Between Four Walls

Our early years have a way of holding us tightly in its grip: quietly, persistently, and often without our awareness. If we never examine them, they run us from the shadows. And even when we do the work, even when we’ve “processed” our childhoods, those old patterns can still flare up, automatic and unchecked. It’s wild how we can be decades removed from the houses we grew up in yet still be governed by what happened between those four walls.

As children, our behaviours solidify in response to the smallest nuances, tone, affection withheld or given, the unpredictable moods of parents, the rivalries and hierarchies among siblings, the need for approval or safety. We build strategies to protect, to belong, to soothe ourselves. Some of those strategies nourish us. Others, we create as armour. But regardless of their purpose, we internalise them. The good, the bad, and the complicated. We carry that sh*t long after we’ve packed up and moved out.

Some of us move out, but not on.

Imagine staying stuck in trauma responses formed when you were five then turning fifty, still letting that little girl inside dictates your choices, your relationships, your sense of self. Imagine hitting sixty but still reaching for the same masks, the same behaviours, still rehearsing the same old defense mechanisms designed to protect you from dangers or uncomfortable situations that no longer exist.

Denial. Displacement. Projection. Rationalisation. Reaction formation. Repression. Suppression...

They’re familiar, almost comforting in their predictability. They once kept you safe. They once helped you cope. But now? They keep you repeating the same loops, reacting to the present through the lens of a past that no longer deserves a place in your life.

Do you recognise your go-to?

Do you still slip into it without realising?

Does it still run the show when the adult version of you should be in charge?

Are you stuck with a narrative of your life that you repeat daily?

And has it held you back from the life you envision for yourself?

Liberation isn’t about blaming the past. It’s about noticing the echoes and choosing not to let them be the narrator of your story anymore.

You deserve to free yourself from the past, to become unstuck, to take the “good” and the “bad" and honour the journey as well as the destination that led to you.