When my first marriage fell apart, I felt both sides of the coin. One side was heavy with failure, abandonment, and worthlessness. The other side glimmered with excitement and freedom. I had the chance to redo what I once thought was the biggest mistake of my life.

That’s the thing about endings. They rarely feel simple. They are a collision of grief and relief, fear and hope, loss and possibility.

The Subtle Erosion of Self

For the first time in years, I could breathe. I no longer lived with someone who reminded me daily that I should be “more like them.”

• How to dress.
• How to move.
• How much make-up to wear.
• What facial expressions were “acceptable.”

It was relentless. A drip-feed of suggestion after suggestion—just how much wasn’t okay with me.

And here’s the truth: when you hear those messages every day, they don’t just bounce off. They sink into your subconscious. They whisper in the background until you start believing them. You start thinking you should be someone else. You start doubting that the person you are is enough.

I used to think, “Lucky he’s so perfect.” Spoiler: he wasn’t.

Shedding the Survival Layers

It took years to work through it all. Years to shed the adaptations that kept me in survival mode.

Hyper-vigilance had become my way of life. Always anticipating what might go wrong, what might be criticised, what might spark another conflict.

And the cruelest part? Even when I did what he asked—said what he wanted, acted how he wanted—when people reacted badly, he’d join them in turning on me.

That’s what years of living like that does. You lose touch with your own instincts. You learn to contort yourself to please others, and in the process, you forget who you really are.

Becoming Emotionless

So I numbed. I had to.

I became emotionless, because feeling the pain every day would have broken me. There were mornings when I woke up and felt disappointed that I had. The thought of facing another day of criticism, guilt, and being diminished felt unbearable.

But nobody saw that. I was very good at covering it up so nobody would notice my pain. And that’s the thing—we need to understand that most people don’t want others to know what they’re going through. Nobody fakes depression or pain. What people actually fake is being happy.

I know many people will relate to this. It may not be a marriage for you—it could be a workplace where you have to put on a mask every day just to survive. A family that makes you feel small. A world that tells you to “be strong” but doesn’t allow you to be human.

When life strips away your permission to feel, you adapt. You stop feeling altogether.

Finding My Way Back

But once he finally let me go, the numbing began to thaw.

Slowly, I started reconnecting with feelings that were mine—not distorted by someone else’s judgement, not filtered through someone else’s expectations.

And when that happened, it was as if life itself started flowing back into me.

I realised:

• I am here to live.
• I am here to feel—fully and safely.
• I will never again interfere with my humanness.

The Gift of Feeling It All

It isn’t easy. But I have never learnt more about myself than I have in these years of reclaiming my full spectrum of feelings.

I know who I am. I know what I stand for. And I know what I want to create in this world.

When you allow yourself to feel it all, you learn to process it all. And from that, you extract wisdom. And when you extract wisdom, you consequently also neutralise the intensity of the feeling. It’s how you know you’ve got the message those feelings wanted you to get.

That is what personal development really is. Not just “improving yourself,” but becoming more fully yourself. Not just self-help, but humanity-help.

A World That Could Be

Imagine if we taught this in schools. Imagine if personal development was part of daily life.

• We would take responsibility for our part in every situation.
• We would react with curiosity, not rage.
• We would release emotions as they came, instead of burying them until they exploded.
• We would stop labelling feelings as “bad.”

Instead, we would learn to respect emotions. Make space for them. Honour them. In ourselves and in each other.

That’s the world I dream of. A world where it is safe to be human. A world where we no longer need to numb or hide. A world where authenticity is not punished, but celebrated.

An Invitation

This is also the space I hold as a coach. A place where you can shed the layers of survival, reconnect with your authentic self, and step into your full humanness.

I’ve walked this road. I know what it means to feel worthless, numb, and lost. And I know the freedom of reconnecting with who you truly are.

If you are ready to explore your own journey of self-development, I would love to walk beside you.