 This stage of life, you know this journey this part of it here This is the the difficult part of life to this point And when we get to this point, it's like something changes in life And now this is an ascent Back in the other direction. We're coming back to who we really are to begin with in this video, I'm going to outline eight stages in life and This is going to describe an arc a story and it's a story from who you were in the very beginning of Your life will will draw that in here. This is you to begin with and Who you were at the start before really any conditioning came in to affect and it's a story of kind of coming back to yourself The entire arc of life some of it will take you away from who you really are and then hopefully the the goal is To start a journey where you come back to your authentic self Who you were in the first stage of life really? That's who you are now Nothing has changed around that Of course, we start off. We become at some point usually an early childhood Of course, it's self-awareness and we have the The I am starts to come into effect here. I am We just become aware that we exist at all and we have a felt sense of our place in the world at this early point in our story and You know the first half of this is kind of like that the bad part of the story None of it's bad, of course. None. All of it is very very natural first part kind of describes the difficulty and The second part of our story here is going to talk about the return back to the self but in the first one when you were in your Initial stages in life you've had certain characteristics and these characteristics you could talk about as Being well the first thing you have when you come in here is you have your Personality and Personality is not very well understood to be honest, but think of personality you were born with one and You can't change your personality really we spend a lot of time trying to change your personality trying to become a better personality But really the the the personality is almost like eye color or height or something like that We all have an innate Personality so that's there to begin with okay. This is kind of like the Materials we're starting off with here in this story Another thing we have when we're born is a potential now The way many people talk about potential now is you know You have to push and make yourself into something when I use the term potential you're born with a potential I'm really talking more about the same way a flower or a plant has a potential Right, it's not something that has to be forced in order to be actualized or achieved really it just has to be watered correctly and Given the right environment the right supportive type of environment and it it reaches its potential So you were born with a potential You were born with an inherent value Okay This is before you know any of our story really begins here But the value you have as a human being ultimately the realization we come to is I am valuable and I've always been valuable. I never lost my value and You can't determine your own value. You're born with it. Okay Sometimes that makes us a little bit uncomfortable that realization, but you are born valuable another Feature we have to begin our story here is that we are also some people use different words for this but one is word naive Other people have used the word innocent. Okay, so really we are Self-aware to begin with Usually very early in life, maybe around the age of two or so And we have this well. I am I have a place here, but we have no idea who we are okay, and It's this arc of this entire story is going it's going to be like a journey through figuring out that question really Who am I fundamentally? Right. I am but I am You know, well, we'll get into that. What exactly am I? And This is the question that we're dealing with it's I am dot dot dot What exactly so we do begin this eventually we we do have kind of like Question marks in here about who it is. We really are now I mentioned the first few stages here the first kind of four stages in life Are quite challenging stages and the problems first begin on this journey now I say problems this whole thing is unfolding. It's all natural. There's no problem with it, but it's it can be difficult We entertain what are known here as false concepts Okay, if a LSE false concepts about ourselves going into our first Period of our lives. Okay. Now we have this question of I am but it's I am what and Unfortunately, you know, we have our we have our mom and our dad here with us at this point. Maybe right And we'll just draw them in here. We'll give that a bit of a mustache. Okay, an exaggerated masculine character here. Here's mom And These people around us at these early stages of life are very very important because now unfortunately We do come into contact with lots of false concepts about Answering this question. I am well. I am what exactly Now when we're talking about something like trauma and I'm not even talking about specific types of trauma I'm almost talking about the trauma of being human being here A very general experience of trauma. We come into a story about ourselves. Okay these concepts and really We come away with it from from this period of life when we entertain these false concepts Often coming from conditioning from those around us. Some people will call this the Really, it's the the fundamental caregivers those closest to us implant these false concepts usually and One way to put it. I'm going to draw it in here in red because These are really the fundamental things that we learn at this point depending on The severity the negativity of these false concepts that we come into contact with The first thing we learn at this point Is that I am alone Okay, that's number one If we don't have supportive people around us If there's not a Unconditional love lots of expectations. Maybe a person isn't listened to maybe a person is ignored They come away with well, I am alone here in this world I'm by myself. There is no one here for me to connect with So this is the first big issue we come into contact with in our journey now That is really the the biggest belief of all the belief that I am by myself here And from experiencing counseling psychotherapy with people I've found that really the most painful belief is we have things like abandonment issues and a person believes that they're well and truly alone It is incredibly painful. So this is a deep deep belief a very very deep belief and it's very very painful for us Huge motivation to ignore deny it repress it get rid of it right get rid of it above all else this this belief and this trauma in the body Now what comes from this belief in being alone here in the story Is our second one and it is The the explanation we give ourselves often we know because young children always blame themselves for things for instance, right It is what I call the defective story This comes from a sort of an introspection here, I suppose Well, I'm alone here in this world, but why am I alone? And the explanation is well, there must be something wrong with me Okay, in other words, the reason I'm alone is because I'm defective But that's why I've been rejected and that's why I'm not connecting with other people around me This is a hugely important core belief that comes in here In fact, it's so important. I'm going to come back to it in a moment, but The third I call these three real beliefs that we get at this early stage in life The big three, you know, these are the super important ones Because of this, I'm alone. I'm defective something wrong with me We go into another sort of a belief and this is a sort of an energetic assumption that the body takes on as trauma It is what I call the vulnerable story I'm alone. There's something wrong with me and this is a well, what if people find out there's something wrong with me And then we go into well, I have to be very very defensive and things like that. So If anyone finds out that I'm defective, there's going to be further problems from real life So we now have this felt sense of being vulnerable all the time And these three main Emotions, you know, these three three main beliefs have all sorts of secondary ones, you know alone We have these feelings of being abandoned or being lonely Defective is often feelings of guilt shame inferiority The vulnerable story there we have our anxiety. We have fear. We have our phobias Insecurities that sort of thing. Okay, so but these are really the fundamental ones that come in so early for us in our lives Okay Now at this point We're almost primed for the next stage Now I want you to stick with me here because I've mentioned before the first four of these Stages in life are challenging Right, it gets better. It gets better Because of this story here, and I'm going to really highlight one of them It is the defective story we have about ourselves that is primarily important There is something wrong with me we Maybe also because we're not in a supportive environment with with people around us to connect with and talk about feelings, for instance We now go into what am I going to do with this? And that brings us to our next stage in life Now as we move into the next stage in life with this Alone story and defective story and vulnerable story, but the defective one has a lot of guilt and shame around it Above all, we don't want to look at that We believe it's true, but we put it out of awareness But what we do is we go into the next stage And the strategy in this stage of life is what I'm going to do is I'm going to fix myself Okay, that's strategy number one. I'm defective. There's something wrong with me has to be fixed Another thing we're going to do is because we don't like this story and nor should we Problem is it's not true, but we believe it, but we don't like it We don't want to look at it the next thing that's going to happen and this is not a bad thing It's not a sign of weakness. It's just a very human thing that happens with everybody Is that we are going to start to project? project blame For what we don't want to look at. Okay All sorts of feelings are going to be coming up around this and in the next phase of life There will be conflict we're going to talk about that, but it's coming from this unexamined story about the self And the last strategy here as we enter into the next stage of life is that we need to we believe we need to defend ourselves very important We become very defensive because of this defective story. We don't want anyone to look at it Feel very very vulnerable. We think there's all sorts of things we need to do to keep safe So that's the strategy coming in here and the real main story of This next phase in our life. We could put it like this Put it in a different color here This is the period in our life where we are going to project This is where projection will come in think of all of this is the story of life. You could think of this is the story of trauma It's a bit metaphorical a bit metaphysical really you could think of this whole thing this is all what's going on underneath the surface of the Varying stories we all have everyone's story is very different, but underneath it you can look at these mechanisms taking place Now when I say project well, what we're going to do is This story needs to be gotten rid of Okay, and we want to get as far away from this as we possibly can feeling this defective feeling And we're in still in close proximity at this point to you know our family of origin or There are close relationships. We have but they're very very difficult. We don't feel connected to it And we are going to fall into a dynamic here again. This is normal. It's predictable. It happens for all of us at this point what we're going to fall into here is this sort of a A dynamic it's a split dynamic between two aspects of the self If you just bear with me for a moment in this I'm going to draw it in like this and this is quite an angry side here and We have two aspects of the self here now this one here Again, I'll put it in in red because this is kind of a dysfunctional or an alarming phase, but It's one of the changes This story here is the victim story Which we all feel like at some point in life, especially for coming out of a very difficult situation The other side here is the victimizer another way to put that Is we have the fearful aspect And we have the guilty aspect What we're doing here with these feelings of maybe worklessness or something Is we rationalize them and we project them on to somebody else close to us Now in terms of healing this really all we need to do is revisit these stories and realize that these false concepts We have about ourselves are not true But because we don't want to directly look at them because they're so painful We go into this thing of projecting blame Which won't really be the mechanism that's going to heal this issue All that will heal this is to realize that none of this is true. Okay By the way This will be done with people who are close to us in our lives primary Caregivers, brothers, sisters people really really close to us usually Also, we do this to ourselves. We either find ourselves as the victim fearful Or we find ourselves as the victimizer and guilty. We start to see things in this whole paradigm of victim victimizer Fearful guilty. Another way of saying it is good versus bad right versus wrong Very natural that this happens. It's a phase we go through in life Very predictable coming out of a difficult circle very very predictable to That this would happen coming out of such difficult circumstances Now what do we do next with this? There is a problem with this dynamic for us on our journey And the problem is that this is massively volatile. Okay huge amounts of volatility here because we are So Close to those people were around in this scenario Every time you project on to another person that attack will come directly back to us So at this stage there's a huge amount of conflict in our life Which brings us to the next phase Well, we come up with a strategy in the next phase of life and you may recognize this This strategy here is all about escape And what we're really trying to escape is The huge degree of conflict We experience here. Okay in our Primary relations close relationships Another way to put it is we really want to run away at this stage We want to create distance with all of this Which is understandable Which brings us into the next phase and that is going to be a phase in which We'll draw them in here in blue, I think This color will We are going to escape this now. Remember, we haven't done the one thing that needs to be done at this point Which is re-examine and and let go of this whole story these big three of these beliefs of being alone defective There's something wrong with me Because there is nothing wrong with this and vulnerability But now we branch out into the wider world, you know, and we have all sorts of New people outside of our Our Smaller network of relationships we previously had as we branch into the world Many many new people Many many new relationships that we're going to form. This looks appealing to begin with Here we have we have all sorts of friends We have Bosses Okay, we have teachers. We have, you know, lawyers. We have you name it psychotherapists everything now Really, we are still in this Strategy of trying to get rid of a feeling of being defective. So we are still essentially projecting We are projecting out our own inner emotional experiences as being caused by other people's behavior, okay A lot of this this seems like it's got a little bit give us a bit more relief from the conflict that's here because the The the closeness of the relationships is now gone. But what's happening is we're still projecting and Over time we will begin to realize that this doesn't work either We project on to all these other people and there's all sorts of conflict down here all sorts of projections going on and There is a big problem with this these projections cause all sorts of emotional cutoffs lack of connection big problems Eventually more conflict finds us here. This could also be things like politicians. Okay societal wider societal problems So we are still explaining our our emotional reality our emotional disturbances and difficulties because of other people interpersonal relationships are really the main aspect of it in this And that's going to bring us to our next phase Over here, which is really as bad as it gets. Okay after that The healing process really starts to begin But I want you to realize here that again the whole arc of this story to this point here Is to get away as far away as possible from this belief in that we're effect defective Okay, because we don't want to really look at it again really let it go In this stage of life what we do is we realize okay. Look it doesn't matter how far I get away from people I still feel bad and there's still lots of conflict. There's still lots of blame And I still feel really inferior inside or I feel vulnerable all the time What we do here at this point is we Do another thing and that is distract We distract ourselves How do we distract ourselves? Well, we'll put ourselves in here At this point here we are In this stage With distractions What we will do is well, we're going to maybe It's time to build a house It is time to start to Make lots of money There's nothing wrong with these things by the way, but this is what happens Maybe we think it's time to really really Study hard and get a good qualification Okay, maybe We get into various relationships. Okay relationships can be used as distraction We are in other words what we're doing here is we are filling Our life With all sorts of Obligations We now have a whole bunch of problems To deal with that once one is solved Another problem comes along That could be things like we have constant money problems Maybe health problems Maybe even addiction problems Um Lots of stress down here managing this. Okay, but really what we're you could describe this phase of life on the arc the lower arc of life the descent if you're like As a coping mechanism or a defense mechanism From examining this story that I am defective somehow at this point Things begin to change sooner rather than later Usually when a person is ready to start questioning these these stories they start to Ask themselves a few fundamental questions about their life. Okay. The first of this is a question like is this old There is That's one of the big questions people start to ask themselves. So I don't feel any better I've got the money. I've got the car. I've got the house. I've got the degree. I've got all these things got the relationship even But is this all there is why don't I feel any different? now This new mentality now that starts to build Is really the the most exciting thing That's beginning to happen here We start to you could describe it as this we start to create a space in our life We are no longer going to distract ourselves like we used to We're going to create a space. We're not going to be busy ourselves all the time We're still no one saying like quit your job or get out of your relationship or stop trying to make money or any of that Stuff because that's that's a mistake to dig that But you do have balance you create a little space in your life to start to Look at some of these issues Understanding what's going on for me emotionally here because nothing I've been doing up to this point has really changed things Another way to put it is is we start to develop self-awareness here We start to develop an inquisitive mind into how our Emotional life works really Another feature of this part of our life and this is I've done a whole course on this on on personal productivity and things but with with external obligations. We start to put in Boundaries we start to put boundaries. We say, okay, that's important. I'll take care of that But it's not going to interfere with a part of my life a space in my life where I'm going to some Sit down and do some maybe inquiry or do some more deeper level work on myself Now this is sort of the mirror image of this Okay And what we will notice here is that before You know here we had distraction and here we now have space here we had All sorts of projection on to other people In interpersonal relationships And what we have now is the first thing we do is well, we still have all these people to look at right in our lives They're not going anywhere. All these people are still around. We still have interactions with them. We still Engage with them whereas before There was projection going on. There was conflict. There was attack. We start to really get curious about what's going on for me in terms of my interpersonal relationships and We start to form genuine connections with other people around us rather than blame or Projection all the time or simplistic explanations for who this person is or why they did what they did, right? So at this point, you know, we had lots of projection conflict up here We are going to start to get to work. We're putting a boundary and now we're going to start to get to work on healing our immediate Conflicts And this will make a little bit more sense in a moment But we're going to start taking more responsibility for how we feel rather than rationalizing our feelings about other people's behavior all the time We're going to start developing more empathy for ourselves and for other people And we're going to give more sort of nuance to explanations for why the people around us that we have all these conflicts with Act the way they do down here. It's much more about good bad right wrong victim victimizer um That type of stuff up here as well. Look those labels I've been using are kind of Too simplistic And this becomes a much more nuanced understanding of interpersonal relationships much more healing Okay, and at this point when you start to come back up in this this arc of the journey One of the characteristics of it is a greater sense of peace starts to take over in your life Remember down here. It was all about Running away from you know escaping conflict creating distance in order to get away from right up here It's about a much deeper movement towards intimacy on a on a very very close level and resolving conflict conflict is no longer Shied away from but rather it is moved towards because with this greater Sort of stillness and peace in our life. We begin to realize it is actually possible to resolve conflict in a way that doesn't create resentment and Down here, of course, we had the projection phase of life up here What we're going to start to do More and more of as we move into these deep intimate relationships with other people Is we're going to start to now reverse Reverse all these projections for our tendency to project on others and a way I'm going to draw it in here When we stop projecting really what we're going to start to realize is here. I am And maybe I'm in an intimate relationship with somebody else before there was a lot when anytime intimacy came in there was lots of conflict What we begin to realize is every relationship I'm in It's as if I am looking at myself in a mirror And we start to realize that every Aspect that disturbs us that we see in other people, especially those closest to us Is showing me and reflecting back to me some aspect some unhealed aspect of myself that I need to be with And I need to heal remember It's always a lone defective vulnerable. That's the story. We're really getting back to okay And that's going to be projected out for a while because we're we're not we're not quite there yet We're still in this story. We're in the arc of this story. But at this point now this is Accepting a lot of our feelings more It is learning to process our emotions in a healthy way It is We're now starting to feel our feelings much much more because of that stillness in life and that boundary We have not to get distracted And we are taking much more responsibility for things As we move into the next stage if we look down here We see what we previously had done kind of in the mirror image on the descent You know now we're in the ascent back to ourselves We were obsessed with fixing the self projecting blame and defending ourselves. Okay because of the vulnerability story Here rather than fixing the self it now becomes about Expressing express the self We begin to be able to talk from a place of authenticity much more than we were able to do in the past We also we take a lot more ownership Okay, we own Are all of our inner emotional experiences or at least we take the appropriate amount of responsibility for them Another thing we do which is very important down here. We become very defensive. Our nervous system has taken up a defensive posture And as we begin to move back And heal from this We become and this sounds a little bit scary, but we could become defense Defense less We start to drop our defenses. Now, what do I really mean by that? Well, I'll give you an example Before when you would go into a You know a scary public Situation or maybe you go meet family or something Well, defenses are really, you know, what will I say? I'm mentally rehearsing it Or I need them to see me as a certain In a certain light or I need to pretend that I'm this or that I need them to see this and now As we come into self-expression and owning our emotions more we stop pretending Much more. Okay, we stop. We start to drop a few of these masks that we've been relying on in the past We become defenseless And it is true becoming defenseless Really, we convinced at that point because we are brave enough to to experiment with being defenseless That we find out for sure that there is no need for defenses. It's actually safe We're really teaching our nervous system at this point, which was terrified to begin with felt very vulnerable That you don't need to take up this posture of defensiveness because when you take it down, you're safe We're reconditioning. We're re teaching the nervous system with it, which has always been trying to protect us So this brings us into a really exciting part of of life And this is a stage of life. Let me just draw it up here This is a stage. I'll draw it like this when We become much more self-aware I'll draw it in like that We really begin to see the dramatic impact of the the inner work we've been doing And down here the mirror of this was well, I am or what am I I'm alone effective and vulnerable Now we realize well, I am I'm not Any of those things, okay Rather I am Well, what are we? We learn for sure without doubt and at this real experiential emotional level We start to feel connected We start to feel all the opposites of the original Feelings and beliefs we had we start to realize that the defective story drops off There is nothing wrong with me. I don't need to fix myself Another way of putting that is you start to see your own value. So I am valuable Or I'm good enough And we also Believe and realize now because we've experimented without defenses. I'm actually safe Things have changed I no longer have to feel vulnerable all the time And when we do, you know, I've drawn in that smiling face there We begin to become much more lighthearted about things Okay, we don't take ourselves nearly as seriously as we used to All this defensiveness around who we are and and the persona and the false image that we need to protect and defend All the time And that brings us back to when we're at that stage The final step really And now we're coming back to conscious conscious awareness of Really the purpose of all of this of who am I? Okay, the difference once we know we started off at this point and you know, it's that thing of When you get back, you realize you need you never left In the beginning. Yes. We knew you existed, but you didn't know fully. There was no self-awareness about who you were This now because you've gone into an experiment and learned true life who you're not You now come back into Awareness of who you are A complete awareness of it not only knowing you exist, but you know who you're not And therefore you have this felt sense of this is who I am. You know who you are finally in life So Again, if you could put it like this the Just emphasize this point once again This stage of life, you know this journey this part of it here This is the the difficult part of life to this point And when we get to this point, it's like something changes in life And now this is an ascent Back in the other direction. We're coming back to who we really are to begin with Right Back to your own personality. You have one. You realize that personality is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's perfect You start to live from your own potential You start to realize your own value and you do begin to realize I am completely innocent There is nothing wrong with me at all In terms of what do we do with this practically? We could look at it like this Most of this, you know, we're you know, if you're probably watching a video on psychotherapy here with me You're probably at this point. Maybe at the least maybe you've you've experimented like this and it's not really a linear story that we have right in our lives We kind of go back and forth more You're probably at maybe a point here on out. Okay. Well, you're you're interested in yourself more and more And what is going on with you emotionally? So If we're looking at practically, you know things that we can do from here on out One of the things we can certainly start off with is setting up a space in your life for self-inquiry Okay to understand yourself on a deeper level and that's a very practical thing we can do, you know We can we can set aside some time for whatever the practices whatever the tools we're using We can surround ourselves with people more inclined to think this way Not to be externally focused all the time external focus is fine But I'm talking about a balance here with that We start to look at the immediate Conflicts that we have in our life Okay, we don't ignore them anymore. We don't just drop this friend and go on to a new friend or things like that Right. We start to really examine. Well, why is the conflict here? Why does this keep happening for me? Why why do I meet this person and why do we break up the same way all all the time, right? So we start to focus really more on much more on interpersonal relationships we start to really be more open to Intimate conversations with people that's something we can do not to run away from conflict Okay to start to really move into and towards conflict and see it as possible to resolve And we start to experiment with Defenselessness What would happen if I dropped that way of being in that situation that I've always acted like that? Well, what if I tried this time and I just experiment and realized that maybe I don't need to wear that mask And maybe it's the wearing of the mask itself that is reinforcing this this idea That I need to be vulnerable need to feel vulnerable We need we start to take ourselves way less seriously Which is strange for me talking about this because I'm just doing this analysis here, right? Kind of which would suggest that we take it seriously Super important work. It's our life's work to do this But really at the end of this we begin to realize there's nothing to worry about in any of this, right? It's not It's anything but serious. We actually begin to laugh at ourselves a lot more and We start to realize a real sense of I'm many different things. I have all lots of different masks and wear but There is an authentic Person there and that's who you are okay so Wherever you are on that journey I hope that this chart can kind of help you with maybe understanding some of the maybe if you're stuck or What the trajectory is kind of like setting a goal for this But one thing I would emphasize is to just start to Have a go for more balance in terms of the external focus in life, which is is certainly important and so it's the start taking some time and Block off some time and safeguard that time for doing some more sort of inner work ourselves understanding our emotions our interpersonal relationships our relationship with ourselves And ultimately starting to challenge this effective story because I'll leave it here at this There's nothing wrong with you Or any of us we're all Just supposed to be ourselves and that's good enough Hope that was helpful and I'll talk to you again soon. Bye for now