Wounding and Vulnerability
A path to understanding and healing
After a really powerful two weeks on my course I have felt such shifts. The work I decided to do this year has been transformational and I am so pleased to bring it into the work I share with my clients.
I’m over half way through The Root Cause Practice and it has been such an amazing and beautiful journey. Learning to witness my own changes, discomfort and healing with patience and acceptance has been an intense experience.
Vulnerability has never been my thing and I notice this in many people I meet. Especially those with Autoimmune Disease. But this twelve weeks has cracked me open in such gentle ways.
I always thought I had to keep my shit together, to be perfect and to get everything right. Messy emotions were not part of my story, I didn’t like them or want them around. I managed to keep it all locked up. The underlying feeling of “What will happen to me if I show my emotions?” The feeling that something bad may happen or that I may be rejected was always the basis of my decision to remain closed.
Working through my own processes, not only with the course but with other forms of bodywork and therapy, I have been able to notice more me emerging, which in itself is uncomfortable. Who am I now without my armour?
I had felt powerless when I was young and I see where I made decisions throughout my life when I felt hurt or even when I didn’t know what was coming next. “You will never see me upset ever again!” Locking myself into my own hurt.
The layers of this decision to remain closed built up over time and created huge issues for my physical, emotional and mental health. It became my pattern, who I was and the only way I could identify.
I have been simply watching my own reactions and asking questions of my inner world. We are in a time where “someone else” is always to blame for our responses and this was definitely my pattern. I want to choose differently now and so I am sharing some of my story with you.
Having autoimmune live with me for so long has been difficult and a real process of getting to know myself. I have searched for understanding at different levels. The feeling underlying autoimmunity is you are under attack. The attack feels so immense and like it’s coming from all angles. You have nowhere to hide.
When you feel under attack, you defend. But when anger, rage, hurt and rejection can’t be expressed outwardly, you feel it has nowhere to go and it sits within the body. Over the years working with this I noted what was coming up often.
Self-loathing.
Self-hatred
Self- punishment
Judging myself because I felt unworthy and unloveable. I poured it all over me and into myself. Looking back, I beat myself up in every way possible. Substances, thoughts, words and feelings. The reasons for this are many of course and everybody's life experiences and the way we see them are different but the responses are often similar.
I was so able to punish myself because it didn’t feel it was my own body. It felt easy to direct all this anger onto myself because I didn't like the skin I lived in. I was outside of myself.
I turned all the unexpressed emotions onto myself because it felt too much to give to anybody else. How could I let anybody else witness my inner world and they still see me the same way? And so I learned to push it down further and further and to people please. To not show my true self.
It's hard to unpack 48 years of that amount of emotion. It's hard to see that at some point you made a decision to hurt yourself and your body. It's hard to see that just like anybody else you are so worthy of living the life you want.
So long spent in cycles of protection, control, safety and perfectionism, it's difficult to see a way forward. Whenever I did see a way, the vulnerable feelings would wash over me and I would retreat again, from the support that was offered and from life itself. I found excuses to not live the life that I was meant to live and hid under the guise of “Everybody needs me and I’m just so busy - I don’t have time”
If I didn’t trust myself to hold me, how could I possibly trust anyone else.
Over the years these patterns of protection have wounded my body, my emotional and mental health. I have chosen unsupportive careers and jobs and relationships. On occasion it has isolated me and I have become so hyper independent, no meme on IG could cover it!
So that is the short version of the story of my body. The patterns of defence and protection and how it can damage. The body knows and it is speaking to us. It is our subconscious mind.
Candace Pert, PhD, is Professor, Department of Physiology & Biophysics, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington DC states:
“Our bodies are in fact our subconscious minds: In the end I find I can't separate brain from body. Consciousness isn't just in the head. Nor is it a question of the power of the mind over the body...because they’re flip sides of the same thing. Mind doesn’t dominate body, it becomes body.”
Have you ever wondered why one body has thyroid issues and the other has skin or stomach issues? There are no accidents to this.
So, how have I helped myself?
Over the years I have tried most things to support my body and in more recent years my mind and Soul. The biggest shift was to work with these emotions that I held so deeply. My emotional wounding was deep and I embodied that wound in every way. I didn’t know how to feel it and to see it without fear, until I finally was brave enough to let go.
I had kept my heart, my truth and my love exiled from others but mostly myself. Protecting myself from the deepest connection of all. When I began the journey to recognise these parts of me, it left space for so much more. More love, more peace, more joy and more purpose.
Over my journey I have learned so much and this is another beginning for me. The resources I used are now used in all of my own tools to support you.
Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT) really enabled me to release really powerful electric emotions that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t release. It supported me to let go of the story and the way I identified. I have seen some amazing results from this work in my clients too in a very short time.
Reiki has long been my go to when I feel blocked. Becoming a Reiki Master Teacher and receiving those energy shifts blew the lid off and helped me to find peace within. It is a gentle and nurturing way to be held and to return the body to a state of relaxation and flow.
Kundalini Yoga lives and breathes through me, it helped shift so much and though my practice is gentler this modality still calls to me and I see the joy it brings in a class or a workshop.
Deep rest was needed as I let go of the layers. My nervous system had been in constant fight flight and needed time to re regulate and learn how to respond differently, this is ongoing learning for me and I love the exploration.
Nature, cold water, being alone, learning, reading and general self-exploration. Not being afraid to look into the dark corners. No longer do I shriek, react and try to fix. I just kindly ask those dark parts to come sit with me and tell me all they have to say.
So many more modalities I could name, but just to say the blend of tools I use for you now are as powerful for you as they were for me. Nobody seeks me out unless they require support to get from one place to the other and I’m so incredibly happy to support those of you who do.
Nobody seeks me out unless they require support to get from one place to the other and I’m so incredibly happy to support those of you who do so.
I hope by writing this those of you who struggle (just as I did) to see their vulnerability as courageous decide to speak up, reach out and shine their light.