In part one, I laid out some ideas on the three mind theory. I tried not to pull punches, and I may have appeared to be blaming you for your own abuse. This was/is not my intention. My intention was to be clear about the situation you may have found yourself in and to guide you into thinking clearly about how to resolve it for your benefit.
Here in part two, I want to explain that not all fear is sensible. Sometimes fear is old stories replaying where they no longer apply. The work is not to obey fear blindly, but to listen to it, to distinguish between a protective fear: This conflicts with your values.
This is not safe.
The opposite is a paralysing fear: You do not deserve this. You will fail. You will be humiliated, not worth trying. Both show up in the body, and both are real. But they have different flavours. Protective fear feels like a firm no (or don’t!) in your gut. There will be a sense of constriction when you move toward something. This is when your clarity grows stronger, the more you pay attention. Then your relief when you imagine stepping away from the situation.
Paralysing fear often feels like a swirl of worst-case scenarios. There is possibly a sense of shame or unworthiness when you think about the situation. Your confusion is likely to grow the more you think about it. Then temporary relief when you avoid the thinking, followed by regret or emptiness.
Listening to your gut does not mean surrendering your life to anxiety. It means developing enough self-respect to take your internal signals seriously, then checking them against context, reality, and your own values. That is not to say we never doanything wrong when we listen to our gut. We have all done things that we knew
were not right for us but did them anyway, I know I have… But, in those cases, we knew it was wrong because our gut told us. Notice how quickly your mind steps up when your body speaks up. It sounds like logic, but often it is self-abandonment dressed up as maturity.
We adopt Common ways we explain away why we do not follow our gut. We minimise the event, telling ourselves it is no big deal, or worse still, that you think you owe them something. We become our own psychologist by thinking that we are just anxious, and it is nothing.
You will accept whatever it is, talking yourself down with thoughts that if you were more healed, it would not bother you. Think about how sensible these thoughts are… You may as well say I give in because my shoes are too small.
There is nothing wrong with giving people grace, questioning your stories, or trying to be fair. The problem is the repetition: you often start by invalidating your own signal, then only decide what compassion or perspective to apply.
The healthy sequence should be, something in me feels off…. This matters to me; I will honour this feeling. Then, if you find it helpful… look at context, other perspectives, and possible distortions. However, your gut must get a say before your intellect crosses-examines it, and then again after the examination.
Every time you override your instincts, you pay a price. In relationships, you stay too long where you feel small, uneasy, or unseen because they’re not that bad or it could be worse, or even, this is how it is supposed to be, me the victim. If you are stuck, it could be that your body has been saying no, but your mind keeps saying… let’s just see.
Do you accept roles, partnerships, or deals that feel wrong because they look good on paper? The salary is great, the title is impressive, everyone says it’s a smart move, but your energy drains out of you every morning you walk in.
Do you cross your own boundaries, sleep, rest, time alone, and say no because you can handle it? On the surface, you keep functioning. Underneath, you end up exhausted and resentful.
The more often you do this, the more disconnected you become from your own inner compass. Eventually, you may think you no longer even know what you want. That longing for someone else to decide is often the grief of a self who has been talked over for too long.
Relearn the Language of Your Body by listening to your gut. This starts with noticing, not fixing, not explaining… just noticing. You relearn your own language by paying attention to the smallest shifts
Part 3 will help you… Ray Freeman
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