EP 0015 - False Self and Fear

It’s Not You, It’s Your Trauma - Trauma, PTSD, Abuse, Anxiety & Recovery - Joe Ryan

Become A Subscriber https://joeryan.com/subscribe/
For access to all episodes and bonus content.

As children, our survival our life depended on our source figures, the people who raised us. We instinctively knew that we are helpless without them, and without them, we would die. We learn quickly the difference between things we do that anger and upset our source figures and the things that please them.

The personality traits and behaviors that displease the people who were raising us, we cut off those parts of ourselves, and the false self was born. We gravitate and cultivate the parts of us that they find lovable and take those parts on as our identity, leaving all other parts of us to wither and die off, but they never entirely go away. They come out as addictions and other forms of mood-altering, so we don't ever feel or express them again.

To give up the false self, we must enter into the feelings of fear we had as children, incorporate those parts of us we have cut off and reclaim them.

Fear arises when we move away from the false self, and our body starts to tremble, our mind begins to race, panic starts to take over as our flight or fight response kicks in. We want to run, to avoid, and put as much distance between us and the feelings as we can as these feelings were more than the child could handle, the emotions felt like death.

It all comes down to fear. To undo the false self, we have to peel away the layers. We have to feel the feelings that we fear, sit with them, face them, and let those come out of us instead of pushing them down, pushing them away, cutting them off.

Nobody can take your fear, or your pain away, except you. I wish there were a quicker, easier way or a magic pill. There just isn't.

- Website: https://joeryan.com

- Instagram: https://instagram.com/joeryan

- Subscribe: https://joeryan.com/subscribe/