Once upon a time, you were a tiny bundle of joy, mischief and curiosity, freely expressing your needs and feelings. Then… stuff happened. Some of your needs were not met, your pain or distress was ignored. You learned fear, and you learned to suppress your feelings in case you got into trouble.

Life wasn’t as much fun any more. You realized it was not okay to be you, to express yourself, to be loud, to be angry or do what you wanted. So you did what others wanted, containing and hiding what you really felt. It was not okay to experience intense emotions, so you put a lid on them. Getting passionate, being playful, making a mess… not okay. You were told what to believe, what to expect and how to make yourself acceptable. You felt shame, guilt, anxiety, resentment, anger and all kinds of conflicting emotions that you couldn’t understand or fix. They started piling up, but you got good at keeping them inside, switching off, finding ways to distract yourself from the pain or comforting yourself with food.

Thus began a lifetime of negative programming that prevented you from being or even knowing the real you—from expressing, loving and sharing yourself, from making healthy choices or thriving creatively in the world. You can’t blame your parents, because the same thing happened to them; they just passed on what they had been taught… to stay safe. The scene is set for all kinds of compromises, relationship problems, illness, crises, anxiety, low self-worth, self-rejection, emotional pain and a deep inner conflict between the persona you’ve been told to be and the real you that’s desperate to break free.

Why we’re running scared

No surprise, then, that we now live in fear, fueled by generational trauma that prevents us from understanding the deeper truth, processing our pain, taking assertive action or bravely creating the world we want. Instead, locked in the illusion of subservience, we wait to be granted freedom by some external authority, while adapting, conforming and complying… to stay safe.

In a time of divisiveness that challenges our most basic human instincts of trust, companionship, connection and healthy communication, how do we find a healthy way forward? If you find it hard to envision a positive future—or any future at all—and if you feel a sense of dread, hopelessness or panic, hang in there. There’s a good reason for feeling that way—a reason that goes beyond current circumstances, to the you buried deep within, waiting for you to reclaim it.

The fear and panic stoked by the growing global dictatorship is the result of our collective unresolved trauma—the only reason that draconian government measures have been able to gain such a foothold in our lives.

Trauma can result from shock, loss, emotional neglect, an accident or injury, a scary situation or event, or anything that pains us emotionally and is not processed or resolved. It can show up as panic, numbness, withdrawal, emotional paralysis, hyperactivity, chronic stress, anxiety, insomnia, an inability to think clearly, and staying stuck in survival mode or a fight-flight-freeze response. It may be so deeply rooted that we cannot see it for what it is. We merely react to it, unaware of how it drives us, distorting the truth, deepening our dysfunction, and preventing us from healing age-old wounds. We distract ourselves from the pain it creates. We may deny its existence, focus on external things, find comfort in foods/drugs/entertainment or operate on autopilot. Yet the trauma itself is the real epidemic, pervading and shaping our collective psyche and having a far greater impact than any virus, disease or crisis.

Sound familiar…?

Despite our fervent claims that horrors of the past would never happen again, history is indeed repeating itself. This is because we have not healed our collective trauma from the brutal religious indoctrination of our ancestors or from more recent transgressions such as the Holocaust. We’re still passing it on to our children, and still consuming it in the form of war movies and re-enactments of historical events that keep recycling our pain. Movies feature conflict, terrorism, loss, dystopia or cataclysmic events, without revealing or resolving their underlying drivers. Yet the conflict that drives all crises, drama and dysfunction is an internal one: the conflict between who we have been programmed to be and who we truly are.

Why we stay small

Over-stimulated by stress, fear, self-doubt and low self-worth, we become emotionally numb and no longer feel truly alive without the ongoing stimuli of drama or crises. Adrenaline makes us feel emotionally charged and engaged, but it keeps us stuck in a loop of diminishing returns, eroding our health, depleting our reserves and disconnecting us from our hearts. Stories of blissful enlightenment or utopia may seem downright boring, by comparison …if we can’t relate to it or have never experienced it. Nor have many of us known the wondrous rewards of being a fully actualized human, living our greatness in a magical, deeply loved life.

Only when we remove the distracting stimuli and allow ourselves to reconnect with our hearts, transform our dysfunction and find inner peace, can we reconnect with our super-humanness.

Stuck in a loop of loss

Without that deeper understanding, we subconsciously feed our fear, which is now being amplified by a manufactured pandemic designed to violate our rights and freedoms. As legal and democratic ‘safety nets’ are stripped away, we are challenged to face our fears and transcend them, so we can finally confront, process and heal our collective pain. Only then can we be truly free and empowered.

It’s not governments that are keeping us prisoners; it’s our mental programming, with trauma begetting more trauma, dysfunction, conflict, disease and despair, beyond our conscious awareness.