28 Jul Invisible

Time and again, I am in awe of the dedication with which life helps us. Whether it is to get us moving when we are stuck or to protect us when we are vulnerable, we can always rely on and trust this never-ending goodness. Especially in our early years, when we do not yet have the tools and skills to approach life in a meaningful and mature way, life offers us a range of survival strategies to withstand the impact of the world.

What is interesting about this is that we employ qualities and talents that are already present in our blueprint. This makes sense because when there is danger or insecurity, you don’t have time to learn new skills. For example, if as a young child you have the gift of scanning your environment with your sensitive senses, you will use this first to screen your family situation for danger, such as in cases of domestic violence. If you have to do this for an extended period, you develop a powerful ‘scanner’, a subpersonality in your psyche that constantly helps you screen your environment for possible danger.

These parts of our personality are intrinsically aimed at taking care of us; that is their driving force. Depending on how much they were or are needed in your life, they often take this task so seriously that they constantly want to be present to keep you safe. In the example of the powerful ‘scanner’, it will eventually want to scan every situation to prevent any sense of insecurity. One of the challenges here is that this subpersonality is frozen in time and still thinks it needs to take care of the small child that was unsafe, not realising that you have since grown up.

Recently, I saw a client in my practice who had to deal with extreme emotional neglect and belittlement in her early childhood. She told me that throughout her young childhood she literally and figuratively had to make herself invisible in order not to be noticed. Not only did she have to hide physically, but she also learned to withdraw her energy completely to avoid being ‘felt’ in the room. Literally, there was no right for her to exist, and life tragically helped her by reducing her energy to a mere flicker.

It is downright fascinating, and in the above example also shocking, how life sometimes has to resort to anti-life measures to be able to live, in her case, to survive. The part that made itself invisible to survive was so crucial in the life of the young child that it had to take a prominent place, proportional to the looming danger. Now, later in her life as an adult, this part that protects her is getting in her way. This creates an inner conflict between the part that wants to keep the little girl safe by making her invisible and the adult woman who wants to live and be visible.

By giving these parts of ourselves ample speaking time and recognising what they do for us, we unlock the incredible intelligence of life that has only one goal in mind: our well-being. When they are seen with awareness and understanding and met with an open and compassionate heart, they take on a new place within the constellation of our existence. This creates an inner alignment that allows life energy to flow again and breathes new life into the meaning of existence.