When I was 14, I remember standing in the bathroom washing my face and arguing with my mother. I do not remember what I said, probably something nasty. I used to be very straightforward and say things as they were, without filters. Something must have triggered her, and she started to hit me with something I do not remember. What I do remember is that my body and mind shut down. It was not that I was overwhelmed physically; it was as if my mind stepped away. I got numb emotionally. I did not feel pain at all. Everything slowed down for a moment. I saw myself in the mirror, and I remember saying,

“You can hit me to death. I will not cry anymore.”

After that, she never raised a hand to me again.

I felt like something died in me. I believed everything could be explained with words. I did not understand physical abuse. What hurt me most was that my mother could not hear or understand me. I felt unheard and lonely.

I always felt lonely. My dad passed away when I was a child, so I did not even get to see him. From a young age, I had the sense that there was no one on my side, a feeling of standing alone inside the family.

I remember my stepdad, of course. He deserves a Nobel Prize for being the most non-traumatizing, saintly stepdad (joking). But still, I am grateful for the childhood I had.

This was my first conscious experience of an inner death—the death of safety and trust.

This is known as a nervous system shutdown. When a child cannot escape danger, the body protects itself by numbing emotion and entering a freeze response. This is a survival adaptation (Schauer & Elbert, 2015).

This is also an identity breakdown: the moment the child self learns,

“Who I am is not safe here.”

Many adults carry this moment without knowing it. It shows up later as over-functioning, emotional distance, or the feeling that closeness costs too much.

Now you are an adult, having your own kids, and you understand how things are. You have your relationships. You know what is safe and what is not. My point is this: Your body and mind know what happened. It just takes time to fully process it, sometimes a decade or more.

When you are a child, you do whatever it takes to justify your parents’ behavior, their actions, even the absence of love. You live in survival mode, creating stories in your head about how you were loved.

Later, as adults, the same people who once had power over us no longer do. We gain choice, and with choice comes boundaries. What once had to be tolerated no longer does.

Death happened long before you realized it, back when you were busy surviving. Something inside had already made the decision to let go. Now, that decision feels liberating.

When you are a grown adult with your own life, something begins to change. The illusion dies, the image the child once created of how love looked, how it was given, and what it meant to be cared for.

As children, we interpret whatever is available as love. This perception helps us survive. But later, when we become parents ourselves, we begin to understand the dynamics more clearly.

This realization can be unsettling. It may explain at some point why some adults slowly stop reaching out to their parents. There are many reasons, of course, but one of them is this moment of recognition: seeing clearly how one was treated, loved, or supported in childhood.

Memories resurface. Scenes you did not choose to remember appear anyway. One image, then another. Over time, the pieces begin to connect. When the picture becomes whole, something inside of you dies.

What dies is expectation, the hope that things will finally feel different than they were.

At this point, the question is no longer

“Can I forgive?”

but

“How close do I want to be, and at what cost to myself?”

It is neither rejection nor avoidance. Everyone moves through this process differently and at their own pace.

This is where inner death becomes a beginning. Relationships are no longer driven by unmet childhood needs, but by choice and boundaries. Here, it is important to understand that boundaries are not walls; they are the conditions under which connection becomes safe.

I have died many times (I bet you have too), and yet, I am still alive.

So now you know what I mean by death. To me, death is not an ending, but a beginning. It is a painful process of detachment—from a comfortable life, parents, pets, home, habits, partners, lovers, you name it. But over time, it becomes a release: the shedding of identities that no longer fit who we are becoming. In that sense, death is an absolute liberation.

Death is the moment you are forced to face yourself. No one can absorb your pain for you. No matter how many people surround you, suffering is experienced alone. This, too, is detachment, a separation each of us must endure.

It can feel terrifying or lonely because the ego resists letting go, yet it is a turning point: By facing your inner reality, you begin to restructure your identity, take responsibility, and live more authentically (Yalom, 1980; May, 1953). Inner death doesn’t mean everything is lost; it is the moment when old, protective versions of yourself fall away, making space for your true self to appear.

Now, the task is not to rebuild the old self, but to learn how to live from this new one.

Next is a transition phase, when the old identity no longer fits, but the new one has not fully formed. This in-between state can feel empty and confusing. Many people mistake this for depression, but it is just your nervous system recalibrating.

You might feel socially exhausted, and you might have stronger boundaries and sudden intolerance for the dynamics you once accepted. It is so unfamiliar, but it feels relieving.

What is happening is that the mind is learning to function without old survival strategies—people-pleasing, silence, emotional shutdown, or over-attachment—that once kept us safe.

It is called individuation. And it does not mean becoming someone new, but becoming who you were before survival narrowed you (Jung, 1976).

You might pause here and ask yourself:

“Who was I before I learned to stay quiet, strong, or agreeable?” “Who was I before certain relationships taught me who I had to be?” “What interested me before I learned to adapt?”

If you cannot remember, that is OK. It means there is space to explore.

Be curious again. Life is short. Study yourself. Invest in yourself.

As this process unfolds, many people notice they feel more alive because they are no longer divided against themselves.

And hold this thought:

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we are alive.” —Norman Cousins

For a long time, I believed this was true. But my own experience has taught me otherwise:

What dies is not our essence, but the illusion we needed to survive.

And when that illusion finally falls away, we become more alive than ever.