The Empath’s Hidden Burden: Unpacking Trauma, Shame, and the Illusion of Kindness
If you often find yourself stressed, overwhelmed, or feeling like you’re carrying the weight of the world for others, it’s time to get real about something many kind, empathetic souls struggle with: the truth you might be unconsciously avoiding, and it is not your fault.
You see, for those who identify as empaths, there are two colossal forces bubbling beneath the surface: horrific childhood trauma and debilitating shame. Understanding these isn’t about blaming; it’s about illuminating the path to genuine healing and emotional safety, and liberation.
Trauma: The Childhood Foundation
Now, if you’re thinking, “Trauma? My childhood was great!” I hear you. But here’s the thing: you don’t become an empath by accident. A deeply sensitive person only develops this hyper-awareness in childhood because their environment demanded it. Think of a child’s emotional landscape as an open, unshielded canvas. Whatever emotions our parents felt — their anxieties, their unexpressed anger, their fears — we absorbed them. We became mirrors of their emotional state.
To survive, we learned to be hyper-attuned. For me, with a mother battling alcoholism and a father consumed by rage, survival meant becoming a human lie-detector, constantly scanning for emotional shifts. This was a brilliant, life-saving skill in childhood. It protected me. But, like an old survival kit, it becomes a burden in adulthood. The very mechanism that saved us then can now keep us from truly living. It’s why so many empaths feel overwhelmed in crowds, struggle in relationships, and constantly feel drained — the trauma of childhood is boomeranging back, keeping them stuck.
Shame: The Silent Driver Behind Inauthentic Kindness
And then there’s the second piece: debilitating shame.
But here’s a powerful truth from the world of human behavior: when we experience severe trauma and shame, we often develop what’s called a reaction formation. This is an unconscious defense mechanism where we repress a disturbing, painful feeling and express the exact opposite.
So, when an empath is excessively kind, it’s often a defense against a buried impulse to be “cruel.” Not because their heart is inherently cruel, but because underneath that shame and trauma lies a deep reservoir of unexpressed hurt, anger, and sadness. As children, they couldn’t stand up for themselves; expressing that raw emotion would have been “bad” or unsafe, reinforcing their shame.
The “Thinly Sadistic” Nature of Avoidance
Imagine all that unprocessed anger and pain building up. If an empath were to truly express that deep-seated rage, it would trigger that original shame and wounding they’ve spent a lifetime avoiding. So, what do they do? They double down on kindness. It becomes a rigid, almost inappropriate trait. This extreme kindness acts as a shield, ensuring they never have to feel that inner “cruelty” — that deep, raw anger — and therefore, never have to face the underlying shame.
This is why many empaths find themselves repeatedly in relationships with narcissists. This “kindness” isn’t a freely given, authentic gift. It’s often coercive, manipulative, and yes, thinly sadistic (a term coined by John Bradshaw). Think about it: how truly authentic or loving is it to be “nice” to someone who doesn’t deserve it, or to give of yourself until you’re depleted, all while secretly resenting it? This isn’t a genuine connection; it’s a dynamic born from unaddressed trauma and shame.
Finding Your Authentic Power
This relentless kindness, in its most extreme form, is an empath’s way of hiding their own “darkness” — the very hurt and anger that, if faced, could lead to their greatest liberation. It’s time to recognize that true healing begins not by perpetuating the cycle with forced kindness but by acknowledging the full spectrum of emotions within and learning to be authentically imperfect. This is the first step on your journey to Emotional Authenticity.If this resonates with you and you’re curious about taking those next steps to heal childhood wounds and overcome shame, my book, Your Journey to Success, could be a helpful guide.
Many of us are afraid of change. Whether it’s a new job, a new relationship, or even going to the grocery store for the first time in months. In today’s Best Day Blog article and attached video, I will show you how to embrace the fear of change in three simple steps!
Why do we fear change?
Anything that we haven’t seen, tasted, touched, felt, or smelled before will instantly trigger the fear response. This means that any time there is a change or you want to try something new; it is normal to be somewhat afraid. We will all have the fight or flight response triggered when we face new experiences. There’s nothing we can do to stop this natural reaction from happening. However, there are many things we can do to learn how to quiet fear and embrace change.
The first step to embracing change
The first thing to recognize is we all have to experience the unknown in our lives. I know this can be extremely scary, and I, myself, have many experiences of this, one of which I distinctly remember. When I turned 18 years old, I left my home in Colorado to play junior hockey in Canada. This was my first time experiencing traveling on my own and a forty-six-hour bus journey. I was leaving the comfort of what I knew, the people I knew, and the customs that I knew. I spent most of that bus ride in tears. But I knew that the only way to conquer that fear was to get on the bus and learn. I had to lean into the fear.
To overcome fear, we have to turn into fear. Importantly, our brain doesn’t know the difference between something good for us or something bad for us; all it knows is whether it knows the experience or not. If not, there will be fear. So, to embrace change, we have to turn those things we’ve never done before into a known experience – we can’t skip this step.
Fear is always ear is one of these three things:
The fear of rejection
The fear of inadequacy – we don’t have the skills, tools, or knowledge to do something.
The fear of powerlessness
In my experience, I was fearful of being rejected – by new friends, by being an American in Canada, of being inadequate- not being skilled enough to play, and of being powerless – over losing old friends, my girlfriend, and the journey itself.
To learn more about the deep intricacies of fear and to overcome each one specifically, I have a 5-part series on my YouTube channel which will take you through my R.I.P. strategy. This video series provides you with a simple process to identify which fear you are experiencing and the steps to calm your fears.
Furthermore, I created a free download How To Remove Feeling Rejected which walks you through a simple ten-step process to never experience the feeling of rejection again.
How to embrace change?
Have grace for yourself and how long change takes. As adults, we all expect change to happen quickly, but I want to remind you of how long change actually takes. When I ask people how long it might take them to write a one-page essay, most reply one-three hours. I then remind them that it took them almost twelve years. I know that seems hard to believe, so let me remind you. Think about it. What’s the first thing you are taught at preschool? The alphabet! We first had to learn how to make each individual letter- the way they move and their different variations.
Then we had to learn how to combine these letters into words and their proper spelling and group words into a sentence. Punctuation and the different meanings words have when placed in different parts of the sentence. Then we move on to paragraphs, which eventually turn into stories. The stories of our lives. If you recall, it was not until you were in senior in high school that you could effectively combine all of these new tasks into a well-written essay. Therefore, remind yourself that we all start at preschool with every new challenge, no matter your age. Change takes time. Have grace for the pre-schooler in you at all times.
How to embrace change in three simple steps:
-To recognize that everything we do requires change. Fear can’t be avoided. We can’t avoid the fight or flight response. We must choose to turn towards change and fear, and by doing so, we create a known experience that quiets our fear.
-Secondly, remember that fear is always either the fear of inadequacy, rejection, or powerlessness. To learn more, you will want to watch my Youtube video series, and read the free download I mentioned above.
-Thirdly, remember to have grace with yourself. So often, as adults, we expect to be able to write the story straight away – without learning the individual letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs – we put too much pressure on ourselves to know everything. This isn’t realistic, and you wouldn’t expect a preschooler to know how to write the alphabet on the first day of school – you’d celebrate them for trying! Love and honor yourself as you would the preschooler, embrace your perfect imperfections, and embrace change.
To learn more:
Watch the video version of this article below. To gain a deep understanding of fear, check out my five-part video series on Youtube and my free download, How To Remove Feeling Rejected I mentioned above. To go even deeper, pick up a copy of my book, Your Journey, To Success. I dedicate a complete chapter to explaining what fear is. The rest of the book provides you with the process of becoming fearless.
Are you confused as to why people ghost you? It’s so common these days, and it leaves us feeling hurt, angry, and perplexed when we can’t figure out why. In today’s Best Day Blog article and the accompanying video, I will help you end that hurt and frustration by explaining why people ghost you, how you attracted a ghoster and what you can do to protect your mental health going forward.
What created the “Ghoster?”
Two things create the people who ghost you. The internet and the underlying emotional feelings within the people who ghost you. The internet has altered the communication landscape drastically. It thrives on separation – messages, emails, text messages. Since only 7% of all communication is words, texting and email are virtually not even communication. Even worse, If you call a person, they tend to be shocked. It may result in you being categorized as weird, threatening, or dysfunctional? Therefore the internet is creating a society that is horrifically underdeveloped emotionally. People can no longer communicate, and most are afraid of intimacy and connection. Think about the extreme rise in the viewing of pornography. This keeps us detached from reality and separates us from intimacy. Unfortunately, society now primarily pursues relationships through screens and not in person.
Perfectly Imperfect Parenting
The nature of being human is to admit that we all make mistakes and therefore we were all raised by perfectly imperfect parents who left emotional wounds in us. These traumatic moments sever attachment, and since we are a child, we are powerless to fix them. This fills the people who ghost with high levels of fear. It might be a fear of confrontation, sharing their needs and wants, or being vulnerable and intimate?
Some people who ghost are aware of their attachment issues and powerlessness but don’t know how to overcome them? Others are aware and consciously choose to ghost you. Regardless, being ghosted is very cruel – to spend time creating a relationship and connection and then, boom, it’s severed with no explanation is a massive abandonment. There are ghosters who do it once and are gone forever, and those who come in and out of your life, repeatedly leaving with no explanation. For someone to do this is abusive, there is no sugar coating this.
Why do people Ghost?
People who ghost will have experienced powerlessness and a lack of attachment as a child. To avoid feeling powerless and out of control as an adult, people who ghost use denial, detachment, and dissociation. To the ghoster, these feel like control and power because they allow them not to feel the pain from the past. Therefore, people who ghost have unhealed emotional pain from the past.
This type of trauma and abandonment causes the people who ghost to put up their defenses, deny what happened, and dissociate from the reality of their childhood. Therefore, it’s tough for them to admit that they might be faulty, deficient, or perfectly imperfect as adults?
Why We Attract People WHo Ghost?.
Many don’t realize that both the people who ghost and the ones attracted to them are part of the problem? On the positive side, that means those attracted to them can create their own solution. First, we have to ask ourselves, ‘what are the benefits of attracting people who ghost?’ You’ll likely say ‘none,’ but there is a reason that you are attracting them into your life. So instead of blaming them and saying they’re the problem, try flipping it and look back at yourself and think of all the ways you benefit?
Some of the benefits for attracting people who ghost:
You don’t have to commit to them
Low drama
Low intensity
Lots of freedom
No accountability for your actions
The first step to attracting people who do not ghost is to get out of denial and into reality of all the.subconscious benefits the person who ghosts brings us. In many ways, you’re having your cake and eating it too because you have the attention, anticipation, and excitement of meeting the people who ghost while still living your life with freedom and no commitment – you subconsciously love it!
However, one of the most significant unconscious benefits is that both the people who ghost and the ones attracted to them treat the other as a light switch. In moments of sadness or loneliness, they switch the light on and reach out for some connection, but as soon as they get what they need, they switch the light off again, making excuses. The truth is, you have to be responsible for yourself and recognize what attracted you to the people who ghost you?
What are you afraid of?
Ultimately, what are both sides afraid of – connection and intimacy. Because of the unhealed pain from the past, both consciously or subconsciously recognize that they are fearful of a relationship. Depending on how deep the pain is, it might ultimately take professional help to conquer these inner fears. It’s challenging to do this alone because the individual is too close to it, and they won’t see themselves. Additionally, the fear of intimacy, abandonment, and powerlessness they experienced as a child blocks their ability to get help. Often they’ll come up with excuses that keep them in denial. For example, convincing themselves with arguments that’ It’s too expensive,’ or ‘I don’t have enough time!’
The solution
If you’ve recognized yourself as a person who ghosts or know that you’re always attracting people who ghost, the best solution is to work with a professional. We all need a guide to show us what we cannot see in ourselves.
If you’re unsure about one-on-one work, then my Complete Emotional Authenticity Method for only $47 a month is perfect. It walks you through healing from your childhood pain, shows you how to go from fearful to fearless, creates intimacy and connection, overcomes codependency, and much more.
Here are more solutions? Pick the one that suits your needs best!
This Best Day Blog article and accompanying video is an analysis of the happenings that took place in the Netflix docu-series Bad Vegan – Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.
In this article, I will be discussing what created the attraction between the ‘meat suit’. Otherwise known as Anthony Strangis, and the bad vegan, Sarma Melngailis. Having this information will allow you to protect yourself from falling for a ‘meat suit’ yourself! Throughout the article I’ll be sharing lots of helpful resources so that you can gain the knowledge, skills, and tools that you need so that you don’t ever fall prey to a situation like this.
What creates a ‘meat suit’ and what creates the vegan who is attracted to them?
For those who haven’t yet watched the documentary, the ‘meat suit’ is what Strangis calls his human form, his vessel. He believes he is a ‘non-human’ and that his body is simply here as a physical representation of himself – his meat suit. I will refer to him as the ‘meat suit’ from here on out.
What created the personality of the meat suit, though? Well, it is something I call The Worst Day Cycle. The Worst Day Cycle explains how we end up in relationships like these. Furthermore, it explains how we fall short in reaching our potential. If you would like to learn the full process and how it is operating in your life because yes, it is operating in all of our lives, I discuss it at length in my book ‘Your Journey to Success’. Your cycle may not be as extreme as what was portrayed in Bad Vegan, but everybody on this planet is caught living in The Worst Day Cycle.
What is the Worst Day Cycle (WDC)?
On my YouTube channel, I have a 5-part video series which takes you through the WDC called ‘Reclaim Your Authentic Self By Becoming Trauma Informed. You will find that series within my WDC playlist.
The WDC consists of four parts, trauma, fear, shame and denial. This might be hard to swallow but every single one of us experiences trauma in childhood – this is unavoidable. For the Meat Suit in Bad Vegan he experienced significant neglect and abandonment from his father who often took him gambling when he was a child. He and his mother were also held hostage and he watched as his father held a gun to her head. While many of us do not experience this level of trauma. We do experience emotional injuries from our perfectly imperfect caregivers.
Worst Day Cycle
For Sarma the ‘Bad Vegan’, she experienced her parents divorcing at 9 years old which is a difficult experience for anyone to go through and her sister, with all best intention, took on a protective role for her, often talking for Sarma and becoming her voice – this is also what happened in the relationship with Anthony – he became her voice. Sarma ended up playing the prisoner just as she had as a child and therefore subconsciously looked for this in her partners. Someone who could talk for her and ‘protect’ her – the trauma cycle repeats.
Many people don’t realize that they’ve experienced trauma in their childhoods. They believe they are completely recovered from it, but most often this isn’t the case. My video ‘The Wounded Inner Child’ will help you to understand more about this. When you are living in denial and not accepting that your childhood was less than perfect. You can’t recover or prevent similar events like those that took place in ‘Bad Vegan’ from happening.
Worst Day Cycle
When we go through these emotional and traumatic experiences our brain actually becomes emotionally addicted to the explosion of fear chemicals and hormones that are released – we become addicted to the trauma – my video on ‘The Tinder Swindler’ goes into this phenomena in some depth. Because we have been conditioned to minimize and suppress our fears, we are all stuck in it. We’ve never been taught the Emotional Authenticity Method I teach to cope with these difficult emotional life experiences.
There is a great deal of work in science, medicine and society that has taken place around emotions because we now know that, actually, emotions do run our lives – not our intellect. Emotions come first – every thought we have starts with a feeling, and because we haven’t developed the Emotional Authenticity that we need, our brains automatically replay the unhealed emotions from the past when we experience new things or things that subconsciously trigger the same feelings we experienced as children.
The Third Stage
The third stage of the cycle is shame. As a child we must physically and emotionally connect to another human being to survive. Therefore when our parents are imperfect and create emotional injuries inside of us. We adapt and create a false persona to fit in. It is a survival mechanism to protect ourselves. Because it happens so young, we believe it is the real “us”. This loss of the authentic self creates a power vacuum. Shame is ultimately a power dynamic. We use this deep shame core as adults to regain our power. How do we do that? By choosing hobbies, friends, careers and relationships that mirror the injuries of our childhood. We do this because even though we have been hurt, who is responsible for the hurt? Ourselves, we CHOSE, this person place or thing. The overwhelming truth that we are responsible for our self-victimization send us into denial.
About Denial
Denial is the single greatest killer on the planet today. He is the main reason you don’t have the relationship, career or life you want. This is exactly what Sarma was caught in – the shame and denial portions of the cycle. She kept going back, choosing to re-victimize herself (shame) by denying the abuse and lies that were right in front of her. Not because she is a bad person but because as a society we don’t teach about The Worst Day Cycle or how to attain Emotional Authenticity.
To dive deeper into how denial is the single greatest killer on the planet today, I really recommend checking out my ‘Self-Deception/Denial’ playlist on YouTube so you can learn how your denial is affecting your life and begin the healing journey.
The Worst Day Cycle is incredibly powerful. People often think that these sorts of experiences can only happen to people who aren’t smart or are defective in some way, but Sarma was a very clever woman. It happens to all of us. Many people find this very difficult to accept – that even the ‘victim’ could be responsible for bad things happening to them, but learning to accept responsibility for this is the only way to heal. Sarma wanted money, she wanted her dog to be saved and she made the choice to stay. She did these things because of The Worst Day Cycle and her lack of Emotional Authenticity.
Resources and links to help you
We must become an expert in the worst day cycle and how trauma, fear, shame and denial operate in our lives. My book ‘Your Journey to Success’ goes through this in detail.
If you would like to start your healing journey then sign up to my free masterclass ‘Your Journey to Emotional Authenticity.’ Learning my Emotional Authenticity method does not take long and you will see very quickly how much better your life becomes and when you have the knowledge, skills, and tools, how easy it is to avoid being eaten by a meat suit!
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There’s an old story of how Albert Einstein was teaching a class. He wrote 10 simple math problems down on the board and asked the class for feedback. One was wrong out of the 10 problems; 9 x 10 = 91. When he asked for feedback, everyone in the class laughed at him and completely denigrated him. So even though Einstein is one of the greatest mathematical minds to have ever lived, he got a problem incorrect. Why? Because he was human, and he wanted to prove an even more profound point. We all tend to focus on our 1 mistake and not our 9 accomplishments.
In this article, I will discuss why we all focus on somebody’s imperfection, the 10% of them, and not the perfection, which is the more significant part. I will also provide you with some tips on transforming your self-esteem instantly.
As we struggle with our self-esteem, pointing out someone else’s imperfection is our way, conscious or not, of bringing them down to our level. Why should they feel good about themselves when I feel so terrible? It’s the crabs in a barrel mentality: when you put a bunch of crabs in a barrel, as soon as one starts to climb out, the others pull it back down. As a society, we really struggle to accept another person’s success, especially if it’s directly in our sight. You can see examples of this time and again in popular culture. The up-and-coming artist is beloved and celebrated on their journey to the top, but once they’re there, people begin trying to tear them down, whether that’s based on their talent, appearance, or any number of qualities that may or may not be there.
We do these things because we notice we’re not doing what they’re doing. We’re not taking the same risks, we’re not putting ourselves out there, and we don’t want to admit that it’s our failing. So it starts to become about how the other person doesn’t deserve their level of success because these small mistakes likely only make up 10% of the overall picture where the rest is ignored. So it is really just us covering up our low self-esteem. All of those judgments and things we see in them are things we see in ourselves, but we’re not quite ready to face them and what it means.
Think about the last time you struggled with somebody’s success. Notice how your talk of them mirrors your internal dialogue towards yourself — it’s identical, isn’t it? Think of the politicians you hate, or whichever side of the current societal dynamics you’re on, and how you denigrate the other side. Then think about when you’re imperfect in your own life and how your description of them is identical to your description of yourself. You belittle yourself or talk to yourself the exact same way for whatever mistake you made. So that’s why when people start to succeed, we focus on the 10% and not the 90%.
Tips to change your perception
1. The 90/10 rule.
Instead of spending 90% of your time pointing out your imperfections, spend 90% of your time focusing on your perfections and all the ways you succeed. To help you achieve this, start writing down three things that you accomplished at the end of the day. Simple things like “I drank a glass of water” can be a victory because how many of us don’t stay hydrated? The positive things we do should be treated as a victory. Very few times do we fail in life. So when you hear that negative voice condemning you, pause, shift, and do something positive like listing 9 things you did incredibly to cancel out that 1 mistake you made.
2. Get an accountability partner.
It could be a stranger living halfway across the world or someone you know personally, but you need to find someone to help hold you accountable (and you can help keep them accountable too). The goal is that whenever you have a negative thought about yourself and catch yourself in the act, you’re going to tell your accountability partner. You’ll then follow up with those counter-thoughts – the 9 positive thoughts you have about yourself. And they’ll do the same for themselves. Together, you’ll teach yourselves how to start seeing the reality of who you are – the 90% is that reality. The 10% is just that human part of us prone to making mistakes. All humans do.
3. Find a way to reward yourself.
Set a target for yourself that is attainable. It could be a weekly check-in or multiple times per week if needed. Reward yourself for staying accountable and tracking those negative thoughts along with recognizing the positive things about yourself. Your reward could be whatever will benefit you most – it could be going out to a restaurant you love, going for a hike somewhere you really enjoy, taking a new class, whatever. As long as it makes you feel good and helps to reinforce the behavior, you’re developing in recognizing the positive things about you – that 90% — then it will work for you.
If you’re competitive in nature, you and your accountability partner can turn it into a sort of game or competition to see who can recognize the most positivity throughout the week. Maybe whoever wins then has to buy the other dinner. Find what will work for you and what will keep you on the hook to help you build your self-esteem.
Remember that we all make mistakes. That’s how humans are. We’re all perfectly imperfect. However, making a mistake does not make us less deserving of success and self-esteem. If you complete these three exercises, you’ll be able to flip the dynamic you’re currently working in where only 10% of your mindset about yourself is positive. You’ll notice a huge difference when that number changes to 90%. That’s how you raise your self-esteem instantly.
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Do you feel like no one will ever love or accept you unless you are perfect? Its time to accept your Imperfections.
We’ve all felt this way at some point in our lives.
But we don’t have to
All of us are perfectly imperfect in our own special and unique way.
We just haven’t been shown how to live our life full of self-love and acceptance for our perfect imperfections.
That End’s Today! This masterclass will provide you with the knowledge, skills, and tools to accept who you are as an individual.
ALL OF YOU.
Your Perfect, & Your Imperfect!
By learning the seven characteristics of high self-love and a simple process to stop negative thoughts and feelings, you will no longer feel lonely, rejected, or like an outsider in this world.
In fact, you will embrace change without fear, communicate your needs and wants decisively, and easily shrug off attempts by others to judge or criticize you.
See how simple it is to transform the imperfect emotional wounds from the past into perfect, unshakeable self-confidence.
Treat Yourself! You’re Worth It!
Start loving and accepting your perfect imperfections TODAY!
Welcome back! Today we’re talking about self-sabotage: what creates it and how to get out of the cycle.
The first place we need to start is: what creates it? What makes the need and desire to self-sabotage is: we were told directly or indirectly that we had no worth as a child. what creates it and how to get out of the cycle.
Think about it: underneath the self-sabotage is the belief that we don’t have the value to achieve it. In those self-sabotaging moments.
we have a feeling that tells us we don’t want to take a particular action even though we know it will help us achieve our dreams.
That sense of dread or procrastination was placed into us and stopped us from doing what we want. That feeling of anxiety or procrastination is a shame.
It is the feeling that we will be bad if we claim what we want.
Where does this come from?
How does this happen? Over 80% of the people I talk to say their parents and childhood were great and perfect. I can appreciate that – personally.
I believe every parent wants nothing but the best for their kids, even in imperfect parenting moments.
But the fact of the matter is: our parents make mistakes. And a lot of them. I’m going to prove that to you.
Here’s the first step to get out of denial about our childhood. Science shows 70% of the messaging we get as a child is negative, disempowering, and self-sabotaging.
Think about that. Over 2/3 of what we heard from our parents was negative.
Even a simple divorce causes actual brain damage and the feeling of abandonment. If we believe there were no imperfections in childhood, that means we think we were raised by a perfect human being – a God.
That’s not possible! Finally, to get into the reality of childhood,
I’ll ask you two questions to prove you suffered trauma or less-than-perfect parenting that still affects you:
1- When you were a child and felt sad, lonely, or scared at anything your parents did or said, did you discuss it with them and voice it?
No way. They probably yelled at you to get into your room and to not backtalk.
2- Do you have any secrets from your parents? We all do. Do you see how traumatizing that is? It means that if I were to share who I really was, if they knew what I really thought, felt, or did.
I believe they will reject me. Ultimately we don’t feel safe with our parents. That’s horrifically traumatizing! They are the two people we should feel the safest and secure with, yet we believe our truth is not allowed.
This trauma creates what I call The Worst Day Cycle. There are four stages to it: trauma, fear, shame, and denial.
Everyone is caught in this dynamic. Every choice in your life revolves around this cycle, and I’m going to walk you through it – it’s at the heart of self-sabotage.
The cycle is created because we have two needs as a species: attachment (physical or emotional to someone else) and authenticity (the pursuit of who we naturally are).
The previous questions show that our power was squashed if we were to speak our truth or pursue who we are.
We weren’t allowed to follow our authentic selves.
Because we don’t want to lose attachment – our survival depends on it as a child.
In the pursuit of attachment, we lose our authenticity.
We all downplay, deny, and justify what happened to us. We do it to stay alive.
It’s the moment shame and denial are born.
In those less-than-perfect moments, a big chemical explosion in our brain and body is created: fear. That chemical release becomes a chemical addiction.
It takes a lot of energy for our brain to do anything: 25% of the calories we consume go straight to our brain. In addition, the brain doesn’t process right or wrong but rather known and unknown.
If we’ve lived and experienced it, our brain will repeat it even if it’s wrong. The traumatic feelings got known in childhood, and the brain chooses to relive them in its effort to conserve energy.
It’s an emotional chemical addiction that keeps us stuck. The fear we get addicted to is always one of three things: the fear of rejection, inadequacy, or powerlessness.
Think of that moment when you went to express yourself as a child. Rejection. Inadequate. Powerlessness. It’s an overwhelming cocktail of horrifically painful emotions that get stuck in our bodies.
The overwhelming nature of these feelings sends us into shame.
Shame is the feeling that there’s something wrong with us – it’s internal.
“Come on; you’re so stupid!” We learned we must be bad, wrong, stupid, or defective in some manner, either directly or indirectly, through our parent’s actions or expressions.
This is why we self-sabotage. As a child, we were powerless, and we couldn’t argue with our parents. Now we’re adults. We get to pick where to live, where to work, who to marry. What’s the greatest way to get our power back?
To choose things that don’t work because we get so much attention (attachment) from others. Because our brain and body were trained to repeat the miserable feeling of not liking ourselves – stuck on the emotional, chemical loop.
We pick terrible relationships or careers to relive that pain against ourselves. It is a subconscious attempt to get our power back because I chose.
Until we heal the original wound, this is precisely what we do: your life story is proof of it.
Do you see how the terrible person you’re with or your bad job reminds you of the same chaos, confusion, uncertainty, and belittling dynamic in childhood?
If you’re in denial, you won’t see it, and I urge you to seek professional help. We need help to see the tie-ins if we want to stop the cycle.
The shame piece is our attempt to remedy how we were told, directly or indirectly, that we didn’t have worth.
Who we were meant to be was squashed, so as a child, we develop a false persona to create attachment and survive.
I tried out for two professional sports before deciding that neither of them was for me.
I was only trying to gain my father’s attention and get back at my brother by repeating the agony. My brother was shooting at my head when I stopped the frozen tennis balls as a kid, therefore I became a hockey goalkeeper.
it would make him mad. To get my power back as an adult, I relived the abuse against myself. I continued the cycle as the person in control.
You’ll see this in every aspect of your life.
Ask people about their careers, and you will hear how they are reliving the unhealed pain of their childhood.
People in finance will tell you stories of money problems. Salespeople never felt a sense of worth, insurance people, no safety. The correlations are so transparent.
All we do is relive it until we heal it. Gallup has done polls for years that show only 7% of people are happy in their careers. Now you know why.
They are all reliving the pain and trauma from childhood against themselves; they are stuck in The Worst Day Cycle.
This self-victimization kicks us into denial: this process shows us we have to admit we don’t know who we are. We have careers and hobbies but don’t honestly know what we like.
Many of you will say there’s no way you’re starting over – that you can’t admit it to yourself. You may say I’m wrong.
But science disagrees with you: 95% of our adult life, thoughts, feelings, and choices are all derived from the emotions placed into our subconscious as a child.
Remember: our brain seeks to repeat what it knows. You may disagree with my premise, but your life story shows you the proof. You can’t outrun yourself.
I know it’s hard to hear.
It all comes down to imperfect parenting, but parents are not to blame – for centuries, we’ve never been taught these topics and their effects.
Our parents don’t know any better. How can we blame – where does it end? Back to the first cell or Adam and Eve?
Waste of time. Everyone is perfectly imperfect, and no parent can be blamed for doing something they weren’t even aware of. Many parenting skills we thought were good at the time were only later seen as abusive.
We didn’t know. We always do the best we can with what we know at the time.
It’s daunting enough to admit we are reliving a subconscious program, but there’s more.
Can you see the second reason we self-sabotage and relive the cycle:
if we accept the truth and pursue our authentic self, we give up attachment to our parents. If we heal, admit our secrets, become what we want, and succeed, we lose attachment.
Remember, we became all of those things so our parents wouldn’t leave us. This may not make sense at first but think: what happens in a riot? People are mad at the police and government but destroy their own neighborhood and themselves.
This is proof of the worst-day cycle. How do we celebrate as a culture? We get drunk, stoned, over-eat, victimize, destroy, and self-sabotage.
Then, we repeat the self-sabotage and go into denial, saying these things aren’t true,
I’m not forgiving myself for the suffering I’ve caused myself in the past?
I didn’t make up a phoney identity to get attention; I’m comfortable with myself.
Are you sure? What happened the last time you got drunk? You woke up hungover the next day, tell your kids you can’t play, boom.
the kids feel rejected, and now the cycle has passed onto them. They can’t comprehend hangovers, only that mom or dad abandoned them.
Do you remember how they tried to modify their behavior to get your attention/attachment and love? Can you now see how you did the same thing in your childhood?
We’re all perfectly imperfect
we can’t stop the cycle. But we can take ownership of our actions and choices and do the work to conquer the cycle. As a society, we need to talk about it openly with ourselves, friends, and family.
We need to make it OK to end the cycle. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see we do all of this – everyone. I know it’s scary, but this is how we get our self-esteem back.
If we can’t admit the truth, we have low self-esteem – we need to confront the pain, darkness, and pain.
It hurts, but you will be in reality and gain self-esteem. It’s the recovery process.
It’s how you get your authentic self back. You did the best you could with the information you had at the time. Now that you have new and better information, you can do something about it.
This may be the first day in your life you actually have a choice to pursue your greatness: therefore, you are not to blame for any of your imperfections.
You can’t be blamed for doing something you weren’t even aware of. But now you have a choice
will you relive that pain against yourself or make a change to learn about this, do the work, recover, and end the cycle?
If you want to make that choice, the process is pretty simple: become an expert in the worst day cycle. To do that, pick up my book.
I lay out the exact process much more profound than I just did. Next, gain Emotional Authenticity. My book will help give you the tools to achieve Emotional Authenticity.
Step three is to get out of denial and admit your trauma. Step four, become an expert in your fear, shame, and denial.
Every person who’s done this process has reclaimed their authentic self: it has never failed. When there’s no denial, there’s truth, self-esteem, self-love, and authenticity. Or, as I like to call it, Our Greatness.
It has been my life experience that every person on the planet lives their life stuck in the “Worst Day Cycle” – no one is immune from it.
Are you unsure if you do? Here are two questions that will give you that answer?
1- As a child, when you felt angry, sad, or scared by anything your parents said or did, at that moment, could you discuss it with them?
Of course not because what was the typical response? “Get in your room! No backtalking! I don’t want to hear it!” Do those responses sound familiar?
That shows that all of us were squashed and had to deny our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. For the first time, we learned denial and saw the truth of our parents’ perfect imperfections.
We learned to survive. We had to deny who we authentically are.
2-Do you have any secrets from your parents? Something you’ve done? Something you believe?
Of course, we do? That means if we shared who we authentically are, deep in our soul.
we know our parents won’t accept us. Instead, they left us with the shameful message that our authentic feelings, thoughts, and beliefs are defective.
That shows me we have all been through massive trauma and caught in “The Worst Day Cycle!”
These events are significant because our brain becomes addicted to the emotional, chemical response we secrete in these traumatic moments.
Unbeknownst to ourselves, our brain seeks to repeat it.
It unconsciously chooses this because it takes tremendous energy for our brain to do anything. Its solution is to do as little work as possible. It accomplishes it by repeating what it already knows.
Since our brain “knows” trauma and denial from childhood.
it proactively seeks to repeat The Worst Day Cycle. It’s true. Our brain seeks to self-victimize us as adults.
What is the solution? We have to admit:
I am not really who I think I am.
I am the author of my self-destruction.
Who wants to own these things? No one has shown us how. So we don’t, and that kicks off the cycle again, so it repeats over and over.
Imagine it this way.
Have you ever watched a 3D movie without the special glasses? Of course, the colors and images are distorted, but since you have had the movie experience.
you can still somewhat know what’s going on, but not everything is clear.
That’s how we live our life. But, unfortunately, we don’t realize that with every choice we make (our friends, our hobbies, our partners), we are reliving our Worst Day Cycles.screaming back at us the trauma, fear, shame, and denial that we haven’t addressed. And ultimately, we haven’t forgiven ourselves.
What are we missing? Why can’t we see it? We don’t have the glasses.
Accepting the Answers You Discover on Your Way to Success: Amazon.com: 9781981471010: Kenny Weiss
How to Accept the Answers You Discover Along Your Journey to Success [Weiss, Kenny] available at Amazon.com. Qualifying deals qualify for free delivery. How to Accept the Answers You Find Along the Way on Your Path to Success
As a result of Kenny Weiss’s efforts,
The Greatness University 
