The more I get to know how profoundly early childhood experience molds us, the less I come harsh on myself.

Most of behavioral patterns are formed at very early stage in life — at the pre-verbal stage of development — but continue to sustain themselves through out the rest of life. Those behavioral patterns are defensive in nature — they’re acquired as a means of defending the emerging self, which at its most vulnerable and fragile moment, from potentially injurious experiences. But they remain locked in the body even though the original perceived dangers have long since passed. They can’t be accessed through cognitive or intellectual insight. They can only be accessed through the body.

The critical point to remember is, this defensive mechanism happens so early that it is a non-verbal, pre-intellectual event. As such, it can be addressed in no other ways than through the body.

Through greater awareness — both cognitively and bodily — obsolete responses can be abandoned and alternatives created.

The biggest individual tragedy — one continue to present the defensive pattern to the world while the true energetic self recedes from awareness, perhaps for the remainder of one’s life.

My early childhood answer to the perceived dangerous world was to excel to avoid being abandoned. To excel at any cost. Later on I gradually discovered I’d just be fine being my very imperfect self and every existence was uniquely beautiful, but that cognitive insight can’t be translated into embodied awakening. Compulsive competitiveness is still my default response.