SELF-ARCHEOLOGY

Practice listening to yourself and meaning-making. This is a quick article on the topic of self-connection. Here, I will talk about the importance of self-connection, the origins and difficulties of (self-)disconnection, and the cultivation of self-validation and individuality. The Origins and Results of Disconnection When we are children, we often are invalidated, mistreated, rejected, frightened, manipulated, confused, and abused in a thousand other ways. To avoid all of that and survive in our toxic and dangerous environment, we learn to adapt to it by disconnecting from it—and, fundamentally, from ourselves. Then we grow up, and those survival and defense mechanisms carry into our adulthood and manifest themselves in the same or similar forms. Except now, being in a completely different habitat, they are not protecting us but hinder our growth and lead to numerous problematic, even unhealthy situations, behaviors, and moods. Being disconnected from yourself leads to realit...

I’ve written about the classification of child abuse in one of my previous articles, and I’ve talked about child abuse and its results many times before. Most people tend to deny or downplay the epidemic of childhood trauma and its results. This denial, which also transforms into projection and acting out, manifests on a personal and social level. On a personal level it takes various forms of neurosis, addiction, delusion, dissociation, dysfunction, depression, irrationality, misunderstanding of what’s healthy, confusion about one’s identity and boundaries, chronic fear and anxiety, irresponsibility , warped self-esteem, unhappiness, self harm, physical illnesses, and other psychological and physical problems. On a social level it is evident in such phenomenons as wars, rape, violence, predation, lack of rationality, harmful institutions and social structures, exploitation, mass delusions, unhealthy relationships, oversexualization, extreme lack of empathy for others , enormous im...

As you can tell from the title of this blog post, it will be a more personal one. Yesterday I visited my grandparents’ town where I spent a lot of time in my childhood and adolescence. I haven’t been there for about 4 years. I walked around for about 30-40 minutes. A lot has changed – renovations, new buildings, new people. It’s a very small town, so I was able to visit a lot of familiar places. I experienced a shroud of memories and a wide range of emotions. My memories were both pleasant and unpleasant – and I felt them in my mind and in my body. Emotionally, I felt great sadness, grief, nostalgia, child-like worrylessness, relief, loneliness, hurt, fear…. And because now I know how to soak my memories and emotions in, without them overwhelming me and without me blocking them, I just let in the thoughts that came up, and let myself feel whatever emotions followed those thoughts. Since I didn’t have my journal with me (or its substitute, like iPad), I recorded an audio log on ...

End the cycle Intellectually, the mechanism of continuous child abuse is not that hard to understand. Childhood trauma that we haven’t consciously processed we impose on our children. Most people haven’t even started to uncover their past and gain real knowledge on how the world works, or have done very little self-exploration; therefore they inevitably harm their children to the degree of their own unprocessed traumas and ignorance. The Cycle of Abuse As children, we are abused in various ways by our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, priests, coaches, or other caregivers and authority figures. Sometimes the abuse is overt and instantaneous, like beatings or molestation – but often it is subtle and continuous, like emotional unavailability, shaming, threats, over-control, or neglect. Such experiences often start basically when we are born, and in one form or another they last for decades. All of this cripples us mentally and stunt our emotional and psychological g...

Everyone knows themselves at least to some level, but, sadly, not many people have a really close relationship with themselves. Because of our experiences from childhood and adolescence, our environment, and other reasons – i. e. because of our family dynamics, our relationship with others, our past traumas – many of us are so alienated from ourselves that we don't know our true emotions, needs, goals, and dreams... We don't know what are we doing and for what reason, we act impulsively or (self-)destructively... We fear things that objectively are not scary; we feel shame or guilt in situations where we did nothing wrong... We don't have things we would like to have; we don't live the life we would like to live; our relationships are not that kind of relationships we would like to have... A lot of people don't live , but only exist . Or to be more specific – they only vegetate , i. e. they slowly and passively wait for their deathbed, or act destructively – and i...