I expect this answer is going to be a surprise.

The whole purpose of self improvement is to return our inner world to the condition it was in, at our own birth!

We all carry Hurt. We shouldn’t. It’s an accident.

The difficulty of healing ourselves depends on how much damage we have suffered.

People in therapy begin with the present, and then work their way to childhood issues. Is there a reason? Early childhood is when the damage happens, that’s why.

Lets look at life on our planet. Every life is driven from within. Life has needs. Some are obvious. One is critical, but invisible.

What could it be?

The right to exist, as the one and only unique identity that that life can ever be!

Nature provides this absolutely perfectly. Every life gets full support in developing into the only thing it can ever be, and still remain healthy.

Every life lives out loud!

Except people!

People do not live out loud. We hide our feelings, wishes, hopes, and dreams.

Well, we certainly didn’t hide anything when we started out! We found that to be necessary, along the way.

Why?

Our Identity is fixed.

When we get requested to be different than the one thing we are, we cannot do it.

We are a lion. We can’t be a sheep. But we can pretend.

The one thing that we can do to please others, is to hide all of our qualities that they are not willing to Accept from us.

And that’s what we do. We pretend to be a sheep! Does this sound healthy?

It causes hurt. Big buckets of it. Our identity is never going to accept concealing most of itself. It will never stop it’s pressure to be complete.

If we cannot be ourselves, we hurt.

But wait, it gets worse.

We cannot survive in this much pain. We face the choice of dying, or removing ourselves from our feelings.

And that’s what most of us have done. Now we cannot participate in our own feelings. Our identity originally used it’s instinctive resources to guide us through our feelings. Without our feelings, we don’t know who we are. We cannot feel our identity. We don’t know what we want.

As if that weren’t enough already, The way back is blocked as well.

We were in pain when we disconnected from our feelings. We were feeling shame for not being good enough. We felt guilt too. There is monumental fear in abandoning what is a big part of ourselves.

We are locked out of our own feelings, and consequently our identity, by intense, overwhelming pain, fear, shame, and guilt. That’s why we don’t like our own writing, our own faces, and our own qualities.

We certainly didn’t start out this way.

To work our way back, is to meet these feelings head on!

And that’s where we are. Stuck and hiding, and to face any of it, hurts.

What to do?

Our first job is to allow our children to be themselves. We have to accept what’s there. If we can do that, the immediate cooperation we get is going to astonish everybody. It actually happens, just like that.

The demand for obedience was always only about the needs of the caregivers. It helped reduce their hurt.

Children can and will cooperate! They just can’t be something else. Ask them and they will give you anything. Really. Except for one thing. They won’t be something else. Shouldn’t that be enough? It is for nature.

Our next job is to recover. We do that by owning every feeling we have. We open up and live out loud. If that hurts somebody else, they need to grow up.

The results will surprise most. We rapidly become a better person, not worse.

We also become powerful in our own right. Just like a baby. Ever noticed the power of an infant. To feel like that is the best gift you could ever give yourself.

I believe that outlines the entire situation accurately.

What an unfortunate development. All this conflict, hurt, and misery for no good reason whatsoever.

Remove the hurt, and people become trusting happy, cooperative, and playful. That’s what people really are.

We need to stamp out hurt. Respect life, in it’s uniqueness, and it’s all love and trust.

Good luck on your journey. Thanks for letting me ride along.

Norm.