CraigJustCraig

Tag: healing

  • Not My Shadow, Not My War

    Carl Jung once said that “the most dangerous psychological mistake is the projection of the shadow onto others.”
    I feel that on this holiday break. Most conflict: interpersonal, communal, spiritual, starts when someone wrestling their own darkness mistakes you for their battleground.

    I used to think I could avoid this if I just explained myself well enough… moved gently enough… was compassionate “enough.”
    But I can’t outrun someone else’s shadow. It walks with them—cast on me.

    What I can do is learn to recognize the moment their shadow lands on me.

    For me, the first sign is intensity.
    Not every disagreement or discomfort is a projection. Humans clash all the time. Personalities don’t always mix: different values, different morals, different goals, different perspectives, different trauma, different strategies for getting needs met. I get that. That’s normal.
    But when the emotional charge is strong, out of proportion for what happened, or strangely personal… that’s usually not about me. That’s their shadow searching for a new battleground.

    My strategy starts with simple observation:

    Notice the flare.
    When someone’s reaction is harder than the situation called for, I pause. I feel it, but I let it pass.

    Acknowledge it instead of fighting it.
    If I argue with their projection, it only grows. Shadows get stronger when you deny them.

    Name what’s happening.
    Not out loud, but to myself: “This is not about me. This person is projecting.”
    That one sentence keeps me from internalizing their story.

    Stay rooted.
    Their shadow doesn’t overwrite my truth.
    Who decided their darkness swallowed my sun?
    The only one who can decide that is me.

    And sometimes the simplest thing you can do is let their shadow pass like a wave hitting a rock.

    The goal isn’t to be liked or understood, but to see clearly—your shadow and theirs—and not let either pull you out of yourself.

    How do you deal with it when someone’s shadow tries to make you their mirror?

  • The Art of Being Seen: Exhibition as Energy

    There is power in being witnessed—true, unflinching energy meeting energy.

    Not a glance. Not a surface-level attention. Seen.
    Resonance acknowledged, currents mirrored, vibration returned without hesitation.

    Through years of observing and capturing bodies, motions, pulses, I’ve noticed: those who crave to be witnessed are not chasing attention—they are seeking connection. A moment where their energy reflects back intact. Whole. Unmasked. Unashamed.

    Exhibitionism, at its core, is not about flesh. It is about revealing the current within. Some do it by shedding layers of cloth; others by stepping into the flow of a spotlight, a lens, a frame, and transmitting, “This is me. Are you receiving?”

    When we create art—especially charged, sensual, alive—we are not capturing form alone. We are honoring the courage it takes to offer your energy as something visible, measurable, palpable.

    I see it in those who commission works that resonate with their vibration. I see it in those who surrender to the mirror, the camera, the canvas, offering their pulse without compromise. I see it in the strokes that render longing, desire, and the alchemy of release.

    Being seen is healing when it is intentional. When the energy flows both ways. When care and attention amplify rather than distort.

    We are not meant to dwell entirely in shadow, disconnected from the currents that make us whole.

    So, reflect:

    1. When was the last time your energy was truly mirrored—and what made that resonance safe?
    2. How do you distinguish between surface-level attention and the depth of being witnessed?
    3. What currents within yourself are still unshared, locked, or suppressed—and what would bloom if they were reflected instead of hidden?
    4. Has the energy of someone else’s art ever synced with yours so precisely that it felt understood without words?
    5. What would it mean for your energy, your presence, your full resonance, to be captured and acknowledged?

    This work, this space, this practice—it is more than flesh, curves, kink. It is a field for energy to show up, fully, without retreat.

    Because healing is never solitary.
    It is resonance returned.
    It is energy acknowledged.
    And sometimes, the most sacred, most transformative act is simply letting someone see your energy… fully, without compromise.

  • Harmonics of Desire And Being

    The air around me vibrates, a current I can feel, a hum that threads through the body and mind. It speaks of erotic, profane, sensual, the unbroken pulse of existence itself.

    The divine is not a building, a book, or a word whispered in quiet halls—it is here, in my heart, in my mind, in my actions, in the raw exchange of energy, in the collision and surrender of force that courses through flesh and intention alike.

    BDSM and kink are not merely acts of sensation—they are conduits, living currents of energy. Every touch, every bind, every strike is a spark along a web of resonance, a pulse that threads through time, intention, and body alike.

    The scene becomes a lattice of energy, woven with consent and focus, a deliberate choreography of power, release, and expansion.

    The first brush of rope against my skin, the pull of restraint, the guiding presence of force—these are not physical alone. They are channels. They are currents awakening the body and attuning the mind.

    The most intimate corners of desire become nodes in a network of energy, conduits to states of awareness that surpass flesh, that echo through the marrow, that vibrate with the raw pulse of the universe.

    Ritual is the shaping of energy. Intention is the spark. Every scene begins in alignment, a negotiation of currents, limits, and flows—a preparation of the field. The room, the tools, the light, the sound—they are instruments. The bodies themselves are altars, resonating in harmonic convergence, amplifying and channeling the energy that moves between them.

    In this exchange, Dominance and Submission are forces. One guides, one receives. One channels, one becomes a conduit. The push and pull, the surrender and control, the ebb and flow—these are currents of creation. To submit is to release tension, to dissolve the ego, to allow the energy to flow unimpeded. To dominate is to focus, to shape the movement, to guide the current, to hold the field in sacred tension.

    Restraint is not merely containment; it is anchoring. The ropes, the binds, the ties—threads of potential, of manifestation, of energy focused and honed. Every knot is a pulse, every tension a charge, every release a cascade through the system. Impact, sensation, rhythm—they are catalysts, transmuting the mundane into altered states of awareness, refining raw energy into sharpened presence, into heightened resonance.

    Even sensation itself is alchemy. Deprivation, overstimulation, the dance of extremes—they fracture ordinary perception, letting energy seep into spaces normally locked away. Pleasure and pain become the same frequency, the same current, vibrating across nerves and marrow, dissolving the boundaries of self, opening channels to uncharted energetic realms.

    Fluid exchange is not literal; it is energetic communion. The flow of essence, the intermingling of force, the resonance of two systems meeting and harmonizing—this is the altar of the body, the purest conduit for energy, a sacred exchange of power and vitality that ripples outward, reshaping perception, attuning the senses, igniting the currents of existence.

    To ritualize these acts is to channel them. To infuse touch, gaze, movement, and breath with deliberate intent. To let energy move freely, without judgment or resistance, and to witness its transformation in yourself and in the space around you. Aftercare is not recovery—it is grounding, integration, the settling of currents into coherent resonance, the honoring of the forces that moved through the field.

    This is the path. Not devotion to form, not obedience to dogma. It is surrender to flow, mastery of current, communion with the raw pulse of being. Every gesture, every sensation, every moment becomes an offering, a prayer, a conduit. Pleasure, pain, power, release—they are all energy. And the sacred is not separate from the sensual; it is exactly in the convergence, in the rhythm, in the luminous chaos of bodies and currents, in the resonance of all that moves through us.

    Step into the field. Align your currents. Let energy flow through you as devotion, as ritual, as revelation. Let your body become the altar. Let your desire be the spell.

  • Embodied Convergence

    The Doctrine of Rope: Rope as Mirror, Rope as Threshold. Rope engages somatosensory system, shifts brain into presence, triggers endorphins, oxytocin, adrenaline, and serotonin. The nervous system becomes of fire. Sensation, breath, and stillness guide trance states. Rope becomes body, mind, and spirit aligned. Pain is teacher. Pleasure is guide. Transformation occurs in full embodiment.

    The Result: Radical surrender, heightened awareness, erotic and spiritual expansion, cathartic release, integration, and the unification of skill and presence.

    I talked you what you bring to rope:

    [Bondage as Divination](https://craigjustcraigcom.wordpress.com/2025/07/26/bondage-as-divination/)

    [Bondage as Meditation](https://craigjustcraigcom.wordpress.com/2025/07/26/bondage-as-meditation/)

    [Bondage as Strength](https://craigjustcraigcom.wordpress.com/2025/07/26/bondage-as-strength/)

    [Bondage as an Energetic Tool](https://craigjustcraigcom.wordpress.com/2025/07/26/bondage-as-an-energetic-tool/)

    [Bondage as an act](https://craigjustcraigcom.wordpress.com/2025/07/26/bondage-as-an-act/)

    [Rope as a Modality for Spiritual Release](https://craigjustcraigcom.wordpress.com/2025/07/26/rope-as-a-modality-for-spiritual-release/)

    Alone, these are fragments. Embodied Convergence is their fusion—the moment when skill and presence collapse into a singular, real-time self. . It is who you become in the scene, beyond preparation, beyond theory. Not a trait. A state. Activation under pressure.

    What is Embodied Convergence?

    It is the unification of capacity and emotion into living, immediate action.

    Yearning

    Why do we seek the experience of being tied?

    Origin

    Where do our desires come from and how can we honor them?

    Presence

    Where does our attention go when we are in Rope?

    Signal

    What can we do to let our partners know how we feel, without speaking up?

    Breath

    What are the ways we can use our breathing to create a better experience in Rope?

    Root

    What is the source of our resilience in Rope?

    Edge

    Where are our limits and whose responsibility is it to recognize them?

    Opening

    Why do we want to surrender and what allows us to do so?

    Safety

    Which pains can we welcome and when do we decide to stop?

    Discernment

    What makes us feel safe in rope?

    Holding

    Why rope can be a place to embrace all of our emotions, even the difficult ones?

    Threshold

    Which risks can we take, and where to stop exploring?

    It is the real-time marriage of technique and truth, visible in your partner’s tremble, the rope’s creak, your tightening breath. Here, rope is not choreography. Rope is you.

    Outside the Rope Parallel:
    A seasoned fighter steps into the ring. Years of training form their Structural Identity. Their fatigue, anxiety, or focus bring Emotional Presence. When the bell rings, all theory collapses. Instinct fuses with skill. Pressure multiplies—or exposes—the gaps. They are not performing a style. They are the style. This is the same under rope: consequence is the bell, the scene is the ring, and what manifests is pure, unfiltered self.

    Pressure and Consequence

    Pressure is the alchemy of convergence. Without it, skill and state remain hypothetical. Pressure is not cruelty; it is reality made tangible. Words, hands, gaze, rope—they carry consequence.

    Types of Pressure:

    • Physical: inversion, suspension, real-time bodily demand.
    • Temporal: slow or compressed time to focus or unsettle.
    • Emotional: confronting fear, desire, grief, arousal, vulnerability.
    • Relational: being fully seen and responding authentically.

    Safe vs. Destructive Pressure:
    Safe pressure challenges without harm, expands without collapse. Destructive pressure neglects presence, consent, or capacity. The distinction is context-dependent: what is sacred for one may be destabilizing for another.

    Pressure as Catalyst

    Pressure multiplies or fractures:

    • Hard Skills: movement sharpens or becomes robotic.
    • Soft Skills: awareness expands or blinds.
    • Emotional Presence: connection deepens or collapses.

    Embodied Convergence doesn’t demand perfection—only presence. Trembling, faltering, returning, it’s all participation. Pressure does not change you. It reveals whether your skill, your emotion, and your intention can meet.

    Rope Implication: When multiplied, rope becomes language, body becomes truth. When divided, rope becomes a cage, skill becomes empty motion, emotion absent. Pressure makes rope real.

    The Point of it all

    This point marks the threshold: practitioner becomes art. Not about technique, placement, or extremity—but about:

    • Did you show up?
    • Did you speak your truth?
    • Were you present?

    Here lies proof: every skill, every emotional edge, every decision under consequence, brought fully into the room. Rope becomes mirror, body becomes question, pain becomes teacher, and surrender becomes revelation.

    Ordeal Work vs. Edge Play: Ordeal steps past limits and brings transformation. Rope unmasks disowned parts of the self. Radical acceptance allows memory, rage, fear, and desire to emerge—valid, witnessed, and integrated. You are anchor, guide, witness, and participant. Rope is energetic intention; restraint is liberation.

    Embodied Rope Practice

    Rope is yoga, ritual, and somatic key:

    • Breath is portal—inhale draws spirit, exhale releases resistance.
    • Tension is information—hot, cold, grounding, awakening.
    • Energy Pathways:
      • Spine/legs: root, grounding, primal energy
      • Pelvis/abdomen: sexuality, desire, creativity
      • Solar plexus: will, confidence, fire
      • Chest/arms: heart, compassion, erotic tenderness
      • Throat: voice, choice, expression
      • Face: intuition, perception, witnessing
      • Crown: spiritual bliss, full-body presence

    Rope awakens mind, body, and spirit. Pressure, touch, breath, and trust create altered states, neurochemical cascades, and energetic release. Pain and pleasure converge. The body becomes vessel and landscape. The rope is teacher, mirror, and conduit.

    Closing

    Be here. Breathe. Surrender. Allow rope to show the truth beneath form, fear, and identity. The ordeal transforms, pressure teaches, presence unites. Embodied Convergence is not a concept. It is you, alive, under the rope, fully realized.

  • Follow The Bread Crumbs Back To The Circle

    There was a time when the world was not divided—when spirit and matter, love and healing, the living and the dead, were nearly undistigushable. In the Dagara world, this unity is not myth but a reality. The material is simply the skin of the invisible; what we call the “supernatural” is nothing more than the deeper part of the natural world. Ancestors walk among us. Rivers speak. Trees listen. Ritual is not an event but life itself.

    From birth, each person carries a unique “genius,” a purpose breathed into them by the Other World. Names are a reminders of that destiny. And community exists to safeguard the chosen. To forget or worst never learn your genius is to weaken the whole community. In this way, individuality and community are not opposed; the singular gift of each person is the cornerstone of our survival.

    Nature, in this worldview, is not scenery or resource. It is the first book, the first teacher, the first home. Its remedies do not only cure the body but restore the mind. To be cut off from nature is to be cut off from healing. Reconciliation with nature is reconciliation with ourselves.

    Ritual, then, is the technology of the invisible. It is how a community repairs the web of connection—between people, between worlds, between elements. Unlike the rigid ceremonies of modern religions, Rituals are alive, tailored to the wound at hand. It bends with grief, laughter, anger, or celebration, channeling energies too subtle for perception. Ritual is how a community remembers itself.

    And yet, this remembering is fragile. Knowledge in the village is guarded, not hoarded. What is sacred must be revealed at the right time, to the right person, in the right way, or it risks becoming powerless or harmful. To know is to recall what was already within.

    This stands in stark contrast to much of Western life, where knowledge is accumulation, love is possession, healing is symptom management, and community is we just go here.

    For the Dagara, love is not private. It is spiritual and communal, woven into the obligations of ancestors and community. Intimacy is not simply pleasure—it is power, to channel spirit. Marriage is notjust a couple’s affair but a oath to the village itself, binding families and tribes for future trials. Elders ensure that unions are aligned with purpose and energy.

    Compare this to Western societies, where—as Erich Fromm and bell hooks observe—love often collapses under the weight of the individual. Love is mistaken for cathexis, the temporary intoxication of infatuation, rather than practiced as “the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth.” Patriarchy trains men to avoid vulnerability and women to endure abuse. Consumerism co-opts spiritual hunger, selling “self-love” while starving us of communion. There is a longing for love, but also a fear of it this is our crisis of faith.

    , as Lee Harrington writes,Kink communities attempt to build “tribes of the heart” where negotiation, consent, and radical honesty about needs become sacred practices in themselves. Here, love is not assumed but constructed through dialogue. It is not perfect, but it is intentional. In their rituals—munches, play parties, collaring ceremonies—we glimpse a yearning for communal intimacy that echoes indigenous wisdom, refracted through an erotic lens.

    For the Dagara, illness is not a biological glitch but a fracture in relationship. To heal is to mend connections—with community, with nature, with Spirit, with self. Community is the tool that loosens the grip of ego, shakes free what has calcified, and restores flow. Grief is not hidden but shared, for communal grieving is food for the soul. Healing is less about “fixing” than remembering.

    Western healing, by contrast, often isolates. Therapy can be profound, but it is privatized, pathologized, and often stripped of spiritual practices. Grief is silenced or rushed; illness is reduced to symptoms; loneliness is epidemic. The hunger grows, yet yet you feeds it empty calories. As Scott Peck noted, true healing requires discipline and communion—yet Western culture trains us to seek quick fixes, not deep chages.

    Again, kink offers an alternate path. Scenes are often framed as “play,” not work: confronting fears, releasing trauma, exploring shadow, achieving catharsis. Like ritual, kink manipulates subtle energies, shaping altered states of consciousness. It can be profoundly healing when practiced with care. Though rooted in Western contexts, it resonates with the indigenous truth that healing is communal, embodied, and spiritual.

    The Dagara teach that community is not optional; it is the very condition of human life. The entire village raises each child meaning that your child might sleep in any home in the village, that you might go weeks with interacting and yet know that they are safe and cared for, ensuring their gift is heard and honored. Elders anchor the tribe with memory and wisdom, while mentors nurse the spirits of the young. Conflicts are not disruptions in the community but messages from Spirit, to be resolved for the sake of all. Community is abundance—not in accumulation, but in fullness of connection with one another and with the earth.

    Western culture, on the other hand, prizes the individual above us all. Isolation is epidemic. The nuclear family, far from being ideal, even has fractured under capitalism, leaving many adrift. Elders, feared as reminders of death, are hidden away, stripping society of wisdom. Progress is linear, technology destructive, speed a sign of spiritual collaspe. And yet, beneath all this, there is yearning—a hunger for belonging, for tribe, for home.

    In this yearning, kink communities again serve as a mirror. They craft chosen families, create rituals of gathering, and strive for inclusivity. They are not utopias—conflict, drama, and exploitation exist—but they hold space for radical honesty, vulnerability, and shared identity. In their best moments, they echo what Sobonfu Somé calls the “spirit of intimacy,” where connection itself becomes sacred.

    What emerges from this tapestry is not nostalgia for an idealized past, nor condemnation of the West, but a bridge. As Malidoma Patrice Somé argued, indigenous wisdom is for museums it’s medicine. Westerners are spiritually hungry, emotionally starved, and communally fragmented. Indigenous traditions remind us that purpose is not invented but remembered; that love is not a feeling but a practice; that healing is not fix but a choice; that community is not a lifestyle but a condition for survival.

    Even within the West, subcultures like kink show that another way is possible. They reclaim intimacy as intentional practice, ritualize communal gatherings, and insist on consent and transparency as cornerstones of relationship. While not identical to indigenous forms, they demonstrate a deep human impulse: to belong, to heal, to love, to remember.

    Conclusion

    The bread crumbs point the same way: toward intentional communities that prioritize growth over ridicule, acceptance over blame, rememberance over punishment.

    The lesson is the same: we are not meant to live alone. Our purpose is to each other. Healing is communal. Love is the will to nurture growth. Spirit is here in every moment, every action, every touch, every ritual, every breath.

    A community committed to growth does not tear down indivual in the name of purity or ideology. It understands conflict as a chance to deepen connection rather than sever it. To ridicule or exile is easy. To call in—to say, I see you, I see the harm, and I want us both to grow—is harder. This shift is essential if we are to build communities that do not replicate the same domination, punishment, and disposability we came to escape.

    The rope, the flogger, the collar are all can be tools for healing, remembrance, and ecstatic communion. These spaces echo the Dagara’s ritual circles, arenas where we purge pain, confront fear, and taste freedom together. When kink transcends performance and becomes devotion, it is indistinguishable from prayer.

    Non-monogamy when rooted in respect, honesty, and care are not threats to community but expansions of it. They can become vehicles for abundance instead of scarcity, generosity instead of jealousy, connection instead of competition. Pleasure is shared, intimacy is sacred and these are not spaces of fracture but whole.

    We must break from ideologies that serve power, image, or ego, and return to practices that serve Spirit, healing, and growth. Choosing practice over posture. Love, healing, community, and kink are not slogans—they are labors of devotion.

    Building cultures of trust. we must create spaces where hiding is unnecessary, where truth can be spoken without fear—not masked by ominous catch-all terms like “consent violation” or “harm.”

    Honoring elders and mentors. Communities cannot thrive without wisdom keepers, guides, and midwives of the Spirit.

    Ritualizing our connections. Whether through kink scenes, communal meals, or healing circles, ritual transforms the ordinary into the sacred.

    Centering Spirit and respect. Every encounter—sexual, communal, or conflictual—is a chance to honor the divine in one another.

    What lies on the other side of this path is not utopia, but fullness: communities where each person’s genius is recognized; relationships where respect and devotion are more powerful than possession; kink circles where energy, eros, and ritual are woven to heal and uplift; non-monogamous constellations where love is abundant, not scarce.

    This is a vision of better sacred communities: not dominated by shame or fear, not fractured by ideology, but alive with Spirit, love, and the ecstatic pulse of collective life.

    It is not a dream of perfection—it is a call to practice.
    To love. To heal. To remember.

  • All I Ever Wanted Was Community v2

    All I Ever Wanted Was Community

    All I ever wanted was community. That longing might sound naïve, but it is deeply human. I entered these spaces hungry for connection, for chosen family, for a circle that could hold both my fire and my tenderness. I led with my heart—always have. That heart has carried me through joy and devastation, but it also connects me to a much older hunger, one that thinkers and wisdom-keepers across cultures have tried to name.

    Sobonfu Somé, in The Spirit of Intimacy, reminds us that true community is a spiritual endeavor: a weaving of vulnerability, ritual, and collective responsibility. In her Dagara tradition, the health of the individual is inseparable from the health of the whole. Malidoma Patrice Somé echoes this in Healing Wisdom of Africa and Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community: community is sustained by rituals that reconnect us to one another, to nature, and to Spirit.

    I believed that if I moved with integrity, compassion, and willingness to learn, there would be room for me. I showed up. I gave. I made space—not to earn approval, but because that is how love teaches us to live. bell hooks, in All About Love, calls this the ethic of love: an active choice to nurture growth in ourselves and others.

    But instead of belonging, I met betrayal. I have been erased from spaces I helped hold, accused in whispers, and defamed without dialogue or process. This grief is mine, but it is also cultural. M. Scott Peck writes in The Road Less Traveled that true community requires struggle, honesty, and commitment to growth—but most groups collapse before reaching that stage. Instead of intimacy, we replicate domination.

    The West romanticizes the “rugged individual,” Erich Fromm critiques in The Art of Loving, but this individualism breeds alienation. Families are privatized, elders discarded, art isolated in museums, Spirit replaced with consumption: I shop therefore I am. In Of Water and the Spirit, Malidoma Patrice Somé contrasts this with African initiation systems where community raises the child, and where each person’s survival is bound to the survival of all.

    And yet, I kept hoping. I thought the circles I entered could be intentional spaces of care. What I found instead was conflict avoidance, gossip as governance, and safety-ism masquerading as accountability. Lee Harrington, in Playing Well with Others, emphasizes that authentic community requires communication, negotiation, and clarity—not whisper networks and silent complicity.

    So no, I am not broken. I am becoming. Smaller, deeper, and more intentional. I no longer scatter my energy into spaces that treat my humanity as optional. I do not beg for belonging. I honor those who have supported me, I release those who have harmed me, and I devote myself to what Sobonfu Somé calls the “vital life force” of real community: ritual, Spirit, and the deliberate weaving of souls.

    Community is not everyone in a room. It is not gossip or safety committees or charismatic leaders. It is a spiritual practice: a collective intimacy that restores, heals, and sustains life.

    That is still all I ever wanted. And that is still what I am building.

  • No One Breathes for You

    The tension between responsibility for oneself and the creeping trend of infantilization, “safety-ism,” and universalizing one’s own perspective over another’s consent and choice

    There’s a troubling trend I keep noticing: the desire to treat others as if they are incapable of making their own decisions, as if they are children who must be protected at all costs.

    I watch as people step in and supplant another’s desires, another’s wishes, with their own judgments — robbing them of agency, interfering in their path of self-discovery.

    I spoke recently about responsibility — that I am responsible for my existence, my choices, my actions, my happiness, my relationships, the values I live by. No one can breathe for me; no one can give me self-esteem; no one can rescue me from the consequences of my choices. That is the work of my life alone.

    So why do so many now insist on “protecting” others by stripping them of this responsibility? Why pretend that people are victims of choices they themselves have made?

    When someone consents, when someone desires, when someone says yes — who are you to override them with your own discomfort, your own morals, your own standards? Why is your universalized perspective supposed to count for more than the actual will of the person in question?

    I see it over and over: loud voices declaring “safety,” when in truth what they create is suffocation. They destroy the spaces we’ve built in the name of protection, but protection from what? From being fully human? From tasting risk? From living by our own choices?

    And worse — the arrogance of it. To presume that your personal discomfort invalidates another’s freedom. To insert yourself as savior when no rescue was asked for. To yuck someone else’s yum, and then call it morality.

    There are no victims here — only people who choose. We each walk our path. We each live the consequences of our own decisions. To deny that is to deny our dignity. To rob people of their responsibility is to rob them of their humanity.

    So I return to what I know:
    I am responsible for my life.
    I am responsible for my choices.
    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to everything I do.

    No one else can do that for me.

  • Needs vs Strategies

    Needs vs Strategies

    Needs vs. Strategies
    Part I: The Problem – Alienation from Ourselves

    Today I want to talk about three books and why they helped me describe a topic I have been extremely passionate about: The Art of Love, Nonviolent Communication, and The Body Keeps the Score. The topic is Needs vs. Strategies.

    What do I mean by that?

    Strategies are requests, desires, wants, and “solutions” to specific actions by specific people. Needs, on the other hand, contain no reference to any particular action; they exist regardless of who or what is available. Some examples of needs are rest, understanding, support, honesty, and meaning.

    This topic is so fundamentally hard to talk about, but it transforms everything. I am going to attempt to codify my understanding through this writing. Why? Because strategies disconnect us from our needs.

    Stop right there. Some of us can’t even name our needs. We live outside ourselves—and by that I mean we live on external directives rather than from our internal knowledge and needs. We become alienated from our natural state.

    All criticism, attack, insults, and judgments are the result of our attention being focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels. Our thinking becomes centered on dehumanizing one another with labels and judgments. Judgments, criticisms, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our needs.

    But everything would change if we listened to the feelings and needs behind the message.

    Part II: Trauma, Survival, and Strategies

    We have an estrangement from feelings and get stuck utilizing survival strategies to assert our needs. This is both an inability to connect with our needs and an inability to assume responsibility for our needs. We put all our energy into protecting ourselves, developing whatever survival strategies we can. We may repress our feelings; we may get furious and plot revenge. We may decide to become so powerful and successful that nobody can ever hurt us again.

    Many behaviors that are classified as psychiatric problems—including some obsessions, compulsions, and panic attacks, as well as most self-destructive behaviors—started out as strategies for self-protection.

    Biologically, we need to attach to someone. Whether that is a loving and caring someone or a distant, insensitive, rejecting, or abusive someone, we will develop some way to get our needs met. And when your source of survival is also your source of fear, you are stuck with “fright without solution.”

    In The Body Keeps the Score it says: “It is much more productive to see aggression or depression, arrogance or passivity as learned behaviors: somewhere along the line, the patient came to believe that he or she could survive only if he or she was tough, invisible, or absent, or that it was safer to give up.”

    These adaptations will continue until we feel safe and integrate all the parts of ourselves that are stuck fighting or warding off trauma. Coping takes its toll. For many, it is safer to hate themselves than to risk their relationship by expressing anger or acting out.

    They survive by denying, ignoring, and splitting off large chunks of reality: they forget, they suppress, they numb. They reconfigure their minds to live with the worst. They develop defensive strategies to help them survive.

    What is unknowable causes anxiety. People need the illusion that everything can be known. Even if in this illusion they are the most hated, it feels safer than the chaos of the unknown.

    Part III: Turning Inward – Naming Needs and Affirming Worth

    When we live away from our needs within ourselves, our lives become limited by external and alien perspectives, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on our needs.

    But when we begin to live from within outward—in touch with the power within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us—then we begin to be responsible to ourselves.

    We begin to recognize our deepest feelings. We give up, out of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness that so often seems like the only alternative. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

    To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience and to allow ourselves to be reduced.

    It requires a concern to know not only external reality but also internal reality—the reality of my needs, feelings, aspirations, and motives—so that I am not a stranger or a mystery to myself. The feeling that joy and fulfillment are my natural birthright.

    Part IV: The Affirmations – Owning My Existence

    Once you’re able to say:

    I am not here on earth to live up to someone else’s expectations; my life belongs to me.

    Each person is the owner of his or her life; no one is here on earth to live up to my expectations.

    I have a right to exist.

    I am of high value to myself.

    I have a right to honor my needs and wants, to treat them as important.

    I am lovable.

    I am admirable.

    I will usually be liked and respected by the people I like and respect.

    I should deal with others fairly and justly, and others should deal with me fairly and justly.
    I deserve to be treated courteously and with respect by everyone.

    If people treat me discourteously or disrespectfully, it is a reflection on them, not on me. It is only a reflection on me if I accept their treatment of me as right.

    If someone I like does not return my feeling, it may be disappointing or even painful, but it is not a reflection on my personal worth.

    No other individual or group has the power to determine how I will think and feel about myself.

    I trust my mind.
    I see what I see and know what I know.
    I am better served by knowing what is true than by making myself “right” at the expense of the facts.
    If I persevere, I can understand the things I need to understand.

    The more conscious I am of that which bears on my interests, values, needs, and goals, the better my life will work.

    To remain effective, I need to keep expanding my knowledge; learning needs to be a way of life. The better I know and understand myself, the better the life I can create. Self-examination is an imperative of a fulfilled existence.

    At the most fundamental level, I am for myself.
    At the most fundamental level, I accept myself.

    Part V: Responsibility and Aloneness

    I accept the reality of my thoughts, even when I cannot endorse them and would not choose to act on them; I do not deny or disown them.
    I can accept my feelings and emotions without necessarily liking, approving of, or being controlled by them; I do not deny or disown them.
    I can accept that I have done what I have done, even when I regret or condemn it. I do not deny or disown my behavior.

    I accept that what I think, feel, or do is an expression of myself, at least in the moment it occurs. I am not bound by thoughts, feelings, or actions I cannot sanction, but neither do I evade their reality or pretend they are not mine.

    I accept the reality of my problems, but I am not defined by them. My problems are not my essence. My fear, pain, confusion, or mistakes are not my core.

    Once you own that:

    I am responsible for my existence.

    I am responsible for the achievement of my desires.

    I am responsible for my choices and actions.

    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my work and other activities.

    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my relationships.

    I am responsible for my behavior with other people—co-workers, associates, customers, spouse, children, friends.

    I am responsible for how I prioritize my time.

    I am responsible for the quality of my communications.

    I am responsible for my personal happiness.

    I am responsible for choosing or accepting the values by which I live.

    I am responsible for raising my self-esteem; no one else can give me self-esteem.

    In the ultimate sense, I accept my aloneness. That is, I accept that no one is coming to make my life right, or save me, or redeem my childhood, or rescue me from the consequences of my choices and actions. In specific issues, people may help me, but no one can take over primary responsibility for my existence. Just as no one else can breathe for me, no one else can take over any of my other basic life functions, such as earning the experience of self-efficacy and self-respect.

    Part VI: Healing, Neuroplasticity, and Self-Care

    In order to play, mate, and nurture , the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance. We must identify strategies beyond denial or repression for navigating pleasure in relationship to others.

    Drop low-performing strategies and replace them with tested alternatives. Once I could name my needs, I became aware of my strategies—how I cope with the fear of my needs not being met.

    I learned to listen for feelings, to express my needs, to accept answers that I didn’t always want to hear. I learned to grow, to accept, to love, to be fulfilled.

    The most important job of the brain is to ensure our survival, even under the most miserable conditions. Everything else is secondary. Psychological problems occur when our internal signals don’t work, when our maps don’t lead us where we need to go, when we are too paralyzed to move, when our actions do not correspond to our needs, or when our relationships break down.

    The brain is formed in a “use-dependent manner.” This is another way of describing neuroplasticity, the relatively recent discovery that neurons that “fire together, wire together.” This creates the communal, spiritual, and historical contexts that shape our lives.

    As we begin to re-experience a visceral reconnection with the needs of our bodies, there is a brand new capacity to warmly love the self. We experience a new quality of authenticity in our caring, which redirects our attention to our health, our diets, our energy, and our time management. This enhanced care for the self arises spontaneously and naturally, not as a response to a “should.”

    We are able to experience an immediate and intrinsic pleasure in self-care. The body needs to be restored to a baseline state of safety and relaxation from which it can mobilize to take action in response to real danger. Building up internal resources fosters safe access to sensations and emotions. Feeling the pleasure of taking effective action restores a sense of agency and a sense of being able to actively defend and protect ourselves.

    Part VII: The Call – From Survival to Liberation

    When we don’t know how to directly and clearly express what we need, we make analyses. Criticism and diagnosis get in the way. Pain can get in the way of our ability to hear clearly.

    Translate any message into an expression of a need. Understand the pain.

  • Unbound and Untamed

    They only crave what they cannot taste. They only hunger for what does not beg to be devoured. The moment you stop offering yourself as their feast, they circle your absence like starving pilgrims, desperate for one more sip of the nectar you’ll never pour again.

    People are trained to prey on your longing—the soft tremor of needing to be desired, the ache for approval, the moan for validation. They smell it on you like sex. Like sweat. Like blood. But once you strip yourself of that hunger, once you tear out the root of needing to be chosen—you stop being food.

    Your silence is lethal. Your detachment is a mercy. No longer a body bent into shapes for their comfort, you become an altar of your own making. They’ll call you selfish. They’ll call you heartless. There’s nothing more suffocating than hands that held you only to keep you down.

    They raise you on the lie that being needed is the same as being loved. When you no longer need anyone, you become the only one they all need. Love without reverence is just hunger, and hunger will always drain you dry. Your absence becomes louder than their presence. They whisper your name when you’re not there because silence has made you a legend.

    Most beg for a seat at poisoned tables. When you no longer need their touch, their approval, their lips at your ear, you become the very thing they worship in secret. They tremble, they whisper your name in their sleep, because the one who no longer kneels becomes the only one worth kneeling to. You’ve met your monsters, made them dance, and came back free of every leash.

    They’ll call you ruthless when you stop explaining. Arrogant when you stop apologizing for your hungers, your fire, your divinity. But their accusations are burning on your altar. Their words feed your legend. Mystery is power. Secrecy is survival. To withhold your body, your secrets, your energy—this is sovereignty.

    A world addicted to taming wildness will call you a monster when you bare your fangs instead of your throat. But it is not monstrosity they fear—it is your refusal to be owned. They want your submission as proof they still matter. But you’ve tasted your own darkness, your own lust, your own silence. You are no longer theirs to tame.

    The old you—the one who apologized for existing, who begged for scraps—is gone. You buried that ghost and wear its ashes as war paint. Your indifference is not emptiness, it’s fullness. Your withdrawal is not cruelty, it’s clarity.

    Now, you choose where your loyalty goes. You choose who earns your presence. That choice is your crown. That choice is sovereignty.

    They will circle your silence like worshippers around a forbidden shrine. They will ache for the doors of your temple to open again. But they no longer understand: you are not waiting to be claimed. You are not starving for their presence. You are nourished in the sacred garden of your own solitude, fed by rivers no hand can touch.

    Let them gossip. Let them rage. You are not theirs to own, never were. You don’t need their applause, their tables, their love offered as ransom. You are the ocean—vast, ungraspable, answering to no one.

    You are not stone—you are iron. Not cruel, but sovereign. Not cold, but untouchable. You stand as proof that freedom is possible. That is what makes you dangerous. That is what makes you unforgettable.

    Everybody wants you when you don’t need anyone.

  • Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Review

    seriously this book is casting out spirits disguised as a communication manual.

    Marshall Rosenberg didn’t just hand me a tool, he handed me a mirror, and a scalpel. and said get to work.

    This book is not about how to “communicate better.” It’s about how to stop speaking like a colonizer. and how to stop letting the colonizer speak through you.

    This was a wake up call to how much of our everyday speech is laced with violence, shame, and guilt. This book really pulled back the veil of socially acceptable manipulation and all the ways we’ve learned to control, manipulate, and people.

    Most of what we call “communication” is a poorly disguised threat without even realizing it.

    Judgement, blame and guilt are expressions of our own unmet needs.””survival stragtegies” we us to avoid facing fact we dont know what we need and hoping someone else can figure it out for us.

    The book said “All criticism, attack, and insult vanish when we listen for feelings and needs.”

    How everytime you hear the word “should” or “I have to,” you’re handing your agency to the abyss. and saying Fuck it. you’re outsourcing your power. you’re kicking your inner child on your way out the door…. again

    When you been taught to that sacrifice = love, when actually… your just neglecting your needs and Wearing your pain like it’s a badge of honor.

    What sucked and was heard to swallow was “Nobody makes you feel anything.” The way I interpret what someone says or does is on me. “Anger isn’t about anyone else. It’s about your unmet needs.” see that one i need a minute ….

    “The difference between a request and a demand is what happens when someone says no.” Ouch. you see what i mean?

    This man said : “Depression is your reward, for being good.” like wtf!!!!!!!

    That we are taught to be good, be obedient, be productive, and above all be quiet your actual needs.

    What the real struggle is: Don’t label. Don’t judge. Just say what’s happening, say what you feel, say what you need, and clearly, concisly, ask. Language is a spell to liberate, not to control. Guilt, shame, blame? Just masks to avoid your needs.

    This book is not gentle. But it will help you grow.

    Rosenberg is calling for a revolution dismantling the internalized systems of domination that keep us distant from ourselves and each other. He teaches you how to get real and get in touch with your needs. He’s asking us to speak in a language of life. A language of need. A language of choice.

    And honestly? That shit slaps.
    Highly recommend