Reality Issues

Knowing Yourself and Seeing Others Clearly

In Mellody’s model, “reality” means knowing who you are—your feelings, thoughts, body sensations, and preferences—and accepting others’ reality without losing yourself.

Where It Comes From

Reality issues arise in childhood when caregivers:

• Deny the child’s emotions (“You’re too sensitive,” “Stop crying”)
• Override their preferences (“You don’t really want that”)
• Shame their inner experience
• Are unpredictable or unsafe, causing the child to disconnect from inner truth to survive
• Model dishonesty or emotional distortion

Children learn to abandon their own truth and read the room instead of themselves. As adults, this becomes:

• Difficulty identifying feelings
• Minimizing experiences
• Dissociation
• Over-identifying with others’ emotions
• Constant self-doubt
• Struggling to name needs or wants
• Difficulty owning your reality without apology

How to Heal It

1. Reconnect with your internal world.
   Use mindfulness, somatic practices, journaling, and emotional vocabulary work.
2. Honor your truth.
   Even if others disagree, your internal experience belongs to you.
3. Practice “I statements.”
   “I think… I feel… I need…” rebuilds containment and ownership.
4. Heal developmental trauma.
   Inner-child re-parenting helps restore the self that had to go underground.
5. Practice relational truth.


Share your reality in safe relationships and allow others to have theirs too.

Reclaiming your reality is reclaiming your selfhood.