Absence at the Blockage Point

We all carry impossibilities that define us. Every existence is traversed by aspirations that remain perpetually out of reach. And what if the obstacle were not the objective itself, but our absence at a precise point in our history, a point where our very identity became frozen?

The repetition of failure and the feeling of powerlessness

Each person carries within themselves a set of goals they never manage to achieve. This reality crosses all existences, without exception. The aspiring writer who never opens the blank document, that novel which remains perpetually in a state of project; the person who, aspiring to serene romantic relationships, finds themselves tirelessly caught in toxic dynamics, reproducing the same destructive patterns; the one who wishes to modify their relationship with their body but cannot initiate the slightest change, carrying throughout their life the weight, literal or metaphorical, of a self-image that hinders them in their social relationships. Others remain paralyzed before a necessary professional change, returning home each evening with the bitter taste of non-accomplishment.

These situations, however diverse they may be, share a common foundation: a feeling of impossibility, of frustration, of illegitimacy from which one cannot manage to emancipate oneself. We commonly call these “blockages,” these invisible walls against which our will seems to shatter.

Faced with these impasses, the range of proposed solutions is vast. The contemporary therapeutic offering bears witness to this: from behavioral therapies to psychoanalysis, from bodily approaches like kinesiology to energetic disciplines like acupuncture, through shamanic approaches, not forgetting medicinal aids or spiritual quests. Each method attempts to provide a key, proposes its reading grid and its tools of liberation.

My intention here is not to propose an explanation that would substitute for others, nor a supposedly superior solution. I simply wish to illuminate this phenomenon of blockage from the angle of the philosophy of presence that I develop. A philosophical perspective is, by essence, situated. It does not claim to be absolute but offers a perspective, an angle of view that, at a given moment, can prove relevant and illuminating for those who receive it. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote, “truth does not dwell only in the inner man, or rather there is no inner man, man is in the world, it is in the world that he knows himself.” (Phenomenology of Perception, 1945) My approach is inscribed in this perspective: understanding how our being-in-the-world, our presence, finds itself hindered by specific identity mechanisms.

It is a complementary contribution, another way of questioning these tireless repetitions of incapacity. In my view, the root of this repetition resides in what I call absence at the blockage point.

The blockage point is an identity crystallization

I advance the hypothesis that these realities of incapacity stem from a singular “blockage point,” whose nature is profoundly identity-based. This blockage point is not the apparent obstacle, the overweight, the shyness, the procrastination, but an underlying identity knot. From the perspective of my philosophy, this point is directly linked to the unconscious preservation of our identity, even when this identity is symptomatic.

To exist, we need a stable identity. Now, this identity is initially conferred upon us from the outside, by the institution of others. As George Herbert Mead analyzed in Mind, Self, and Society (1934), our “self” emerges from the internalization of others’ attitudes. We first construct ourselves through the gaze and discourse of others: I am my parents’ child, my uncles’ nephew, my grandparents’ grandchild. This family identity galaxy, the first matrix for those who have an identified family, founds our social existence. The places, acts, words of others confer our identity upon us. It always initially comes from the outside before being integrated, metabolized, appropriated. Our first definitions of ourselves are received before being elaborated.

Let us illustrate this with the case of a person who has been overweight since childhood. Within a benevolent family, their weight is a recurring subject. The comments, never malevolent, aim to help or simply to state a fact: “You could make an effort,” or criticisms toward other overweight people that they take personally. They are given affectionate but reductive qualifiers that crystallize their state. These remarks, these qualifiers, gradually weave their place within the family. Their overweight is no longer just a physical characteristic; it becomes an element of recognition, an attribute validating their belonging to the group.

The blockage point is precisely there: in the fusion between a characteristic (the overweight) and the very structure of identity. Family discourse, by mixing the recognition of the person and the mention of their weight, has made this symptom a cornerstone of their social being. Identity offers reassuring fixity in a changing world, as Erikson observed in his work on identity, it constitutes “a subjective, invigorating feeling of personal unity and temporal continuity” (1978).

Changing this state of affairs would therefore not merely mean following a diet for the person, but modifying the foundations of how they are recognized and, consequently, how they exist in the eyes of others and themselves. It is the identity and relational dimension of this overweight that constitutes the true blockage point.

The paradoxical perpetuation of imprisonment

The paradox is there: the person sincerely wishes to change, they know they would be welcomed with joy if they arrived transformed. Yet, the blockage persists. Why this persistence? Because their identity, which is necessary for them to exist socially, incorporates overweight as a constitutive element. Change would be well received by those around them, but changing identity represents a major existential risk.

The issue is never the detail itself, whether it’s weight, lack of confidence, intelligence, a passion deemed illegitimate in the family context, or a particular skill. The issue is the fixity of the identity dimension that has attached itself to it. This blockage point, however tiny it may seem, acts like an oil spill, extending its effects to the entirety of existence and imprinting multiple brakes upon it. A detail frozen in identity can block the totality of becoming.

This is why certain therapies sometimes seem “magical”: by touching, sometimes by chance, this neuralgic point, like a small acupuncture needle in the right place, they provoke a domino effect, releasing unsuspected energy and possibilities. But if the solution seems so simple, why do we so often remain powerless? Why don’t we much more generally unblock all the blockage points of everyone? Because we are, for the most part, absent at this blockage point.

Protective absence and its hidden costs

Our absence at the blockage point is not accidental: it “protects” us. We are not aware that it is an identity blockage point, a small point in one place, that imprints so many brakes in our life. And even, we refuse, often consciously, to unblock it so as not to lose our identity.

Our resistance to identifying this point comes from a powerful protection mechanism. Becoming “present” at the blockage point would mean becoming aware of its identity nature and, above all, daring to name it socially. For the overweight person, this would consist of saying to family members: “Your words, heard since childhood, even without bad intention, have contributed to freezing me in this identity.” Such a declaration is a major social act, a redefinition of oneself in front of others, because identity is always social.

We refuse to do so for several interconnected reasons. First, we anticipate their suffering: hurting others, making them feel guilty, being perceived as ungrateful or accusatory. They might feel responsible for a harm they never wanted to cause, experience our declaration as an aggression, an unjust accusation. We fear rejection, the breaking of bonds, the destabilization of family balance. Sartre wrote in Being and Nothingness (1943): “Hell is other people”, but I would add: hell is also the fear of losing others by becoming profoundly oneself.

The ultimate fear is losing our entire identity. Without it, who would we be? This existential anguish keeps us in a prison of which we nevertheless possess the key. This blockage point is so intimately mixed with our identity that undoing it seems to threaten the entire edifice. We prefer familiar suffering to the unknown of transformation. As Freud noted in his observations on repetition compulsion, we tend to reproduce what makes us suffer rather than risk the uncertainty of change.

We then choose, unconsciously, to protect others and our own stability, at the price of our flourishing. We envision ourselves as actors responsible for others’ well-being, and this perception paralyzes us.

The extreme case of silence that perpetuates destruction

Allow me to evoke a more serious case that illuminates the mechanism in all its complexity. A woman who suffered sexual abuse in her childhood from a member of her extended family. She managed, as a child, to stop these abuses by her own means, without ever speaking about it. As an adult, she keeps this secret so as not to inflict on her parents a pain and guilt that she judges unbearable: “it would hurt them too much”. Today, she carries deep emotional and sexual blockages, which cause her harm well beyond her intimate life.

This protection of others at the expense of oneself reveals the extent of the identity trap. Her silence, motivated by benevolence, is nevertheless the seal that maintains her blockage in her emotional and sexual life. By keeping silent, she preserves the intact family identity, the image her parents have of themselves as protectors, the apparent harmony of the clan. But in doing so, she remains prisoner of an identity as a silent victim that infiltrates all her intimate relationships.

Being present at her blockage point would mean breaking this silence. The consequences would certainly be destabilizing: parents’ guilt, painful confrontations, family shock wave. Yet, these consequences, however difficult they may be, would probably be beneficial. Other potential victims could be identified and freed. She herself could finally modify her identity and access emotional and sexual emancipation. As Alice Miller wrote in The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979), “the truth does not make us sick; it is the lie that makes us sick.”

For herself, first, because naming the trauma is the first step to undoing it in one’s identity. And for others, then, because the truth, however painful, is often an abscess that is salutary to burst, for everyone, for oneself and for others.

The risk of presence, an act of ontological courage

If we were present at the blockage point, already aware of its existence, then capable of naming it and claiming it socially, we would change identity in language, which would be the starting point of a domino effect that could completely transform us. But this presence requires accepting the risk of being misunderstood, rejected, of destroying our established social identity. It demands being sufficiently anchored in our identity of presence to ourselves to bear the temporary loss of our social identity. It is taking the risk of our presence, for which we are solely responsible in the eyes of others.

The consequences of affirming this authentic presence are systematically overestimated. We perceive ourselves as social actors responsible for others’ well-being, and this perception paralyzes us. But by refusing to be present at our blockage point, we deprive ourselves of self-respect while depriving others of the truth that could also free them, even though this is not what others wish for us.

Daring to “hurt” by speaking one’s truth is not an act of selfishness; it is a gift of presence and authenticity that one gives to oneself, and consequently, to the world. As Rainer Maria Rilke said: “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are waiting to see us beautiful and brave” (Letters to a Young Poet, 1908).

It is taking the risk of destroying an alienating social identity to allow the advent of a presence to oneself, more just and more alive. Bursting the abscess of our identity blockages is offering everyone, starting with ourselves, the possibility of a renewed, living identity, capable of evolution. It is choosing presence rather than absence, becoming rather than fixity, life in movement rather than frozen survival.