Forty Thousand Feet From forty thousand feet, the feuds Shrink to a shimmer on the plain; What looked like armies of the wise Is one long river in the rain. A man below, at his black mic, Declares the world a hall of fools; He says their minds can’t be repaired, And he, of course, is not the rule. He warms to it: the dumb, he says, Can’t see the borders of their dark. A tidy science, with one flaw — It never checked him for the mark. The blindness he describes so well Is not a gift he got to skip; From up here, every prophet’s fist Looks like a hand that lost its grip. And some are born with narrower light They never got to choose; They love, they grieve, they hold the door — I will not laugh at what they lose. From here, the clever and the slow Are one bright blur of want and need; Both fall in love, both fear the dark, Both bleed when someone makes them bleed. I’ve been the fool in someone’s feed, Declaring what the crowd can’t see; The one mind I have keys to still Locks half its rooms away from me. Reason is not a hammer, friend; It’s a lamp you carry for your feet. You cannot shine it through a skull, But you can light your own dark street. So let the loud man keep his niche; Contempt sells tickets by the pound. I’d rather ask what I got wrong Than win the whole thing on the ground. We land. The dots are people now, With names, with debts, with someone who waits. The mind I’m sent here to repair Boarded with me — and it’s late
…
DCG
We are surrounded by idiots, outnumbered by fools, and the number grows greater every single day, because stupidity is immune to reason. Hear me again: stupidity is immune to reason. You can’t give them information to change them. You can’t give them data to fix them. Stupidity doesn’t accept that. And here’s the worst part. The Dunning-Kruger effect goes into play, because Dunning-Kruger says they’re so stupid they cannot recognize their own incompetence.
Alexithymia — a word she’s never heard — is where she lives: no language for the heart. Her feelings come like weather, without words, and leave her with no map of where to start. I grew up fluent in the language of need; I learned to read a doorway for a sign. I have ten thousand words for how I feel — she has a silence where I lay down mine. We met the way two old scars recognize a shape they’ve known before a word is said: her fear of holding on, my fear of goodbyes, two childhoods braided into a single thread. The closer that I came, the more she’d leave; the more she’d leave, the harder I would chase. Two nervous systems, armored to believe that longing is a dangerous kind of grace. She never left because I wasn’t enough — I was more love than she had learned to hold. The child whom no one comes for, in the dark, grows up believing warmth is something to withhold. And when the shame inside her starts to swell, she nitpicks, distances, and turns away; she calls my open heart “too much” — to hide the words she was never given leave to say. I’ve studied every pattern, every name — Bowlby, the chase, the great and quiet retreat — but knowing why a wound burns is not the same as being healed; my pulse still skips the beat. And love, I’ve learned, is real but not enough: the healing has to be a mutual art. I stay — but I will not abandon me. I keep my worth, and I still keep my heart. And still I count this strange and aching grace: she woke me to my wounds and to my worth. If we should ever heal, it’s face to face — two warriors, laying weapons on the earth. RSP
…
DCG
Alexithymia
A Post about the RSP/DCG epistolary collection, and the words she never had.
The Epistolary Collection For nearly 3 years this blog has carried a single story told in installments — a collection of poems and reflections signed RSP … DCG: two initials, two people, one story. It began quietly with “A Leap of Faith” in 2017, a poem about the wounds parents leave when they cannot show love, and it has run through dozens of pieces since — “Heal with me RP”, “R and D”, “A heart’s whisper”, and “The dissolution of entropy”, among many others. Read in order, the collection is an epistolary record of one relationship seen through the lens of attachment theory: my anxious attachment — the boy who learned to read a doorway for a sign, who sought approval because an absent father never offered it — and her dismissive avoidance, the woman who learned young that needing was dangerous and that the safest way to be loved was never to ask for it out loud.
This post is about the condition that sits underneath much of her avoidance, a condition that is tragic precisely because it is so often misunderstood: alexithymia.
What Alexithymia Is The word comes from the Greek — a (no), lexis (words), thymos (emotions): literally, “no words for emotions.” It was introduced by the late Harvard psychiatrist Peter Sifneos in the early 1970s (Psychology Today). A person living with alexithymia has difficulty experiencing, identifying, understanding, and expressing their own emotions. They may struggle to distinguish feelings from the bodily sensations that accompany them — a tight chest, a restless night — and their limited emotional vocabulary makes it hard to communicate what is happening inside them (Psychology Today; Luminet & Landré, PMC). It is not a mental illness or a character flaw. It is a trait, often forged in childhood, where feelings were not welcomed and no one came when the child cried.
The research links it directly to the attachment story this collection tells: the more avoidant the attachment style, the higher the alexithymia — avoidant individuals are particularly prone to difficulty describing feelings (De Panfilis et al., PMC; Zdankiewicz-Ścigała, PMC). The avoidance and the wordlessness are not separate problems. One grows from the other. What It Is Like to Love Someone Without Words I recently heard a widely shared video on Facebook — attributed to a speaker named Patrick, though I could not verify the source — about loving a dismissive-avoidant partner. Its central claim has stayed with me: your avoidant ex didn’t leave because you weren’t enough. They left because you were more than they could handle. Your emotional availability wasn’t the problem; it was the trigger. And underneath it all is shame — the quiet belief that they were not good enough for you. That is the tragedy of alexithymia in a relationship. It is not coldness. It is not indifference. It is a person whose feelings still arrive — the ache, the longing, the shame — but who was never given the vocabulary to meet them. Imagine a life where your own heart speaks a language you were never taught, where every emotion arrives as weather without a forecast: unnamable, overwhelming, and therefore best avoided. Imagine being asked “how do you feel?” and having nothing to say — not because you feel nothing, but because you cannot find the door. I am her opposite. I have ten thousand words for how I feel; I have written them here for years. She has a silence where I lay down mine. And that contrast — my fluency and her wordlessness — became the magnetic core of our dynamic: my anxious reaching, her avoidant retreating, the closer I came, the more she would leave. Two nervous systems, each armored by childhood, each mistaking the other’s survival strategy for rejection. What I Have Learned The hardest and kindest truth this collection has taught me: Love is not enough. Not by itself. Healing requires mutual work. One person cannot do the interior labor of another, no matter how patient, how fluent, how willing. I know this now — I wrote it into “Cliff notes from the heart”: love that saves another must not teach me how to lose.
I must not self-abandon. Staying in the push-pull is only survivable — only humane to us both — if I keep my worth, my boundaries, my self. Understanding her condition does not require dissolving into it. Empathy without self-erasure is the discipline. Knowledge helps, but it does not heal. I have studied Bowlby, the patterns, the chase-and-retreat. My pulse still skips. Knowing why a wound burns is not the same as being healed — hers or mine.
And still — gratitude. She woke me to my own attachment wounds. Because of her, I found the boy in the doorway, and I have spent years learning to take his hand. Whatever else this relationship becomes or fails to become, that awakening is a gift I will not stop counting.
The poem below distills all of it — her alexithymia, my anxious heart, the shame she carries, the work only she can do, and the strange, stubborn, profound love that remains.
Alexithymia — a word she’s never heard — is where she lives: no language for the heart. Her feelings come like weather, without words, and leave her with no map of where to start. I grew up fluent in the language of need; I learned to read a doorway for a sign. I have ten thousand words for how I feel — she has a silence where I lay down mine. We met the way two old scars recognize a shape they’ve known before a word is said: her fear of holding on, my fear of goodbyes, two childhoods braided into a single thread. The closer that I came, the more she’d leave; the more she’d leave, the harder I would chase. Two nervous systems, armored to believe that longing is a dangerous kind of grace. She never left because I wasn’t enough — I was more love than she had learned to hold. The child whom no one comes for, in the dark, grows up believing warmth is something to withhold. And when the shame inside her starts to swell, she nitpicks, distances, and turns away; she calls my open heart “too much” — to hide the words she was never given leave to say. I’ve studied every pattern, every name — Bowlby, the chase, the great and quiet retreat — but knowing why a wound burns is not the same as being healed; my pulse still skips the beat. And love, I’ve learned, is real but not enough: the healing has to be a mutual art. I stay — but I will not abandon me. I keep my worth, and I still keep my heart. And still I count this strange and aching grace: she woke me to my wounds and to my worth. If we should ever heal, it’s face to face — two warriors, laying weapons on the earth.
RSP
…
DCG
Sources • Alexithymia — Psychology Today • Alexithymia — Luminet & Landré, PMC (NIH) • Adult attachment and emotional awareness impairment — PMC (NIH) • Attachment Style, Early Childhood Trauma, Alexithymia — PMC (NIH) • Understanding alexithymia: a review — Journal of Pharmacy & Pharmacology Sciences • Thunder God Blog RSP/DCG collection: A Leap of Faith · Heal with me RP · R and D · A heart’s whisper · The dissolution of entropy · Cliff notes from the heart · Full RSP/DCG index •
Alexithymia
Let me reassure you: your avoidant ex didn’t leave because you weren’t enough. They left because you were more than they could handle. You were emotionally available. You were intentional, vulnerable, expressive, loving, compassionate, and invested. You offered real intimacy, the kind they never learned how to hold.
And here’s the part that hurts. They saw how special you were. They knew exactly what they had, and that is why they ran. Your emotional availability wasn’t the problem. It was the trigger.
People with dismissive avoidant wounds grew up without emotional safety. Feelings were not welcomed. Affection wasn’t consistent. Their needs were minimized, or even ignored. So they grew up believing: “My feelings are wrong. Love is unsafe. If someone sees the real me, they’re going to leave.”
Their childhood taught them to protect themselves by shutting down, by avoiding closeness, by suppressing their emotions to the point that they can’t even feel their own. So when someone like you shows up, open-hearted, expressive, and emotionally mature, it exposes every single wound they’ve spent their entire life hiding. They don’t have the capacity for deep connection yet. That’s not because they don’t want it. It’s because they were never taught how to do it. They can only handle surface-level connections, casual intimacy, and relationships that require very little emotional depth. That’s why many avoidants end up with emotionally unavailable partners: narcissists, other avoidants, people who keep everything on the surface. It feels safe. It’s not fulfilling, but it’s safe. But when they meet someone like you, someone who loves with depth, who sees them clearly and cares anyway, it overwhelms them. Deep down, they don’t even feel worthy of that kind of love.
So instead of dealing with that shame, they blame you. They nitpick. They distance themselves. They make excuses. It’s not because you did anything wrong. It’s because facing their wounds is too painful. They tell themselves you’re “too emotional” or “too much,” when really, you were everything they wished they could be.
Until they’re ready to self-reflect, sit with their own insecurities, face their shame, and heal, they’re going to keep running from the very thing they long for. Your love didn’t scare them. Their unhealed wounds did. And please tattoo this on your heart: it was never because you weren’t good enough. It was because, deep down, they believed they weren’t good enough for you.
learned the weather in a face Before I learned to write; A spoon set down a shade too hard Could change the shape of night. “Do I fit here?” I ask the page. “Is this what made me so?” My stomach answers every knock Before I say hello. “You’re good with people.” Yes, perhaps. I learned which self to wear; Could make a joke, could swallow grief, Could almost turn to air. I hear the break beneath “I’m fine,” Then lie awake till two; My inner smoke alarm makes toast A matter to review. But does a silence mean contempt? Must every pause mean rain? I know how fear can forge a key That fits the wrong old pain. And still, a song can split my chest; Small kindness makes me weep. I watch someone pull up a chair For one left out—and keep. “Was childhood, then, a gift?” I ask. “No. Children should feel safe.” Whatever good my heart grew toward Does not excuse the strafe. “Must I repair each hurt I sense?” “No. Ask before you mend. You need not climb inside each wound To be a steady friend.” I cannot know each heart I feel; I can ask, listen, stay. The gift is not that hurt was good— But love can choose its way.
…
DCG
You are allowed to feel things deeply, and I do not mean that as reassurance. I mean it as neuroscience. Because the depth with which you feel things is not a flaw in your emotional regulation, and it is not a sign that you are too sensitive or too much. It is a measurable neurological capacity, and it comes with abilities that people who feel less deeply simply do not have access to.
Here is what is actually happening in a brain that feels deeply. Research from psychologist Dr. Elaine Aaron identified a trait present in around 20% of the population called sensory processing sensitivity. In brains with this trait, several regions show measurably greater activation in response to emotional and sensory input: the insula, which governs interoceptive and emotional awareness; the mirror neuron system, which governs empathy; and the regions associated with depth of cognitive processing.
A brain that feels deeply is not malfunctioning. It is running a richer, more detailed, more thorough processing of experience than a less sensitive brain runs. You do not feel too much. You feel accurately at a resolution most people cannot access. Here is what that capacity gives you. You notice the shift in someone’s mood before they have said a word. You feel the emotional undertone of a room. You are moved by beauty in a way that people who feel less deeply genuinely cannot understand. You form connections with people that reach depths shallower processors never touch. You experience music, art, nature, and love with an intensity that is the entire point of being alive. And yes, the same capacity that lets you feel joy that deeply also lets you feel pain that deeply. You cannot have one without the other. They run on the same neural system.
But here is what you were never told. The depth is not the problem. The problem was being raised in an environment that treated your depth as an inconvenience rather than recognizing it as a gift. You were asked to turn down something that was never meant to be turned down. You are allowed to feel things deeply, not despite the pain it sometimes brings, because the depth is who you are.
And the world needs the people who feel it all far more than it needs the people who have learned to feel nothing.
Some children watch the doorway, And learn to read the night; They hide the tears that need a hand, To keep the grown world right. They hear, “You are so strong now,” And learn what praise can cost; The child who keeps the house from breaking Is still a child being lost. Years pass, but shoulders tighten When footsteps cross the floor; The danger may have left the house, Yet breath still guards the door. Why does a quiet evening Feel like a coming storm? Why does a heart reach out for love, Then shrink from something warm? They work until their hands are shaking, And call exhaustion care; But if their worth depends on giving, Who sees the person there? The mind can name the old hurt, Yet tears still need their say; To know why sorrow filled a room Does not yet clear the way. So grief sits down beside them, And speaks what none could hear: “You should not have held that burden; Your needs belonged here.” They need not build a life on blame, Nor claim the hurt was right; They turn toward what they can change, And bring their choices into light. They pause before the old surrender, Let “no” stand without shame; Accept a hand, rest without earning, And practice when fear comes again. They meet the self beneath the duty, And give its hopes a voice; The past may knock, but need not lead— With care, they learn to live by choice.
…
DCG
It begins quietly, almost unnoticed. You’re only six years old, huddled by the door frame, watching your parents fall apart piece by piece. Maybe it’s addiction, maybe it’s explosive rage. Maybe it’s just the cold void of an adult who can no longer show up.
In that moment, something primal clicks in your young mind: “If I don’t hold everything together, there’ll be nothing left.” This is how a child disappears—not literally, but spiritually. They learn to smile more, cry less. They learn to read the room before speaking. They become the family’s emotional thermostat. They turn into miniature adults while their minds are still far too tender, and the world pats them on the back with praise: “You’re so mature, you’re so reliable, you’re so resilient.”
But no one stops to ask: What’s the cost? This is the invisible pain of children who grow up too fast. Today, we’ll dive deep into the psychology of that child, because the consequences don’t fade with time. They shape you, follow you into relationships, careers, and the way you see your own worth. If you don’t understand what happened, you’ll spend your entire adult life repeating survival patterns that once saved you but are now quietly eroding you.
Let’s start with what really happens in development. When children are forced to prop up adults’ emotions instead of being propped up, psychologists call it role reversal. That’s when the child becomes the caregiver, the mediator, the counselor, the protector. This isn’t just unhealthy; it rewires the brain. Because when a child is constantly responsible for regulating emotions—their own or others’—it creates a state called hypervigilance. You’re always scanning for danger, you walk on eggshells, you learn that love is a transaction. You bring peace; maybe they’ll give safety. You learn that your needs are a threat, while theirs are urgent. So you erase yourself—not physically, but emotionally. Instead, a version of you grows, one that performs perfectly. You become the good kid, the quiet achiever, the therapist friend, the one who never asks for anything. And you wear that mask so convincingly that even you forget it’s fake. But deep down, something aches, something bleeds for the child inside that you buried but didn’t kill. It’s still there, screaming in silence: “Why didn’t anyone protect me?” As you grow up, the symptoms get more complex. You might become hyper-independent. You reject help, push people away, or never feel truly safe in love. You might freeze in moments of joy because happiness feels foreign, undeserved, even dangerous. You might be unable to rest because productivity is the only way you’ve ever felt valuable. And worst of all, you might not realize you’re still stuck in survival mode. Because when dysfunction is normalized early, your nervous system accepts chaos as baseline. Silence feels wrong, peace feels suspicious, love feels like a debt you have to pay. This is the psychology of a child forced to grow up too fast. It’s not just sadness; it’s complex trauma that reshapes how you see the world, and more importantly, how you see yourself.
Now you might wonder: Why would a child willingly take on that role? Because children will do anything to maintain attachment, even abandon themselves. That choice is never conscious. It’s biological instinct. In the absence of safety, the child sacrifices authenticity for belonging. That’s not weakness, that’s intelligence, that’s instinct. But the tragedy is this: What once saved you now imprisons you. So many of us walk around as high-functioning adults with deeply abandoned inner children pulling the strings. We achieve greatness to earn love, we stay silent to avoid abandonment. We care for everyone but secretly hope someone asks if we’re okay. And that fantasy—that someone will see you’re not as strong as you pretend, that maybe, just maybe, you’ll be allowed to fall apart and be held—that’s the unmet need, not of the adult ego, but of the child who never got to be a child.
The first step to healing isn’t fixing; it’s witnessing. Because until you acknowledge what happened, you’ll keep lying to yourself with thoughts like: “It wasn’t that bad. Others had it worse. I’m fine.” But fine is just another mask, and deep down, you know it. So what happens to that child when they grow up? They become adults who never feel safe, even in quiet rooms. They become lovers who can’t trust tenderness. They become givers who can’t receive. They become the type who apologizes for crying, flinches at compliments, and mistakes burnout for success.
This is the price of growing up too early. Because if childhood trained you to be strong at the cost of softness, silent instead of honest, fixing others while ignoring your own cracks, what kind of adulthood do you inherit? You inherit a life where you’re always holding your breath, waiting for someone to finally let you break. But here’s the truth: No one is coming to save the child you buried. You have to go back and take its hand. You have to say what no one ever said: “You didn’t deserve that. You were just a kid. You get to rest now.”
This is the beginning of shadow work—not fixing, not performing, not dodging pain with fake positivity, but returning to the abandoned parts of yourself and saying: “I see you now, I hear you, and I’m not leaving.” That’s the rebuilding process, and it’s brutal because it requires you …
Prologue Pain need not be deserved to become a doorway. This poem explores how clinging deepens sorrow, how looking inward loosens its hold, and how awakening becomes meaningful through kindness.
The Hand That Opens We ask the things we love to stay, And hold them close against the night; But life keeps moving through our hands, And sorrow grows as we grip tight.
An open hand can still hold love, Without demanding it remain; We need not close our hearts to loss, To loosen what prolongs the pain.
I built myself from others’ eyes, And called their praise my solid ground; But when their voices turned away, I feared no self would there be found.
So I sat down beside that fear, And heard the child beneath my name; He needed care, not one more crown, A listening heart, not one more shame.
I tried to force the river’s course, To make its waters serve my will; The harder that I fought its flow, The less my troubled heart grew still.
Yet yielding need not mean defeat, Nor letting cruelty have its way; I choose where I must stand like stone, And where to let the water play.
But what is waking worth to me, If all I seek is my release? If I leave others in the dark, How deep can be my private peace?
I cannot bless the hurt I bore, Or make each broken moment mend; But I can hold another’s grief, And let the harm with me find end.
…
DCG
First, you suffer. Then you awaken, and only then do you begin to ascend. Strange, isn’t it? That pain is not a punishment, but a summons. A knock on the inner door that says, ‘Wake up.’ Not to the world, but to yourself. You see, suffering shakes the foundation of who you think you are, so that you may discover who you truly are.
—A passage circulating online under Alan Watts’s name. Its attribution to an original Watts lecture has not been verified.”
A postulated reflection: If our histories shape what we see, what might change when we question our first judgment? We meet one world through different eyes, And each declares the picture clear; But what we call another’s fault May wear the face of our own fear. Perhaps the past still frames the room, And tells us what deserves our sight; One seeks the comfort of straight lines, One seeks a hand against the night. We gather proof that takes our side, And leave unwelcome facts outside; Confirmation bias names the habit— A tilted scale we call our guide. Yet different views are not all true, Nor does a wound make falsehood right; The world resists what we believe— Our claims must bear its testing light. When someone speaks against our view, The pulse may leap before we know; Is this a threat before our eyes, Or yesterday refusing to go? Before the verdict leaves the tongue, Could we allow one breath of space? Not choke the feeling into silence, But keep its heat from ruling the case. What fact would make us change our minds? What have we brushed aside as wrong? Could reason test the claims we love, Not merely make their voices strong? To hear another is not to yield, Nor must we bless the harm they do; We can refuse a cruel demand And ask what brought that hurt to view. Must every difference draw our blood? Can we meet doubt without the flame? If anger keeps deciding for us, How much of us will it reshape and name?
…
DCG
Transcript Took me 42 years to understand what I’m about to explain to you in under a minute. And once you understand this, you’ll stop being so confused about why people do what they do. There’s no one single right reality where you are right and everyone else is wrong. We assume that the way we see things is the way things are, right? Our values feel obvious, our priorities feel logical, our conclusions feel correct. So when someone disagrees with us, it feels wrong. And this is where the frustration starts. But here’s what most people never consider. Other people are not just choosing different actions, they are seeing a completely different reality because everybody is experiencing life through their own lens, and it’s shaped by their upbringing, by their experiences, by what they’ve been rewarded for, what they’ve been hurt by—which means something subtle is happening. Two people can look at the same situation and see two completely different things. One person walks into a messy room and feels stressed. Another person walks into the same room and doesn’t even notice it. But they do notice how people are feeling. One values order, the other values connection. Neither is wrong, but they both feel like the other is. And Anaïs Nin said it simply: “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Our view of the world happens through patterns the brain has learned over time. And once your brain builds a certain view of the world, it starts reinforcing it, looking for evidence that confirms it and ignoring what doesn’t. So this leads to a very different way of thinking. What if the reason people frustrate you isn’t because they’re wrong, but because they’re seeing something that you’re not? One of the strangest truths about life is this: we are not all reacting to the same world. We’re each reacting to the version of the world our mind has learned to see. And the moment that you realize that is the moment you stop trying to correct people who are wrong and you start understanding them.[Attachment] Attribution search The strongest match was a Threads post by @flipbardinas, dated April 15, 2026 in the search results. It quotes:
—Transcribed from a social-media clip; original creator
Shannon Shallcross describes herself as a speaker, writer, founder, and two-time TEDx speaker. Her platform, The Gratitude Mind, explores gratitude and how perception shapes people’s experience of life
The childhood home — one room where I grew up, and then the other room, once my brother’s, where I stayed with my own children for a time after my divorce.
Two kinds of shame: one as a child, and one as an adult. The shame of the adult takes an even tighter hold on the constraints of your manhood when it is shared with your own children. That differs from the shame you carry as a child yourself, growing up in the house of pain.
How you deal with the shame you feel depends a great deal on the audience around you.
Note
The trauma: CEN or childhood emotional neglect: CPTSD 
The father: authoritarian narcissistic
The mother: codependent, and lived in fear, but also looked away and did not protect
The ex-wife: also authoritarian with a need for control
In one room, you are the child
And in another room, you have your children who see 
Two rooms in the same bewilderment
The common denominator: me
The activities of a child versus 
The activities of a man
The comparison is poignant
But the shame still stands
I now understand my trauma
Unhealed wounds must be processed through connection
In silence, they fester unseen
So with this testimony, I raise my objection 
One shame is learned
One is self created
The burdens of inequity
When you point the finger at yourself – it’s related
The lessons of accountability
And the politics of shame
It’s extremely hard to point the finger
When the finger is pointed at your name
Oh how we justify
The economy of quid pro quo
Just what do we testify?
Sometimes, I don’t rightly know
Like sitting in your own church
Like sitting in your own pew
Just what will we receive?
Just what will we do? 
In childhood I learned to overthink
In adulthood, I did the same
I now try to integrate emotion 
The man, the boy, and the claim 
Over 50 years with living in silence
The reflection from the polished mirror, I am now me 
Why do I walk the mesa late at night, beneath the bell tower’s arch of sun-bleached stone? Why does the old campus glow so bright for one who walked away from it alone? I left my home at seventeen, so young, and paid my way with every dollar earned. Who heard the quiet hope upon my tongue each night I studied while the lamp still burned? Why is there always one more class to find, a room I cannot reach, a door that’s locked? Why does the schedule blur inside my mind while minutes slip away upon the clock? Psychology, philosophy, two roads I traveled far but never saw them end. Three classes short. Who measures all the loads a working heart must carry, lift, and tend? I married, and I worked for forty-one long years, and gave the best of what I had. So why, when all those working days are done, does one unfinished piece still make me sad? Is this the reason that the dream returns? Does painful truth play hide-and-seek at night, and wait behind the library till it learns I’m strong enough to face it in the light? And if I face it, what else might I find? That no diploma measures who I’ve grown? That every lesson life has left behind has taught me more than any class I’ve known? The past is history, so let it be. The future is a mystery, still unknown. But now, this very moment, sets me free, a gift we call the present, all our own. So if a dream keeps calling you by name, what hallway, what closed door, waits there for you? Perhaps it doesn’t come to bring you shame, but just to walk you home, whole, and new.
…
DCG
“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”
— unknown 
This was the dream. I woke up on the San Diego State University campus, wearing a very plush San Diego State letterman jacket, which I have owned in the past. I was surrounded by people, many of whom were from where I worked. The people I had my career with showed up throughout the dream, even though many of them did not attend San Diego State. We were sectioned off, almost as if we had been told to serve the campus community for some unknown reason. We were grouped together in square formations, almost like attendance lineups, or even in classrooms. I walked around and saw people from my job. I didn’t know why they were there too, because many of them did not go to the same school I did.
This dream, in some form, keeps coming back: me on the campus of San Diego State University.
Transcription “Here is the twist. I was three classes shy of getting my degrees at San Diego State University. One in psychology and one in philosophy.” Annotation: the two degrees would have been a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. A Revelation I left home at 17 and paid my own way through San Diego State University. I studied toward a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy while working full-time. I always meant to finish. But marriage and work took priority, and I spent 41 years with my employer. I ended up three classes short of both degrees, and not finishing those classes is my biggest regret. My education has always mattered deeply to me. That may be why the same dreams keep coming back. I think they may be my mind returning to the one important thing I never finished the way I wanted to. This isn’t a failure. It shows how much I still value what I worked so hard for.
The body holds its own accounting A ledger written in the chest, A tightness where the words fall silent, A weight that will not let me rest
What wounds the most is often absent, Not the blow, but what was never there, The comfort missing from the doorway, The empty space of unmet care
A child will trade away the feeling To keep the bond that keeps him fed, Authenticity for attachment, A quiet bargain in his head.
So I learned to think instead of feeling, To analyze and not to weep, Assembled reason like a fortress, And buried sorrow in the keep.
But thought without the heart is exile, And feeling without thought, a flood; The mind must learn to hear the body, The pulse, the breath, the rush of blood.
So I return to meet the younger, The one who stood beside the wall, And name the ache he could not utter, And answer, finally, his call.
To face the shadow is not surrender, But gathering what was cast aside; The anger I was taught to swallow Becomes the strength I need not hide.
Responsibility becomes the medicine, To carry what I did not choose, To bear the load and find the meaning Within the things I feared to lose.
Compassion, then, is not indulgence, But curiosity made kind, A question asked without a verdict, A gentle light within the mind.
The fence I built becomes a garden, With gates I open and I close; Not every soul will find the entrance, But those who do, the heart well knows.
So in the sanitarium of my mind, I convalesce, but not alone; The thinking and the feeling marry, And I, at last, am coming home.
…
DCG
If every lock opened with every key, keys would become useless. People work the same way. You aren’t meant to connect with everyone. The people worth keeping are the ones your personality was meant to unlock. Because your job isn’t to open every door, it’s to find the ones you were made for.
Why do I keep returning to the door I learned to fear before I learned my name? What am I hoping to find beneath the floor? Why does each poem go back there just the same? Jung called it shadow: what we push away. Is mine the anger I was taught to hide? If I invite it in, what will it say? And can I hear it without taking its side? I wrote of learning silence in a house. Did silence keep me safe, or leave me small? Do I still go quiet as a mouse When no one here is angry after all? I wrote of wearing calmness like a coat. Who taught me how to fasten every seam? When hurt comes near, why do I clear my throat And speak as though I’m safely in a dream? Why does my pride arrive prepared for court With every slight arranged to make its case? What does it guard when it cuts kindness short? What fear is hiding underneath its face? I wrote that thought could make a fortress last. Was learning then a shelter from the pain? When I explain each detail of the past, Why does my heart still walk into the rain? I studied how a person comes to be, The mind, the soul, the habits we repeat. Did all those years of study help me see, Or keep me from the feeling at my feet? Jung listened for the parts a life concealed. Do I keep hearing them beneath my page? Is there a grief I’ve carefully not revealed, Or fear I’ve called good sense for half an age? Why do I read a silence as a sign? Why do I search a face for coming rain? Whose old voice sounds so much like mine When I tell myself I must endure the pain? What do I make of that boy on the field, Still waiting for somebody to draw near? What did he learn when no one asked him how he’d healed? Why does his silence still live in me here? I speak of love, then turn and guard the gate. I ask for closeness, then prepare to flee. Is this the shadow Jung asked us to face: The frightened part I will not let be me? And what of all the good I set aside? The softer self I feared the world would bruise? Is there a gentleness I learned to hide Because I thought that I would have to choose? Would Dostoevsky’s man beneath the ground Know why I argue with myself at night? Do I build proofs where no proof can be found So I can say I’m right instead of frightened? Why does this question follow all I write? Has something pressed its shape into my soul? If I can name the thing and bring it light, Must I still feel it to become more whole? I think of Maslow and the life I sought. Is growing more than reaching some clear height? If all I’ve done is learn to master thought, Who holds the hurt I keep outside my sight? Am I, like Jung, pursuing what I miss When I mistake the mask for all I am? Can I hold both the wound and joy in this, And stop condemning one to save the man? I almost sign this page, then change my mind. Must I give strangers every private name? Can I leave those I love and hurt behind The curtain, yet speak plainly of my shame? Can I ask the question without scorn? Can I meet the boy and not demand his proof? What part of me was waiting to be born While I stood outside myself beneath the roof? Please help me understand what’s going on inside. Not just the story, but the ache beneath. Can I sit with what I used to hide And let a feeling pass without a speech? I think I’m on a path that Jung once knew: To meet the hidden self, not win a fight. My steps are mine; his questions help me through. Could I be growing whole by facing night?
…
DCG
“The most self-aware person in the room is often hiding the deepest pain. People who were emotionally neglected as children become the biggest intellectualizers in therapy and the healing journey. They get stuck overanalyzing over and over, but terrified of feeling anything in their body. They might walk into a therapist’s office and get told, ‘Wow, you’re so self-aware. Seems like you got it all figured out.’ But instead of relief and validation, they feel hollow instead, because what’s actually happening is a defense. It’s the suppression of the grief, the anger, the shame, the anxiety that never got to cycle through to actually release. You see, a child’s first instinct when they are neglected is to cry out for help, to reach for connection. But when that call keeps getting ignored, they learn something else instead: that their cries don’t work. And so they go into the prison of their mind instead. They suppress the feeling, they disconnect, dissociate, and intellect becomes the only safe place left. And it sure fools everyone, including themselves. But what’s underneath is a nervous system that actually collapsed. It’s the belief that feeling emotions puts them in a helpless and hopeless situation. The intellectualization isn’t really making them smarter. It’s just trauma that’s still in control, and it costs them dearly: relationships that never really feel safe, a body that never gets to relax and loosen up, years—maybe even decades—understanding themselves so perfectly while nothing actually changes underneath. But eventually, like all coping mechanisms, it starts to break at the seams: random bouts of crying, reactivity that they can’t explain, numbing out, avoiding hard conversations, or having hard conversations that immediately turn into explosions. Now, if this is you and you want to get out of this, you have to go beyond the mind, and that’s a journey into the body, into the nervous system, into the parts that you never got to develop. So one quick move that you can do the next time that feelings come up inside you is to place a hand—a soft hand—on where you notice it in your body. And there’s a lot of science backing this up now: just stay with it for at least 60 seconds and ride it out. Let the feeling happen. Short window, but big impact. You might find out that you actually move through the feeling and get to the other side without having to suppress and overthink. — mindfulness 
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