[Gem]

When a part of yourself gets repressed, generally from shame or from harsh judgment of others, it has no way out unless it can be resolved in less self-judgement and judgmental environments.

Generally when we're young we feel more uncertain and rely on how others perceive us to find out what's acceptable or not. We've been told many negative things, we tell ourselves such things, and we have a pile of evidence to back it up. Then there is fear, more-so when we are young because we are so uncertain and dependent and can't just flip the bird and go. Females, who are more vulnerable than males, get trapped in abusive situations and are demeaned, and abusers are skilled at making more vulnerable people feel insecure and reliant on them.

They are just illustrative examples. There are millions of other compromised circumstances as well and it's up to the individual to assess their own particular circumstances. You'll probably find your circumstances in some way are such that you have to constrain part of self, and it's unwise to just 'let go' in that situation. The situation has to change before letting it out is possible or feasible.

I remember a number of years ago I had a hard psychological time after going sober. I'd been drinking and smoking lots of dope since I was a teen. I thought when I stopped things would get better, but actually, everything got worse. I became unhinged and lost everything.

There were problems with the inner child who I had abandoned at about ten years old. The family situation was miserable back than and I wanted to run away. One day I packed a few things and started walking down a creek that ran near our house. After a while wondering where I was going I got too scared and turned around and went back home. When I did that, I abandoned the child in that spot because I was not brave enough to go through with what was my real chosen path. I was instead led astray by my fear.

All the time since then until after I sobered up I couldn't live as a whole person. I was disfunctional because the child part of me was still abandoned by the creek where I left him. I had to return to that time and place in mind's memory as an adult and retrieve the child who I abandoned there all those years ago.

The problem was my circumstances at the time were not safe for the child and there was no way of repairing his trust unless things changed. The catalyst was, I was at my parents place after moving down here from Queensland. I re-became that child and 'ran away' without really knowing where I'd go, but I was less dependent as an adult of course, and much braver, so this time I didn't become a piker and chicken out.

We think being homeless is a bad situation to be in, and it is terrible in many ways, but for me it was the the safe place from which I could go back and retrieve the child from the place I'd left him, and bring him back with me.

Problem was, the child didn't trust me. Why would he? I hurt the kid. It's very hurtful to abandon a child. I was wrong to do that. It was cowardly, but I was only a child - the same child - at the time, so the pain is double. Not only was I abandoned then; I was also deeply ashamed of abandoning him.

Anyway, I had to change my situation to resolve the whole issue, so I left what would be a toxic environment for the kid and lived in my car.

I first had to reestablish a connection by revisiting the time and place in memory and slowly rebuild the trust by openly regretting abandoning him, now knowing better, I know was wrong, but I'm much stronger now, I came back for you, and we have to rely on each other from now on because we're the very same person and we can't live a whole life as a part-person. It takes a long process for the child to forgive and try a little bit of trust at a time to eventually realise that I'm completely reliable, it's safe, and he won't be abandoned again, ever, no matter what.

Then I started living as a more complete person. For example, when I started looking for a place to live again, the place had to have things that 'the child' in me wants. That would have been completely invisible to me before. Then everything changed for me. I gave up on everything the world wants and parents, family and friends etc. expect of me, and just did it my way as a more complete human being. That's how I ended up where the child is safe and is happy enough to be the man that I have become.

Anyway I just told that personal story because spiritualists make it sound easy, just let go, but reality is multidimensional and every aspect of life plays into every other aspect. We deal with a very complex web of things across the wide scope of our situation and our entire life-span.

I don't know 'the answer', but can say, at first when the mind is wild and distraught it's impossible to make headway. One needs a strategy like venting on paper and burning it. Burning the rant symbolises it coming out of you and you ain't holding on to it. You can feel it being released and you can't get it back when you burn it. Doing that over and over again every day, it slowly burns itself out. It might take many weeks, but you will notice that the obsessive ranting that preoccupied you gradually loses steam, and over time you have less and less inside to rant about. After a while you barely even have a single paragraph left in there.

Once that layer of going in circles around the same thing subsides, you are able to centre yourself as the one who retrieves parts of yourself that you sectioned off in the past, but doing that requires a 'refuge' (which for me was just a car). Doing it in an unsafe setting could do more harm than good. Using my example, if i retrieved the child with my parents around it would have been even more harmful; not beneficial.

That's just an example. It's not the reader's situation. I have no idea what the reader is within so I don't give advice. I don't have the energy or the inclination to help people anyway. I just believe I have resolved deep, long lasting issues in myself. It wasn't simple as in 'just let go'. It was complex and multidimensional, as our lives actually are. I just had an urge to say so because apart from just a bit of entertainment on a lazy Saturday afternoon, there's a primal wish deep inside me that everyone will be happy.