with it, psychological blisters that hurt a little more each time. I looked for love in all the wrong places. I was a widow at 25, engaged at 27, married again at 28, pregnant at 29.

Go. Go. As fast as you can. You can’t catch me. — The internal battle between the cocoon of armor I’d held onto with dear might and the brimming-to-come-out wounds within.

The fifties have been a time of addressing the wounds, allowing the cocoon to fall away and finally allow the light to enter.

This second act of life offers an opportunity for radical acceptance of others and ourselves. It’s a chance to pull up a chair and put a compassionate stethoscope to the fractures in your heart.

The Russian Doll of Aging

I used to ( and still do) love those stacking Russian dolls. Every time you think you’ve freed the last Russian doll, you discover there’s another and yet another still.

That’s what aging feels like: the allowing of ourselves to — with compassion — explore the layers of our life story. 

It’s not until we are willing to explore the landscape of our heart and mind that we can begin to heal. We need to become like emotional excavators if we want to unearth the effects of those early seeds planted.

The Five Childhood Wounds

A popular psychological concept is that there are five potential core psychological wounds from our childhood. Many times, we are unaware of the wounds and walk around this life feeling triggered without knowing its origin.

Our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships in adulthood are often deeply influenced by our wound in childhood.

It is when we don’t address those core wounds that they have a greater chance of manifesting in our adult relationships.

Here are the five core inner child wounds:

🤕 Abandonment

🤕 Rejection

🤕 Shame

🤕 Betrayal

🤕 Injustice

Each fear arrives with certain behaviors. For example, if you were sent to your room without dinner for a bad grade, a seed of rejection may have been planted.

Fear: being rejected for who you are

Behavior: people-pleasing or perfectionism

The power to heal from our wounds begins by recognizing where and how the wound began.

And that healing continues when we carve out a safe space for ourselves to alter the narrative and know that we are not our wounds. 

I often think of that Frosted Shredded Wheat commercial in the 1980’s. 

We can tune into the gooey cocoon of our psyche at any time. It may hurt to listen, but that shell we carry is falling apart anyway. And when we allow to see our wounds with compassion, we are creating a sacred space for our wings to unfurl.

You were meant to soar. You were meant to transform your wounds into something beautiful. 🦋

Healing Mastery XI Code

Confronting Inner Wounds: Steps to Emotional Freedom

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He was poking me. Not physically. Emotionally. His words landing like shards of glass in my throat and chest.

The pain was unbearable. It was a suffocating thing. All consuming and deep.

So, I did what typically happens when we are in this level of suffering: I lashed out with biting words of sarcasm. I knew my words were wrong and irrational, but rationality takes a back seat when pain is in the driver’s seat.

And then came the tears. My tears. Deep, guttural tears that had nothing to do with his poking words and everything to do with the unaddressed wounds within me.

The pain in my heart lasted long after he hung up on me. It ached between my bones and clung to the pores of my skin, stinging my eyes with unshed tears.

There is no greater pain than living with unaddressed wounds. 

Emotional pain holds on greater than a rabid Rottweiler biting down on a pant leg. It’s unwavering, unrelenting and feels like your soul is coming apart.

Break Out to Break Through

The pain I felt was so intense that I knew there was only one thing left to do: explore it.

“When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out, because that’s what’s inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.”-Wayne Dyer

I looked at the wound within me. And there I found a history of wounds. I unravelled each wound until a pattern began to form. 

The wounds were from a lifetime of false narratives, all of them being told by unhealthy, narcissistic, insecure men.

The pain I felt was a lifetime of me contorting myself to fit their narrative. 

We each have the power to transform our pain to empowerment.

The man goading me was just another manifestation of that false narrative. He was able to “get a rise out of me” because of the unaddressed wounds that I’d bandaged up, with psychological pus oozing out of them. 

A peace arrived within me when I addressed the root of the wound:

I was a victim of abuse. I am not the abuse. The power is always within me. I can choose to love and be love, regardless of what others do.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t experience moments of sadness or grief, pain or disappointment. It means that I allow those emotions to rise and fall within me, no different than waves in an ocean.

“Don’t think you’d be free if you just didn’t have these kinds of feelings. It’s not true. If you can be free even though you’re having these kinds of feelings, then you’re really free — because there will always be something.”-Michael Singer

When I allow the pain, it passes through and doesn’t stick around to form a new wound.

Emotional pain arises because of the unaddressed wounds we carry. It’s ripping off the figurative Band-aid that allows us to heal. It’s allowing ourselves to feel the pain and breathe through it that brings us true peace.

The need to poke another emotionally is sourced from an unaddressed wound. Those who manipulate, lie, and deflect responsibility are walking around this planet with significant unaddressed wounds.

True peace arrives when we realize we can only be responsible for our own inner healing. 

I cannot get sick enough to make that man healthy. You cannot get poor enough to make someone else feel wealthy.

Freedom means allowing another to choose their own path, however destructive that may be. 

A peaceful life begins when we embrace the four C’s: I will not control, change, cause, or contribute. 

But we can choose to be light and love to others. We do this when we prioritize our own healing.

XI Code to Peak Performance