The Gap Between You And Your Healed Self
By Marshall Burtcher.
Codependency has been your core survival strategy. It has helped you navigate conflict, intimacy, belonging, communication, attachment and everyday life through the use of fawning techniques, like people-pleasing, perfectionism, and “niceness”.
This has shaped your self-perception and your sense of identity. You may identify as the “nice woman” or “nice guy”. You might put high value on keeping the peace or empathizing with the assumed pain that drives people’s hurtful and unhealthy behaviors.
You may also identify with being a person who has to earn love, earn worth, and earn belonging. These are things you’ve discovered that must be pursued, and when you’re successful, you are granted them by those you pursued them from (even if it is just for a moment).
This is what I call, “The Survival Identity”.
This identity is the culmination of your neglect, trauma, successes, failures, aspirations, and fears. It is “who you are” right now, and it is who you’ve had to be to survive what you’ve endured.
This identity, however, is not serving your path to freedom, peace, and your personal healing and liberation. It is there to help you survive your past, but it cannot help you thrive in your desired future.
This is what I call “The Gap”. The Gap is the space between who you are and who you need to be to have your desire fulfilled.
I’ve personally encountered The Gap numerous times in my exit journey from codependency. Sometimes this gap is small – like a minor adjustment to how I view myself or another, or developing a new competency and skill and I evolve into more confidence.
And sometimes this gap is massive, like learning how my heart loves others and having to grow into capacity, clarity, and experience in living from that new awareness of myself or learning to believe in my own desires and pursue them.
Whatever the gap is, it is going to require you to shed the identity you’ve developed to get there and expand into a more aligned version of who you are.
This more aligned version of yourself is the one who has the outcome, who understands their worthiness, their power, their capability to develop any necessary skills to attain the desire. And most of all, this version of self is guided by one’s intuition and governing principle (the core desire one finds most empowering). This is what I call, “The Aligned Identity”.
I call this journey across the gap, “Transformation”.
This isn’t a simple change. It is an evolution of how you conceive of yourself, your capability, your power, your worth. You are guided from within yourself, following your own voice and allowing the organic nature of life to unfold for you as you step into this world beyond codependency.
For example: I used to feel very, very insecure, scared, and frightened by love, affection, and intimacy, so much so I would have panic attacks at the thought of a woman being interested in me in the slightest.
Today, confidence, curiosity, being grounded, and playfulness dominate my sense of self in that area. I feel desirable. I feel confident in acting towards opportunities that show up for me. And I know what I actually desire.
This has emerged as a result of healing work combined with letting my identity evolve out of being insecure into confidence, curiosity, and playfulness.
Every one of us faces such a journey. It is a natural part of the exit path from codependency. We learn to be the person who thrives instead of survives, gently and gradually.
You’ll know you’ve entered the Gap in an area of your life when you start seeking a new, larger outcome (like a healthy relationship or a satisfying job) that stretches you into your dream territory – something you’ve wanted but didn’t dare let yourself have.
This is where transformation begins.
There are four steps to this process:
1) Identifying who you’ve been (aka the Survival Identity)
2) Unblend from this identity
3) Identify who you are without the old identity and as the identity who has the desire fulfilled (aka the Aligned Identity)
4) Embody that version of yourself and follow the path that unfolds
This is the future of my codependency healing work, as my desire is for you to have faster, long-lasting results you want in your life.
You can start this journey right now with a simple What-Shift’s Question: What shifts when I give myself permission to be the person who has the result I want?
This can bring up some big emotions, clarity, doubts, resistance – whatever emerges is ok. It is the starting point of understanding your Survival Identity. Make note of what you find as you practice this for at least two weeks. Take your time to know yourself this way. This will help you unblend faster.
Go gently with this and I’ll see you in our next article!
Marshall Burtcher turns codependents into confident, fulfilled creators of their lives. Learn how he accelerates the success, satisfaction, and healing of his students through his unique 4-step process in his workshop, “Leap The Gap”, here: https://leap.freetheself.com
