People say, “I felt so alive”. Or, “I feel dead” They don’t mean biologically. They mean something psychological. A widening of experience. Or a narrowing of it.
Aliveness isn’t a binary state. It’s the degree to which you are in contact with your internal life, your anger, desire, envy, grief, tenderness, aggression, longing. The full range. Most of us restrict that range, more than we realise.
This restriction isn’t random. It’s defensive. If, early on, strong feelings threatened attachment or overwhelmed a parent, your mind learns to inhibit. Anger becomes dangerous. Desire becomes shameful. Need becomes humiliating.
So your personality organises itself around control. Certain thoughts become prohibited. Certain emotions are split off and boxed up. Over time this inhibition feels like character: “I’m just not an angry person”.
But this defensive narrowing has a cost. When you dampen aggression, you often dampen vitality. When you suppress longing, you also suppress excitement. The system becomes efficient, contained, appropriate. But flat. You might function well. You might be admired. But internally there is a muted quality, a reduction of energy.
Therapy is not about manufacturing feeling. It is about increasing your tolerance. Loosening repression. Challenging the delusion that thoughts or feelings are inherently dangerous. Many adults still carry the child’s omnipotent logic: if I think it, it’ll happen; if I feel it, I’ll lose control; if I want it, I might destroy it. So you police yourself. And the cost of that policing is aliveness.
Aliveness isn’t acting on every impulse. It’s being able to register your impulses without excessive fear. Thinking all your thoughts, and feeling all your feelings.
If you feel half-alive, it may not be because nothing is there. It may be because too much of you has been exiled from your awareness.
image credit: Nick Monica
