Mike - 31

What does life look like when you operate in a state of perpetual numbness? Desaturated. Greyscale. You’re never too happy nor too sad, spikes of emotion are repulsive, and everything is just “alright”. This sort of existence is comfortable, reasonable, and low risk; conditioned to not “rock the boat”. 

I thought I was supposed to be the anchor; the person everyone counted on. The one who would always be there to keep our collective fleet steady. Like iron, I was proud of the cold metallic walls I had constructed to keep us safe from the churning waves of life. At the bottom of the ocean, I was grounded, clinging onto hard facts, and toiling against the fluidity of everyone’s emotions. The crushing pressure around me was welcomed; the more I could take, the more proof I had that I was useful.

Up until the beginning of this year, I had convinced myself that my life, attitude, and way of being were stoic, responsible, and a reflection of my resilience. I consciously bolstered these characteristics within myself by dedicating the last decade to self development work. Always a book in hand, constantly listening to podcasts, chatting with anyone who would listen about how to optimize their life. Never had I considered that there may be a problem with how I was going about things, but there were signs.

Over the years people have asked: 

“Why are you so serious all the time?”

“Why do you work so hard?”

“Why don’t you just chill out?”

“Why do you not take risks?”

“Why are you so boring?”

“Do you even know what love is?”

To all, I would say to myself - because life is hard and demands seriousness for it all to work out. Most of the time, I would brush these questions off as utterances from people who didn’t have the same dedication to life as I did. These were people that didn’t understand me or my upbringing, nor did they have my best interest at heart - I would show them that my sacrifices were worth it once I reached my “ideal self!”

Many personal growth teachers say that one should enjoy the process versus hyper fixating on the end state of your goals. Although, I do believe there is value in that idea, for me it manifested itself as a contradiction. I only cared about the statistics of the day, and I became void of emotion towards the goals themselves. Everything had to be measured, everything needed to have its place, everything became a zero-sum game. Robotically, those binary systems were deployed throughout my life with varying degrees of success and if an area of life was suffering it was only because I was not working hard enough. You may be asking yourself where does happiness and fulfillment enter into my equation? It rarely did. My emotional currency was measured by how much I had sacrificed myself to a larger goal or for the emotional stability of others. To a man with clouded judgment this sounds romantic and virtuous; ironically, this path slowly led me to a place of self destruction. 

In February of 2024, the pressure from a shattered romantic relationship, financial irresponsibility, chronic isolation, and a raw sense of inadequacy, cracked the rusty iron shell around me. I was broken, untethered from the fleet, consumed by the ocean. Worse still, my memory was so murky and confused that I couldn’t piece together how this all came to pass. Part denial, part cognitive dissonance, and a lot of overthinking led me to an internal space I had not been to in years. Fear.

All men experience fear to different degrees and subsequently react to it in different ways. At first it was a tightness in my chest, then a lump in my throat, moving down to upset my stomach, and finally producing a sharp headache; a purging of repressed emotional energy. Anger was a quick second emotion to come out of its cage to spew its hatred towards the situation, people who harmed me, and of course myself for not being strong enough to keep everything together and moving in the right direction. In a desperate frenzy for some answers and self soothing, I sought out personal development videos and podcasts. Eventually, a form of psychotherapy that focuses on exposing the dark parts of the psyche to the light, found me and henceforth my shadow work began.

Through some intense exercises I discovered that my identity as “the anchor”; was an illusion; a character I had conjured up to embody everything I thought would have protected me from my negative childhood experiences. I built him up stronger every year, burying parts of my authentic self in the process. In the dark recesses of my psyche, I knew that I couldn’t connect to people in the ways that I said I wanted, but more importantly, I couldn’t fully connect to myself anymore. Since I was so entrenched in my “role,” there was no way I could truly see or feel the emotional damage my way of being had caused those closest to me. The realization that I had been so misaligned in my words and actions for years was sickening and brought about a new wave of raw emotion. Grief.

Within shadow work there is a powerful exercise where one writes a letter to the people who hurt them as a way to cathartically release, process, and forgive them for the pain they caused. Taking this to another level, one can confront those demons directly by reading this letter to said person. For me, the archetypal “Mother Wound”; was at the crux of my dysfunction and pain. To my horror, I found that this wound had malignantly weaved itself into all my close relationships with friends, family, and girlfriends. Clearing deep rooted resentments and vulnerably sharing the pain I carried inside for decades with my own mother was transformational! For the first time, I was able to identify the cycle I had been subconsciously trapped in, a cycle which I used to keep people out and myself in a subdued state. Those protective walls I was once proud of only stood as limits to my ability to experience life and have started to come down. My binary rule book has begun to turn into a rich novel full of adventure and examples of living with integrity. Colours, tones, and hues have started to pop back into my experience of life. I am remembering how to be present and connected to my body; enough to register emotions and memories in a full sensory way.

Carl Jung said: “Anyone who perceives their shadow and light simultaneously sees themselves from two sides and thus gets in the middle.”

I am anew. I am worthy. Behold my authentic self.

Music - Mike's music choices during our photo session included Opeth, Ulcerate, Meshuggah and Gojira.