Suppressing Life Energy

This all comes from personal experience.

I am not a neuroscientist, but I have a lot of experience with mental problems.

I grew up in a household where my opinion wasn’t appreciated.

So, from a very young age, I taught myself that every time I wanted to speak out, I would stop myself.

The problem with teaching yourself that at a young age is that you forget you taught it to yourself. The body and brain are very energy-efficient systems, so there is little time to reflect. You are like a boxer with a poor jab.

Every time you hit a stressful situation, just like in actual boxing, you tend to fall back on a default strategy. So, in this analogy, somebody with an eating disorder will need a few attempts and mistakes during stressful times.

All these processes are so automatic that it’s very hard to spot when you, or somebody else, push an emotion away. It happens so fast. It’s like suppressing somebody’s life energy for a brief second, adding tension to the body.

I am seriously worried that this also happens a lot with women who grow up in certain areas. It’s very hard to see that a lot of suffering is self-taught from a young age.

A lot of sadness is saying goodbye to old parts of yourself.

That’s something you have to go through on your own, because only you know what you still need to pause and reflect on.

If you know that you’re a worrier, and you say, “I’m someone who often worries,” then you know it—and it immediately stops being a problem.

This is how your brain and consciousness, in a way, teach you who you really are. It’s a fascinating process that not everyone seems to pause and reflect on.

It’s a bit like with OCD: your brain shows you that you can choose differently, that things don’t have to be done in a specific way or touched in a certain pattern.

The worst things you can do to someone come from love.

You don’t want to hurt your partner, so you stay in the relationship.

You want to help people, so you smother them with too much care.

You want to help poor people, so you take away their responsibility.

You want to take away people’s pain, so you invent a place after death.