My Arrested Development And A Shocking Discovery

Capture by handcuffs

My Arrested Development

In a minute I will share something deeply personal with you. I can only share information on it as it’s appropriate seeing how I’m not the only one involved. However in typical Tony fashion, It’s all on the table for you to walk away with what works for you.

While I sit here alone, I am comforted knowing I’m connected to you. I am not able to be my greatest I can be by myself and you are a very important part of my growth. I thank you.

This is the rest of my story you may not know that I’m sharing with you today. I have allowed my perceptions to unjustly define who I am:

  • I am not wanted
  • I am not loved
  • I was a mistake

These were unconscious beliefs now turned conscious from my coaching session last week. In my opinion it was a light form of arrested development in my childhood that has held my hand through even my now, adult years.

I realize I had become stuck at an emotional level in childhood where I continue to operate as an adult today. Until it was unlocked by what I’m about to share, I continued to operate from the limited beliefs that I adopted from my childhood experiences. Limited beliefs that come from being a child without a rational mind to understand a person or persons, who as an adult, was an idiot in the way they talked to me or treated me.

I took these experiences personal, then they became a belief. Out of this negative belief comes an underlying & unconscious commitment. I.E. I’m not good enough, I was a mistake, I’m dumb, etc…Well rationally I can say this is bullshit but still internally & unconsciously I’ve have had these loops playing.

The work is to break the loop and insert something that empowers us.

My Emotional Breakthrough

It all came to fruition yesterday as far as I’m concerned. Feb. 17th 2010 as I had first contact with who I believe may be my biological father.  A man I’d never seen, never heard from or had ever made contact with.

Whether he is or isn’t my biological father, my break through and consciousness of my arrested emotional development became quite clear to me.

Thirty Seven years later after my birth into the world, I realized just how much stock I had still put into what lays outside of myself for my self worth. Rationally it doesn’t make sense with all of my personal work, but emotionally it stuck anyway.

It was a a feeling of incompleteness that I hadn’t acknowledged or engaged in. One that I felt I was stronger than. However I am weak and I admit fully to the fact.

It all came rushing out of me after I opened the email from the man who may be my father, the feelings, the emotions, the memories of no self worth.

The day before my coaching session with Jana was rough and I was in a lot of resistance. We unearthed my underlying beliefs:

  • I’m not loved
  • I’m not wanted
  • I was a mistake

Where did I come up with these beliefs?

  • A mother who gave birth too young, (at 17) who I perceived, gave me away
  • Great grand parents who took me in begrudgingly and didn’t provide any kind of intimacy as a parent. Love wasn’t said or physically given, it was proven through a roof over my head and love didn’t need to be talked about. I look back now and I realize there was some compassion there otherwise they would have had me taken by foster care. However my perceptions where locked in
  • A mother & stepfather who took custody of me back for 5 months but abused me physically  & mentally
  • And at the bottom of the list, a father who didn’t want me because I was a mistake

The first 3 area’s I’ve explored in great detail, the final one I had put out of my mind. I can’t tell you how many times when someone has learned of me not knowing my father I’ve said, “You can’t miss what you never had.

Boy did I sell myself on that one strong. I believed it through and through.

I realize now just how much of that part of me had gone unacknowledged.

What I’m Making This Mean

I later now realize what I made all this mean as a young adult isn’t true.

I defined myself on something that I didn’t have all the facts on. I made up the meaning of this stuff and those beliefs have probably kept me in a place where where I’ve not performed at my best because I’ve wallowed in self pity.

I asked my good friend Sharla Patrick in a phone conversation about my thoughts & emotions on the subject.

“My head says I am already everything I ever need to be whole.”

“My deepest emotional acknowledgment is that I feel a huge gaping hole inside.”.

Then I was reminded by Sharla  about the movie, The Shift, we are like a tree.

We’re born into this world whole, with everything we ever need to be, like a tree. We start as a seed, and grow into a tree. At some point we have branches that are broken off during the storm. It’s painful and it hurts, but we are able to grow those branches back out, because we are always what we are. We are source and we are light. It is what we were born of.

The strength of the tree is tested by the wind, by the rain, by the cold, and by the heat. The heat provides light, the rain provides nourishing life, the cold allows it to go within and slumber. Within the elements of the earth that challenge the tree, it grows stronger.

You and I are much the same way.

We require people, experiences, challenges and tribulations to help us to grow. Even if those very same things break off our branches. Without people who challenge us, whether we like it or not we stay arrested in our development otherwise. Stunted with a child like belief that isn’t really our purpose, but is our lesson to unlock that purpose.

The tree requires the elements. Though they may break branches, lose leaves, it’s fruit or it’s seeds, it’s all part of the reason in life for it to be a tree. Just like the challenges are a reason to be you and me.

How I interpret all of this is up to me as a conscious loving human being, which is what I choose to do.

I have to be cautious and won’t share much more of this in order to protect this man’s privacy, even if he is my father. But this is who I am, and marching my shadows into the light is what I do. As I peel back the layers of my onion it’s my hope to inspire you to do the same in whatever comes at you in your life.

Thank you, I love you.

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