{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Unparented","title":"The Dark House Within: Rebuilding Your Identity After It Fractures","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4274,"description":"This week, I'm talking with Liam J. Wakefield, a psychotherapist, counseling lecturer, and former British Army soldier who's built his entire practice around a question most of us avoid: what happens when the person you were completely falls apart?\nLiam lost his mother to abandonment as a child, went to war at 21, and was medically retired from the military after a chronic illness dismantled the identity he'd spent years building. He's faced grief not just from death, but from the loss of self: the fracturing that happens when the architecture of who you are can no longer hold.\nWhat makes Liam's work different is that he doesn't see healing as putting yourself back together. He sees it as learning to hold the tension between all the fractured parts: the grieving child, the masked adult, the angry protector, the exhausted survivor. He calls it \"the self as continually becoming,\" and it's completely changed how I think about rebuilding after loss.\nWe talk about the masks we wear to survive, the parts of ourselves we abandon to keep going, and why grief isn't something you get over. It's something you learn to carry differently. Liam also walks me through his \"dark house within\" practice, a tool he uses to help people visualize and navigate the psychological architecture they've built around their wounds.\nThis conversation is deep, honest, and deeply human. If you've ever felt like you've lost yourself in grief or in just trying to survive, this one will hit.\nWe get into:\n\nthe abandoned parts of ourselves we leave behind to survive\nwhat it means to fracture and why it's not the same as breaking\nthe masks we wear and which \"hands\" are holding them up\nhis journey from rock and roll to the military to psychotherapy\nwhy he believes suffering is an initiation into growth\nthe \"dark house within\" exercise and how it maps your psyche\nhow children experience grief when their needs aren't met\nwhy authenticity is impossible and why that's okay\nthe parliament of parts inside...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/AZjp1ZzwTB7VJ2U954KHvC1-Xx6cP-PT94a6p9MsWbo/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mNWQ0/MzRiODY5ZmIxN2Y1/NWNjYTcwOGQ1ZTU5/MDQyOS5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}