Latest / Unlocking The Paradigm Portal / Be Real, Not Nice: The Story Underneath the Story. | The Defective Wound (Generational Wounds Series)

Transcript

Be Real, Not Nice: The Story Underneath the Story. | The Defective Wound (Generational Wounds Series) · Unlocking The Paradigm Portal

• 0:09
  Good morning. Welcome back to unlocking the
• 0:12
  Paradigm portal. My name is Sarah, so let me tell
• 0:15
  you, the struggle to record this one has been real.
• 0:18
  So once again, I'm a fumble, I'm a fuck up, I'm a stumble.
• 0:22
  You might hear a cat meowing or cars going.
• 0:25
  I don't know. We're going with it.
• 0:27
  My phone has been ringing off the hook.
• 0:29
  I'm done trying. So I am just going to get this
• 0:33
  done. Work with me.
• 0:35
  So Monday we talked about the trapped wound, right?
• 0:38
  That's the one that keeps the exit mapped and it turns freedom
• 0:41
  into a cage that you build yourself.
• 0:45
  So if that one got you and hits you in the fields, sit with it.
• 0:48
  Don't rush past it. It sucks.
• 0:51
  I know the only way to the other side of the stuff is to sit in
• 0:54
  the suck. OK, so today we're going to go
• 0:57
  somewhere that lives underneath that one, underneath a lot of
• 1:00
  the wounds, honestly, because the trapped wound, the unworthy
• 1:03
  wound, the unlovable wound, they all need a reason to exist.
• 1:07
  And this is the reason or one of the reasons.
• 1:10
  It's the story that explains the other stories, and it doesn't
• 1:13
  make noise. It doesn't have some big fancy
• 1:15
  dramatic origin story. It just sits underneath
• 1:18
  everything else festering and has been there so long you've
• 1:21
  probably mistaken it for your personality.
• 1:24
  So today we're talking about the defective wound or there's
• 1:28
  something wrong with me. Now you have a story about
• 1:33
  yourself that you have never said out loud.
• 1:37
  And I'm going to do a dramatic pause on this one because I want
• 1:40
  you to let that story come up to the surface.
• 1:42
  What is it? We all have one.
• 1:46
  OK. I feel like some of you may be
• 1:49
  feeling a little flushed or a little called out.
• 1:54
  And this story, whatever it is about yourself, you haven't told
• 1:57
  your therapist, you haven't told your best friend, you haven't
• 2:00
  told the person you've been most honest with in your entire adult
• 2:03
  life, because this one, it feels different.
• 2:06
  The other story is you can work on those.
• 2:08
  You can trace them, you can examine them, bring them into
• 2:11
  the light. But this one feels like it might
• 2:13
  just actually be true. And the story might go something
• 2:17
  like this. Everyone else seems to know
• 2:19
  something that you don't. Everyone else moves through
• 2:24
  their life with this basic sense of being OK and grounded in a
• 2:28
  quiet confidence that they belong wherever they happen to
• 2:31
  be. And you've spent your entire
• 2:34
  life either performing that or working around the fact that it
• 2:38
  hasn't arrived for you. Waiting.
• 2:40
  Just waiting for the day it clicks into place and wondering
• 2:43
  in those quieter moments whether it ever will.
• 2:47
  And you might be competent, you might possibly be excellent,
• 2:51
  possibly even exceptional by every external measure.
• 2:56
  And underneath all of it, there is a voice.
• 2:59
  Not dramatic, not loud, just relentlessly consistent, that
• 3:02
  says if they knew, if they could see the whole picture, if the
• 3:07
  curtain ever came all the way down, they would find it.
• 3:10
  The thing that confirms what you've always quietly suspected
• 3:14
  about yourself. And that voice is not the truth.
• 3:17
  You've just been living inside it like it's the truth.
• 3:21
  So the defective wound is the core belief that something is
• 3:24
  fundamentally, structurally wrong with you.
• 3:27
  Not situationally wrong. Not I made a bad choice or I'm
• 3:30
  going through something hard, essentially wrong, built in
• 3:34
  wrong. The kind of wrong that isn't a
• 3:37
  phase and isn't a problem you can solve.
• 3:40
  It's just a permanent feature of what you are.
• 3:43
  And it's different from the unworthy wound, which says I
• 3:46
  have to earn my place. It's different from the
• 3:48
  unlovable wound, which says I won't be chosen.
• 3:51
  The defective wound goes deeper than both, and it says the
• 3:54
  reason I have to earn my place is because there is something in
• 3:58
  me that doesn't belong. The reason I won't be chosen is
• 4:01
  because anyone who looks closely enough will eventually find it.
• 4:06
  It is the story underneath the other stories.
• 4:10
  And here's where it gets relational.
• 4:11
  Because this wound doesn't just live in you privately.
• 4:14
  It shows up in how you connect with other people.
• 4:17
  Or don't. Because if there is something
• 4:20
  fundamentally wrong with you, then being fully seen becomes
• 4:23
  dangerous. Closeness means someone gets
• 4:26
  close enough to find the flaw. Intimacy means you are findable,
• 4:30
  and findable means rejection becomes possible in a way that
• 4:33
  feels unsurvivable. So the wound builds a protection
• 4:38
  system, and it keeps people at arm's length, and it seeks
• 4:42
  constant external validation, not because you're needy, but
• 4:45
  because the wound is trying to get enough evidence from the
• 4:48
  outside to quiet what it's saying on the inside.
• 4:51
  And it performs and it perfects and it preempts every possible
• 4:55
  criticism by getting there first.
• 4:58
  It can look like imposter syndrome, so persistent it has
• 5:02
  become your operating system, not just at work, but in life.
• 5:07
  The sense that you have assembled a version of yourself
• 5:10
  that passes inspection, but the assembly is yours, and the
• 5:13
  inspection never fully closes. And it shows up as the need to
• 5:18
  explain yourself constantly, to preemptively justify your
• 5:22
  choices, your reactions, your needs, before anyone has
• 5:25
  questioned them. Because the wound lives in
• 5:28
  anticipation of the finding. It knows the question is coming,
• 5:32
  so it answers before it's asked, and it shows up as a response to
• 5:37
  being truly seen. Someone reaches past that
• 5:40
  curated version and touches the actual person underneath, and
• 5:44
  instead of feeling known, you feel exposed.
• 5:47
  And instead of relief, there is something closer to panic.
• 5:51
  Because visible means findable, and findable means The thing is
• 5:55
  now within reach. Perfectionism is not about high
• 5:59
  standards, it is about the terror of being found out.
• 6:02
  And you have been performing Florida State for an audience of
• 6:05
  1, The voice inside you that is waiting for the proof.
• 6:10
  So where did this come from? Because we know it didn't start
• 6:13
  with you. Well, the Greatest Generation
• 6:16
  survived by being useful, and in a world shaped by war and
• 6:20
  economic collapse, your value was entirely located in your
• 6:23
  function. Feelings, needs, the interior
• 6:26
  life. Those weren't just irrelevant,
• 6:29
  they were potentially dangerous. Weakness was a liability.
• 6:33
  The message transmitted clearly and consistently.
• 6:36
  Who you are on the inside doesn't matter.
• 6:39
  What you do and what you endure is what counts.
• 6:43
  So what does that produce? Well, a generation of people who
• 6:47
  had no language for their inner lives, who were taught
• 6:50
  structurally that having an inner life at all was self
• 6:54
  indulgence, and who handed that teaching down to the silent
• 6:58
  generation. So now the silent generation
• 7:00
  internalized it completely. You did not show your struggles.
• 7:05
  You manage them through work, through control, through the
• 7:07
  kind of rigid composure that looks like dignity but is really
• 7:12
  a very tight lid on a very full container.
• 7:16
  And the children who grew up in those houses learned the
• 7:19
  interior is not safe to show. The version of you that is
• 7:23
  struggling goes in the basement and the version that functions
• 7:26
  goes out in the world. So the boomers, they came next.
• 7:31
  They grew up in post war prosperity with one very clear
• 7:34
  message. Achieve capital A the house, the
• 7:38
  career, the status, the upward trajectory worth was entirely
• 7:42
  located in what you built and what you earned.
• 7:45
  Feelings were besides the point. Results were the point.
• 7:49
  The defective wound in this generation sounds like if I'm
• 7:52
  not succeeding at the pace and level I'm supposed to be,
• 7:56
  something must be wrong with me. Not with the circumstances, but
• 8:00
  with me. And they pass that down by
• 8:03
  making achievement the primary language of love.
• 8:06
  Praise for performance, silence for struggle.
• 8:09
  Children who learned very early that what they did mattered far
• 8:13
  more than who they were. So Gen.
• 8:16
  X, they got it through absence. Not always physical absence.
• 8:20
  Sometimes it was emotional parents who were there but not
• 8:23
  really there. A generation of adults who were
• 8:26
  working and struggling and surviving and divorcing and
• 8:29
  drinking. And children who learn to read
• 8:32
  the room take up less space and not add to the pile.
• 8:36
  And when a child consistently feels like a burden or an
• 8:39
  afterthought, the nervous system does what it always does.
• 8:43
  It makes the child the reason, not the circumstances, not the
• 8:47
  adults who were overwhelmed and had nothing left you.
• 8:51
  Something about you required too much.
• 8:54
  Something about you was too needy, too sensitive, too much
• 8:57
  to manage on top of everything else.
• 9:00
  That is not the truth. But a child doesn't have access
• 9:03
  to the full picture. They only have themselves as the
• 9:05
  variable. And that conclusion, unspoken,
• 9:08
  early, persistent, becomes the defective wounds foundation.
• 9:13
  There is something about me that is inherently too much and not
• 9:17
  enough at the same time. So millennials were the that
• 9:22
  word participation trophy generation.
• 9:26
  I don't even, I can't stand the participation trophy bullshit.
• 9:29
  They were told from childhood that they were exceptional and
• 9:32
  that they mattered and that the world was waiting for them.
• 9:35
  And then they graduated into a recession, drowning in student
• 9:38
  debt into a job market that didn't want them and a housing
• 9:42
  market they couldn't touch. And the story didn't match the
• 9:46
  reality. And when that gap opens up, the
• 9:48
  defective wound has already explanation.
• 9:51
  Maybe I was never actually that good.
• 9:54
  Maybe everyone else figured something out that I missed.
• 9:57
  Millennials also came of age as social media arrived, which
• 10:01
  handed the wound its favorite toy, a public scoreboard.
• 10:06
  So worth became measurable, likable, shareable.
• 10:09
  And the version of yourself that doesn't perform well enough in
• 10:13
  public doesn't just feel inadequate privately, it looks
• 10:17
  inadequate to everyone. So then Gen.
• 10:20
  Z, they came of age in a world that felt genuinely unsafe.
• 10:24
  School shootings, A pandemic, a climate crisis, economic
• 10:28
  instability. Not as background noise, but is
• 10:32
  the actual texture of daily life.
• 10:35
  They are the most mentally health literate generation in
• 10:38
  history. Talk to one sometime.
• 10:41
  They've got all the lingo. They know the language, they can
• 10:45
  name their triggers, identify their attachment styles, analyze
• 10:48
  their parents, explain their nervous system responses.
• 10:51
  And still, underneath all that fluency, the defective wound
• 10:57
  runs. Maybe because knowing the
• 11:00
  language and actually healing are not the same thing.
• 11:05
  Maybe because being told your feelings are valid while
• 11:09
  watching every system that was supposed to hold you fail
• 11:12
  creates its own particular exhaustion.
• 11:16
  The Gen. Z defective wound sounds like I
• 11:19
  know exactly what's wrong with me and I still can't fix it.
• 11:23
  Which to a wound looking for evidence sounds an awful lot
• 11:26
  like proof. Different generations, different
• 11:30
  experiences, same wound at the bottom.
• 11:34
  The wound got handed down through every generation that
• 11:37
  taught its children the interior is not safe to show.
• 11:41
  You are not defective. You are the inheritor of a very
• 11:46
  long silence. So how does this show up on a
• 11:50
  Wednesday morning at the crack of dawn in your actual life?
• 11:55
  It looks like the apology that comes before anyone has
• 11:58
  complained. You do something, you make a
• 12:00
  choice, you take up space, and immediately you apologize for
• 12:03
  it. Not because anyone objected,
• 12:05
  because the wound expects the objection and moves to preempt
• 12:09
  it. You've been doing this so long
• 12:11
  it feels like you're being polite, and it looks like the
• 12:15
  way you tell stories about yourself.
• 12:17
  There's always a caveat, there's always a disclaimer, always the
• 12:21
  part where you undercut your own accomplishment before someone
• 12:25
  else can. I got the promotion, but
• 12:28
  honestly they were probably just desperate.
• 12:31
  The response was really good, but I don't know if it will
• 12:34
  last. People seem to like it, but I'm
• 12:37
  not sure it's actually that good.
• 12:39
  You land the punch on yourself before the crowd gets a chance.
• 12:43
  You framed it as humility, but it isn't humility.
• 12:46
  It's the wound running interference, and it looks like
• 12:50
  being uncomfortable with praise. Someone tells you that you did
• 12:53
  something genuinely, measurably exceptional, and you cannot
• 12:58
  receive it cleanly. It bounces off, or it lands
• 13:01
  briefly and then something in you dismantles it.
• 13:04
  They're being nice. They don't know the whole
• 13:05
  picture. You are incapable of simply
• 13:08
  saying thank you and letting it be true.
• 13:11
  And it looks like pulling back right when something gets real.
• 13:15
  A relationship starts to deepen. Someone is showing up
• 13:19
  consistently, choosing you, clearly getting close enough to
• 13:21
  actually see you. And instead of leaning in,
• 13:24
  something in you starts to manufacture distance.
• 13:27
  Not consciously, just a slight withdrawal, a sudden awareness
• 13:31
  of their flaws, A creeping feeling that this is moving too
• 13:35
  fast. The wound doesn't want you
• 13:38
  findable, so it engineers space before anyone gets close enough
• 13:41
  to look. It looks like choosing
• 13:44
  relationships where you are always slightly less than your
• 13:48
  partner in some legible way, always the one who loves more,
• 13:52
  always the one more invested, more emotionally available.
• 13:56
  And this is where it differs from the trapped wound.
• 13:58
  Because in that case, you're always the one who needs them a
• 14:01
  little bit less, loves them a little bit less, always has 1
• 14:05
  foot out and a little less emotionally available.
• 14:08
  They're mirror images. And it's not because that's what
• 14:11
  you want, but it's because being the one who loves more or with
• 14:16
  the trapped wound loves less, gives the wound it's out.
• 14:19
  Of course it isn't reciprocal because of the thing.
• 14:23
  This confirms what I always knew, that there's something
• 14:26
  wrong. And it looks like the 3:00 AM
• 14:28
  audit when the lights are off and the performance is over and
• 14:31
  there's nothing left to do but exist with yourself and the
• 14:34
  inventory starts running, every mistake, every falling short,
• 14:39
  not to learn from it, just to confirm it.
• 14:41
  Like self flagellation. The wound is not looking for
• 14:45
  evidence that you're OK, it's looking for evidence that it's
• 14:47
  right. So the defective wound does not
• 14:50
  rest. It's been auditing you your
• 14:52
  entire life and the audit never clears you because it was never
• 14:56
  designed to. So here is what the effect the
• 15:00
  defective wound does not want you to look at too closely.
• 15:04
  And as always, I'm going to share it because I like to poke
• 15:07
  at this stuff. The story it tells, that there
• 15:10
  is something fundamentally wrong with you, is formed at an age
• 15:14
  when you had no framework for what was actually happening.
• 15:18
  You were a child in a system, and children make themselves the
• 15:22
  center of the story. And when something goes wrong in
• 15:25
  a child's world, the child's brain doesn't conclude the
• 15:28
  adults around me are struggling with their own unexamined
• 15:31
  wounds. The child's brain concludes
• 15:34
  there is something about me that caused this.
• 15:37
  Because if the problem is you, at least you have some control
• 15:40
  over it, and at least it's something you can theoretically
• 15:43
  fix. It was a rational conclusion for
• 15:47
  a child to reach, and you are still living inside of it as a
• 15:50
  fully grown adult decades later in a completely different
• 15:55
  context. Because no one ever came back
• 15:57
  and corrected it. So here is the correction.
• 16:01
  The defect was never real. The version of events the wound
• 16:05
  has been narrating, the one where you are the common
• 16:07
  variable in every difficulty, the person with the fundamental
• 16:11
  flaw. That is not an objective
• 16:13
  analysis. And yes, I'm bringing a little
• 16:15
  bit out of the Mama bear voice out right now because I have
• 16:19
  seen this in my children. I felt it in me, and I'm just
• 16:24
  going to fall on mom you right now.
• 16:26
  It is not about you. You are an adult.
• 16:30
  The child is running everything right now.
• 16:32
  It's the child's explanation that literally calcified into a
• 16:36
  belief before you were old enough to question it.
• 16:41
  So when you name it and when you can hear it as a voice rather
• 16:44
  than live inside it as truth, that's where the distance starts
• 16:48
  to form. That's that story again.
• 16:52
  That's it's not that there's the truth again, it's small, it's
• 16:56
  insignificant or but it's also significant.
• 16:59
  Excuse me. And it truly ultimately is
• 17:01
  insignificant. I'm going to share a little
• 17:03
  example of this. I remember years ago getting hit
• 17:06
  a couple of years ago, getting hit by a tidal wave of the most
• 17:09
  intense imposter syndrome ever. And I was sitting on my back
• 17:13
  deck and if I've had been feeling really good and all the
• 17:16
  sudden it was like getting nailed by it.
• 17:18
  And I was like borderline hyperventilating.
• 17:20
  And all that was running through my head was, who do you think
• 17:23
  you are? And it was debilitating.
• 17:27
  It literally stopped me in my tracks.
• 17:28
  And that day, I was supposed to have a family therapy
• 17:30
  appointment with myself and my two kids.
• 17:33
  And literally Quinn threw herself on the ground, as she is
• 17:36
  known to do when she doesn't want to do something and
• 17:38
  pretends that she's died and literally goes.
• 17:42
  And Brody just was like, dude, I'm not going.
• 17:45
  So I said, OK, it's too late to cancel.
• 17:47
  I'm going to go by myself. I go by myself.
• 17:49
  I sit down with the guy, Joel. He was amazing.
• 17:52
  And I said, Joel, I am getting crippled by imposter syndrome
• 17:54
  right now. And he said, what are you
• 17:56
  hearing in your mind? And I said, I'm hearing who do
• 17:58
  you think you are? And he said, where did that come
• 18:00
  from? So being me, I excavate all the
• 18:03
  way back to the beginning. And I was like, not my childhood
• 18:05
  because my parents, you know, they have their challenges.
• 18:08
  But one thing they always said to me is you can do anything you
• 18:11
  want because you will work hard enough.
• 18:13
  So it's not from them. And then as I kept moving
• 18:16
  forward, I figured out whose voice it was.
• 18:19
  And I told him. And this brilliant, brilliant
• 18:23
  therapist looks at me calmly and goes, OK, when are you going to
• 18:27
  stop letting him control you? And it was like I hadn't thought
• 18:31
  of it that way because I hadn't separated.
• 18:33
  To me, it was my voice in my head saying that, but it wasn't.
• 18:36
  It was someone else's. And in this case, it was nothing
• 18:39
  he ever actually said to me. It was implied that I was not
• 18:42
  capable, that I was not sufficient, that I didn't know
• 18:47
  how to do anything. Just very subtly, manipulatively
• 18:52
  implied. And it's settled in there.
• 18:55
  But hearing that guy look at me and say, when are you going to
• 18:58
  stop letting him control you? Honestly, all I'd literally set
• 19:02
  up and I went, oh, that was a smart move.
• 19:05
  Game on. It's go time and I have every
• 19:08
  time that little voice comes up, I use the person's name and I go
• 19:12
  sit the fuck down. Not today, Satan.
• 19:16
  So whatever that story is that's coming up, whose voice is it?
• 19:20
  And just think of the story that I just shared.
• 19:23
  So here's the other thing. There's something else that
• 19:26
  starts to shift once you like flip the lights on and you can
• 19:28
  see it clearly. The wound kept you from letting
• 19:31
  people get close enough to actually see you.
• 19:34
  This was another reason it was AI just have in the last couple
• 19:37
  of days had huge, huge awareness of the unseen wound that I'll
• 19:41
  get into probably next week. But this running under the
• 19:46
  surface prevents you from allowing people to actually know
• 19:49
  you and see you clearly because you're afraid of what they see.
• 19:53
  But the thing it was protecting you from being seen and found
• 19:55
  wanting has never actually happened.
• 19:59
  When you've let someone in who's actually capable of holding what
• 20:02
  they found. Think about that.
• 20:05
  Who around you have you let in? And they are just like I got
• 20:09
  you. Amazing, right?
• 20:12
  So the people that can't hold it, they are not your people.
• 20:15
  And the catastrophe that the wound has predicted would happen
• 20:19
  has not arrived. The wound has been running a
• 20:23
  protection protocol from a threat that was real once,
• 20:26
  maybe, but it isn't anymore. And the healing isn't about
• 20:31
  fixing what's broken, it's about understanding that the break was
• 20:35
  never in you, it was in what happened to you.
• 20:37
  And those are not the same thing because you are not a person
• 20:40
  with a defect you've been successfully hiding.
• 20:43
  You're a person who was handed a story about yourself before you
• 20:47
  were old enough to Fact Check it.
• 20:49
  And it's time to audit the auditor.
• 20:51
  It's time to let the grown up take charge.
• 20:54
  OK, so you're stoned for this week.
• 20:56
  And I'm sorry that this one has run a little bit long.
• 20:58
  And I'm going to take back that sorry because that's the
• 21:00
  remnants of my something is wrong with me wound.
• 21:03
  No sorry needed. First place, find one place this
• 21:06
  week where the wound is running the preemptive apology.
• 21:09
  Hey, perfect example. I just did that right where it
• 21:13
  puts up the disclaimer or the undercut before anyone else gets
• 21:16
  there and just catch it like I literally just did in real time.
• 21:20
  You don't have to stop doing it yet.
• 21:22
  Just catch it mid swing and notice what it's protecting you
• 21:25
  from by getting there first. Second, receive one thing
• 21:29
  completely this week. One compliment, 1
• 21:31
  acknowledgement, 1 moment where someone reaches towards you with
• 21:34
  something genuine and instead of deflecting, minimizing, or
• 21:37
  immediately reciprocating so fast that you never actually
• 21:40
  absorbed it, you just say thank you and you let it be true for
• 21:45
  10 seconds. Better yet, say thank you.
• 21:47
  I am, if that's an appropriate phrasing.
• 21:50
  Just take the compliment. You don't have to do it forever.
• 21:53
  Just hold it for 10 seconds. Let something good land without.
• 21:57
  Like an editorial commentary. The wound says that you will be
• 22:01
  found out, but the truth is you've already been found.
• 22:04
  And what they found was not the defect.
• 22:06
  It was you. Just you and all your messy
• 22:09
  glory. Look at my blog post ever.
• 22:11
  If you get a chance. It's I end it with with you in
• 22:14
  the messy middle for a reason. Because it's always messy and
• 22:18
  you are enough. You are more than enough in that
• 22:21
  messy middle. So I will see you Friday and
• 22:23
  we're going to end this week with the bad wound, the one
• 22:26
  build entirely out of guilt, the one that has you apologizing.
• 22:30
  See, we're going to take the apology thing and go to the next
• 22:32
  level, has you apologizing for your own existence in 100
• 22:36
  different ways every single day. It's the last one for the week,
• 22:40
  and it might be the most insidious of all for this week.
• 22:43
  And then next week we're going to go into some more.
• 22:45
  So come back for it and have a fantastic Wednesday.