Latest / Unlocking The Paradigm Portal / Be Real, Not Nice: The Cage Of Your Own Making. | The Trapped Wound (Generational Wounds Series)

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Be Real, Not Nice: The Cage Of Your Own Making. | The Trapped Wound (Generational Wounds Series) · Unlocking The Paradigm Portal

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  Good morning, Sunshine's. Welcome back to Unlock in the
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  Paradigm portal. My name is Sarah.
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  So let me tell you, this is like the 18th time I've tried to
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  record this because just like the unlovable wound that I did
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  last week, this one today was a particularly intense one for me.
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  And it keeps getting my throat choked up and I have coughing
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  fit. So as I did on Wednesday last
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  week, I'm just going to roll with it.
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  I may cough, I may fumble. Just hold on, OK?
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  So last week we went deep into the three wounds that build the
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  open vessel. The unworthy wound, the
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  unlovable wound, the unsafe wound.
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  And if you were here for Sunday's deep dive, that was
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  yesterday. You heard me talk about the boat
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  and what it means to finally close the bottom.
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  So this week we're going to go somewhere new.
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  Because those 3 wounds, they don't just live in you quietly.
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  They generate responses and coping strategies.
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  Entire personality architectures built around keeping you safe
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  from the thing the wound is most afraid of.
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  So this week we're going deep. We're talking about what those
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  responses look like. Today we're talking about the
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  trapped wound. Wednesday is the defective or
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  there's something wrong with me wound, and Friday is the bad
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  wound, which shows up as feeling guilty.
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  And I want to warn you right now, these ones are going to hit
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  differently because these aren't just about what happened to you.
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  These are about what you do with what happened to you.
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  And that part is a little harder to look at.
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  So if you're feeling uncomfortable, lean into it.
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  I'm right here. I've got your back.
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  OK? You know what you do when
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  something good shows up? You look for the exit.
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  Not consciously and not in a dramatic, I need to sabotage
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  this kind of way. Just quietly, like a little scan
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  of the room or a small inventory of what it would cost you to be
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  in this, like really in it, and what it would cost you to leave.
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  And somewhere in that calculation, leaving starts to
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  feel like the smarter option, or the safer option, or the option
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  that keeps you intact. And the good thing, like the
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  real thing, the one that actually had potential, either
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  ends or never fully begins. And you tell yourself it just
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  wasn't right, or the timing was off, or you weren't ready, or
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  something was missing. What was missing was your
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  willingness to stay inside something that mattered without
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  an escape hatch already mapped. That's the trapped wound.
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  And it has been running your life a lot longer than you
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  realize. You don't have a commitment
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  problem. You have a safety problem.
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  And those are not the same thing.
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  And here's the cruelest irony of the trapped wound.
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  You have spent your entire life running from the cage, from
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  anything that felt like restriction, like the walls
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  closing in, like being held somewhere that you couldn't
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  leave. Commitment felt like a cage.
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  Intimacy felt like a cage. Vulnerability felt like a cage
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  being fully known by someone. Like really, all in.
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  No exits felt like the door locking behind you.
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  So you stayed free and you stayed loose and you stayed 1
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  foot out. You probably stayed with people
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  that you didn't have to get too deep with or too attached to.
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  And what you built instead, and all that freedom and all that
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  protective space was a cage of your own making, not one that
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  locked you in with someone, one that locked everyone else out,
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  bars facing outward, you on the inside, feeling victorious and
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  untouchable and completely, devastatingly alone.
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  The wound convinced you. It was keeping you from being
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  trapped, but it was the trap the whole time.
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  So what is the trapped wound? Down deep, it's this core belief
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  that staying, really staying, fully staying, no exit strategy.
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  Staying is dangerous. Not just uncomfortable, but
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  dangerous. Like a threat to your actual
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  survival, a threat to your entire system.
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  And it's not the same as the unlovable wound, although
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  they're cousins of sorts. The unlovable wound says I won't
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  be chosen, and the trapped wound says even if I am chosen, I
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  cannot afford to be held because held means no way out, and no
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  way out means if this goes wrong, I am completely at the
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  mercy of someone else's choices. And that is the thing the
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  trapped wound cannot tolerate. So it engineers freedom
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  constantly, quietly. It keeps 1 foot out the door in
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  every significant relationship. It resists labels.
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  It resists depth. It resists the kind of knowing
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  that makes you truly accountable to another person.
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  And it finds reasons. Like, very convincing, very
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  logical reasons why this particular situation requires
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  more space, more time, more independence than maybe the
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  average person would need. And it can look like a fierce
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  commitment to autonomy. And autonomy is genuinely
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  healthy until it becomes a Moat, until it becomes a thing you
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  hide behind so nothing can get close enough to matter enough to
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  hurt you. And it can look like chronically
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  choosing unavailable people, or the one who lives far away, or
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  the one who is emotionally closed off, the one who is
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  actively in a different life situation that makes real
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  commitment structurally impossible.
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  And you tell yourself it's bad luck, but it's not bad luck.
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  The wound is selecting people who cannot actually hold you,
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  because being held is the thing you are most afraid of.
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  And it can look like leaving right before things get real,
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  right before the conversation. That would deepen something
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  right before the vulnerability that would crack you open right
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  before the moment where you would have to be seen fully and
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  respond to being seen and staying anyway.
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  The wound times its exit perfectly just before the point
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  of no return. So the trapped wound doesn't
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  blow things up, it just never fully lands.
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  And it is very, very good at making that look like
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  discernment. So now the generational map,
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  where did this come from? Because it has very deep roots.
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  And we're going to go all the way back.
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  I did dive into the Greatest Generation, which is the one
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  before the Silent Generation. Because this one, this one
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  really sticks. And you can see it best when you
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  go back to the Greatest Generation.
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  So they were born in those early part of the 1900s, and they were
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  shaped by World War One, the Great Depression, World War 2.
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  And these are people for whom survival was not a metaphor.
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  It was a daily, literal project. You did not have the luxury of
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  examining your feelings about your circumstances.
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  You endured your circumstances. You kept moving.
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  You did not stop to ask whether the life you were living was the
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  one you actually wanted. Because wanting was besides the
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  point. Getting through was the point.
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  So what does that produce in terms of relationships?
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  It produces duty, obligation. You stayed because leaving
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  wasn't an option. Economically, socially,
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  structurally. You made it work because you had
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  no other framework. Love was something you decided,
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  not something you felt your way into.
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  And choice, like real choice, the kind that comes from genuine
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  intention and intentional decision making, was a luxury
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  that they could not afford. And then the Silent Generation
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  inherited that framework and applied it to a world that was
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  starting to stabilize. But the template was already
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  set. You married who you were
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  supposed to marry. You stayed in the job you were
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  supposed to stay in. You did not make waves.
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  The trapped wound in this generation often ran in reverse.
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  Not the fear of being held, but the crushing weight of a life
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  lived entirely without exit. They were trapped in the literal
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  sense, and they passed that down.
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  And then the boomers, they grew up in the post war boom.
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  Stable homes, stable marriages. The picture of the American
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  dream on the outside. But stable doesn't mean healthy.
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  And what they watched were parents who stayed dutifully,
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  quietly, often times miserably, because leaving wasn't done.
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  Love as an obligation, marriage as an institution.
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  Emotion is something you managed privately and never discussed
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  openly. And then they came of age in a
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  cultural moment that blew all of that up.
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  The 60's, the 70s freedom, self-expression, questioning
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  everything their parents had accepted without question.
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  So the boomer trapped wound lives in that collision point
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  between the suffocating stability they were raised
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  inside and the radical freedom they reached for.
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  Commitment, started to feel like the thing their parents had.
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  Airless, dutiful, a life sentence.
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  And the wound said, I will never be that trapped.
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  So Gen. X got the wound in its most
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  distilled form, latchkey kids, divorce epidemic, A childhood
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  that required early self-sufficiency and taught very
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  effectively that depending on people is how you get stranded.
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  The Gen. X version of the trapped wound
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  is almost a point of pride, fierce independence and allergy
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  to need a bone deep conviction that the only person you can
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  truly rely on is yourself, which is adaptive and unbelievably
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  lonely and it makes genuine intimacy feel like handing
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  someone the keys to your own undoing.
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  And then millennials, they got a confusing double message.
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  You can have it all. You deserve to have it all.
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  But also the economy is collapsing and nothing is
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  stable, and the institutions that were supposed to hold you
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  are crumbling. The trapped wound in millennials
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  often shows up as chronic optionality, keeping the door
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  open, refusing to fully commit to anyone, path, relationship,
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  career, city. Because what if something better
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  is right around the corner? The wound reframes itself is
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  keeping your options open. It is not keeping your options
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  open. It is keeping your exits clear.
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  And then Gen. Z.
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  They're navigating this in real time in a world that has never
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  moved faster or offered more alternatives.
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  It's overwhelming. Swipe left, next option.
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  The algorithm will always surface something new.
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  The trapped wound has never had more cultural reinforcement, and
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  staying, really staying through the boring parts and the hard
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  parts and the parts that require you to be accountable to someone
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  other than yourself has never been more countercultural.
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  Here comes the coughing. So it's different generations,
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  different expressions, same wound, same question underneath
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  all of it. If I fully commit to this
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  person, this path, this life, and it turns out to be wrong,
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  who will I be and how will I survive?
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  Every generation found a different answer to that
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  question, and every generation passed their answer down to
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  children who had no idea they were receiving it.
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  So how does it show up right now and what does it look like on a
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  Monday morning in your actual life?
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  Well, it looks like being physically present and
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  emotionally somewhere else. You're there in the
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  relationship, the conversation, the moment, and simultaneously
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  quietly running a background check on whether you could
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  survive without it. Not because anything is wrong,
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  just because the wound needs to know the answer is yes before it
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  will let you relax into any of it.
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  And it looks like picking fights right after something goes
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  really well. Real intimacy just happened.
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  Something opened, something was shared, something felt genuinely
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  close, and within 48 hours you've manufactured a reason to
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  create distance. The wound doesn't like exposure.
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  It moves to cover it, and it looks like the sudden,
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  inexplicable loss of attraction right around the time someone
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  starts to really show up for you.
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  They're consistent, they're available, they're choosing you,
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  clearly, and you feel nothing. Or worse, faintly suffocated,
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  and you think it means they're not the right person.
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  What that means is that the wound just got activated and it
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  looks like having a very elaborate personal philosophy
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  about independence and space and not losing yourself in
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  relationships. A philosophy that is in many
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  ways genuinely healthy, but that you apply so rigorously that
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  real closeness never actually has room to form.
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  And it looks like staying in relationships that are
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  comfortably distant. That situation ship that never
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  quite defines itself. The relationship with someone
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  emotionally unavailable enough that you never have to be fully
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  accountable for your own unavailability.
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  The dynamic where both people are keeping 1 foot out and
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  calling it chemistry. These are relationships where
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  you don't have to invest emotionally.
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  And it looks like a very specific kind of regret.
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  Not the loud dramatic kind, the quiet kind.
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  The 3:00 AM kind. The one that shows up when you
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  think about the people and the moments you edged away from
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  right when they were getting real.
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  When you think about what might have been possible if you'd
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  stayed inside of it instead of finding the door.
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  The trapped wound doesn't leave you with dramatic losses.
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  It leaves you with a long, quiet list of things that almost were,
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  and that is its own kind of devastating.
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  So here's the thing. The trapped wound does not want
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  you to know, and I'm going to share it.
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  Freedom is not the opposite of commitment.
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  Freedom is not the opposite of being held.
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  The wound has sold you a story that says staying.
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  Like, really, staying without the exit mapped means losing
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  yourself. It means becoming trapped in the
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  literal sense. It means handing over your
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  autonomy to someone who could use it against you.
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  But that is not what happens when two whole grounded people
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  choose each other. That is what happens when
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  someone who has never felt safe tries to do intimacy without
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  ever having healed. The part that doesn't believe
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  safety is real, real security. The kind that comes from doing
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  your own work and knowing who you are.
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  It doesn't evaporate when you commit to something.
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  It's what makes commitment possible without it feeling like
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  a cage. You don't lose yourself in
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  someone when you know who you are.
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  You bring yourself to them. And if you think back to
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  yesterday's episode and I talked about the person pulling up in
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  their own boat and tethering to yours because they've done their
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  work, think about that one. Go back and listen to that
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  episode. So the Wounds exit strategy has
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  been protecting you from exactly one thing, the risk of being
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  fully known and fully chosen and then fully lost.
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  Which is a real risk, genuinely. But love involves that risk.
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  And the wound solution never fully arriving doesn't actually
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  protect you from loss, it just guarantees a different kind of
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  loss. The loss of what could have
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  been, the loss of your own depth, the loss of finding out
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  what you were capable of. When you stay and when you turn
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  the lights on, when you name the pattern instead of living inside
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  of it over and over on a repetitive loop, the first thing
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  that shifts is the awareness of the exit strategy.
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  While it's running, you start to catch yourself.
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  You feel the distance start to form.
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  And you can ask, is this discernment or is this the
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  wound? Is this person actually wrong
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  for me or have they just gotten close enough that the alarm is
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  going off and you don't have to have the answer immediately, you
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  just have to stop moving toward the door on autopilot.
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  The exit strategy has kept you safe.
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  It has also kept you from finding out what you are capable
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  of when you don't leave, and that is worth knowing.
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  So you're stoned for today. Another two parter and don't put
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  any pressure on yourself with these.
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  The first part, where is your exit strategy right now?
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  And again, as I've said before, not in a relationship that is
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  genuinely unhealthy, toxic, unsupportive.
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  Not that one. That one.
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  Get the hell out of that one. See it for what it is.
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  Get out. Stop trying to save people or
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  change them or playing in your own patterns.
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  That's why you're listening to this.
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  But somewhere in your life where something real is available and
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  you have quietly, carefully kept yourself from fully landing in
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  it. A relationship, a friendship, a
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  career path, a creative project, something that matters enough to
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  be worth protecting yourself from.
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  Name it. Just name it the second part.
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  Sometime this week, I want you to do one thing without the exit
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  mapped. Sounds challenging, I know.
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  One conversation you've been having at arm's length?
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  Have it a little bit closer. Inch in one moment of real
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  connection you've been letting pass.
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  Let it land one place where you've been physically present
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  and emotionally somewhere else. Come all the way, even in, even
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  just dip a toe just once, just to find out what that feels
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  like. It's called exposure
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  reprogramming. 3 seconds in the discomfort just to start getting
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  your system used to it. It's not about forever, it's not
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  a lifetime commitment. It's just one moment of not
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  having the door propped open. That is enough.
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  That is everything and that is how it starts.
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  So I will be back Wednesday and we are going to get into the
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  defective wound. The one that says something is
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  fundamentally, irreparably wrong with you.
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  Sounds great, right? This one also has been impacting
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  way more people than I think they realize.
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  It is quiet, it is painful, it is vicious, and it has been
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  operating your system like a freaking virus.
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  So come back on Wednesday. Join me for that one.
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  And then as always, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday are the Light
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  in the dark series at 9:00 PM. So the 1:00 tomorrow night,
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  Tuesday night will be based on this particular trapped wound.
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  So leave some comments like share, subscribe, hype, all the
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  things, whatever. Just come back and let's keep
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  diving into it together. And if you're feeling
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  uncomfortable, if you're feeling nervous, leave a comment, send
• 18:29
  me an e-mail. I am in this with you and I am
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  here to support you. All right, have a great day.