#34 - We All Have Madness, Some Of Us Bury It And Some Of Us Honor It

by KC Johnson

Accept Who You Really Are Without Fear

When you get a brief glimpse of your deep inner self does it scare you, intrigue you, make you want to change into someone else, or are you thankful for your uniqueness and want to understand your inner self even more clearly? Exploring the deepest recesses where you hold your sense of self identity, you will expose your most fragile Inner Child views about your worthiness to be who you are.

You have based your sense of self on years of feedback received from others starting at your earliest life experiences. That self-identity becomes the lens that you see the world through as well as the lens your see yourself through. The types of emotional experiences had in childhood can add layers onto the filters you look through that affects every thought, self-perception, and expectation you have for yourself and for the world you live within.

If you were treated lovingly, you will have a healthy accepting sense of your true self. You become a reflection of the attitudes towards you during childhood. A fully nurtured experience means a favorable sense of self during your most formative years. All of your thoughts, actions, and perceptions are filtered through your favorable self-impressions and your world seems more welcoming. It’s becomes easier accepting who you are. You do not have a tangled challenging emotional web surrounding your thoughts and perceptions.

When you experience traumas from inadequate nurturing and have had unfulfilling interactions with other people, your true identity becomes distorted from the purer loving sense of self every child needs. That distorted identity is your Inner Child’s perspective that things are not safe and welcoming, and that the world is a place that needs being protected from to feel safer. These distortions are your little Inner Child trying to make sense of the attitudes being experienced from others.

As a result, your sense of self develops protective layers to help your Inner Child feel safer. The more intense the traumas experienced, the thicker the emotional protective layers become further altering your perceptions of the world and of yourself. In the extreme it is possible to completely wall yourself off from any harmful experiences.

Your sense of self is the well you go to as your Inner Child creates your micro-voice identities that you use to interact with the world. A healthy inner sense gives you the tools and courage to face challenges and experiences with optimism and without needing to judge those experiences. You can see the world as positive opportunities to learn from and not to fear. Thus, you can love others more fully with fewer conditions and without the need to judge their uniqueness. You don’t need another person to make you feel whole or complete, because you are already feeling acceptance for who you are.

A sense of self that is based on judgment, fears, and fragile identities locks you into not accepting yourself and often blinding you to recognizing or allowing opportunities to be loved by others or of being able to deeply love others, or your world. Milder traumatic experiences with some loving support may result in you developing bothersome self-doubts about some of your abilities, yet holding positive thoughts about other areas of your life. In these instances self-growth can happen more quickly once there is a decision to try.

In the extreme, your traumas can lead to judging yourself as unstable, even becoming incapable of facing life’s challenges. You may see your outer world as a dangerous place, and if you adopted the negative programming forced on you as a child, you may not even have an inner refuge to rely upon for safety and comfort. This sense that you have no control over your life, no safe place to call your own, and you recognize few tools within you for handling your experiences can become a deeply dark place to start your efforts for self-growth.

What Do You Do To Not Feel Lost?

An interesting way to look at your life is through the lens that everything is energy. When there is an energy imbalance there will develop counter-measures to bring all life back into balance. Just like within the atmosphere of heating and cooling the wind is always in movement trying to find equilibrium. Heating from the sun, mountains, colder and warmer waters and land masses trigger air movements in search of stasis. Like air water flows freely, but when encumbered by a dam, the energy is blocked. Your energy works in similar ways.

You are bundles of energy needing to find your balance. The perfect state of energy is when it can flow freely without interference. As long as you have only had loving, nurturing, supportive experiences in your childhood, you will not have developed significant emotional inner energy imbalances. This means you will not have a need to judge others or your inner self. Judgment is an energy blocking dynamic that distorts your ability to completely love and to fully express your abilities.

Since you have developed your sense of self based on the perceptions others have had about you, you have to re-develop your inner identity by intentionally examining every aspect of your beliefs, thoughts, and expectations that you hold for yourself. This may sound overwhelming to consider doing, but the status quo of self-doubt and unhappiness seems an even greater burden to carry for the rest of your life. To develop into your own true self, you need to fully create the ‘you’ that who you want to be. Examining and perhaps letting go of your parents’ values that they instilled in you doesn’t happen overnight. You can do this over time, constantly adjusting your identity and values throughout a lifetime. You are not static and you are not without the power to re-design your inner sense of self.

You may create a ‘new me’ that causes others to say, “you’re different now,” or that you are mad, too weird, or that you don’t fit in anymore. But this isn’t about them. You do this to discover a ‘you’ that you can live with, that feels like a comfortable skin to live in. You are creating a safe place you can rely on when encountering challenges, it is your inner refuge. It is the source of your true powers that no one can take away from you.

People trapped in their own distorted sense of self with incomplete identities will not understand you, nor will they embrace you when you change. But there will be others who do accept your uniqueness and who will encourage you to be your authentic self. Any change can cause everything around you to change a little bit. This is just life happening, you are never static, but you need a sound foundation to work from that is not a foundation built on someone else’s values, rules, conditions, and arbitrary identities about you.

How Do You Begin The Change Process?

You begin transforming yourself by simply deciding to start doing so. Of course, that’s easier said than done. When you hold the thought that you want to re-design your inner self to better reflect who you are, that sets in motion continuous learning opportunities presented to you by your soul to help with your discoveries. Your soul wants you to love every moment, in other words, to release your energy damming judgments that interfere with your ability to achieve self-love.

You will unexpectedly find the right book or have a key conversation with someone that answers your questions. Laying in bed at night you can suddenly ‘hear’ answers that help find a piece to your puzzle. Sometimes the answers come quickly, sometimes it takes years to fully understand the message. But it is important to know that you have within you great abilities to find any answer, if only you remain open to the messaging sent to you by your soul.

Any messaging based on judgment is a sign that you are listening to a micro-voice that is still protecting your Inner Child and that message will not be objective and likely will not give helpful answers. Your soul does not judge, does not criticize your ideas, nor does it tell you what to do. It presents you with experiences to learn from and you have to interpret the message to fit the standards you set for yourself. Life is indeed like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and sometimes you have to pick up a piece and examine it many times before you discover where it fits. All of your experiences are intended to teach you how to love every moment, and often the lesson needs repeated learning opportunities.

The more you are able to clearly understand your values, the self-identities you hold for yourself, and the direction you want to go, the more targeted will be the messages you receive. You also need to be patient, especially when you feel stuck when not making ‘enough’ progress. If you hold expectations about how you expect to receive the next bit of information, then you are ignoring the process your soul has for you to follow. You don’t know what other information you may need to learn first to be ready to understand other messages. You just need to be receptive and open to messaging without judgment.

“I’ve Tried This But I Can’t Stop Judging Everything”

Your micro-voices are the vehicle your Inner Child uses to protect itself from perceived threats and to help it feels safer. Your Child through your micro-voices will tell you what they fear and can even tell you what they need to feel comfortable enough to begin releasing their held fears. This is probably the most difficult phase in your self-discovery process because it relies on recalling experiences you may have worked hard to avoid facing.

You may have spent years developing tools to protect your Inner Child from hurtful experiences, and until the energy connected to those painful experiences can be removed, your micro-voices will continue protecting your Child. Often times, the reason your Child feels unsafe is that you have left it behind as you grow into adulthood. But more than anything, your Inner Child wants to still feel loved and to be included as a part of your adult life.

Your Inner Child’s safe place is feeling fully loved. So many people come out of childhood not feeling fully loved, not feeling worthy or lovable. In adulthood you still crave feeling loved -- that is still your Inner Child talking to you. But your adult world of arbitrary values and customs may prevent you from easily experiencing love from others. That’s why you may find it so remarkable when strangers help each other, you may be conditioned to withhold giving love because you haven’t filled your own love-quota from childhood. A fully loving person has no problem helping others unconditionally.

As you help your Inner Child feel loved, feel safer, and feel a part of your life, it can have its micro-voice defenders begin releasing their need to use judgment for its protection. The safer your Child feels and the less reliant you are using judgment, the more clearly you begin hearing your soul’s messaging for discovering your truer self. It can become a cascading effect once your Child begins feeling safer with all of your micro-voices becoming receptive to shedding fears and learning how to become more loving from each other.

Some Final Thoughts

Discovering your madness is no more than accepting your uniqueness with respect to your own values, beliefs, and identities. It is only madness to someone who doesn’t understand you. You are never locked into any one identity -- you are always changing, always recreating yourself when you have a healthy, vibrant sense of self. You then have reclaimed your personal powers and are ready to discover even deep mysteries your universe has for you to discover.

Your Inner Child needs to feel accepted, loved, and appreciated for the qualities it brings into your life. Once you are able to release the fears your Child is holding onto you will be able to shed the old identities that others expect you to have. Becoming your authentic self is a liberating experience. It is your rebirth and reclaiming a life that is possible for you.

Loving every moment means living without fear, without judgment, and without conditions. You can be ecstatic for the experiences you are having regardless of the challenges that are associated with these lessons. You become a source of love for everything around you because your well of love never runs empty. Your creativity grows and you attract other like-souls into your life. - kc