When people feel stuck, they usually look for a practice.
Meditation. Journaling. Setting phone timers. Positive affirmations. Breathwork..
Practices always come with a promise: “Do this every day and you’ll be calmer, more focused, more loving, more enlightened.”
But here’s the catch: practices often sit on top of identity.
If I practice kindness while secretly hating or judging someone, the “kindness” isn’t real. It turns into pleasing.
And pleasing turns into resentment.
It’s not because I failed — it’s because identity can’t be bypassed by practice.
It always sneaks back in, sometimes in a new costume.
That's why a practice often becomes a performance.
That’s why it so often collapses into cycles of effort, disappointment, and guilt. (Even though initially provide some relief so we feel hooked).
Why This Matters
Practices keep identity in place because they chase an outcome.
Exposure dissolves identity because it reveals the game itself.
It’s like watching a horror movie. In the dark, with the sound turned up, you’re terrified—you jump, your heart races, you swear it’s real. You can chant mantras or give yourself positive affirmations or do inner child healing - and it may make a difference. But you have to keep the practice the entire movie. And at the end you’ll be exhausted with flashbacks.
Exposure:
But when the lights come on, the blood is just paint—it doesn’t even look red anymore, it’s kind of pink under the light. The monster mask is made of rubber, the knife is plastic. Suddenly you can’t be scared in the same way again. You can still watch the film, but the spell is broken. The illusion collapses.
It’s not tragic anymore, it’s absurd.
In our sessions, when clients laugh uncontrollably, I know they see it.
That’s why in my 12-week work with clients, we don’t practice "presence”, new habits, or relaxation techniques for stress. We expose the identity. We see what it seeks, what it feeds on, what it costs. And when it’s exposed and it has no more job to do.
So, yea, nothing is wrong with you if you don’t stick with your practice as much as you’d like. It’s just that you may be trying to fix what has never been broken.
What Do You Even Want? Learn to Want Again without Collapsing into Identity, Fantasy, or Fear
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