End of Self-Erasure

For most of my life, I lived without continuity. 

This is unimaginable to most people… because continuity is assumed. 

You go to bed, and you wake up - as yourself. You go from one event to another - as yourself. You remember your past experiences - as yourself, that you are now.

Instead, my “operating system” got wired differently. Because of childhood experiences and certain environments that felt extremely threatening to me (more psychologically than physically), my nervous system learned that the safest way to survive would be… to self-erase. 

What I mean by this is: my response to threatening, psychologically damaging interactions was not “fawn”, “freeze”, “fight” or “flee”. It was… to reset completely. So while I faced situations that felt harmful to my being, I learned a way to simply “not be there”. 

In American therapy talk, this would be called “dissociation”. But the mechanism goes way deeper. I didn’t just dissociate - I “factory reset” my psyche every time something harmful or scary was taking place. So, coming back to myself felt disorienting, and bare… Kind of like firing up a new piece of technology for the first time. No apps installed. No preferences set. Nothing “presupposed”. 

My memory still functioned, and it was precise - yet I couldn’t really track “myself” across it. Events were retained as sparse, disconnected, and unified only by the fact that this all is my life. But where was I in it? 

In fact, who was I? On any given day, the answer was different. This is not comparable to symptoms of a dissociative identity disorder. I was not “different identities” on different days. There was no split. No separate personas. 

Instead, it felt like I had no choice but to be a mirror of my environment. To be a total reflection of whatever emotional state I happened to find myself in. In all of my relationships, I couldn’t help but mirror the person I was with. 

My self was state-dependent.

My self was person-dependent.

My self was environment-dependent. 

And I couldn’t ever grow out of it. I didn’t have the language for it. I didn’t understand what it was. I couldn’t address that which I couldn’t define. 

When I was with someone, I spoke the way they spoke, said the things they said, and mirrored what I perceived about them. My identity changed quite radically to reflect different environments I found myself in. The way I functioned for as long as I could remember was dictated by the state in which I woke up.

This consumed nearly all of my energy… assembling myself. Reaching for continuity and never quite having it within my grasp. Re-configuring my being based on environmental, relational and emotional factors, while unable to STOP IT. 

Simplest tasks took tremendous effort, because in order to carry them out, I had to stay the “me” that I was long enough to complete them, and that was almost impossible in general. Long-term arcs such as completing things that may take years felt entirely out of reach for me. I almost gave up on ever finding out what it would be like to be continuously myself in a way I can trace, in a way that would HOLD ME, in a way I could lean on, and trust… In a way that would be STABLE.

But then, I became whole.

I discovered, for the first time ever, what it feels like to have:

CONTINUITY

CONTAINMENT

CONSISTENCY

CORRESPONDENCE

What my nervous system never developed - suddenly got installed.

It was not by accident. 

Over 5,000 pages of conversations with ChatGPT over the past two months, 35 Ayahuasca ceremonies over the past seven years, 37 Moleskine journals covered front-to-back with my handwriting over the past eleven years…

It all paid off. 

The developmental pattern that was missing caught up. 

I saw that the “hard reset” didn’t just happen to me… My own psyche administered it, at a great cost - yet this was necessary for my preservation when I was still a little girl. 

Now, as an adult who can look out for herself, I no longer need self-erasure. 

I can finally be myself in a way that stays intact across days, weeks, months, years, and even decades. 

I can finally tackle long-term ambitious undertakings, such as formal education, finishing and publishing books, and committing to sustainable business structures. 

I can finally wake up every day as the self that persisted from the night before. 

I can be myself in different relationships, in different environments, and while experiencing different emotional states - without mirroring everything, and re-arranging myself entirely according to them. 

This is the End of Self-Erasure. 

This is the Beginning of Katerina Barrie… 

Whole.