My dear friend Joseph, thank you for such a moving piece! 💙

That was the life-changing realization I made without planning for it in Sep, 2018!

I was suffering from a Perfectionism Syndrome almost my whole life, given I was loved conditionally, that my intrinsic worth was discriminated against, which gave birth to a fearful-avoidant attachment style!

Folks like the former me develop an hypervigilence and a high level of observation when it comes to the human behavior as an adaptation to their environment.

As a result, they are experts in spotting any microscopic swing in someone’s mood and run to rescue them (oh, the savior pattern is also part of the equation! 😁🤭🙈).

At the same time, and because they have no clue that this skill was part of their subconscious survival strategy, they tend to expect others to mind-read them as well, and can become so disappointed and resentful when people fail them, and they will especially they’re either anxious-preoccupied or dismissive-avoidant; in which case the relationship and investment in terms of energy&time&soul will ALWAYS be imbalanced.

The achiever component of my Perfectionism Syndrome was leaving me without any psychological air from time to time. I’ve done everything earlier than average: walking, talking, speaking, singing, dancing, acting, etc. I was promoted during my whole education. I was workaholic and best employee. I was miserable…

I had several burnouts among them 3 in 5 years. I had an existential crisis. I was trying to understand what was going on, while I was spot by a malignant narcissist. I was the PERFECT victim. I was so harshly but subtly abused that I almost lost my sanity and life in Sep 2018.

I reached the darkest places and was about to proceed while I had what I could only describe as an out-of-body experience! It was as if the servant leader inside of me dissociated to show me all the lies of my unhealthy ego and all the limiting beliefs ingrained in my invasive subconscious program, either about myself or the world. Diagnosing the latter group, afterwards, was much easier than the former one.

How come? There is a simple logic for any limiting belief about the world: is it violating any universal principle (which we all have as our original center before the conditioning, our natural constitution, our compass to know what’s right from wrong, but that we unfortunately numbed and replaced by distorted centers).

That moment was my point of no return! In addition to the lies, I saw that the world was anything but revolving around my small self and that I was here for a mission.

Without even putting my hand on my chest when I came back to the physical reality, I was hearing the beats of my heart and felt a limitless gratitude to the universe for the story of my life and all the traumas which made that moment possible!

The caterpillar needed time to heal the very obvious scars and gain some strength before starting the most painful work: re-writing my subconscious program and setting the original being free!

“Taking our responsibility to change what we were not responsible for creating in the first place-- our subconscious program-- is probably the highest level of wisdom and courage!”