In this form of our recovery we remain happily distant from the misery lurking in our guts.

We begin the healing process stage on life’s healing journey in the contest Stage. This is the stage of grandiosity, acceptance by the norm, dissociated happiness, and approval by the parents and significant others. The parts of us that are winning the contest stop our journey before it has even begun. Here we deny our deepest traumas so intensely that we fool even ourselves into believing they never happened – and that we are already healed. It is for this reason that dissociation mimics recovery. Here we idealise the parents, which allows us full unconscious liberty to replicate the worst of our past in our present. Here we do not look beneath our surface, and if fate goes our way, we will never have to. In this form of our recovery we remain happily distant from the misery lurking in our guts.