You function. Appointments, kids, the business, the relationship. Inside there's an emptiness you fill with achievement, scrolling, sex or work.
What lost means
Lost often means you're useful and needed. You've moved far away from yourself to hold together what mustn't fall apart.
You're not broken. You've adapted. There's a difference.
Traps
- Waiting until you're fully healed before you show yourself.
- Making your partner, your job or your father the problem, instead of feeling your own part in it.
- Another book, another short video, another diagnosis. Understanding without feeling.
- Abandoning yourself so the relationship survives.
Five inner blocks
- Fear of being selfish.
- Love only through achievement.
- Not feeling your needs.
- Mistaking yourself for the role.
- Fear of rejection.
Six steps back to yourself
- Notice where you abandoned yourself.
- Honour the inner boy instead of trying to get rid of him.
- Feel your needs before you negotiate them.
- Boundaries without guilt.
- Get clear on direction. What do you want, regardless of her, of him, of the job?
- Stay in the relationship without losing yourself.
You don't have to earn your right to be here first. That's the sentence most men get stuck on.
A short way to calm down
When your nervous system is on high alert, insight doesn't do much. Ten minutes in the body before you write. Breathe out longer than you breathe in. Feet on the floor. Phone away.
This is orientation, not therapy. In an acute crisis you belong in clinical hands, not in my calendar.