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Can we ever be truly free?

I have been sitting with that question since hearing Dr Gabor Maté speak in London. He spoke about childhood, attachment, the body and the experiences that shape us: what we were praised for, what was allowed and which parts of us seemed to threaten our belonging.

It left me wondering how much of the life we are living today is genuinely being chosen by us—and how much is being chosen through a lens we learned to wear long ago.

As babies, our needs and responses are immediate. We reach, cry, turn away and make ourselves known. But somewhere along the way, many of us learn that self-expression has consequences. Do not be too difficult. Do not ask for too much. Do not become angry. Be good, amenable and easygoing. Preserve the relationship. Keep the peace.

For a child who depends upon attachment, this adaptation makes complete sense. Belonging is not a luxury; it is survival. Yet the strategy can follow us into adulthood, long after the original conditions have changed. We call it our personality. We say we genuinely do not mind. We rise above anger, soften the boundary and swallow the no—while resentment, tension or exhaustion gathers inside us.

Then one day, self-expression begins to matter more.

We set a boundary. We name what is true. We stop volunteering for the role everyone expects us to play. And because our nervous system remembers that authenticity once risked rejection, even a healthy act of self-loyalty can feel dangerous.

This is the painful choice beneath so many apparently ordinary moments: do I risk disappointing someone else, or do I continue abandoning myself?

Freedom may not mean becoming free of everything that happened to us. We may always have a history, conditioning and a body that remembers. Perhaps freedom begins in the moment we recognise: this happened; this is what I made it mean; this is who I learned to become because of it. Then a new question becomes possible: do I still need to be that person now?

That awareness is not an instruction to blame our younger selves. The adaptation protected something precious. Nor is it a demand to express every feeling at another person. Self-expression can begin privately—with the courage to admit what is actually here. What is true for me today? What wants to come through me? If I did care, what would I choose?

One of the most beautiful parts of the evening came during a question about supporting children through painful circumstances. The response Melissa heard contained three simple invitations: care for yourself, allow their full expression and delight in them.

What if those are also instructions for our own healing?

Can I care for myself and tend to my emotional state? Can I allow the anger, grief, desire, joy, guilt, ambition and mysticism to exist without immediately correcting them? And can I enjoy myself—not merely treat myself as an endless healing project, but become available for my vitality and aliveness?

Perhaps healing is not becoming better at holding pain. Perhaps it is becoming more available for truth, authenticity and life.

This is spiritual intelligence: not collecting more knowledge about why we are the way we are, but developing the capacity to meet our mind, body, emotions, Soul and history consciously enough that we can participate in what happens next.

What happened to you matters. The meaning you made was intelligent. The person you became helped you belong or survive. But what are you doing with your story now?

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Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

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