I am like a resonator guitar.

Unlike electric guitars that rely on amplifiers to be heard, the resonator produces its voice from within. A metal cone sits inside its wooden body, and when the strings are played, the cone vibrates, amplifying the sound naturally, without external force. It doesn’t scream. It sings by vibrating in harmony with what’s already present.

But what if you’ve never been in harmony? What if your entire nervous system learned early on that truth wasn’t safe?

The first time I ever heard my authentic self, it wasn’t soft or poetic. It was a tiny, shrill voice, screaming from somewhere deep inside me. I didn’t listen. I never had. That voice was trying to tell me that my son needed help. Something was wrong. But I was trained to override it. I sent him to the hospital. He couldn’t explain it. I didn’t know how to stand between him and what was coming. And then he died.

I had spent decades in twelve step meetings and therapy offices trying to fix myself, thinking I was broken. I had no idea that what happened to me wasn’t about character or disease. I’d been traumatized. Split in half like a melon. My authentic self was buried under layers of performance and survival. And nobody saw it. Not the psychologists. Not the sponsors. They called it addiction. They called it depression. But what I had was dissociation — fragmentation. A soul cut off from its own source.

Here’s the truth: if you were traumatized enough to need alcohol or drugs or self hatred to survive, then you were traumatized enough to form a false self. A survival self. One that looks functional on the outside but is disconnected from the truth inside. That’s not disorder. That’s adaptation. And this needs to be known.

The resonator metaphor didn’t come to me as an idea. It came as a felt recognition. Because the moment I began dismantling the lies of the mind, the diagnoses, the shame, the compulsions to be anything other than what I was, something in me began to hum again. A signal. A vibration. The return of my own tone.

And once that happened, something irreversible followed: I began to trust what I felt. Not what I’d been told. Not what I could prove. Not what others approved of. But the felt sense in my body that said yes or no. This became my guide. My compass. And my mind, for the first time, became second. Not gone. Not exiled. Just no longer in charge of reality.

This, I believe, is what real healing is. What Dabrowski saw in the people with developmental potential. The ones the world often mislabels, the broken, the depressed, the addicted. What he saw was the possibility of dismantling the socially constructed identity. Of breaking from conformity and returning to coherence with life itself.

Because this resonance I feel now, it’s not just psychological. It’s biological. It’s something that began four billion years ago when life itself began to respond, adapt, and self organize. That same life force is still in me. That’s what I’m aligning with now. Not a theory. Not a program. But the felt rhythm of being alive and connected.

I used to feel like Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi pullyu — pulled in two directions at once. Conflicted. Divided. Always trying to make life safe by contorting myself into something I wasn’t. But now, instead of being pushed by fear, I’m pulled by what resonates. There’s a magnetic draw toward what is real. And that is how I know it’s true. It doesn’t scream anymore. It calls.

Some things still land on me like dissonant chords, dull, flat, lifeless. They don’t move me. Just like the resonator guitar doesn’t respond to frequencies that don’t match its inner design, I no longer force a response from myself. I don’t chase noise anymore.

The things that do resonate, they vibrate through me. They don’t need justification. They don’t demand effort. They just ring out. And in that resonance, I move. Not to prove anything. But with the ease of something finally in tune.

I used to think I needed to be plugged in, to applause, identity, and approval. But I don’t. I was always built to carry my own song.

What resonates is what’s real. My body knows. My nervous system tells the truth. I don’t figure it out. I feel it.

So now I let myself be played by life. I listen. I vibrate. I respond. And only the things that ring true, only those things, get amplified.

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Resonator Guitar ↔ Inner Resonance

A resonator guitar doesn’t need an amp. Its voice comes from within. When the strings are struck, a cone inside the body vibrates, turning that internal motion into sound.

That’s what it means to be truly alive. To let life strike you, and trust that what moves you from the inside is what matters.

You are the instrument. The world plays its notes some cruel, some kind, but only the ones that match your inner tone ring out.

And if you’ve been hurt, if you’ve been split, if you’ve lost track of your tone, it’s still there. Under the static. Waiting.

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Deepening the Metaphor

• A resonator doesn’t resist sound. It lets it in. It lets it move. Then it speaks. You don’t have to force truth. You feel it. You move with it.
• If the vibration doesn’t match, it fades. You don’t have to fight what isn’t true. It just won’t echo in you.
• Healing isn’t about becoming something new. It’s about removing what blocked your sound in the first place.
• When the mind stops dominating and the body leads, we return to coherence with nature. This isn’t regression. It’s evolution.

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Quote-style takeaway

Like a resonator guitar, I was never broken. I was just buried. When I dismantled the mind’s lies and stopped chasing the noise, I began to resonate with life itself. My body became my compass. My mind came second. And for the first time, I moved in harmony with what is real.