Ok… sooooo… say a person has a dominating Inner Critic that sparks fear and doubt every time she tries to change her life or her career for the better.

Just…hypothetically speaking. 

Every time this person tries to write a book, start a business, get a better job, take better care of herself or even improve her relationships with her children or mate… something always stops her.

She has the vague, gnawing, growing sense that she might be her own worst enemy. That she might be the thing that keeps getting in her own way.

So she feels frustrated. Chronically. She knows what she wants to do, but she doesn’t feel like she can ever quite get there. 

She wants to be in one place, but she always needs to be somewhere else. 

She wants to be doing one thing, but she always has to be doing something else. 

She wants to be a certain way, as a person, but feels obligated to act another way, maybe just out of habit. 

The Germans have a word for this.

Zerissenheit.

This translates to: torn-to-pieces-hood. Feeling pulled in one direction by your Inner Guidance, your intuition, your genius, your bliss, your desires… and your so-called obligations pulling you in the opposite direction.

Zerissenheit feels like being scattered. All over the place. 

It feels like stress. Frustration. Misalignment.

But it doesn’t always translate into sadness, depression or angst, like you might think. 

In many smart, successful people, the misalignment between the lives they have and the lives they want creates anger. 

This anger is trying to deliver a message about what’s really important to you, at soul-level.

It’s trying to deliver the information that you’re ignoring, abandoning or even silencing your true, sacred self.

That anger might also be trying to deliver you the energy to make some different choices.

This anger is painful. It doesn’t feel good. If we let it “have it’s career within us”, as Dave Richo would say, it would build and crest, like a wave, and then dissolve… and probably fuel our journey into a more aligned life along the way.

But usually, because it feels so bad, we simply dispute it. We choose not to feel it. In fact, we do all sorts of things to avoid feeling the anger of our misaligned lives… the anger of our unlived lives. 

We eat more. We drink more. We scroll more. We watch more. 

So it doesn’t go away, no matter what you do to repress it. It just rattles around within us, until it bursts out of the seams in one or five different forms:

• Overweight
• High blood pressure
• Jaw clenching
• Other physical illness
• Bouts of angry crying
• Impatience
• Irrational competitiveness (even at mothering or birthday cake baking)
• Binge consumption (of food, alcohol, social media, etc.)
• Emotional rollercoaster at home (alternately yelling at, then indulging, the kids…).

Carl Jung even famously said once that “the greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.” 

I’ve heard so many repressed, frustrated people who are living misaligned lives, out of integrity with their true selves, say they want to learn how to be more patient, be nicer to their families or manage their stress, their weight and their time better. 

But patience isn’t the problem. Just learning to be nicer or breathe more deeply… those are great things to do, but they ain’t the solution to this problem. 

Until you address the root reasons you aren’t able — as a grown a$$ human — to give yourself permission to truly fulfill your potentials and your dreams, your unlived life will remain unlived…

… the split within you will continue

… your obligations will continue to spark dread and pull you to pieces, and

… your stress, your health, and the people you love the most will feel the pressure, too. 

Only one question remains: What would it take for you to give yourself permission to start living your unlived life?

Head up + heart out,
 

P.S.: Last call to join my first group of students in the Inner Critic Cure™ program. We just opened the doors, and would love to have you join us. 

Learn more and enroll here: https://soultour.com/inner-critic-cure-special/

Tara-Nicholle Kirke, MA, Esq.
The Inner Critic Coach™️
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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