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.
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Previously Published on joeryan.com
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