By Robbie Poteet
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have been through some intense things in my life: I came from a traumatic background, I left home when I was 15, I’ve lost 200lbs, done some really stupid/ballsy shit, I’ve put myself out there, travelled and lived in other countries, lived through natural disasters, etc. My point is that I am an adventurer.
Last year I started an adventure into myself and I learned more about the human mind and experience than anything I listed above. I discovered a lot of pain, hurt and dysfunction within myself. I had never been inside to look at this place before and to be honest I didn’t even know that was an option. My method had always been to shove it down, cover it in bronzer and a smile and keep going. Hey, it’s gotten me this far! Once I saw all of this dysfunction I had no choice but to deal with it, because I realized that I was standing in my own way of happiness for years and all of the baggage that I had learned to carry didn’t even belong to me. When you get into the science of the mind, it basically breaks down into this: our brain is one big computer. The first 6 years of our lives we are downloading information from the world as blueprints on how everything works: how to live, behave and have relationships with other people. Children can learn up to 3 languages at once - they’re little sponges for knowledge.
Our subconscious is basically one giant data bank that can process 400 times more information per second than our conscious mind. We start out consciously learning to do something and then eventually it crosses over into our subconscious mind and we don’t have to think about it anymore. We don’t have to think about how to walk anymore, our minds just do it. Most of us get in the car and don’t have to think about driving, we just do it. Most of the time I arrive at my destination and barely remember getting there. My point to all of this is that we always have subconscious programming running in our minds that we are unaware of. We learned this programming a long time ago and it tell us how to operate in the world. This programming is the blueprint for everything from how we think about money, how we behave, how we think about ourselves, how we trust others, how we have relationships with other people and how we handle our feelings. That is why some of us can have great friendships but run into disaster when we get into a romantic relationship… it’s a different blueprint and we likely downloaded the blueprint from the relationship that we saw our parents having with each other.
The problem is that there is no one in the subconscious to monitor it. It’s the conscious minds just to monitor it and that’s the piece we’ve been missing.
This may be intense for some people to hear, but I refuse to not talk about it because if my story can help someone heal themselves that far outweighs any sort of judgment that I could receive. I was emotionally abused, neglected and invalidated most of my early life. Now that I have a better understanding of trauma: I can see that all of this led to my morbid obesity - which led to being teased and bullied in school - which transformed into severe body issues as an adult and has never allowed me to have a healthy sex life and explore my sexuality. I can see that I had a lack of skills to talk about and process my feelings – which led to me not being able to speak my truth – which lead to tumultuous relationships as an adult. All those experiences, and so many more that I am not mentioning here, were hard wired into my subconscious programming.
I took a spiritual approach to my healing because spirituality is all about becoming aware. Becoming aware of the human mind and how it works. When you bring awareness to your thoughts, your feelings and things going on inside of the body you can start to see that you are not these things. You are what’s watching it all happen and receiving the subconscious messages. I am not the voice inside my head that was screaming “your body is hideous” – this is a subconscious negative thought pattern that I learned long ago and it’s also a limiting belief about myself that I placed on myself - that I was in there listening to. Think of it this way, if you had a friend that spoke to you that way you wouldn’t keep them around. Why would you tolerate this from your own mind? This is insanity to me. It is insane that so many of us are not taking a more active role in that programs running in our subconscious mind. Generally speaking, I don’t think most of us know. I didn’t know until I got out into the world and my unmonitored programming was bringing me the dysfunction that I had learned.
This is the dysfunction of the human condition and everyday I work to reprogram myself. I am so grateful to live in an age where mental health is becoming a big deal and it’s something we talk about. I am so grateful to become aware of myself so that I can live a better life. I am so grateful to have the resources available to me to do the work and heal. Since March of last year, I have read 32 books, listened to 12 audio books, and been through months of therapy all in efforts to learn what I wanted my version of healthy to be defined by.
Writing this now is easy and it came from some very difficult times. The first time I chose to be vulnerable and honest about my feelings I was trembling, my voice was shaky, and I cried. I was inarticulate, slow and it took me a long time to get my words out. I felt small, weak and embarrassed. It was awful, and I didn’t see it at the time but that was incredibly brave of me and I was breaking generations of inherited family dysfunction. I had to dive into some ugly, traumatic times and learn about my parent’s past to understand why they were the way that they were. This taught me that they were doing the best that they could with the skills they had. I had to sit with my father’s ashes and reaccept his energy that I had spent nearly two decades rejecting. Do you know what I found at the end of all of this? I found peace.
It’s hard to be mad at anyone when you understand why humans act the way that they do. I don’t believe that we set out to hurt other people. I believe we are the product of experiences, culture and family teachings and unfortunately some of us go through some dark, ugly, dysfunctional stuff that teaches us to act in a way that doesn’t serve us. With this understanding, I have decided that I want to go through my life promoting healthy and positive experiences. I want to empower and inspire other people so that we can all do better. I am constantly monitoring every thought that I have and if it doesn’t serve my purpose, I redirect it. I monitor every word that comes out of my mouth and if I slip up and say something that is hurtful or untrue, I apologize and try to do better. These things are very powerful: Our thoughts shape our reality - It’s all about perception and how we consciously choose to look at something. My words effect other people – they are my power and I will only use my power in the way I choose.
Everyone deserves love and respect. Everyone. I want to live an open life and be the best version of myself that operates from a place of love and healing. That can be dangerous because you can absorb other people’s issues. This is where you learn to protect yourself with your words, with boundaries and with limiting access to your space from other people. Anger and a need to prove myself has gotten me this far, but there is no need to be angry or closed anymore and because I have committed to loving myself the way I have always desired love from others… which means putting myself first, making choices that are in my best interest and protecting myself. Now I am free to do things simply because I want to and not to prove my worth to anyone. I feel no resentment toward anyone because I know that they did the best they could.
To my father, who was never taught to be vulnerable and how to love and talk about his feelings – I am so sorry that happened to you. I am so sorry that your experience with your parents didn’t have the tools to experience uncomfortable emotions. I am so sorry that you were conditioned with the unhealthy behaviors that kept you from being truly close with other people. Thank you so much for bringing me into this world and keeping me alive until I was old enough to take care of myself. I know you did the best you could, I know you loved me, and I love you back. I forgive you and I will do better.
To my mother, who wasn’t around when I was a kid, I am so sorry that you lacked the skills necessary to make healthier choices. I am so sorry that you were not set up to know what healthy was so that you could live your best life. I am so grateful that we are connected now and that you are on your own healing journey. Thank you for letting me be a part of that and I couldn’t have gotten this far without you. I know you did the best you could, I know you love me, and I love you back. I forgive you and I will do better.
To my family, who didn’t know how to handle it after I left home at 15. I am sorry that we weren’t all taught healthier relationship habits from our older relatives. Things happened behind closed doors that you were unable to see, and I did what was best for me. I was a child that was begging for help. I did what I had to do to take my life back and I broke a cycle of dysfunction. That isn’t easy to do and I’m sorry that shocked your system, but sometimes a shock is necessary to heal. Please know that the way we were taught to live is not optimal for happiness and there are resources to learn to do things differently if you choose to do so! I know you did the best you could, I know you love me, and I love you back. I forgive you and I will do better.
To the man who told me that I was garbage and that I was never going to amount to anything when I was 8 years old, I am so sorry that somewhere in your life someone taught you that it was okay to speak to a child like that. This experience remained in my subconscious for a long time and created a limiting belief about my own intelligence. I know you did the best you could. I forgive you and I will do better.
These are just some of my deepest wounds and I forgive them all. I forgive them all for myself and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to do so. All these experiences have given me a deep understanding people and how we operate. I am so thankful that I can heal myself and create a life that I am proud of. I believe that fate is when life is unfolding in front of you because of your unawareness, Destiny is when you take your fate into your own hands and you wake up and start shaping it into something of your own creation. This means being responsible for the things happening in your mind and the way you interact with the world. This is real healing. Real healing is a shift on perspective. Real healing is taking responsibility for the subliminal programming in your mind, that is operating under your awareness and telling you that you aren’t enough or that you aren’t worthy. Real healing and awareness are actively monitoring and programming all parts of yourself to operate in your own best interests – to me this is that path of the spiritual warrior.
So much of the world is operating below our own awareness and that thought frightens me to my core: Racism, inherited family dysfunction, exploitation and so many other cycles that keep people from excelling to new heights are right in front of our faces and we choose not to see them. Understanding the world I live in and helping others along the way is my purpose because we are not going to get anywhere unless we all wake up and make changes together. Dysfunction has been the blueprint for my entire life, which had me out in the world perpetuating and creating more dysfunction. Now that I cleared all of that out there is so much space inside of me. I am learning new things, I am connecting with people on entirely new levels and I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve learned that it’s nobody else’s job to fix me, everyone must take responsibility for themselves and I can’t expect anyone to have skills that I myself didn’t have. Know that I was doing the best I could, I know you loved me, and I love you back. I forgive myself. I am a trauma survivor and a spiritual warrior. I will do better.