top of page
Search

My Truth

Updated: Jan 25

This is what I share when asked to in recovery and healing meetings. I have been invited to speak at four international meetings this week about my experience. I attend around five meetings per week.


Thank you for reading this – I am truly full of gratitude. I hope that this article, and my experience, strength, and hope, will serve you in some way that is helpful to you.



My Truth...



I want to share with you today from a very tender, heart-felt, open, authentic, and vulnerable place. Why? Because recovery and healing have taught me that there is no other way to BE. Anything else is ego. And prior to this journey there is no way that I could have or would have done this. I was, like so many of us, asleep. Today, I wanted to speak to your souls.


My journey began four years ago when my life crashed. I was truly brought to my knees as the Gift Of Desperation: The best acronym for GOD that I have heard so far. I thought I had it all, according to societal standards – the nice house, the beautiful family, the perfect job. But I was empty, emotionally dead, depressed, and so full of fear that I tried to end my life twice just to get away from the anxiety. I have learned that joy and gratitude are an inside job, and they come from wanting what we have, not having what we want.


My psychotherapist and psychologist at that time told me that in 5 years that I would be grateful for this arduous journey. This sense of gratitude occurred before 5 years. I lost everything, including my house, my career and my family, albeit temporarily, but I found me, and I started getting clarity on how the world works. It isn’t easy but it is simple. It’s called recovery. For me this has been the bridge to everything that was missing in my life – realising that I wasn’t actually missing anything. It has been the 12 steps, it has been 'A Course in Miracles', it has been the Hero’s Journey, it has been full time inner work, and so much more: All metaphors for personal transformation. It has been the hardest thing I have ever done, but also the most worthwhile. I thank those who tried to destroy me. I forgive them as they were spiritually sick, asleep, and unconscious too. I truly believe that spirituality is a journey within that we must all make, including our journey through The Dark Night of The Soul. We sometimes need to be punched in the face before we can realise it: A 'knockout blow' before you can find real peace, unconditional love that was there all along, joy, true abundance and bliss. Inside me I found an invincible summer. Love your fate. All is well.


A dysfunctional childhood creates a deep wounding and resultant coping mechanisms. My family was more like the Simpsons than the Waltons. The greater the extent of self-inquiry and exploration one can undertake, the more effectively an individual can enable their own healing, along with cultivating self-awareness and understanding, which in turn creates the ability to meet oneself with grace and compassion. 



My mother was a Narcissist and a compulsive sex and love addict who suffered from mental illness. She was married four times, and my brother and I were made to move schools and home addresses six times. My mother would never spend time with me or my brother. She never came on holiday with us. She screamed at us every night, threatening to have us adopted. I had no father to protect me. My mother feigned two suicide attempts with a kitchen knife and by jumping out of a car on the motorway in front of me by the time I was only seven years old. I attempted suicide by drowning when I was a child as a result, but was not offered help. My mother gave all my pets away or had them put down every time we moved house, including my dog. I never had friends for more than a couple of years due to our frequent moves. For 40 years I was not aware of how my severely dysfunctional childhood had affected me. I felt numb, impenetrable emotionally. I thought everyone felt like that. My heart was encased in concrete. I subconsciously abandoned people before they could abandon me. All the while I was abandoning myself. I have been in survival mode for four decades, living from my survival brain. This is the proven result of childhood trauma.


It was totally exhausting emotionally for me as a young boy to have to nurture my mother and parent her. It drained all my energies. It was an impossible situation for a young child. I remember wanting to escape my childhood into a world of fantasy where I could be independent and successful academically and be in control of my life. I had to develop survival mechanisms in order to cope. I used every coping mechanism under the sun. But they could never be enough. Something needed to give.


Me, when I was seven years old


My subconscious coping mechanism from my childhood was to compulsively seek external validation. Now I know that’s my addiction: The tragedy is that this behaviour is encouraged and rewarded in our society, until it isn’t: For 4 decades that was through exams, prizes, accolades, and work. Then, when this failed to bring me joy, I subconsciously turned to people for validation. Unbeknown to me, I self-sabotaged: I now see that I subconsciously drove my train off the track. Now, in hindsight, I realise that through my suicide attempts, I didn’t want to die: I wanted to be reborn psychologically.


My mother died the day before my birthday a few weeks ago. She was buried in France, her country of origin. My father had died 5 years previously. My brother put some items in my mother's coffin to symbolise her life – one of which was a kitchen knife as she loved to cook and even taught others to. Little known to him was that it was the very knife with which I had attempted suicide four years ago. The woman who smothered me with neglect as a child, taking the blade with her for eternity to protect me from further harm, sealed inside her coffin. In that moment, I stopped looking at where I had fallen, and instead started looking at why I had slipped. I hate to say it, as it sounds awful, but I feel such relief since I buried my mother a few weeks ago. She can hurt me no more, and yet I feel connected to her soul, thanks to my recovery journey into healing.


Me with my mother at her 70th birthday


Carl Jung (psychiatrist, psychologist, and spiritual master) and Bill Wilson (who wrote the 12 steps) thought that addiction is a misguided attempt at spiritual wholeness and bliss, not oblivion, and that spiritual bliss is something which I believe we all crave. I truly believe that addiction is a calling to the door through which it is pure light. But we must choose to go through the door, every single morning when we wake up.


Carl Jung wrote that "The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire." In Jungian psychology, fire represents anxieties, losses, grief, hidden consciousness, and existential crises that threaten to consume us.


We need to learn to 'Fall Upwards', as Father Richard Rohr states in his book of the same name. In the first half of life, we are naturally preoccupied with establishing our selves; climbing, achieving, performing, and gaining accolades. But as we grow older and encounter challenges and make mistakes, we need to see our Selves in a more life-giving and forgiving way. This message of falling down - that it is in fact moving upward - is the most resisted and counterintuitive of messages. Falling upward offers a new paradigm for understanding one of the profound of life's mysteries: How those who have fallen down are the only ones who understand 'up'. We grow spiritually more by doing it wrong than by doing it right, and the disappointments of life are actually stepping stones to the spiritual joys in the second half of life.


I am now a voracious reader of spiritual, psychological, Deep Coaching, and philosophical literature, having read over 250 books (please see my suggested reading list for where to start) and I have made several thousands of pages of notes. I run a recovery meeting with over 200 international members every week, I run a weekly workshop on the Loving Parent Guidebook, give regular invited lectures and shares on these topics, and I have had three sponsees and two sponsors. I have written a free eBook on Enlightenment for you and 250 free articles on personal transformation in order to serve you.


I can’t share without mentioning fear again. It has taken me 4 years to name that fear. My fear is my inner child not feeling safe in facing the world. Fear to me is nothing more than a bubbling cauldron of our unfelt feelings. We are not here to suffer. We are here to remember who we are, guided by our Higher Power. The Universe does not create our fear, we do. So it is in our power, guided by God, to feel our emotions fully then surrender them to him. That is how we get rid of fear. Feelings, when felt, only last a few minutes, so why do we carry round this bubbling cauldron for decades? It's not a question of if we will falter, but when. And the only person who can truly catch you when you fall is you. You are your saviour. But you do need a guide, an Enlightened Witness.


How do we remain sober from our compulsions? For me, it was easy, as my fall from Grace was so traumatic, that it allowed me to drop my ego overnight. But I know that I am only ever one step away from walking a different path – one in which there is no peace, joy, or love. We remain sober by loving our Selves, saying no to our self-hatred, serving others, and in giving we receive sobriety as an act of Grace. As often quoted by the American presidential candidate Marianne Williamson from ‘A Course In Miracles’ it says "You can have a grievance or a miracle, but you cannot have both." I choose miracles. I choose to see you all as souls. I choose to love unconditionally. I choose to believe in my Self. I choose to believe in my Higher Power. I choose to run and live my life from intuition and conscious contact with God, taking action based on Faith, rather than running my life from my unconscious petrified seven year old self. I surrender my powerlessness over this condition. I choose to forgive my Self. I choose to love my Self, and that’s thanks to all of you. I can now let go of my insatiable quest for validation. I can let go of outcomes. I can let go of my need for being attached to people, places, and things. It all just is. I won’t be abandoned. I let go of all my negative self-limiting beliefs and my fears. With the help of our Higher Power, our character will change. Ram Dass said that “Emotions are a doorway to another plane of consciousness.” Like you are in the presence of God or in presence.



Serving with humility has really helped my healing. Lao Tzu wrote that "All streams flow to the sea, because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power."


No amount of imitation love will be enough if you didn’t get real love as a child. If your primal needs of unconditional love are not met as a child you cannot get enough substitute gratification as an adult to replace it. This results in endless cycles of insatiable cravings, overwhelming emotional pain, and disappointment. Adult cravings can never satisfy our unmet infantile needs and our experience of childhood and adolescence creates a false identity, the ego. Yet, even we don’t love our false self. Instead of primal needs being satisfied we experience primal emotional pain. This makes us scream silently. To experience a rebirth we must feel our initial pain as that is where our growth and wisdom are buried alive. I know that my journey now is to face all my pain. But do you know what, I have learned to love the catharsis of crying. Bring it on.


Almost 50% of my step 4 was about my mother. Despite dropping my resentments, for a long time I was full of suppressed rage about her dysfunctional parenting. However, I now forgive her, and now only connect with her soul through love. This is the gift of living in the present. As Rumi said “We are born of love, that love is our mother.” This is why we learn to reparent our Selves with unconditional love while we heal from childhood trauma. I choose to become a transformer of darkness into light. No darkness can hold us back. Train your mind to think with unconditional love. It will work miracles. Bless everyone who enters your life. Compassion will begin to flood your life. One is not defined by one's past, one is prepared by one's past. Your future Self will guide you in the present moment.


Taking care of your Self at your lowest point in your life is the bravest thing you can ever do. If this is where you are right now, I hear you.


It's never the situation that causes us to suffer: It's how we react. We can either choose to sit in self-pity, or we can use it as a lesson and a reason to change. It's always your choice.


Thank you again for allowing me to share my experience, strength, and hope with you. I hope that it has in some way served you. My role now is to champion your possibility.


I see you, I hear you, I see the divine in you.


Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you: Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.


Namaste.


Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.


Olly



Email me: 





Hello,

I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person. 


“Transformative life coaching uniquely creates and holds the space for you to see your self afresh, with clarity, and step into new ways of BEing, which will transform how you perceive and intuitively create your world. My work is to guide you to raise your own conscious awareness to the level that you want to achieve.”







Click here for the books that I know will help you along your journey of recovering your Self:









I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have a number of other higher qualifications in science and surgery. I have published over 50 peer reviewed PubMed cited scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for over five years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.




Please let me know if you would like to join our 'VOICE for men' VIP community: 'Vulnerability & Openness Is a Choice Ensemble', 'Visibility Is Power', where men can find their strength, courage, and authenticity, by dropping their egocentric fears and instead communicate openly with vulnerability. We are co-creating this space. It will change your life. It will empower you. This community is a safe space for men to connect and discuss philosophy, spirituality, positive psychology, awakening to Self-realisation, wisdom and timeless Truths, to share our experience, strength and hope, and to find solutions to our pain and fears. Our meeting is free to join. There is no script, just sharing.

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page