"These pains you feel are messengers, listen to them" - Rumi
This quote was once very difficult for me to hear. I was buried under my own pain and illness. I had formed a pattern filled with cycles of stress and burnout. Over giving and not knowing how to receive.
I tried many forms of therapy. Mainly physical and they were all so beneficial to my body and yet the illness kept on coming. I had formed a view of the World that didn't feel safe and so had travelled along managing quite well. These patterns, thoughts and behaviours had worked for so long, they kept me safe and protected.
People pleasing was huge in my life, this was one huge pattern. If I could control the outside World then all would be well. It was response to my early life and where I felt I had no control and powerless. I never put my own needs first or even second and it helped me to hide what was really going on inside.
I had learned to observe everyone and worked out what they liked and disliked so that I could fit the mould and hopefully fit in. It was a subconscious pattern and was led by my instinct to stay safe. But it wasn't helping.
As I have so often explained before, my true feelings and my own true self was hidden under layers of protection and responding to others needs. In the end my body began screaming for the truth and it needed to be heard and some space to be felt, heard and understood.
These sound like very "en vogue" statements. But there is simply no other way to describe it.
Despite my people pleasing and controlling my outside World, I still didn't feel safe. Anxiety was even higher and if I got into new social situations it was a complete nightmare. This was where I would mask and cover my vulnerability with alcohol and smoking, which only served to make the anxiety even worse the next day.
I know I am certainly not alone. I understand how many others did and still do the same. But I needed to change and to understand how to deal with my body, mind and Soul. As much as the thought of change frightened me, feeling like was 80 years old at just over 40 years old wasn't acceptable to me. I needed growth and expansion.
Our body's want this for us, they want us to live and to grow and expand. We all get stuck and each moment like this invites us into an an opportunity for change. Returning to wholeness has to be a choice, change doesn't come from changing our external circumstances, that all comes from the inner change.
Illness is multi-layered, multi-textured and multi-faceted. To start to heal, self-acceptance is required. Understanding your body is simply trying to speak to you and love you takes time, patience and love. But most of all courage to be authentic and walk your own path.
We hear the word "authenticity" a lot. But what does that mean?
The Cambridge Dictionary describes it thus: the quality of being real or true:
So where might we be supressing our authenticity? Where might we be living someone else's life? What is stopping us living our truth and expressing that openly?
As a woman who has experienced this disconnection for much of my life, I understand the repeated cycles of chaos and stress. I understand that by keeping it all locked up it feels like you are safe. I know how hard it is to be vulnerable but if we don't lean into change, how else might our body respond?
If life is exhausting now and you are struggling, how much longer can you feel all that without expressing it?
We can keep searching for the answers outside, but they come from within. I invite you to use these prompts this week to check in with your true self.
What emotions do you regularly suppress?
Where do you hold them?
How often do you have negative thoughts about yourself?
How do those thoughts make you feel inside?
Where are you holding pain in your body and when did it start?
What was happening around the time that pain showed up?
How does that pain make you feel emotionally?
These are all questions I have explored myself. The answers might surprise you and they are just a passage to your inner world.
I use this way of working now with my clients and it has transformed supported some big life changes for them. By holding a space that feels so safe that they were able to be held and witnessed as they processed has been a way to unlock the stuckness and pain in their body and lead them to a path to unfolding their future in a more expanded way
I know there is no right or wrong way, but there is your way and this is how I hold you.