The inner critic isnât trying to hurt you-
itâs trying to protect you.
Any time you step outside the role you learned to play-
the âgood boy,â the âgood girl,â the one who keeps the peace- that voice will try to pull you back.
Itâs not the enemy.
Itâs an old protector, stuck in the past.
The work isnât to silence it.
Itâs to understand what itâs guarding and to show it that itâs safe to do things differently now.
If this resonates, Iâve recorded a free workshop on de-armouring the inner critic- with reflections and practices to help soften that voice and return to choice.
DM me or comment Critic and Iâll send it your way.
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It's said that 'hurt people, hurt people'....
And also true that healed people, heal people.
We all pick up different wounds, traumas and false beliefs in life and all experience difficult emotions such as anger, grief and shame.
It can be easy to look or lean away from our discomfort, pain or wounding, hoping it will disappear, but when left unacknowledged, our pain often plays out unconsciously and is transferred onto other people.
Efforts to suppress, repress or deny the intensity of difficult emotions can lead to reactivity, defence mechanisms, addictions and autopilot behaviours designed to keep us safe and protected but often disconnected.
In acknowledging, leaning toward and healing old wounds we can show up from a place of love rather than fear and can reclaim our authentic self whilst allowing others to embrace their authenticity.
Exploring the roles of anger, grief, shame and fear in our lives can open up a whole new world of possibility for us.
#healing #selfcare #trauma
You were born whole.
Then you learned to be someone else.
Watch any small child.
They breathe fully.
They cry when theyâre sad.
They reach for what they want without thinking about it.
Thatâs not innocence.
Thatâs wholeness.
Then life happens.
You learn that certain feelings arenât welcome.
So you start to build something on top of who you are.
A character.
The real work is subtraction.
Itâs not about becoming someone new.
Itâs about peeling back to who you were before you learned to hold your breath, clench your jaw, and perform your way through life.
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Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
Youâve read the books.
Done the journaling.
Tried the morning routines.
So why do you still feel stuck? Hereâs the uncomfortable truth: most self-help is designed to change your thinking.
But your patterns donât live in your thoughts. They live in your body. You can recite affirmations in the mirror and still feel like a fraud the moment you walk into a room.
Because the body doesnât read your journal.
The nervous system doesnât care about your affirmations.
Your system responds to felt experience, not words.
Share this with someone who might find it useful.
Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
You say you want love.
But every time it gets close, something in you pulls back.
Not consciously.
Not deliberately.
It happens in your body before your mind even gets a say.
Because at some point, your system learned that closeness comes with a cost.
That being seen fully means being hurt eventually.
So your body built a reflex: let people in just enough to feel connected, but never enough to feel truly exposed.
The work isnât to try harder at love. Itâs to understand what your body is protecting you from.
Share this with someone who might find it useful.
Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
Somewhere between the ages of 3 and 10, you made a decision.
You didnât know you were making it.
But itâs running your life right now.
Maybe it was:
I have to be good to be loved.
Or: if I need too much, Iâll be abandoned.
That decision calcified.
It became a posture.
A way of breathing.
A pattern of tension.
The moment you can feel the difference, the moment you can sense that old decision in your body and realise it was a strategy, not an identity, something begins to shift.
Share this with someone who might find it useful.
Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
What if the thing youâre most afraid of isnât failure?
Itâs feeling fully alive.
Because aliveness isnât selective.
You canât turn up the volume on joy and keep grief on mute.
You canât open yourself to excitement without also opening yourself to disappointment.
So somewhere along the way, you turned the whole thing down.
You stayed functional.
Productive.
In control.
But you also stopped being moved by things that matter.
Youâre not broken because life feels flat.
You just turned the dial down to survive.
The work now is learning itâs safe to turn it back up.
Share this with someone who might find it useful.
Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
If you couldnât scroll right now, what would you need to feel?
That question is worth sitting with.
Because most of the time, weâre not scrolling toward something.
Weâre scrolling away from something.
A feeling we donât want to meet.
A sensation weâd rather not sit with.
The phone isnât the problem.
Itâs the most socially acceptable way to avoid your own inner world.
And the thing youâre avoiding?
Itâs probably the exact thing that needs your attention.
Share this with someone who might find it useful.
Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
Thereâs a difference between being curious about your emotions and being consumed by them.
Curiosity creates space.
It says: what is this? Where do I feel it? What does it need?
Consumption collapses that space. It says: this is everything. I canât get away from it. I am this feeling.
Most people swing between the two extremes: either avoiding the emotion entirely or drowning in it. The sweet spot is in the middle.
Present enough to feel it. Spacious enough not to become it.
Comment EMOTION and Iâll send you my free emotional processing guide.
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Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
The reason you keep circling the same patterns isnât lack of willpower.
Itâs something deeper.
Your body learned a specific emotional shape in childhood.
What love feels like.
What safety sounds like.
And that shape became the template.
So now, even when your mind wants something different, your body keeps steering you back to whatâs familiar.
Not because itâs good for you.
Because itâs known.
Youâre not repeating because youâre broken. Youâre repeating because your body hasnât been shown another way yet.
Share this with someone who might find it useful.
Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
Most people think conflict is the opposite of intimacy.
Itâs not.
Itâs the doorway in.
Because real intimacy doesnât happen when everything is smooth.
It happens when things break down and you stay anyway.
When you show the ugly parts and the other person doesnât leave.
Conflict reveals what comfort hides.
It shows you what each person is really carrying.
And if you can stay present through that, if you can breathe through the discomfort instead of shutting down, something deeper opens.
Not despite the rupture.
Because of it.
Share this with someone who might find it useful.
Follow @patdivilly for more on the body, the breath, and becoming.
