They tried to wipe the smile off my face.
At my job of nine and a half years, after I published my book, they gathered all the forces at their command— they saw something real. Something they could not fake, possess, or destroy.
They were envious of my freedom. They wanted to steal it.
But here is what they did not understand: a truly free mind cannot be captured again.
The Smile That Confused Them
Most smiles are performances. They are social masks worn to please, to appease, to hide the truth of what lies beneath. The repressed know this intimately because they wear such masks every day. They know the effort it takes to maintain the facade.
So when they encountered my smile—a permanent, genuine expression of inner peace—they did not recognize it. They could not understand it. And because they could not understand it, they became enraged.
Their rage took the form of targeting. Of coordinated attacks. Of trying everything in their power to break me, to regress me, to pull me back into the emotional prison they themselves still inhabit.
They failed.
Not because I am stronger than them. But because I am no longer fighting from the same battleground. I am no longer swimming in the poisoned waters of the human ocean, desperate for validation, terrified of rejection, performing for approval.
I am on the shore.
And from the shore, you can see everything clearly from a mile away.
The Therapist Who Tried to Regress Me
I once communicated by email with someone who proclaimed to be a therapist, someone who claimed to understand Alice Miller's work, someone who presented herself as being "on my side."
Her mission statement was nearly identical to words I had written years earlier. When I contacted her for a foreword to my book, she did not celebrate our shared vision. She did not see a fellow traveler on the path to liberation.
She saw a threat. And she moved to neutralize it.
Her emails were masterpieces of control disguised as concern. She demanded apologies. She questioned my integrity. She spoke to me as though I were a child who had been caught misbehaving—the very thing she claimed to oppose.
But I saw through it. I had faced my past. I had faced my internalized parents and older sisters. I could no longer be regressed by anyone's tactics, however subtle.
I wrote back clearly: "This is my last email to you."
That is the power of true freedom. You can walk away from anyone who tries to shrink you back into the child you once were.
What I Learned from the Emails
The exchange I published revealed something deeper than one woman's hypocrisy.
It revealed that many who claim to be healers are still trapped in the very prisons they promise to liberate others from.
They accumulate intellectual knowledge. They memorize the words of those who actually did the work. They parrot insights they have never felt in their own bodies. And then they use this borrowed authority to control others, to position themselves as experts, to build their little kingdoms of influence.
But they cannot help others heal because they have not healed themselves.
"Education alone is nothing more than one more big illusion. The more talented, gifted, and sharp a person's intellect is, the more they master the art of compartmentalization, dissociation, and create elaborate rationalizations, lies, and illusions to help them run from facing and consciously feeling their own repression."
What people need most is courage. Intelligence alone is not enough.
Alice Miller's Warning
Alice Miller warned me about people like this. She wrote:
"There are readers who SEEM to understand SOME of what I have written, at least intellectually, but they are still so afraid of their very cruel parents and of their repressed FEELINGS of rage towards them that they are constantly looking for scapegoats. They thus live in a continual confusion, pretending that they are healed and even offering help and empathy to others. But eventually, they use unconsciously other people (even the ones who are quite friendly to them) as a poisonous container like their parents did to them."
She urged me to trust my feelings and to not offer my empathy and interest to everybody just because they said they read and understood everything she wrote.
"In most of the cases it is a lie."
I learned this truth the hard way. Through the emails. Through the workplace mobs. Through the people who smiled to my face while sharpening their knives behind my back.
But I also learned something else:
Not everyone staring at you is admiring you. Some are amazed you survived the traps they set for you.
The Freedom They Cannot Touch
Today, I live with a permanent smile. It is not a performance. It is the natural expression of someone who has faced her truth and made peace with it.
I enjoy my own company. I love the quiet calm at the shore of the human ocean with my cats. I no longer need to swim in those poisoned waters, competing with others for a wave that will always crash.
I still visit the ocean. To work. To gather resources. To survive. But I do not swim deep, and I do not linger.
Because I know what is in those waters:
Monsters
- Sociopaths
- Dangerously repressed souls unconsciously and compulsively looking for scapegoats to reenact their unspoken childhoods.
They sense I see them. And when they sense that, they target me. But I know their pattern. I know how to protect myself.
They don't scare me anymore. Because I am no longer trying to be loved by people who are still trapped in the prisons of their past.
The Words I Live By
Alice Miller wrote:
"If I allow myself to feel what pains or gladdens me, what annoys or enrages me, and why this is the case, if I know what I need and what I do not want at all costs. I will know myself well enough to love my life and find it interesting, regardless of age or social status. Then I will hardly feel the need to terminate my life unless the process of aging and the increasing frailty of the body should set off such thoughts in me. But even then I will know that I have lived my own, true life."
This is the truth I have lived. This is the freedom I have earned.
Don't be afraid of losing people. Be afraid of losing yourself by trying to please everyone around you.
What I Want You to Know
If you are still swimming in the human ocean, still climbing over others to reach a top that does not exist, still performing for an audience that will never truly see you—I want you to know that there is another way.
You can turn. Quietly. Without drama. And swim parallel to the shore.
You can face your past. You can endure the pain you have been running from. You can break the cycle of repetition compulsion.
And when you do, you will discover something profound:
The freedom you find cannot be stolen. The smile you earn cannot be wiped away. The peace you cultivate cannot be shaken by those who are still drowning.
They will try. They always do. But they will fail.
Because a truly free mind cannot be captured again.
Sylvie Shene is the author of "A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions." She lives with her cats and her permanent smile on the quiet shore of the human ocean.
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