My Double Life

I have always felt as if I am living a double life. Where I came from is not anywhere that anyone that I know could ever imagine or understand. I have successfully escaped the nightmare that I call ‘my childhood’, so I thought. The identity that I have created for myself is reflected in my success as a business man living in a upper class world. I am having a very difficult time sharing my life with an intimate partner and use the success in my business as my excuse. I am afraid that if I allow myself to become emotionally vulnerable with a women that she will see right through me to the small emotionally and physically neglected and abused child that I once was. How can I merge my two lives in such a way that I can share myself and my successes?

It sounds very painful for you when you consider your life as a small child and it is amazing how you have never allowed that experience to dictate who you have allowed yourself to become. Please do not start now. You have subconsciously tapped into the art of re-framing all along and have been telling yourself the other version of the story of your childhood. This is the only way you could have arrived to where you are now. You have a super power, the amazing ability to re-frame. Lets just help you bring that superpower into your conscious mind so that you can consciously tap into it and create the intimate part of your life with a partner. Re-framing is the experience of consciously rethinking our past in such a way that it can only support our life in our now. You may rethink your childhood as an experience that was colored with contrast that has given you the clarity which has allowed you to know the life that you would like to create for yourself. This has worked for you in regards to your professional identity and can also work for you regarding your personal identity. You recreate an understanding about what has happened that can only feel good when you reflect back upon it if you choose to reflect back at all. I do not believe that we ever need to look back in order to move forward. The contrast of what was has launched a clear and focused desire for what you are seeking now and every part of the process can feel good. You can do this and you do not have to merge what was into what is, it can simply be what was, a moment that has gotten forever lost in what is. Your life is now and you are amazing in every way. Relax into the knowing that who we are is always up to us and not dictated by where we have come from.