The Viable Alternative

In my previous message, I shared with you that a reason why you may be inhibited and stifled is because you’re disconnected from your body which is what you feel with, and if you can’t feel, you can’t flow.

Well, I will share with you another reason by illustrating a story.

A friend of mine has a daughter who liked to sing, but one day he noticed that she hadn’t sung in awhile so he asked her why.

She explained to him that a girl in her class told her to stop singing because she couldn’t sing, so, out of likely shame, embarrassment, and fear of not being accepted, she stopped singing.

Fortunately, her father intervened, told her that the girl who told her that didn’t know what she was talking about because she had a great voice, and encouraged her to sing as much as she liked.

Had her father not intervened, she would’ve grown up with a deep desire to sing that was suppressed and concealed due to shame and fear. Although she may have forgotten about the incident which caused her to stop singing and though she may not be aware of the emotions associated with the event, her behaviour of holding herself back would’ve persisted.

The result would be every time she had that natural urge to express herself, “something” would be holding her back and she would acquiesce to it every time.

This would undoubtedly result in her feeling inhibited and stifled but clueless as to why.

Imagine a similar experience happening MULTIPLE times to you over the course of your life and especially during your childhood when you were more vulnerable and impressionable WITHOUT the edifying intervention of an adult or someone you respected and you will see that it is a foregone conclusion as to why you feel so inhibited and stifled.

Think about your life and mindset as a child.

Your mind was undeveloped and immature, so you were bound to misinterpret things that happened to or around you based on your limited understanding about life.

Your parents or primary caretakers had the power of life and death over you. You knew that and they knew that. They were the source of your food, clothing , shelter, sense of security, sense of self, and love. You had to believe they were infallible to maintain this sense of security, this included believing in all the hurtful things they may have said to or about you.

You also had to do what you felt was necessary to feel loved, safe, secure and validated. This included hiding and suppressing certain parts of you that were criticized, punished or scolded by your primary caretakers (or even other family members like older siblings or cousins) for expressing.

On top of your household being your whole world, so was school. Any type of ridicule, ostracization, humiliation, threat of physical violence or rejection meant your whole world was over as far as you understood it. As a result, you had may have had to suppress certain aspects of yourself to mitigate these factors.

This self suppression may have especially been the case if you were unpopular, chronically bullied or had difficulties making friends.

So, as an adult, with all this history of having to suppress different aspects of yourself out of shame, fear, guilt, immature thinking, rejection, abandonment, abuse or neglect that you may not even remember, you’re feeling stifled and inhibited.

When you have this inclination to be free and fully self expressed, your body, which is part of your subconscious, holds you back.

This is why many people choose to drink or take drugs to “loosen up.” They help numb these feelings that hold them back so they can get some semblance of freedom. But depending on an external substance for your sense of freedom is not a healthy option. and can cause problems down the line.

You will also notice that saying 300 million affirmations about how you’re free and fully self expressed doesn’t help either.

Believe me, I’ve tried.

The most effective way is to get in touch with your body so you can connect with those feelings that are associated with you holding yourself back. You have to connect with them so you can feel them, and, when this happens associative memories come up, you have to use the images from those memories to establish a deeper connection with the feelings associated with those events.

When this happens, your body will start to process these buried emotions so it can let go of them. This will result in the unfreezing of your nervous system that kept you stuck in the first place.

This process can also involve you giving the YOU in that memory the feelings that you needed but didn’t get to help release the emotion which will also help unfreeze your nervous system.

This will help give you your freedom back.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Stay tuned. There’s more to share about this but I don’t want to turn this into a book so I’ll share this in another piece.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love