Get Back Up, Baby!

Don't fall into the rescue fantasy trap

During the summer of 2012, two mornings in a row on my patio I found an upside-down rolly-polly bug. Different days, different bugs, but it was the same situation.

At first it appeared motionless and dead. Then as I got closer, all those little legs started flailing wildly in the desperate struggle to get right-side up again. It was working against gravity and the laws of physics.

Who knows how he got into that predicament. Maybe he rolled into the wall. Maybe the wind overpowered him. Maybe he was chasing after a pretty female of his species or perhaps he was running away from a predator.

Looking at that rolly-polly, I was identifying with his struggle...the confusion, anxiety, desperation, fear, exhaustion, failure and defeat. Maybe I was just seeing into the mirror of my own experience at the time while observing his struggle.

It’s not always clear how we end up upside-down on the floor in life. It’s often due to mistakes or bad decisions that we make. Other times it might be the influence or intervention of a force greater than us or even what some call bad luck.

A lot of people ended up flattened at times by the cumulative stresses of the last few years. When you’re in that state, it’s hard to get back up. It’s normal to get knocked down sometimes and it’s important to have some tools in advance because when you’re collapsed, it’s hard to see anything other than a pervasive dark cloud tainting everything. 

In those moments it’s easy to forget that you have access to imagination, insights, intuition, creativity and other human faculties to help you figure a way out of that predicament. That’s why it’s helpful to consciously take inventory of the tools available to you in advance so that when you’re on the floor, you have a greater chance of being able to remember how to connect with those inner resources.

Sometimes we see someone we care about in that state. Naturally, we want to help them and that’s when it’s essential to remember that helping is not the same as rescuing.  

I didn’t have a close relationship with the bug but I wanted to help the little guy get back on his feet. However, every time I tried to scoop him into the lid of my coffee cup, he would struggle furiously against my efforts. The results were futile for both of us. The more I tried to get him upright, the more he struggled against me. A seemingly simple problem became more complicated than I thought. I was frustrated so I took a seat and drank some of my coffee while reflecting on a better solution. 

Finally, I decided to just hold the surface of the lid right up next to him, without actually trying to get him on it. Lo and behold, his legs immediately grabbed onto the edge and he picked himself right-side up, almost effortlessly. I couldn’t believe how easy it was when I took a different approach. 

Trying to pick someone up from their upside-down predicament in life doesn't work because that's their struggle.

If you try to rescue someone else from their struggle, they will often fight you, even when they do want to get back up. The same is true if someone else tries to rescue you from your life circumstances.

All of us struggle, sometimes some more than others. Yet suffering is something avoidable in life. In Buddhism they talk about pain being unavoidable while suffering is elective. It definitely doesn’t feel like a choice in the moments when you’re in the pits of suffering.

That’s because we forget.

The overwhelm of the situation can cause us to get disconnected from our inner resources and higher states of consciousness. A struggle can either be the pain that motivates you to take action and do something about it or the suffering that holds you down indefinitely. The longer you’re down, the more you lose track of time, and the harder it is to get back up.

If you look back at the biggest struggles of your life, and maybe even the little ones too, do you notice how those experiences were part of shaping you into who you are today? That could be negatively or positively—it just depends on what you did with it. You either used the struggle to motivate you to take decisive action and change your circumstances, or you let it use you, giving away your power in the process. This reflection exercise is not for the purpose of beating yourself up for what you did or didn’t do but rather to empower you to recognize the patterns and use the struggle for growth next time.

Your story of struggle gives you the empathy to understand others who are struggling and the desire to help where you can. You can have the compassion and desire to help, but you also need healthy boundaries that both protect your wellbeing and respect the other’s free will, otherwise you will get pulled down too. Then everyone ends up struggling. While commiseration can be tempting, it’s not the path of awareness, transformation and growth.

Ultimately every being is responsible for their own path.

Sometimes, in wanting to help others, we end up taking away an opportunity for them to discover the confidence and competence to do it for themselves and further develop their strength of character. That’s where we fall into the Rescuer role in Karpman’s Drama Triangle. It may appear noble to save someone else, yet when rescuing another person from their life predicament, we are taking away their agency and that’s not helpful. 

When you force someone against their will to accept help or otherwise do what you want, then you fall into the Persecutor role. You may want to help because you think that you know better what they need and if they can’t figure it out on their own, then you’ll do it for them or force them to do it. You may mean well, but keep in mind that abusers force people to do what they want and the covert ones always couch it like, “it’s for your own good”, “it’s for the common good” or “it’s to keep you safe”. 

So what can you do? You can show others, through your example, new possibilities of a way out.

Maybe like the rolly-polly bug, they’ll see the opportunity and act to get themselves back up. Or maybe they’ll be so lost in the sauce that they can’t even hear you or process what you’re saying or see the path that you’re illuminating with the light of your awareness.

If they’re deeply identified with their victimhood and holding on to a rescue fantasy, they might get angry that you’re not doing more to save them from their circumstances. They might even resort to guilt-tripping tactics. That’s a trap and if you fall into it, you won’t be helping yourself or the other person.

The struggle is the incentive to find the reins of will power.

When things are done for us or decided for us, this external control suppresses our internal drive for self-control. Self-control is the precursor to summoning the will power. A person who is stuck on the floor feels like everything is out of their control and the only way back up is through a savior, some external entity that will come in and save the day. It’s a rescue fantasy and it’s a precarious place to be.

This is how abusive and manipulative people often aim to control their targets. When they can get a person to outsource the control over their life by selling them a rescue fantasy, this surrender of self-control causes the target to forget how to exercise will power and self-responsibility.

The Persecutor often gets in the door by acting like the Rescuer who is going to save the Victim from their difficult life circumstances. They’ll make big promises and paint the picture of the exact fantasy that the target desires in order to relieve them of their struggle and extort their power.

The target of this con feels like this is finally the answer to their prayers. Over time, they forget how to access their own will power so they start deferring more decisions to the abuser, becoming ever more dependent on their Rescuer, who is actually the Persecutor in disguise. Eventually the target will feel powerless and incapable, then completely under the control of the abuser because they gave away their agency.

I’ve had clients who were declared legally incompetent so the abuser had full control over their life decisions. The victims let it get to that point slowly over time because they didn’t see what was going on. Little by little they were giving more control to the abuser, becoming more helpless and powerless in the process. They only wanted to see the fantasy that the abuser was selling, so they ended up subscribing to the narrative that the abuser created and eventually one day the abuser was able to get the court to grant them agency over the victim, looking like a savior in the process.

This same rescue fantasy dynamic has happened in our Rockefeller-Big Pharma-sponsored healthcare system for decades. People have been conditioned to believe that they have very little control over their health and they should just outsource all those decisions to the doctors, surrendering to their fate as if disease were some kind of bad luck and not the result of cumulative, daily lifestyle choices usually due to a lack of self-discipline. Indeed some conditions are genetic, but keep in mind that habits are easily passed down too.

This is why it was so easy to herd and cull the masses into the harmful medical mafia practices of the C0V¡D era.

While it’s entirely our personal responsibility to educate ourselves on what is healthy—and that may vary a bit from person to person depending on our natal constitution and other factors like blood type, sensitivities, environment, season, etc.—yet most people don’t even think about preventative health habits and their doctors rarely talk about it either.

In America, doctors complete medical school without getting an education in nutrition or other healthy eating and living habits because their medical school textbooks are sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry, who also funds those research and educational institutions in other ways.

It isn’t just limited to allopathic medicine either. I went to Chinese medicine school to learn the ancient healing arts and ended up feeling disillusioned that a big chunk of the curriculum was pharmacology, which was required in order for the schools to get accredited and for graduating the program.

When the bottom line and business growth of corporations like pharmaceuticals depend on people getting sick and more people getting more sick, then those same corporations train doctors to treat patients in order to serve their business model and maximize customer retention, we get the exact results we see in society. People are getting fatter, sicker and taking more drugs than ever, many of which make them fatter and sicker, which is a downward spiral of misery.

One of my friends told me about a reality TV show of morbidly obese people who want to get stomach surgery to lose weight. Before they’re allowed to have the surgery, the doctors require they lose a certain amount of weight through nutrition and exercise. Apparently many of them are upset because they thought the doctor would save them from the results of their own life choices and they wouldn’t have to actually do anything to lose weight. These are the kinds of people who go to doctors and then complain that they’re “not being served” because they’ve completely outsourced any sense of agency and forgot how to access their will power.

Of course the system is also poisoning us in ways that most people don’t realize since it’s not on the news and their doctors are oblivious so they don’t inform them. Then when people get sick from the cumulation of the toxicity, they’re offered more poisons, which people consent to because they feel powerless to fix the damage caused by the other poisons that they were exposed to without awareness because they were never given informed consent.

The owners discovered long ago that humans are worth more to the healthcare system sick rather than dead or healthy. Second only to war, this is their top psychopathic racket.

For example, they put the carcinogen glyphosate in the food supply since the mid-1990s, in America and many other countries. It’s sprayed on GMO crops that are bioengineered to be doused in the chemical and even on crops that aren’t genetically modified, like wheat and oats, in order to desiccate it for the harvest. This poison insidiously and slowly over time destroys us from the inside so they don’t have to overtly gas us in the concentration camps any more. If you think that’s an exaggeration, just look how obvious it really is.

Glyphosate is an herbicide, formerly owned by Monsanto and now belonging to Bayer, a pharmaceutical and chemical company that used to be called IG Farben. During WW2, IG Farben earned global notoriety with their product, Zyklon B, the pesticide used in the gas chambers. After the war, they obviously needed a rebranding so IG Farben was split into several corporations, one of which is modern-day Bayer.

After eating glyphosate-laced food for years and decades, many people get cancer and other diseases, yet they have no way of proving how they got it, they just want to get better. Without doing any independent research or looking into alternatives, most people immediately turn to the medical system, which offers them a “potentially life-saving” treatment protocol of extremely toxic chemicals and radiation that further destroy their health. They feel powerless and desperate so they sign up for whatever.

Then they need more pharma drugs to manage all the collateral damage symptoms caused by the poisonous treatments. Thankfully Big Pharma is there to rescue them again! It’s a hellova customer retention model. To eliminate the competition, doctors or other healers who interfere with this market dominance by finding effective natural treatments are usually punished or killed.

Our water systems are intentionally poisoned with fluoride, which they claim is for preventative dental health—oh but the children need it to prevent cavities!—yet few people question why it’s being systemically ingested by millions of people of all ages and why hazardous waste by-products are being added to our water supply.

Many people are not aware that the Granddaddy of Propaganda, Edward Bernays, was hired to sell fluoridated water to Americans through the state-sponsored medical propaganda.

Here’s a 1952 fluoride propaganda film.

They sure left out a lot of details. Here’s the history behind fluoride in the water supply.

Bernays’ nephew is the CEO of Netflix, by the way, just in case you haven’t noticed all the modern propaganda woven into their movies and series. They sure do keep it in the family!

Bernays’ main area of focus was on exploiting peoples’ unconscious desires through the engineering of consent.

If you want to understand the history of political and public psychological manipulation, how your desires and fears can be manipulated and used against you, not just by the fascist government-corporate axis but also by manipulators in your personal life, there’s a 4-part documentary called The Century of Self.

It shows the evolution of this behavioral science from consumer advertising campaigns to far more nefarious purposes. The film is old but it’s interesting to see how the same progression happened with the early algorithms used online to suggest and sell products through consumer data harvesting and targeting, but are now already progressing to more evil ends.

The post-public relations form of democracy was described as the shift from being citizens to consumers—passive consumers—who make decisions based on their desires, not rational thinking.

“It’s not that the people are in charge, but that the people’s desires are in charge. The people exercise no decision-making power within this environment. So democracy is reduced from something that assumes an active citizenry to the idea of the public as passive consumers driven by instinctual or unconscious desires, and that if you can trigger those needs and desires, you can get what you want from them.”

~Stuart Ewen, Historian of Public Relations

Part 1 shows how the Nazis thought democracy was dangerous because it unleashed selfish individualism but didn’t have the means to control it. We all know where that destruction went. Raise your hand if you were called selfish at some point during the recent years for not complying with the tyranny, which was eerily similar to the public health policies that happened in the late 1930s in Germany. The same playbook is still being used, it’s just much more technologically advanced now although it wears a familiar disguise: “for the good of individuals and the stability of society”.

You probably won’t be surprised to discover that the engineering of consent was deemed “necessary” to manipulate people’s emotions in the interests of a “higher truth”.

Also in the list of highlights from Part 2 above, is that the in the late 1950s, when the CIA psychologists saw the potential of Bernays’ work, they put millions of dollars into psychology departments at universities across America, funding experiments to find out how to alter and control the inner drive of human beings, which is how to influence behavior.

Of course this psychological manipulation is framed as for the good of the people, since they think we are too stupid to make our own decisions, therefore they claim they are saving us from ourselves and saving society in the process.

The same rescue propaganda is used in the climate control agenda. Our skies are being poisoned as a solution to the panic. They claim to be “cooling the Earth” to avoid global warming, yet how can we be sure they aren’t in fact making things much worse by interfering with the natural cycles of the planet? Who is monitoring the effects of this program?

The interesting thing is they didn’t even have to sell this one to the public through any kind of public relations marketing campaign. The philanthropaths just did it and continue to do it. That may be because geoengineering is just the start of where they’re going with the climate agenda. Now that they’ve progressed significantly in their climate panic narrative, and people are begging for solutions, they’re openly telling us that they’re spraying the skies for our good.

We are all struggling in some ways due to the constant pressure of psychological manipulation IRL and online, as well as the continual assault of toxins in our environment, food and water. A lot of this seems out of our control. What matters is what we do with the struggle. It can be the motivation to summon our will power to make the conscious choices and actions that most support our health, sanity and wellbeing…or it will be the path to self-destruction.

The rescue fantasy is one of the most common pre-qualifications for abuse.

Abusers know how to sniff out a person’s deepest desires and fears, then speak to those in order to manipulate the target. Sometimes they also manufacture panic in order create fear and get the target to beg for the solution. Essentially, abusers sell their targets a fantasy that promises to fulfill their desires and alleviate their fears. It’s what Bernays referred to as stimulating the irrational self to drive behavior.

This will be how the owners try to trick people into the next narrative and measures. There are a lot of issues brewing that will likely affect all of us in the not so distant future. The economic fraud and sabotage is catching up to us like a run-away train of inflation. While our leaders act like everything is fine, the tidal wave of “corrections” in the financial market is inevitable. Trillions of dollars were created since 2020, the likes of which we have never seen before. The government is now in the position of a person who has too much debt with a rising interest rate and will eventually be unable to make the minimum monthly payment without defaulting or launching another major war. 

When it gets out of hand and the masses get restless, they will propose a solution to rescue people from their woes and alleviate their struggles, or worse yet people will beg for it as a result of the psychological engineering. Either way, that’s the red flag leading to the trap.

We saw the rescue fantasy deployed during C0V¡D when the perpetrators created a panic and bombarded people with fear, then used the product marketing campaign, “safe and effective” to sell the solution that the people were begging for to relieve their fears.

The third parameter of the Stockholm Syndrome or trauma bond, which I’ve renamed a psychoneurospiritual state of captivity, is a perceived life threat. The ongoing perception of threat collapses the nervous system so the target shuts down. Over time, this leads into the fourth parameter, the perceived inability to escape.

The experimental “life-saving vaccine” was positioned as the only escape from that nightmare, the only relief from the oppressive fear and anxiety that was being manufactured. It was the biggest psychopathic con in the history of humanity.

Pimps convince people to enter into sex trafficking in a similar kind of way. They promise lots of money and financial security, but then take total control of the money, making the slave work quotas, get exhausted, traumatized and often addicted to drugs, with nothing but a meager allowance and no way out. This business model is disguised in all kinds of seemingly helpful ways to trick the target into the con.

Peter Santanello recently did a story in Vegas, talking with some women who escaped the industry. In this interview, they explain how the grooming happens and why people fall into it. It always starts with some kind of rescuing and the promise of a fantasy.

Andrew Tate says he told his webcam models that he was much better at managing money since they’re women and he’s a man, so they should just trust him to manage all their money. Tate said the girls worked, made him millions of dollars, and in return he gave them a little allowance.

That sounds insane but this doesn’t just happen in elite or fringe environments and it’s not always related to abuse. When we are rescued from our struggles by someone or something outside ourselves, then we become dependent and it gets very difficult to get back up on our own feet.

I’ve talked with some women whose (non-abusive) husbands provided everything, some even including a housekeeper and nanny. There wasn’t much left to struggle for, so they started to mentally and spiritually deteriorate. They became weak, lazy, apathetic and started to give up even though they seemingly had everything to live for. When we see old TV shows of neurotic housewives driving their husbands crazy, this is one of the contributing factors to that trend. This is also a reminder that a nostalgic desire to return to the way things were is not the answer to the current state of decay in society and families. It’s just another rescue fantasy.

Something similar happens to a mistress who is provided for by her lover, someone else’s cheating husband. That money buys her discretion and availability when he wants in order to meet his needs. She becomes dependent, debilitated and apathetic to go out and strive to earn a living in a different way. She also becomes increasingly lonely and unfulfilled because she’s living her life on someone else’s terms, who isn’t even committed to her.

Nowadays there is a growing trend in society where women rely on men online or in person to pay their bills, buy them expensive things and fund their lavish lifestyle in exchange for sexual content or services. Sometimes the comments read, “you go girl” and “you’re so empowered,” when usually it’s just the opposite. In some cases, it might be enjoyable, especially for empty, narcissistic women. In other cases some women might not enjoy it but use it as a stepping stone to invest in their training or education so they can transition to do something else. For most single women who have seemingly gained a sense of financial independence this way, they usually feel like they’re slaving for men in order to get that bag and deep down they probably wish they were doing something else to earn a living on their terms.

Of course this doesn’t just have to apply to women and can be relevant to people in general. In these situations, one person is dependent on another person to provide for them and this removes their will power to strive in life.

The same is true when people are financially dependent on a government. Having a social net like welfare has helped put food on the table for some individuals and families, and that’s good that people can eat, however there’s also a shadow side to these entitlement programs as well. For poor single mothers, the father has been replaced in the home by Daddy Government and the children are born into dependency on the system. What would happen if that net disappeared?

Edward Dowd, the author of Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Death in 2021-2022, thinks that the Universal Basic Income (UBI) will be floated as a way to introduce the Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).

The UBI is an idea that sounds noble initially, to relieve the struggles of those who are struggling, until one observes the real life consequences on the human being.

A few years ago I spoke with a refugee from Ethiopia. Some of his family members left before him and went to Europe. In France, they were provided with housing, food, healthcare, language classes and other benefits by the State. The deal was they would be provided for endlessly…unless they got jobs and started earning an income, at which time they would no longer be elegible for government assistance.

He observed that his relatives and others in the same circumstances had lost their drive to struggle and do something, anything, with their lives. They lost their sense of meaning and became lazy because everything was given to them. He saw their deteriorating psychological and spiritual state after living like that for just a few years.

Intuitively he understood how hard it would be to get out of that state if he got used to having everything provided. So he decided that wasn’t the future he wanted and he took another path to America. He worked hard for about 15 years, eventually learning more English, becoming self-employed and even purchasing his first home all on his own.

What kind of future do you think his children will have?

How will that differ from his relatives’ children, who will be born into dependency on the system as the only life they’ve known?

Can you see how this would apply to UBI and how that would affect a society?

When we look toward someone else to save us, sooner or later, we end up in deep waters.

A person being rescued from their struggles often ends up feeling indebted to the rescuer. They start to feel like they have to give up what they want and instead serve only what the rescuer wants. Somewhere in that process, free will becomes a distant memory.

The rescued person becomes a dependent, infantilized adult-child, waiting to be taken care of by another person or the government. The only alternative is to summon the inner will power to get up and take action despite all odds. Abusers hate it when their victims remember how to access will power because it means they stop giving their power away.

People also love a good rescue drama as spectators.

That’s why the Titanic Wreck of the Titan story has recently dominated the news cycle, distracting from who knows what else we aren’t seeing.

The news media ran wild with the story for days, stoking the hope of finding them alive, when they were apparently dead all along. Meanwhile multiple countries sent resources for rescue missions while they discussed who would be responsible for paying for the investigation. People were watching, hungry for a rescue fantasy drama with a happy ending, but instead it ended in implosion.

The keyword is "rescue". That's the hypnotic implant from the interwoven stories of the Titanic as well as the Titan.

The Titanic wasn’t just about the rescue of the passengers. That event led to the deaths of a few gentlemen who were opposed to the rescuing of the financial system with the creation of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, which led to the creation of a central bank as well as to the ratification of the 16th Amendment for income tax in 1913 and then the funds as well as the ability to move the money to enter WWI.

In retrospect we will eventually see how the recent Titan event is connected in the Big Picture. The rescue fantasy was like a seed planted in people's minds non-stop on the news. Abusers usually sell a rescue fantasy to their targets so they can play the savior who will keep you safe. Whatever the next crisis is, be mindful of the rescue fantasy trap.

It’s interesting how much the submersible story has in common with another recent scenario. People are questioning why such rich people would risk their lives on an experimental submersible that didn’t go through any kind of rigorous scientific study and was not subject to any kinds of regulations, given its experimental nature. There were safety concerns of catastrophic proportion that went ignored and dismissed. In the past, the corporation’s advertising was found to be misleading to the public and they were also involved in multiple lawsuits.

Why is it such a surprise that 5 people took that risk while chasing their desires?

BILLIONS of people rolled up their sleeves to inject into their bodies a rushed, experimental product that bypassed industry regulatory standards, lacked any serious long-term studies, had numerous safety concerns and was produced by corporations with a notorious track record of lawsuits and harm. Every one of them was either chasing a desire or running from a fear.

What they had in common was a fantasy. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for the 5 explorers who ended up literally on the ocean floor. Likewise the jab is also causing sudden deaths and other cases of people collapsing from harm.

We can point out the risks and warn people that it doesn’t sound like a good idea, but ultimately everyone needs to make their own choices and face the consequences. Never underestimate the emotional sway of a fantasy.

One of the reporters on the submersible story said it was a reminder that people shouldn’t do dangerous things that could have a negative impact on others. That would be a fantastic segue into the “Net Zero” climate panic motto. “Don’t you dare breathe and expel CO2, you dirty, polluting carbon-based life form. It’s Net Zero or you’re a selfish person!” But I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s still more crisis manufacturing and incremental fear bombardment necessary before we get there.

Overcoming the personal struggles we face in life, builds confidence, strength and character.

As much as you might care about someone who is on the floor, you can’t save them. If you lift them up, they’ll fall back down because they haven’t learned to get back up yet. You’ll waste a lot of valuable energy and time at their side trying to lift them and you won’t realize that you’re starting to sink into the same quicksand. In the worst of cases, they’ll pull you down to their level. In the same way that water pools at the lowest points, misery loves company.

The greatest help we can give another is to show them a possibility through our own example, while holding the space and allowing the other to figure it out in the best way for them. When they do, they will build confidence, strength and character. If you try to do it for them, they will likely sabotage your attempts to help, even if they really want the same outcome. When people (or animals) accept being rescued, they usually become dependent on it, forgetting how to strive for themselves.

This is one of the reasons many natural areas have signs that say not to feed the wildlife. First of all, fast food and most of the processed foods in grocery stores are actually food-like substances that aren’t really food and can harm the animals. Another problem is the dependency it creates, where the animal could lose its natural drive to struggle to find food and survive.

In Mexico, I met a group of activists who were selling healthy snacks made by locals with amaranth, nuts, dried fruits and honey. They were helping the community raise money by exchanging value (money) for something they produced. The activists were talking about why they don’t recommend people make donations of food, clothing and other items to the communities, because then people become dependent on handouts instead of using their own will power to earn a living.

It’s interesting to notice how the philanthropaths and their advisors have been talking about hijacking the human will.

Yuval Harari, the main advisor to Klaus Schwab of the WEF said in reference to the algorithms that are increasingly controlling more of human life, “The whole idea that humans have this soul or spirit and free will and nobody knows what’s happening inside me, so whatever I choose, whether in the election or in the supermarket, this is my free will…that’s over.”

Harari also said in another interview, “Once the government and corporations have the ability to hack humans, there’s no more free will…In order to dominate a country (or human), you don’t need to send in the tanks. You just need to take out the data.”

We have been socially engineered to defer more and more of our decisions to authority figures and now, AI. This next level of the Bernays’ engineering of consent is already happening with social media algorithms deciding what content is shown in the newsfeed of each user as well as what ads people are shown. It’s a targeted experience based on the data you’ve shared with those platforms and other data they’ve stolen from your device, which you probably didn’t realize you agreed to in the Terms & Conditions.

It’s crazy when you see something suggested online that you were just recently searching for, texting or talking with someone about. But the really creepy ones are when it suggests something you didn’t say out loud or write or search for on your device—you were just THINKING it. That’s when you know the algorithm is hitting too close to home.

People are becoming increasingly lazy to search for information on their own so they settle for what they’re spoon-fed in the newsfeed, which is highly manipulated. Not only are people losing a sense of agency but we’re also having our reality curated for us if we don’t consciously assume this responsibility and act on it with will power.

Have you noticed how much of humanity is on the floor right now?

It’s very similar to the state that you’ll find the target of an abusive relationship, after a few years. They’re crushed, exhausted and depleted. They have low self-worth. They’ve lost their sense of self and who they are. They feel like it’s all their fault. But they also can’t articulate any of this, even to themselves. They feel anxious but don’t really know why and all they can do is keep going through the motions to try to have a sense of normality.

Abusers, especially the covert ones, invite their targets to destroy their own lives, all the while making each act look like a noble and necessary cause, often getting the target to think it was their own idea. It becomes self-sacrifice and self-destruction disguised as altruism. Then the abuser plays the savior again and the cycle continues. This is the dirtiest trick ever played because the abuser will wash themselves of any responsibility for the manipulation and deception, hiding behind the plausible deniability.

Over time, the target of abuse will end up on the floor…collapsed, numb, shut down, dissociated, debilitated and exhausted. This flattening can even continue after a person leaves an abusive relationship or situation. In the state of learned helplessness, where the pervasive belief is some version of, I can’t, a person doesn’t believe they’re worthy or good enough.

In that state, people tell themselves they can’t get up. They don’t remember how to summon their will power. They don’t believe they could get up even if they knew a way out. After a certain point, they don’t have the energy to do anything anymore. Even the basic, day-to-day life functioning becomes difficult.

The Autonomic Nervous System, in such a state of collapse, locks the person’s mind in a lower state of consciousness where they don’t have access to critical-thinking, intellect, reason, insights, intuition, imagination and creativity. The mind starts to think in tunnel vision where only negativity, lack and emptiness exist.

In this state, a person can’t even imagine what it would be like to live any other way. The longer a person stays on the floor, the harder it is to get up because they become accustomed to their predicament. They start to get comfortable with it and believe this is just life.

A person collapsed on the floor and unable to get up is subscribed to a lie.

It’s like an all-consuming trance that feels so real. The lie is usually some version of the belief that your self-worth comes from outside of you, from the way other people treat you or how they see you, from their expectations of you or what they say about you, from measuring your value by the amount of money you make or your professional degrees and titles or lack thereof. The lie of worthlessness convinces you that you can’t get out of your predicament because you are not good enough.

A target of abuse will develop an increasing tolerance for the abuse, the escalation of devaluation and degradation, to the point of spiritual bankruptcy. It’s pernicious, almost imperceptible at first but the abuse escalates slowly and gradually over time. Eventually much more intense events take place but the target has normalized so much abuse by this point, that it seems normal. 

An abuser will pivot from crisis to crisis, layering on additional dangers and life threats, which keeps a target in a low state of consciousness, flattened, exhausted, dysfunctional and unable to think clearly about what’s happening or how to do anything about it. In between, there will be moments of reprieve, the temporary absence of abuse, or even the stoking of fleeting illusions of false hope for the future. Just when the person thinks they’re finally in the clear, another crisis happens.

Be careful not to get sucked into the hopium because that’s just a numbing of reality and leads to an inevitable, painful withdrawl when you’re finally confronted with the disappointing and ugly truth.

This is what has been happening around the world. Even for those of us who are perhaps more aware of what’s going on, the flattening can happen all of a sudden at certain moments along the journey when something trips us. It could be a trigger, a disappointment, a loss, a failure, a disruptive truth or another kind of jarring experience that catches you off guard.

So how does a person get out of that state of collapse?

It’s always better to have some tools and resources prepared ahead of time so they can be put into place when needed.

I’ve found that it can be challenging to remember the inner tools and resources available when you’re in the moment of a crushing experience. That’s when the fear, shame and self-pity become all-consuming. Consciousness reverts to a child-like state where the unmet fantasy of childhood is superimposed upon reality. Instead of looking for solutions, the brain is usually only looking for a savior to come to the rescue or something, anything to make it all better.

When you hear thoughts that sound like a rescue fantasy, stop and take a more conscious inventory of what’s happening so you can start to interrupt the pattern. Remind yourself that you’re the only one who can save you.

Keep in mind that the longer you’re down, the more you can go into the spiral of depression, lose track of time and have a more difficult time to get back up. So the sooner you get back up, the easier it will be.

In order to override the immobilization paralysis of the collapse state, you’ll need to mobilize yourself. This means you literally need to get up.

If you find that you’re in a vegetative state on the sofa or in bed telling yourself that you can’t do this or that or you want to but you just don’t feel like it or have what it takes, then you need to pick yourself up and do something that’s beneficial for your health and sanity. Go for a walk, a drive, to the gym, into nature, take an online course, clean your kitchen, make some simple, healthy food, organize a drawer, a closet or room, or go see a friend. Make a list of some of these things that would be beneficial for you so that when your mind is shut down to possibilities, you can remind yourself by reading the list.

Dissociation is an adaptation to the collapse because we can’t stay in a state of shutdown for too long without starting to die. So in order to survive, we dissociate and check out of the body. This mind-body split leaves a person more vulnerable to abuse and manipulation and it also makes it very difficult to be functional in the world with a foggy brain that can’t focus or think clearly. To return from dissociation and prevent dissociating, we need to become more present.

It can help to be in nature and put your bare feet in the grass or sand while you just notice and contemplate your surroundings. Or you can stand up where you are, bend your knees slightly so they’re not locked, then bounce gently while noticing the sensation of contact between the soles of your feet and the floor.

If you find your mind has a strong tendency to zone out, you might want to put a hair tie on your wrist and snap it every time you catch yourself starting to check out. You’ll probably notice a heavy pulling sensation in your forehead or crown when you’re starting to dissociate. As soon as you catch yourself, bring yourself back to presence and your body.

Focus on your breath, inhaling and exhaling naturally. The breath is a tool that’s always available to you when you need to reconnect your spirit, mind and body.

Don’t let your feelings dominate you and control your behavior. Stop using your feelings as an excuse for not doing the things you know you need to do. Do those things anyway no matter how you feel.

Give yourself some time to lean into the feelings as they come up so you can witness them, giving them some airtime so they can be processed then released. You’ll see how your willingness to feel the uncomfortable or painful things starts to let go of the incessant grip it all has on you.

When we push it away and don’t deal with it, that stuff festers over time and eventually things become overwhelming. Clear the emotional cache little by little on a regular basis.

Ask yourself some sobering questions:

How much of yourself and your life have you already lost to this state?

If you continue doing this, where will you be a year from now? And in 5 years?

If you don’t get up, what’s the cost going to be to you? What is the cost for others?

Notice your fearful thoughts and call them out in your mind. Then re-frame your thoughts from negativity, insecurity, scarcity and lack into those that are positive, solution-oriented, creative and productive. 

Be willing to face your fears with a little more courage every day. Talk with your trusted loved ones or professionals about your fears and shame so that it starts to lose its power over you. Recognize that all humans have fears and shame. There’s nothing wrong with you for being afraid or ashamed but your life quality will be better as you unleash the power that you’ve given to those feelings.

Be more aware of your desires and what you’re longing for so that your subconscious fantasy doesn’t get used against you. If you really want to dig in, you can investigate where in childhood that fantasy came from. It was probably based on an unmet need that is still driving you to seek it from other people now as an adult. When you’re in a state of longing, you may accept things that don’t align with your values because your desires are stronger than your integrity.

While the owners still need humans for a little longer to keep working and holding up the economy until robots, AI and synthetic humans take over many sectors of the post-human world, it’s also convenient for the Powers that Be if people are apathetic, hopeless and checked out of reality because people are easier to control when we have nothing to fight for and no reason to get back up.

When you’re down, what will give you the motivation to get back up and keep fighting? 

Find something that matters to you because that will be why you get up.