Look Up from the Fantasy and into the Mirror

I have found some of the many words I have been searching for. After a summer of silence, reflection, and regrouping, I am ready to share my thoughts as I continue to unravel into what I call my awakening.

This piece is not written in anger toward faith, but in love toward freedom. It is for those who have spent their lives giving everything away, their time, their energy, their identity, believing that sacrifice was the highest form of love. It is for the ones who have tried to pray away their pain instead of understanding it, and who have forgotten what it feels like to belong to themselves.

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There was a time when the simplest question in the world left me silent.

What do you want?

It should have been easy to answer, yet it wasn’t. I could list what others needed from me. I could tell you what I should do, what I was expected to do, what would please God, my family, or my faith. But what I actually wanted? I had no language for that.

I have learned that when your entire life is centered around saving others and seeking salvation, desire becomes something foreign. You are taught to suppress it, to mistrust it, to believe that wanting anything for yourself is selfish or sinful. For years, I looked up to a Savior and forward to heaven, so much that I forgot how to look inward.

For most of my life, I was taught to look up, not around.

Growing up as a fundamental Christian, I was taught that my purpose was to serve, to sacrifice, to give everything to my Savior. I was conditioned to believe that my worth came from how much I could surrender, not how much I could understand or love myself. My mind was always fixed on eternity, a dreamland called heaven, rather than the ground beneath my own feet.

When you are told your entire life that this world is temporary, it is easy to disconnect from it. You start to see pain as something to endure instead of understand, heartbreak as a test instead of a teacher. From my first heartbreak to my latest, I learned that ignoring my own needs in the name of selflessness only leaves me empty. I gave all my love away to people, to faith, to ideals, and left none for myself.

From a psychological perspective, these lessons sink in early. When children are taught that their natural needs, emotions, or curiosity must be sacrificed for a higher purpose, the brain begins to wire itself around guilt and compliance instead of self-trust. Studies in developmental psychology show that chronic self-suppression during formative years can heighten stress responses in the brain’s limbic system and weaken the prefrontal regions responsible for self-regulation and identity formation.¹ Over time, this can make people more prone to anxiety, people-pleasing, and difficulty making independent choices. What begins as “faithful obedience” in childhood often becomes a pattern of self-abandonment in adulthood.

The need for a savior did not stop at religion. It bled into my relationships. I gave my all to my loved ones, from my spouse to my children to my closest friends, thinking that my sacrifice would somehow help us all. However, there are many times I lost myself in the process. There are many times I mistook sacrifice for love.

I began to realize that the same instinct that made me surrender to faith was the same instinct that made me disappear in love. Both were forms of escape, ways to avoid facing myself and the present moment. Both kept me too busy trying to be good to ever stop and ask if I was well.

Escapism can feel comforting when the world feels too heavy. From as young as I can remember, I was taught that what was happening here on earth would all be fixed one day by a savior. But that belief built a kind of naivety in me. It became too easy to become blind to the suffering, the injustice, and even the beauty that exists in this world right now.

When you are always looking for an escape, you stop paying attention to what is real. You stop noticing the natural miracles and the quiet joy woven into everyday life. You stop growing, stop looking, stop learning. Psychologists have long said that avoidance is one of the brain’s favorite coping mechanisms, yet it is also one of the most damaging. Research shows that chronic escapism increases anxiety, weakens problem-solving skills, and erodes emotional resilience. When you disconnect from reality, you lose your power to shape it.

I used to think focusing on myself was selfish, that it meant turning my back on others. But I have come to see that caring for myself is the only way I can genuinely care for anyone else. You cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot heal others while ignoring your own wounds. You cannot live fully while waiting for another world or human to save you.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow, best known for his hierarchy of needs, once wrote, “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.” The same applies to being human. You cannot deny your own needs and expect to feel whole. Humans are wired for connection. Research from the University of California shows that love, touch, and belonging activate the same reward centers in the brain as food and water. To love and be loved is not just emotional, it is biological. But genuine love begins with awareness of self.

The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology, said, “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” And maybe that is what I have been doing all along, awakening.

I no longer see myself as something broken, as something that has to sacrifice, as someone in need of a savior. I am a whole being, learning, growing, and deserving of love, not because I earned it, but because I exist. Maybe the most spiritual thing I can do now is to live fully, not in anticipation of heaven, but in appreciation of now. Self-focus is not rebellion. It is reclamation. It is realizing that being human, being here, is sacred enough.

And maybe the reason it is finally getting easier to answer the question “What do you want?” is because I am no longer looking up. I am finally looking within. And even if it’s messy, I am finally looking there.

Friends, you do not need a savior in human or heavenly form. You do not need a perfect plan here on earth or one that will get you to heaven. You do not need to wait for another life to begin living this one.

Look up from the fantasy and into the mirror.

The person and the life you have been waiting for is already here. Love you. Choose you. Be you. Right here. Right now. Why? That is the best thing you can do for yourself, for others, and for the world.

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Citations and References

1. Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are.Guilford Press.

2. Schore, A. N. (2001). Infant Mental Health Journal, 22(1–2).

3. Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. W. W. Norton & Company.

4. Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and Personality. Harper & Row.

5. Jung, C. G. (1958). Collected Works, Vol. 11: Psychology and Religion. Princeton University Press.

6. American Psychological Association (APA). (2020). Avoidance Coping and Mental Health Outcomes.

7. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Social Neuroscience Laboratory. (2011–2015).

8. Somer, E. (2016). Maladaptive Daydreaming and Cognitive Control. Journal of Behavioral Psychology.