Living from your most empowered self
On any given day, in the midst of your adult life, you may be unknowingly ‘blended’ with a younger part of you.
Being ‘blended’ means an adaptive traumatised part of you, normally very young in age, is in the driving seat of your life. It will feel like you. The unfortunate thing is - your empowered, resourceful, fully capable adult self has been relegated to the backseat.
This is what makes life slow, difficult, challenging and frustrating. You might feel you should be ‘further along by now’.
Signs you’re ‘blended’ with a young traumatised part of you, are that you might feel impatient, have scattered thoughts, a sense of ‘I have to get this done, now’, a sense of urgency, hyper vigilance and a need to tightly control outcomes.
As a child who needed to adapt to an unpredictable and unsafe environment it makes perfect sense that you’d have developed this part of yourself.
But these parts are oblivious that you are far more capable than you feel, and they usually don’t know your current age.
When you have the skill and self awareness to be able to pause and do an internal check-in, you may come to realise that you’re not grounded and don’t have access to your best thinking.
With self awareness and tools you can learn to ‘unblend’ and regain access to your most empowered self - the version of you who is calm, has creative problem solving skills, access to clear thinking and emotional sobriety. In this state, life flows, synchronicities happen and you feel like life contains meaningful possibilities.
It’s a key piece of healing.
Your day can go in two very different directions depending on what’s happening in your internal world.
Because your internal state affects how you think, which affects all your decisions - big and small and your decisions affect the trajectory of your life and the level of satisfaction, joy and ease you get to experience.
Growing up in a dysfunctional household, life was very very serious.
As an adult in recovery and away from the danger you can finally access the empowered self that was always there underneath.
So often, emotions weren’t allowed to be expressed as a child and recovery involves developing emotional literacy and building bridges, connections and a relationship with all parts of ourselves.
Understanding all of this is one thing. But if you've spent decades in therapy, done the work, and there's still a part of you frozen in that old story, still running your days from a place of fear and urgency, that's the layer most approaches never reach.
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About the Author
Mary Toolan is the founder of Scapegoat Child Recovery Ltd.
She works with high-functioning adults who were cast as the family scapegoat and are now navigating life after No Contact, or actively working towards it.
Her work helps people untangle the attachment trauma and identity conditioning shaped by family scapegoating, so they can build a calmer, more self-directed life.
Ready for deeper support?
If you're No Contact (or actively moving towards it) and would like support navigating the next stage of your healing journey, you can learn more about my one-to-one coaching programme here.
