How to Honor Your Survival System

Sometimes it really hurts to be alive. So when we were very young, we all created a finely crafted survival system to bury and numb our pain for it was absolutely necessary for survival. Life was too scary, and we didn’t have the skills to meet ourselves in our hearts. And this survival system has being running its program ever since, usually in the background of our awareness until a crisis point where it takes over our life. 

Our survival system can include compulsions, such as drug and alcohol abuse, shopping, unskillful eating, overworking, lost in social media, obsessing, online pornography, busyness, self-judgment, and chronic worry. I think back on all those years when I shut down my pain with food, drugs and alcohol and my heart opens, for ultimately my survival system saved my life!  What do I mean by that? I want to share a beautiful and inspiring quote by Jeff Brown, author of Ascending with Both Feet on the Ground and Love It Forward, that speaks to this: 

 “Our survival adaptations are so tough, but our wounds are so delicate. To heal, we have to lift the armor carefully – it saved our lives, after all. It’s like moving your best friend off to the side of the path. You don’t trample on her, you don’t hit her with a sledgehammer. You honor her presence like a warm blanket that has kept you safe and sound during wintry times. And then, when the moment is right, you get inside and stitch your wounds with the thread of love, slowly and surely, not rushing to completion, nurturing as you weave, tender and true. The healing process has a heart of its own, moving at its own delicate pace. We are such wondrous weavers …”  

We were all wounded in some way or another, and our survival system was our armor. When we finally land on the path of awakening, we come to the place where we can remove our armor and stitch our wounds with the thread of love. We can begin the slow opening of our tender yet bruised hearts. But this is not something we do overnight. As we develop curiosity and compassion, we see the fear, we see the shame, we see the despair. Slowly and surely our hearts open and we can say, “Okay, who is here right now? Oh, I see you, fearful one. I see you, shamed one. I see you, despairing one.” Jeff is inviting us to meet our survival system with respect and kindness instead of going to war with it, and to meet what it has been trying to take care of with the healing of our own heart. 

We don’t ever get rid of our survival system because it is ingrained in us. We can’t dismantle it; but what we can do is bring more space to it. We can begin to heal our wounds by bringing kindness and compassion to these parts that were trained not to trust life. Life is an intelligent process, and it knows what it is doing. It includes pain, loss, and death, and when we try to stop the natural process of life, it only results in suffering. 

For just this moment, allow yourself the mercy of realizing that at every step of the way, you have done the best you knew how to do. Let go of, “I should have done better,” and let the healing of compassion come to you. As you discover how to open to the flow of life, you can begin to heal your wounds and stitch them with the thread of love. You can become such a wondrous weaver! 

We will be exploring these ideas and how to bring them into your daily life in my interactive online course, Being Healed by Our Compulsions. Instead of seeing your compulsion as something that is wrong with you, you will discover that it is an ally on the journey back to a deep and trust-filled relationship with yourself and with your life. This course starts on January 12, 2022 and is currently $200 off with coupon code: $200offcomp5 thru today. This course contains 8 weekly lessons along with video and audio files, 4 fully interactive calls with Mary and teachings on how to support yourself on your journey after the course ends. If you are ready to sign up, CLICK HERE. Make sure to hit apply once you enter the coupon code. If you have any questions, please email Devrah at devrah@maryomalley.com.