Wounds can make us feel broken or that we need to be fixed. It’s a lie. We are always whole.

Yes, we might have been wounded and subsequently developed some defense mechanisms (such as fear, aggression, avoidance, keeping ideas to ourselves, etc.) to help us cope. Those are masks and armor hiding our authentic selves; covered, but not broken. Underneath, our authentic self is patiently waiting for us to remember who we really are, to recover our authenticity.

At some point, we may have developed fear as a way of looking out for ourselves, as protecting ourselves – as a defense mechanism. That fear is an armor, a mask. Then our ego continues to lie to us that we need that fear to continue to protect ourselves.

Shame, asserting control, keeping our ideas to ourselves… all those coping mechanisms aren’t really serving us.

That fear was likely developed in childhood – when we were using immature thinking to make sense of our world.

We are not broken; it is our ways of coping that may need fixing, not us. That nuanced distinction is very important.