Men talk of demons like they’re hiding in corners, but the truer haunt is the one in the mirror — the man you buried to stay liked.
Self-respect isn’t witchcraft. It’s confession. It’s forgiveness. It’s standing before your own wreckage and saying, “I see you. I don’t hate you anymore.”
This isn’t about chasing spirits through incense smoke. It’s about facing the child you silenced, the courage you mocked, the tenderness you were told to kill. When you were young, your light was ungoverned — wild, curious, honest, loud.
Then the world said, “Tone it down.” So you did.
Piece by piece, you dimmed your soul to survive the crowd. That’s where the shadow began: the confident man shamed into quiet, the gentle man branded weak, the joyful man taught to measure every word.
Now, when you see another man free — laughing, certain, alive — something in you clenches. That’s the ghost of your own boldness calling from the cellar.
He says, “That used to be me.”
That work, then, is not mystical. It’s surgical. It is renewal. It is reformative. It is regeneration.
Find the wound. Trace it to its first betrayal. Forgive the faces in that memory — and forgive yourself most of all for lying about how it was all your fault.
That’s how you pull the thorn out without killing the hand.
The Method — Simple, Not Easy:
Notice the pain.
Every trigger is a road sign: “Here lies something unhealed.”
Name it.
Don’t philosophize. Just speak the truth aloud. “I hurt. This is from God. This is for my good.”
Forgive.
Not because they deserve it — because you deserve the peace God gives.
Reclaim.
Call the “forgiving you," the man of peace, back into light. Integrate him. Feed him strength. Remember that without love, we are nothing.
Write down Scripture. Pray over your pain. Sit in the silence without chasing it away with screens and foods and all the rest. Wait until the silence stops feeling like judgment and starts feeling like breath.
Then take that breath. Again. And Again. Weep if you must — but rise afterward. Stand. Keep breathing.
Reclaim.
Pain is the way God works wisdom into being through discipline. The cross of Jesus is how brokenness becomes an everlasting backbone.
You’re not ruined. You are remembering.
Every time you stop lying about your pain and bring it home to Christ makes you steadier, less reactive, more beautiful in holiness.
You don’t needing applause.
You are the applause for others.
You stop asking the world to see you.
You see yourself, through Christ’s eyes.
Healing work isn’t about works righteousness. It’s about received wholeness. It’s about a Promise from the one Man who will never prove a liar. Following Him is how you become both storm and stillness, both lion and lamb — balanced as the Cross itself, resting at its foot, knowing there is no other way out.
So stop running from your darkness. You are not your enemy. You are your own blueprint for repentance, growth and transfiguration. When you meet this covenant without fear, you will find what the world always wishes to steal — God’s givens.
He is Love. So, go. Face your shadows. The King has already been there.
Sweetly. Sweetly, He calls.
