Who is Living Your Life?

Do you ever feel like you live two different lives? 

Like you are living one life aligned with an idea of who you are, the face the world sees, a great employee a doting daughter a dedicated parent perhaps. Then behind closed doors a different life of chaos, depression and uncertainty sabotaging you and stopping you from being who you truly are and how you want to be.

You have realised you're living a secret life and that no one knows you; not all of you. All people know is this person presented to the world, so perfect, in control and full of pretence while inside your mind and heart are screaming for attention.

Splitting is a common occurrence amongst trauma survivors that can be a powerful, controlling dynamic of the mind that keeps us trapped in feelings of guilt, shame and a hidden sense of injustice. 

Many of us quietly struggle with a sense of lost identity, masking or feeling trapped in a life of role-playing as we adapt to cope with the expectations of the modern world, in a drastic attempt to hide our imperfections, hurts and vulnerable life experiences. 

I used to think I had two lives. The life people saw at work or in the community and then this dark, depressed or rebellious side that would come out when I was alone. They were different people it seemed. One was so loving and caring and concerned about others and then this other side would resent everything I was doing, she would cry and drink or smoke weed, ignore people and not be able to function for days. The pressure would build up and I would have random outbursts at the smallest of situations or events. I'd run around manic making rash and inconsidered decisons.

I lived two versions of reality and it was impossible to get help because the public person everyone would meet always hid the sick, tired, angry, irrational and private person so well. It was a nightmare. When I talked about it, no one would believe me. They would tell me it wasn't possible or I was making excuses and that I was exaggerating. 

But I wasn't. I was terrified of telling anyone the extent of it, like the doctors through fear they would lock me up, section me and force me to take medication and be monitored for the rest of my life diagnosed with some awful mental condition.... when I knew I wasn't crazy. I just needed someone to believe me. I needed some help. 

I couldn't find the cause of my symptoms without seeing it diagnosed as some serious mental defect. But that wasn't how it felt, it wasn't simply that I had some random condition of poor thought or a "chemical imbalance". I knew in my gut it was something different. Something, valid and real and explainable but couldn't find an explanation that felt true so I began to dig deeper, research and dive into these disconnected parts of myself. 

Over time I learned it was a dissociative trauma split. A normal and common response to (in my case, sexual) abuse and trauma. What happens (especially if we are young) is that when trauma happens to us, if we are violated or hurt our conscious, aware and observing part of our mind leaves of our reality, it checks out, and abandons the experience of what is happening to our bodies through fear. It is a survival response. We feel powerless in the situation and unable to stop what is happening to us so we choose (a powerful move) to remove the experience from our (conscious) memory. 

Our body still knows the trauma we have endured (I will write about healing this another time) but our mind does not have to deal with the consequences of accepting that part of our reality. Or if our mind is young and underdeveloped it can't comprehend this so to cope, we ignore the situation. We create a mask over the part of ourselves (our ego) considered to be weak and vulnerable and we hide it from others. We carry on as if nothing happened and pretend we are “fine” when often we are not, we are confused, hurt and vulnerable. 

This split can help us to survive many situations and can work for a long time. They become what Jung referred to as our shadow self. Until we notice that the split is causing us issues and draining a lot of our vital energy. At this point these splits need to be healed and integrated and being part of our subconscious now they can control a lot of our life without realising it. 

We might consciously choose to get a job for example but then the split part of us (depending upon the nature of the trauma and why the split happened) might associate authority with danger. So then having to deal with our bosses' demands of us can feel triggering, stressful and exhausting. We can't show this to our boss out of fear of losing our job, so instead we push it back and hide how we feel until we get home and all the emotional energy and repressed thoughts begin to race as our mind attacks us for the betrayal of hiding. 

The more we repeat this pattern the more pronounced the split becomes as we try to hide more aspects of ourselves and the associated traits. These traits could be our depression, anxiety, anger, resentment, and grief. Whatever emotions were sparked and hidden in response to our secret or rejected traumatised self. 

Almost always these splits can be traced back to our childhood even if we have connected trauma that happened to us as adults. An association that is linked to an aspect of our shadow self can make us vulnerable to trauma as adults when we are not aware of it since we avoid aspects of our reality rather than face them as capable adults. 

Our adult mind might want to stand up for ourselves but the wounded child who once yelled back at their parents or teachers and was punished learned to hide and repress that part of themselves. They did this so often that even when we know it would be helpful to speak up, we can't. Until we get home or some less important situation triggers us and we furiously rant and rave at the situation we chose to do little about. 

This type of behaviour can seem involuntary like we are taken over, and we have no choice. It can leave us feeling ashamed, upset and childish further feeding the pattern of behaviour that causes the problem. But we do have a choice and we can learn to change these patterns and heal these long-standing inner wounds.

This is where inner child healing comes in. The work is to meet the split aspect of ourselves, usually connected to core wounds from childhood. We can get to know what they want, need, feel and desire. These splits can be created in our minds as representations of ourselves as children. We can take time to understand the emotional experience of this repressed wound. We unpack all the ways we have hidden ourselves to feel safe.

Once we understand where the wound comes from, we do the physical and mental reconditioning of integrating and adjusting our behaviour. We need to parent the split aspect of ourselves as if we are the understanding, protective nurturing parents we need and we respond accordingly. 

We mentally affirm, validate and set appropriate boundaries. We physically allow ourselves to do different things try new ways, and show up in a way our inner child would want us to. We have to become the adults the child in us wanted around. 

My healing process has involved a holistic practice of connecting to and with my body, mind and emotions and integrating these parts of myself to realign my reality with my experience. It took years of work, research and experimentation, including spiritual exploration, energy work, body connection and mental reprogramming to bring myself back together. After all my research and tried tested ways to heal I discovered this work is core to it all. 

Bringing ourselves back to wholeness requires the time and energy to know, respect and respond to the whole of ourselves and become responsible for how we behave in all circumstances. This might mean we move on from situations that rely upon our constant masking, it might mean we learn self-soothing techniques that are supportive and not harmful. It might mean having difficult conversations, making requests and speaking up when we see injustice in the world. 

If you are struggling with symptoms described in this blog such as depression, anxiety or other emotional or mental health problems, trauma symptoms including most spectrum or neurodiverse disorders, doing inner child and reparenting integration work will support your healing process. It helps us to regain our sense of self, build confidence and find your unique version of wholeness. 

One of our Love School courses is based on this inner child healing and reparenting work. We have made the course as simple, accessible and affordable as possible since this was vital as part of my recovery journey. We all need to reparent ourselves as part of our growth into adulthood. Often we do it unconsciously and not in the way our inner child approves of. Completing this simple course will have a life-changing impact when the tools are used to bring wholeness to your split aspects of self. 

You can access this as part of my contribution to Love School by following the link below or sending a message to find out more.