YOU CAN RECOVER FROM GROWING UP AS A “GOOD GIRL”.

I’d like to be able to persuade you that amazing change is possible in your life.

I’d like to convince you that some very simple practices can shift you out of self-judgement, neediness and anxiety and into equanimity, joy and peace of mind.

The problem is, I have a handicap.

You see, most people expect to be persuaded by a “rags to riches” story, or whatever the equivalent is in terms of psychological and spiritual transformation. Maybe a “pathetic to peaceful” story? Or a “suffering to saintly” story?

Maybe not.

Anyway. The name of the story isn’t my problem.

The problem is that I grew up in an environment where pretense was a virtue.

I googled it to make sure I was clear:

pretense = “a false display of feelings, attitudes or intentions”

As a young child I took on a mission (for some reason that escapes me now) to be a Very Good Girl. That meant doing what I was told, meeting other people’s expectations, not getting angry, not crying too much, and not being annoyingly scared or sad.

Suppression of “negative” emotions appeared to be expected, necessary and modeled by those around me with varying degrees of “success”. Hence the pretense. I learned to squash the negative emotions WAY down and appear in control.

I didn’t realise how “successful” I’d been in my good girl mission until someone in my mid-twenties referred to me as an “Ice Queen”. That gave me a fright. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

All through my twenties, thirties and well into my forties I felt like an emotional wreck much of the time and wallowed in self-hatred, neediness and shame but I appeared to most folks to be doing just fine. Better than fine, in fact. I appeared to be thriving. I kept the pain well hidden and it was dealt with very privately.

Very few people in my life saw anything other than the cover story.

So for most people who have known me for a while, any “pathetic to peaceful” tale just wouldn’t ring true. I seemed happy and thriving back then and I seem happy and thriving now. So where’s the big transformation??

On the surface I seem to have had a very easy life and in many ways that is true. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn around now and try and convince you how much suffering I “really” went through. Because that would be a bit pathetic, right? (just kidding).

The thing about suppressed emotion is that it has all got to come up and out eventually. There’s no way to keep it locked away permanently. It sits there as what Eckhart Tolle calls the “painbody”.

I hear a lot about spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity. I honestly don’t know whether I’ve fallen into either of those traps. If I have, then they were very temporary fixes. In my experience, there is no way of actually, permanently, bypassing the suppressed emotion and old patterns of thinking that make up the painbody. It all finds a way of leaking out. Positivity that isn’t built on strong foundations and expressed with integrity always crumbles eventually.

In my case, everything changed after I gave birth to my eldest child. There is nothing quite like extended sleep deprivation and a child that feels everything very intensely to stir up the painbody. All that suppressed emotion and old “stuff” came up to (metaphorically) bite me on the bum. Hard.

When I finally got bitten on the bum so hard I was drenched in emotional pain, it was time to unlearn the pretense and control patterns and pick up a few helpful spiritual practices.

I don’t beat around the bush with psychology any more, because, while it’s been very useful at times, it’s also not the main game.

For me the main game for the last 20 years has been spiritual practice and seeking of truth.

“Who am I and what the hell is really going on here?” has been a persistent question.

Somehow, I’ve been guided to spiritual teachers and practices that have allowed old emotion to be gradually released and old stories, patterns and beliefs to dissolve and fall away.

The process of spiritual awakening is well underway now and as a result there is a lot of “genuine” happiness and thriving in my life.

I have no idea if there are more old deposits of pain, grief, anger or fear that are lurking in my system just waiting for some event to trigger them into an uprising. It doesn’t seem like that is the case. There is an open-hearted flow of clear, loving energy that is pretty consistent these days. But who knows? I could be in for all sorts of surprises.

I know there are still old patterns of thinking at play in my life. The ego and the voice of the inner critic are a lot quieter than they were, but they haven’t disappeared. Who can say what problems this will generate in the future?

When a problem arises there’s a good chance it will be treated as an opportunity for spiritual growth. The tools and practices I learned for clearing and transformation have been used many times now. There is enough water under the bridge that my fear of “bad things happening” in the future has gone pretty quiet.

However, I don’t expect you to believe my story, for the reasons outlined above.

If you’ve read this far and you’ve also suffered the burden of pretense and the terrible shame of being a good girl gone wrong — I have something to quietly whisper in your ear.

“It’s OK to relax and let go of control. You can recover from being a good girl.”

And

“The deepest truth and the gentle warmth of the heart is already waiting within.”