We live in a world that focuses on the external. We are consumed by the need for status, labels, money and approval. But we are missing the valuable information about what lies underneath this drive. At the foundation is the need to survive. And driving that need is the controller, the inner part within us that keeps us running away from ourselves and toward whatever society thinks we should be. They will flood the mind with plans to secure our external life, but they didn’t get this way on their own. They were inundated with nonstop threats and traumatic experiences. They had no choice. They had to survive. And this is how they did it. But we were never meant to be that way. And unfortunately, the controller problem is much more pervasive than we think. It is everywhere.
So we run around playing whack-a-mole with our external problems. We desperately try to make a life that others will respect or even envy. We try to keep up with the Jones’. But it seems that no matter what we do, life keeps throwing us the same patterns and cycles. The details might be a bit dissimilar. They might be dressed a little differently. They might have diverse characteristics. But in the end, it is more of the same. And we end up in a place of exhaustion and futility. We give up.
But what if I told you the answer was never in the external world. Don’t get me wrong, watching our external world can be a powerful way to bring an understanding of what really does matter. But in the end, the answers aren’t there. They are within us. Even when we see very tangible problems in the outside world, the seemingly unresolvable has a solution. But we won’t see it without an understanding of how we stop ourselves from seeing it. We must go deep within ourselves. I am not talking about the conscious mind. We already know what that says. We have molded it to say what we think we need to say. We have to go where we haven’t been. We must go to the unconscious and delve into what we are telling ourselves, the world, the universe. All the manifestation power in the world is stored in our unconscious. And until we go there, we won’t change things externally.
Not surprisingly, that is easier said than done. Why? We have defenders. And those defenders are trying to keep us from seeing what we need to see. They will tell us we can try to find that savior one more time. They will tell us we can set one more goal at school or at work or at the gym and this time, it will work. They will tell us that we just have to lose the weight, get the promotion or change to that new job. That will make our pain go away. But it never works, does it? The inner obstacles are stronger. We must build awareness of them to have a hope of moving out of our pain and into some peace. So let’s take a look at how the inner obstacles work.
They look for evidence that the past is right. Our defenders act like lawyers in a courtroom. If we were told we were unworthy in childhood, they will only take in the evidence that supports our unworthiness. They won’t let us see any level of worthiness the world is reflecting toward us. If we experienced thwarting of our success and happiness in childhood, our defenders will keep showing us how others are still trying to thwart us. They will ignore any support we may be receiving. They will heavily weight these events in the mind because they are in support of the wiring in the brain.
They paralyze us from the actions we need to take. While some of us don’t know our purpose because it has been blocked from our conscious mind, some of us have ideas of the direction we would like to take. But if we don’t believe we can attain our dreams, we will be unable to take the steps in the external world to make it happen. If we do take a step and are faced with difficulties in the external world, our defenders will use that as evidence to stay futile and to shut down any further attempts. They don’t understand that it is normal to face challenges. They will convince us that it is a sign and we should quit. That futility will keep us stuck even when we have a sense of where we would like life to go.
They change our energy. The law of attraction is often sold in a way that is unhelpful to trauma survivors. Positive intentions are not successful for us because the conscious mind does not manifest. But the unconscious mind does manifest quite powerfully. And when we hold the brainwashing from childhood in our unconscious, it blocks the energy that can attract the positive things we are looking for. As we release the unconscious beliefs telling us we can’t, the energy to attract it is unblocked. They go together. And they are powerful.
If we want to shift our inner obstacles and make room for new patterns, we must start by seeing them in our inner parts. We need to accept they are there, validate their perspectives, feel their pain and listen to their examples from the past. As we do this, we bring those unconscious beliefs forward and allow them to transform in the conscious adult mind. We can allow ourselves to consider other possibilities, different scenarios than what the unconscious past has always created. As we open ourselves up to these new beliefs, we will begin to see our external world shift. This is why we will be exploring how to break through our inner obstacles for the month of May in Survivor’s Guide. Come join us and learn how to change your external world from the inside out.
