Your life doesn’t have to be defined by suffering. No, you can learn to live as an expression of freedom and joy by overcoming the turmoil within. The truth is, you suffer because you’re not addressing the internal brokenness. You’ve become so numb to the pain that you don’t even recognize that it still hurts. And whether you wish to admit it or not, this inner struggle continues to hold you back from becoming the person you know you could be.
So, the question is, when will you confront the roiling ocean of turmoil? When are you going to start living?
In last week’s newsletter, “Inner Struggle: The 7 Hidden Roots (And How to Heal Them) – Part 1,” we explored the first three hidden drivers of suffering: Shame & Guilt, Meaninglessness, and The Pain of Isolation.
This week, we will cover the four remaining inner struggles you might not be acknowledging, beginning with Identity and the Search for Self.
4. Identity and the Search for Self
We label ourselves “this” person because it’s a comfortable mental space. It’s familiar and easy to cling to. After all, who are you if you aren’t the depressed person, the wild child, the dramatic one, or the I haven’t had my coffee yet personality?
However, most of these personas are not who you really are. They’re an amalgamation of wounds, triumphs, heartbreaks, he-said-she-said, validations, and ruminations. You believe this is who you are because the world told you so, and over time, you accepted it.
Without realizing it, you put on a mask to keep yourself safe or project what you think people are looking for during their interactions with you. It’s a way to hide that soft, jelly-like core at the center, the part you fear others will exploit or control—a way to keep yourself from ever being hurt again.
Because of this mask, you might feel directionless. Decisions become overwhelming because inside, you know you aren’t that person. Deep down, you just want a break from having to put on yet another performance to appease an audience that only cares because that’s who you’ve presented yourself to be.
By continuing in this role, you create indecision and self-doubt. Confidence crumbles because you lack clarity around your identity and what you truly value.
If you’re ready to move beyond this, here are a few ways to start the process:
Step 1:
Strip the labels: You are not your job, your bank account, your family, your friends. You are not your trauma or emotions. Spend time removing those items mentally, and ask, Who are you without those things?
Step 2:
Write your story: Reflect on the defining moments of your life. What did they teach you about yourself? What wounds did you embody throughout your journey? Make them plain. Make them known.
Step 3:
Live by values, not vibes: Define your non-negotiables. Let them shape your direction, not just emotion or approval. Don’t accept something because you were told, “This is it.” Test it for yourself. Validate whether it’s true or not.
5. The Inner Struggle of Powerlessness
A lack of power is helplessness, the foundation of a victim mentality. It stems from a belief that you don’t control your life’s outcomes. That you’re just along for the ride, whether you want to be or not.
Because of this, you’re stuck in a cycle of waiting for something or someone to save you. Instead of moving forward in a direction, any direction, you cower in fear of making the wrong decision or upsetting someone because you stepped over an invisible line.
Living this way prevents you from performing at the standard you know you’re capable of. You might feel depressed or hold deep resentments against yourself and others. Bitterness festers within as you replay the thought, “If things had only gone this way, everything would be different.”
Instead of taking responsibility for your life, you blame your circumstances and those around you. You procrastinate and reinforce the belief that you’re not good enough and don’t have what it takes.
Doing this consistently creates a mental and emotional loop that feels impossible to break free from.
But you don’t have to stay stuck there. You can learn how to take your power back. Here are some initial steps you can take to get you started on that journey:
Step 1:
Take one small action: Movement is power. Choosing comfort means you’re not choosing progress. Choose one thing you can control today and act on it, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Step 2:
Stop outsourcing responsibility: You may not have chosen your pain, but healing from it is your job. The moment you stop blaming others is when you can start the healing process.
Step 3:
Rewrite your narrative: You are not a victim. You’re the author. Every decision either reinforces your chains or builds your escape route, but it’s your choice on how to move forward.
6. Fear and Avoidance
Fear is one of our most visceral, unnoticed inner struggles. It’s rarely labeled as fear unless you’re in an extreme situation, like free-falling from a plane or facing real danger. This is because fear masks itself under the guise of more socially acceptable emotions such as worry, stress, and procrastination.
Being chased by a bear is one thing; speaking in public is another. With the bear, all bets are off; it’s pure panic and terror, you know what’s about to happen.
Public speaking, on the other hand, is rife with anxiety and worry about how you look and sound. But beneath it all, you really fear failure, being judged, humiliated, or looking stupid in front of a crowd.
Avoidance creeps in because you are trying to escape what scares you. You fear making a decision, so you avoid anything that requires you to decide. Eventually, this turns into a mental loop that directs your life. It convinces you to play small or delay action. You find yourself numbing out rather than moving forward. As a result, you miss opportunities and begin to resent yourself.
This doesn’t have to be a lifelong sentence, though. If your inner struggle is fear, try starting with these steps to find healing:
Step 1:
Do it scared: Courage isn’t the absence of fear but the will to take action despite it. Start small and build up. Speak up in a meeting. Send the letter or email you’ve been meaning to send. Simply make yourself look someone in the eyes, smile, and say hello occasionally.
Step 2:
Break the loop: Avoidance creates anxiety, not safety. Learn to interrupt the pattern with intentional exposure. Over time, you’ll start to see that it wasn’t the thing you were afraid of; it was merely a mental block in your mind holding you back.
Step 3:
Reframe failure: Get rid of perfectionism! Allow yourself to go through the failing process and be okay with it. Failure is the richest data source you can mine, and you’ll learn more from your failure than your success.
7. Escaping the Present Moment
The present moment is the only real moment, yet most try to avoid it because it reminds them of their true feelings. The inner struggles previously discussed tend to exude from your pores when you finally take time to be with yourself.
However, instead of sitting with the uncomfortable feelings, you hide from them. You rob yourself of the present moment by mentally and emotionally escaping into past or future scenarios as a distraction from the right here, right now.
Instead of confronting or dealing with the dull, painful, or meaningless feelings, you scroll, binge, fantasize, or numb out—anything to avoid feeling. You survive, but you aren’t living, not really. You’ve become emotionally muted, unable to perceive the joy of life. You see it on the edges of your vision, feel it for a moment, but it is elusive when you try to grasp it.
You feel ungrounded and disconnected from things you know should bring peace and happiness. Chronic dissatisfaction begins to take over, followed by emotional numbness. Anxiety ramps up, along with burnout and a lack of purpose. Eventually, you become a shell of who you really are.
This, however, is not your destiny. If you choose to do the work, you can escape the torture of this existence. Here are a few ideas to try:
Step 1:
Return to the body: Use the body to build a grounded reality in the present. You can do this through breathwork, cold exposure, and movement, such as working out or yoga. Find something that anchors you physically in the now.
Step 2:
Practice stillness: Silence isn’t empty. It can be full of answers. Make time to sit in solitude and silence daily. Allow yourself to breathe deep, full breaths, and feel what’s real. Feel the breath, feel uncomfortable in your mind or your body. Don’t run from it. Embrace it, then let it go. Return to the stillness.
Step 3:
Interrupt the escape: Recognize when you are attempting to flee the present moment. Take notice of it: reaching for your phone, getting busy doing anything simply to avoid stillness, numbing out, binge-watching movies or shows, etc. Pause. Then ask, “What am I trying not to feel right now?” Sometimes it’s nothing. Other times, it feels like an emotional abyss, and suddenly you’re three spoonfuls deep into the peanut butter jar, wondering what just happened.
Healing the Inner Struggle
The most important thing to understand is that you are not alone. Every human being you’ve ever met struggles with these issues on one level or another. They may not share your inner struggles, but everyone deals with something.
Ultimately, the key to freedom, to real happiness, is awareness: recognizing when you’re falling into the pit carved by one of these seven hidden drivers of suffering. Once you become aware, it means no longer running from the issue. Be brave enough to stay in the game, even through the hurt and shame, the ugly and hollow feelings. Stop allowing yourself to bow out because things get uncomfortable.
Have compassion for yourself, too. You won’t get it right the first time, the second, or the hundredth. Change takes dedication, practice, and the willingness to fail repeatedly. It’s not accepting defeat as the answer, but deciding you’ll rise every time you fall.
Nobody can heal you. You must embark on this journey yourself, and I promise it’s worth it.
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I wish you well.
Until next time,
Josiah
