Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Awareness about toxic dynamics has never spread this quickly. I believe we are truly fortunate to live in times where this is possible. Concepts that describe relational imbalance, psychological manipulation, and boundary violations are now part of our common vocabulary. Our parents and grandparents did not possess this level of awareness. We know all too well what that lack of language implied for their generation, both personally and societally—where dynamics of control were normalised within families and systemic subjugation went unchallenged.
Today, this awareness is so pervasive that it has escaped the strict confines of psychology and psychiatry. We encounter it in the most unexpected spaces. For instance, while taking a web design course some time ago, the lecturer advised us to avoid clients who constantly try to undermine our worth, devalue our labor, or claim they know the job better than we do just to lower the price. Without explicitly using the clinical terminology, she was describing a classic pattern of entitlement and devaluation.
With the widespread dissemination of this knowledge, we have also witnessed a rise in practitioners, mentors, and virtual coaches dedicated to assisting others through recovery. Many of these guides are moved by the purest altruistic intentions. Like me, they know firsthand what it feels like to be diminished by another, and they understand the psychological traps one must navigate to find freedom. However, a significant challenge arises when this sacred work meets the modern marketplace.
The internet is flooded with recovery content, much of it created with marketing in mind. But digital marketing—especially how it has evolved alongside the social media algorithm—creates systemic issues that no serious seeker of inner freedom should disregard. The algorithm demands constant visibility. It requires creators to perpetually advertise, endlessly generate new content, and keep pushing. And here lies the trap, and it isn't only about what the creator does—it's about what happens in the reader. A post doesn't need to be written with any specific person in mind to land as one. Someone scrolls past a list of "signs you were parentified as a child," or "signs your partner is a covert narcissist," and even in a life that is, by any reasonable measure, going well, a small voice starts searching: did that happen to me? Was that a red flag I missed? The content was general; the self-scrutiny it triggers is not. And because there is always another post, another checklist, another subtler sign to measure yourself against, the search for what might still be wrong with you never quite runs out of material. If the marketing push must be never-ending, then the "healing journey" itself risks becoming a never-ending endeavour for those who seek healing—not necessarily because any single creator intends it, but because perpetual content and perpetual self-examination feed each other perfectly.
The risk is that we begin to view healing as an eternal sentence—a distant North Star to chase with starry eyes and open mouths, or a shiny badge of honour to wear on our jackets. But healing is not an ideology. To someone who has lived within the mental cage of psychological abuse, healing is beautifully simple: it is the quiet capacity to function in an authentic way, day by day. It happens softly, without the need for grandiose acts or perpetual processing. And this is precisely what separates true healing from the trap we've been describing: if you are genuinely functioning well day by day, you are not spending your energy endlessly re-examining yourself, hunting for hidden wounds, or cross-checking your life against someone else's checklist. That kind of relentless self-analysis can look like diligence, even like virtue—but for many survivors, it is simply the abuser's old voice wearing new, therapeutic language: you are not enough, you have to push more, there is still something wrong with you that you haven't found yet. Real healing doesn't sound like that voice. It is quieter than that.
For this reason, we must remember that while our role as mentors and peers is a professional vocation, this work is only successful when our ultimate goal is the independence of the individual. True recovery means a person is capable of feeling their own emotions, making their own choices, and moving through life from a space of inner peace—not becoming dependent on a new system or a new guide.
I have lived this from the other side too, as someone who once needed—and received—more support than I do today. And I hope for the same shift, eventually, for anyone who ever works with me. If a person finishes their path with me and simply doesn't need to come back, I don't experience that as a loss. I experience it as proof that the work did exactly what it was meant to do. There will always be someone else who still needs the door open.
The true guide, coach, or spiritual practitioner is the one who accompanies you on the journey back to yourself, not on a never-ending journey to them.
Saturday, February 28, 2026
One of the most comforting aspects of finally realising you have been a target of psychological abuse is the quiet realisation that you are not your trauma responses.
As you move further into your healing journey, you may feel a gentle, gradual lifting of the veil of shame that has accompanied you for years. For a long time, you might have believed there was something fundamentally wrong with you. You blamed yourself for the recurrent gloomy thoughts, the sudden explosions of anger, or the periods of paralysis and indecision. This is the same shame that an abuser intentionally nurtures with subtle, recurrent hints designed to make you believe that you are the problem. Sometimes this works through reactive abuse—a dynamic where an abuser pushes you to your absolute limit until you finally snap or react with anger, then points to that reaction as "proof" of your instability, conveniently ignoring the months of provocation that led to it. But the same trick works just as well on the gloominess, or the paralysis: whichever trait shows up, in the right hands it becomes one more piece of "evidence" that something is fundamentally wrong with you.
There's an insight worth sitting with, one that carries real weight for anyone battling the identity crisis that follows abuse: Is this really me, or is it something happening to me?
- The Outside Perspective: Can you recall a time—even a small, fleeting moment—when a colleague, a friend, or even a stranger described you in a way that felt "too good" to be true? What if their mirror was the accurate one, and yours was the one that had been distorted?
- The Environment Check: Think of a hobby, a place in nature, or a specific person with whom you feel safe. How does your behavior change in that space? Do you notice a "calm" or a "creativity" that isn't present when you are under pressure?
- The Survival Shield: When you feel "nervous," "angry," or "indecisive," can you try to look at that feeling not as a flaw, but as a shield? What was that part of you trying to protect you from at the time?
Friday, February 27, 2026
When we escape a relationship defined by control, we often feel like a compass that has lost its magnetic north. Our boundaries have been broken down for so long that we hesitate. Making our own decisions can feel paralysing. In this vulnerable space, an "Internet Guru" can look like a lifeline. They speak with the absolute certainty we lack. They offer a simple, one-size-fits-all map that makes living feel like the easiest of endeavours—if only we follow their advice. But if we look closer—paying attention to their language and, most importantly, how our body feels—we might uncover some familiar pattern.
Mimicking the Abuse
The relationship we form with an external authority figure can easily mimic the very cycles we are trying to escape. When a guide presents themselves as the sole keeper of the truth—or when we begin to view them that way, regardless of what they have actually said or done—something dangerous happens. They risk taking over the sacred space where your own intuition is supposed to live.
It is easy to get caught in a loop. We wait for the next sermon, the next post, the next 'secret,' or the next level of a course just to be told how and what to feel. This is not recovery. This is not embodying your most authentic self. It is just another cycle of waiting for external validation. We become dependent on a solution provided by someone else, which keeps us from looking inside at our own reservoir.
Remember this: control is always achieved through erasure, replacing your voice with theirs. Two different things can be happening here, and it is worth naming both separately. Sometimes a mentor, even a well-meaning one, actively contributes to that erasure—demanding you follow their specific 'method' instead of your own lived experience, or instilling the idea that you must attend every weekly sermon. Other times, no one has done anything wrong at all: as survivors used to dynamics of control, we can unconsciously swap one authority figure for another simply because the pattern of deference feels familiar, regardless of how the person in front of us is actually behaving.
But true recovery is not about finding a better master to follow forever. When the work is genuinely good, walking alongside a guide eventually brings you to the same place: a moment when you realise you no longer need them. It means moving away from seeking outside approval indefinitely, and slowly building safety within yourself instead.
In the tarot, The Hierophant represents structure, tradition, and the external teacher who holds the keys to the kingdom. But when we look outside ourselves for an absolute master, we risk trading our inner sovereignty for a new system of control.
Simple Tools for Your Body
To break this loop, we must stop trying to argue it out in our heads. Clever language can easily trick the mind, but the body does not lie. Reclaiming your inner authority simply means learning to read your own physical signals again.
Notice the Tightness vs. the Expansion: Pay attention to how your body reacts to online content. Messages built on urgency, fear, or pressure usually trigger a survival response. You might feel a tight chest, shallow breathing, or an anxious rush to buy or follow. True guidance feels like a physical sigh of relief. It feels grounded, slow, and spacious. If a message makes you feel small or left behind, it does not belong to your true nature.
Weigh the Information: When listening to an expert, imagine holding their words in your hands like a physical object. Does the information feel like a heavy burden you have to carry or live up to? Or does it feel like a simple tool you can pick up, use, and put back down whenever you choose? True inner authority means you have the total freedom to put the tool down.
The Power of the Pause: In abusive dynamics, you are always forced to move at someone else's speed. The digital marketplace does the same thing with limited-time offers and promises of instant change. You can fight this by taking a deliberate pause. Before you hit subscribe, step away from the screen. Feel your feet on the floor. Take a deep breath and ask your body: "Am I looking for this answer because I am curious, or because I am afraid?"
Even these words are only useful if your body agrees with them. If your body does not agree, these words may simply be wrong for you, no matter how much certainty they were delivered with.
The Daily Practice of Return
Becoming your own master is rarely a grand, cinematic event. It is not a sudden moment where you have all the answers, or feel "fully healed" according to someone else's checklist.
Instead, it is a quiet, radical, daily practice of coming back to yourself.
It is the moment you close a browser tab because the tone of a post made your stomach tighten. It is the moment you decide that a specific rule of wellness doesn't actually fit your life. It is the courage to be unfinished and uncertain while you wait for your own internal compass to settle. The path back to your Vera Essenza—your true essence—cannot be packaged and sold to you. No one else can walk it for you. It begins the very moment you stop looking at the screen for permission to exist, and turn your attention back to the only authority that has been with you all along: yourself.
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