# A Radical Awakening by Shefali Tsabary - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? Shed the pain and patterns from your past to discover your true self.

She knows her mind and speaks it. She doesn’t fear failure or the opinion of others. She gives openly, not out of obligation. She is free.

And she can be you – if you’re willing to be honest about your pain. If you’re willing to face your fears and name them. If you can release your need for approval and your attachment to traditions and norms. If you can look inward, find your true self, and listen to that voice, you too can be free.

This Blink to A Radical Awakening traces Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s own story of awakening. She doesn’t hold back, discussing traumas like sexual assault. And she asks us to be just as honest about our own past, no matter how agonizing it might be. From there, we can understand how our difficult history has created patterns in our life that keep us suffering. Once we recognize those patterns, we can work on breaking them.

Dr. Shefali’s message is aimed at women, but she doesn’t exclude men. Yes, women have been more traumatized than men by the patriarchy – the system of male domination that subjugates women and children, and has infected cultures across the globe. But men have been scarred as well. 

In the end, anyone can benefit from Dr. Shefali’s universal healing advice, which reveals how we’ve been conditioned, how we assume false identities for protection, and how we can move past these masks to find our authentic self – and all the power that comes with it.

The patriarchy

Shefali was born in India. She grew up in a culture steeped in tradition and patriarchy. The patriarchal tentacle that snared young Shefali was India’s infatuation with light-colored skin and eyes. Shefali had both, which meant she became the object of excessive and unwanted attention.

By age six, Shefali wanted to be a ninja so she could keep herself safe from men. The plan didn’t work. By age twelve, she had been groped by dozens of strangers, and molested by two male relatives.

She would tie her bed covers above her head and below her feet, as if she were a sausage, to keep away one of the molesting relatives when he spent the night at her childhood home. But he just undid the knots. Kicking him in the privates didn’t work either, and neither did threatening to tell her mother. He knew Shefali’s tender and generous nature. He guessed she would rather suffer abuse than burden her parents with a problem. And he was right.

Patriarchy and its toxic masculinity, which has scarred women and men across the globe for centuries, also infected Shefali’s young life in less overt ways than sexual assault. She has an early memory of her grandmother absently tying knots in her sari, haphazardly fixing her hair, and then explaining she didn’t need to worry about being beautiful since her husband was dead. This felt wrong to young Shefali, but her grandmother seemed to believe it, so Shefali didn’t question her.

Shefali’s grandmother had been conditioned to see her value only in relation to another person. This is one of the defining characteristics of the patriarchy. Most women aren’t aware of it, but they have been trained from girlhood to crave approval, validation, and praise. Not only do many women all over the world look to some external other for their sense of worth, they also place the needs of others over their own.

The patriarchy conditions people, especially women, to assume predetermined roles – subservient wife, obedient daughter, silent victim – or it scares them into false roles, like Shefali’s ninja, and prevents them from discovering their true nature on their own. Yes, many women are nurturing and generous by nature. But when those instincts are co-opted and abused, they stop being a reflection of the true self.

Institutions like religions and cultural traditions also prevent us from discovering our true natures. Like the patriarchy, these institutions want individuals to seek their identity through something external – church, marriage, an educational legacy, and so on – rather than internal. Your relationship with religion, or your marriage, may be healthy – but it probably isn’t if those institutions are your only source of self-worth.

Subjugation by the patriarchy and conditioning from its institutions leave us so desperate to be seen, and push us so far away from our true self, that we assume a false identity to get the attention we crave. That identity is the Ego, and it takes many shapes.

The Ego and its masks

Shefali bent over backward to be a nurturer as a child. She didn’t just “protect” her parents from the truth about her sexual abuse – she also went beyond healthy boundaries to care for her family, friends, and even strangers. As an adult, Shefali reenacted that role in her intimate relationships, including her marriage.

She constantly played the caregiver and fixer, to the point where her own needs went unmet. To avoid trouble, she meekly agreed with her husband, even when she wanted to scream in protest. She was so focused on pleasing him, she lost all connection with herself. She became fully attached to the identity of the Giver, one of the common Egos women wear as a mask.

When a woman is attached to the idea of being a “good girl,” like Shefali, it’s very common for her to hide behind the Giver mask, which has four faces – Victim, Martyr, Savior, and Bleeding Empath.

There are real victims of domestic violence and other tragedies, but the Victim mask we’re discussing refers to a mindset of victimhood. Women who assume this identity feel helpless, and that others are always taking advantage of them. The Martyr forsakes her own needs to meet the needs of others, like Shefali. Saviors are always rushing to the rescue to fix everyone’s problems, except their own. Bleeding Empaths have no boundaries – the other’s pain is the Empath’s pain – and they will offer help at any cost to themselves.

While Givers want to be seen as good, Controllers want to be seen as competent. They tend to be anxious, and they channel that energy into a flurry of action as they try to control everything in their orbit – family, work, home, health, beauty. Perfectionists are highly self-critical Controllers who safeguard themselves by overachieving. Helicopters are overprotective, micromanaging Controllers so enmeshed in the needs of others that they lose themselves. 

The Passive-Aggressive Tyrant is a Frankenstein combination of a Giver and Controller – a sweet, adaptable people pleaser who doesn’t ask for anything … until she breaks and becomes a raging monster. The Shield is a bulletproof alpha woman, a high achiever and leader, but she is so guarded she misses out on human connection.

The three Taker identities are self-absorbed, and they attach to others for their practical and emotional needs: The Diva covers up a deep insecurity by acting better than others, demanding attention, and being bossy. The Princess is passive and entitled. She tries to win love through her helplessness. The Child lives in an alternate reality of unicorns and rainbows, avoiding conflict and her own feelings.

Ultimately, we use the Ego to guard us from childhood fears – but it will suffocate us unless we break through its protective shell. Sometimes, that means smashing against rock bottom.

Rock bottom

Shefali knew she was in trouble when she came to in a roadside ditch and had no clue how she’d gotten there. The near-fatal car accident startled her awake in more ways than one. It wasn’t just her car stuck in a ditch – her soul had also careened off its true path. She seemed competent, successful, and caring, but beneath that facade was inner turmoil. She had lost touch with her authentic self in the whirlwind of caring, and overcaring, for her husband and daughter, and working toward her PhD at the same time.

Shefali felt lost and scared. She wasn’t sure who she was. But she knew, without a doubt, that she couldn’t stay in her marriage as it was.

We’ve all felt this loss of self to some degree. It’s a long process that starts in childhood. Our inner being is slowly chipped away by blows from the patriarchy, culture, and our families. Eventually, our soul erodes away completely and we end up driving into a ditch – or getting depressed or blackout drunk or some other awful symptom.

Fear drives this soul erosion, and it puts us in a fog. In order to heal our soul and connect with our true self, we must peer through the fog and face our fears. Our instinct is to wear the Ego’s mask or cling to institutional beliefs to avoid our deeper pain and confusion. We must fight this urge to avoid discomfort. Instead, we should lean into it. The fear and pain show us where we need to heal and grow. We have to honestly look at our inner workings and identify our childhood traumas and patterns so we can break them.

That honesty must include admitting the role we played in losing ourselves. We need to see where and how we look outside for validation, contort ourselves to please others, or chase someone else’s idea of perfection. Once we notice how much we look to others for love, we might also realize how little love we give ourselves. The truth is, there are no evil spouses, parents, bosses, or anyone else holding us back. They only play the roles we put them in. They never really had any power over us. The validation and worth we’ve been seeking has been inside us all along.

Awakening

As the realities of her conditioning dawned on Shefali, she confronted them and broke their hold on her one by one. When she grew tired of giving, she stopped – even though she felt guilty at first. She stopped waiting for her husband to change. She stopped clinging to the fantasy of being the good girl who would never divorce or break up her family. She worried what divorce would mean for her daughter, but Shefali knew she would be a better mother outside of her marriage than in it.

Still, Shefali had doubts. They cried out in shame and guilt and worry, “You should!” and “You should not!” But when they did this, she asked herself, “How is fear driving me? What do I really feel? Why do I feel like that?” Soon, she didn’t even need to ask the questions. Her inner compass guided the way on its own.

After her divorce, the rest of Shefali’s life and relationships changed as well. She went from meek and mild to loud and defiant. She placed her needs first. She didn’t care about being misunderstood or labeled as bad. Eventually, the only place she looked for validation was inside herself.

Her metamorphosis was painful and painstaking. It took two years of honest self-study and dedicated meditation. Her self-study revealed the harmful patterns Shefali developed while coping with childhood trauma. Meditating helped her develop the discipline of turning inward so she could recognize and break those patterns, even during situations that would have been stressful or triggering before her awakening. She discovered the many masks of her Ego, and she realized she was giving to others to win their approval and fill her inner void. When she started giving from a place of love and abundance instead of fear and lack, her transformation rose to an even higher level.

It’s not easy, but when our old patterns show up, we need to turn away from them. More than that, we should run from them – and run toward our true selves. We need to look inward and ask if we’re acting out of fear, habit, or the desire to please another. We should look out for our Ego and its masks, and ask, What is it trying to protect? Then, we need to listen closely to all the answers from our inner voice. In other words, we need to become self-aware.

Self-awareness is the key to a radical awakening. We must see our patterns and sit with our pain. Only then can we escape them. And when we do, we will reconnect with our true selves and blossom into our power.

Final summary

Losing our true selves is easy in the modern world. Cultural conditioning is coming at us through high-speed internet connections, assaulting our senses in ever brighter and louder ways. We don’t just seek validation from our spouses, families, or colleagues – now we seek it from millions of strangers in the form of likes and shares and retweets. The internet and its focus on images is an especially dangerous place for women, who have been trained to seek approval for their appearance.

To awaken our authentic essence, we need to unplug from the web of conditioning and lies that are fed to us by the patriarchy and its institutions. We must slow down, turn inward, and be quiet enough to hear our real self. When we have found that true voice, we can use it to shout our story from the mountaintops so others can hear and follow the path to a radical awakening.