The reason the recovery norm finds us so threatening, even terrifying, is

The reason the recovery norm finds us so threatening, even terrifying, is that we have explored our unconscious in order to establish our identity of the child within us. We have wrenched our identity out of the unconscious by defying the culture’s prohibition against self-reflection. This is the heart of the recovery process. It is an act of rebellion. Yet what really scares the recovery norm is that when we go into the unconscious to retrieve our child within we might just find out more of what’s in there: we might just catch a glimpse of other secrets and realities buried there—horrible and wondrous. And all of these secrets, the secrets of the truth of childhood trauma, the truth of troubled parents, the truth of unconscious parenting, and the truth of humanity’s real beauty and potential, are the very things that can—and will, if we let them grow—topple the recovery norm’s troubled house of cards.