I’ve been thinking about Eckhart Tolle’s idea of the pain body.
He talks about how the pain body wants to exist. Almost like an identity of its own. Even when someone consciously says they want to heal, want to change, want to be free, the pain body has an interest in staying alive. Someone can say they want to stop being sick, but unconsciously they’ve built an identity around being sick. And that identity wants to survive.
I think this is also true of the survival identities we build inside an unstable world.
Especially inside the fiat financial system.
We say we want out. We say we want peace. We say we want balance. But unconsciously, many of us have become attached to our survival identities. The cynic wants to stay a cynic. The cutthroat profiteer wants to stay a cutthroat profiteer. The collapsed one wants to stay collapsed. The relentless one wants to stay relentless.
Not because these identities are good for us.
Because they once kept us alive.
I want to talk about protector parts.
Protector parts are the parts of you that grew to take over running your organism in order to protect the vulnerable one inside you. The one that feels shame. The one that feels threatened. The one that learned early that the world might not be safe, that relationships might not be reliable, that love might be conditional.
Some of these protector parts we inherit. From our parents. From our ancestors. From lineages shaped by scarcity, threat, and collapse.
Others form quietly, almost invisibly, the way you think you’re choosing your beliefs while the algorithm is shaping you. You don’t notice the protector forming. One day you just believe, “This is who I am.”
I’m a cynic.
I’m a grinder.
I’m argumentative.
I’m kind to a fault.
I have a strong personality.
Often, these aren’t personalities. They’re adaptations.
One of my biggest protector parts is the Bull.
I talk about this in my forthcoming book, Sovereign Ground, because the Bull has been one of the most powerful forces in my life.
The Bull in me was born out of threat. Out of my ancestry. Out of my mother’s lived experience. Out of a simple lesson that got written into my nervous system early on: when threat exists, you work. You work and you work and you work, no matter the cost. To your body. To your relationships. To your nervous system.
The Bull believes endurance is worth.
The Bull believes rest is dangerous.
The Bull believes tenderness can wait.
And by God, the Bull wants to live.
When the Bull takes over, it starts with something that actually feels good. A project. A creative burst. Something meaningful. I feel alive. I feel engaged. And then the Bull says, Now we have to do this fast. Now we can’t stop. Now nothing else matters.
Self-care can wait.
Connection can wait.
The ocean can wait.
My wife can wait.
My kids can wait.
The Bull promises me that if I trust him, if I worship at his altar, he will get me to safety. He will take me from threat to the other shore. And then I can relax.
I’m 54 years old. I have enough data now to know that the other shore almost never comes. The Bull just changes the context of what it thinks we need to survive next.
Over the last six months, I can see clearly how the Bull has moved from project to project, always with a convincing argument for why he needs to be in charge. Don’t let anyone else drive. Don’t slow down. You are under threat.
When I’m in the middle of a project, my nervous system feels like it’s facing annihilation until the project is complete. I can’t enjoy the process because my survival feels tied to the outcome. My identity feels tied to it. My financial safety feels tied to it.
I don’t eat the whale one bite at a time.
I try to swallow the whole whale in one sitting.
And the cost is enormous.
Right now, if I’m honest, the Bull has been running my life.
Teale sees it. It breaks her heart. She can tell I’ve lost a run of myself. I’m obsessed with work. Obsessed with my projects. Even when I’m physically present, I’m checking my phone. My laptop is open in the kitchen. I’m not paddling. I’m not resting.
Last night was a moment of sobriety.
It was Saturday night. Normally we might watch a show together. One episode. That’s our small ritual. Instead, she just wanted to read her book alone. She didn’t even protest anymore.
That’s when you know a relentless lover has hit their limit. When they stop protesting because it hurts too much to keep reaching.
Seeing her give up sobered me in a way nothing else does.
The closest thing I know to a magic wand for interrupting a protector part is letting someone truly see the impact of that protector on someone they love. That’s what happened. I could finally see the Bull clearly. And I could feel the fear underneath him.
I could feel the frightened little boy again.
The boy who learned that survival comes through work, grit, sacrifice. The boy shaped by Dublin in the 1970s. By economic hardship. By corruption. By hierarchy. By the belief that relentless work is the way out of shame.
That calling didn’t disappear. But it’s a calling I have to govern, not surrender to.
When I drop into the fear underneath the Bull, I get scared of how much power he has over me. And if I can stay with that fear, instead of glamorizing the Bull, something shifts. I can ask for help. I can reach for connection. I can let myself be held.
That’s what happened with Teale. She held me. Literally and emotionally. And the Bull went back into the pen. Not gone. Just contained.
That containment is self-governance.
Self-sovereignty is self-governance.
And for high performers, this matters more than ever. With all the tools available now to amplify productivity, to work without teams, to scale yourself endlessly, the risk isn’t collapse into depression. For people like me, the risk is burning out the nervous system completely.
Protector parts don’t want to retire.
They want to exist.
And if we let them run the show, the most vulnerable one inside us never really gets to live.
That might be the deepest tragedy I know. To look back and realize it wasn’t you who lived your life. It was your representatives. Your protectors. Your strategies.
What is the point of the life you’re building, the work you’re doing, the relationship you’re in, if the most vulnerable one inside you never gets to inhabit it?
I love the world I’ve built. My relationship. My kids. Our home. The value I offer. And still, I have to ask myself: what is the point of any of it if it isn’t for the little boy who went through all the hard things to actually live here now?
I don’t want you to read this and have your protector parts take over. Not the collapser. Not the seducer. Not the relentless worker. Not the performer.
I’m hoping that something in this gives your threatened nervous system a moment to rest. A small exhale. A doorway.
Maybe a moment where you can feel the one who’s being protected. The scared one. And instead of fixing, optimizing, or outrunning, you let yourself be scared. And you share that fear with someone who can hold it with you.
That’s the work.
Not killing the protector.
Not glorifying it.
Giving it a job instead of the CEO role.
And letting the one underneath finally come home.
If you recognize yourself in this — if your protector parts have been running the show and it’s costing you your relationship, your peace, or your presence — reach out. This is the work we do at Empathi.
