In the last 30days, I have felt pushed to my limit creatively, emotionally, physically, and financially. All of the things! I’m reminded that when we feel this type of pressure, change is often just around the corner. Instead of resisting, I did my best to welcome it all. I also found that small moments of joy sprinkled throughout this period were a welcome distraction, whether in the form of a new pair of stilettos, a new read or, or a successful attempt at trying a new recipe.
Unlike the last 30days, I'm hoping the next 30days bring a lighter feeling to my life! To overcome this chaos and uncertainty, in today's post, I would like to share 30 things I know to be true as a wellness coach.
Your feeling are there to tell you what you need, they are not there to tell you who you are. Your feeling make requests, not declarations. So you are free to engage with your fear, loneliness, shame guilt, anger, sadness, or insecurities. You are also free from having to panic about what the presence of those feelings might mean for your future or identity. Instead you are invited to examine with tenderness and curiosity, why those feelings are present.
Your discomfort deserves acknowledgement.
Trauma means different things to different people. It is an extremely personal and individual experience. Sometimes it is lingering painful memory of being being hurt or neglected by a parent. Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes it can be an invisible barrier holding us back from forming healthy relationships, from reaching our true potential. Sometimes it can take the form of self-hate or self-sabotage.
Proximity is power. The simple act of whom you spend your time with is who you become.
As children, we did not see through our parents’ power play.
It's not that you love people too hard. It's not that your heart is too big. It's not that no one can reciprocate the kind of love that you give. It's that no one ever properly explained to you that you are trying to love yourself through loving other people.
The healing process doesn’t limit itself to your current struggles. It's about the present as much as it is about past trauma. It gets to the heart of your cumulative wound—the one that contains all of your disappointments and heartbreaks that have been bubbling beneath the surface of your life, perhaps since childhood.
Even the most severe ill-treatment can remain hidden, because of our strong tendency to idealization. Idealizing our parents, friendships, romantic partners, teachers or spiritual leaders.
One way to practice self-love, self-respect and self-care is deciding to stop pursuing the attention of someone who is emotionally unavailable to you. It take a lot of strength and courage to not let fear or the imagined potential keep you in these relationships.
Unresolved trauma may be the underlying issue responsible for most of the ailments you have been struggling with all along: the insecurity that plagues your relationships, depression and anxiety, obsessive and compulsive behaviors, low energy levels, and the loss of self-esteem that have been holding you back.
Sometimes, you are going to be the only person that listens to you.
Without guidance, many people don’t completely recover from their trauma. Their traumas, fears and doubts remain unresolved. True recovery means seeking help when confronting uncomfortable feelings, understanding what they are, and, most importantly, learning how to deal with them.
We are lucky that we live at a time when there are techniques which can help us heal more quickly than previous generations could have hoped for.
Today, I believe that to mistreat children —to punish them, and then forbid them to weep, to speak, to defend themselves, to revolt against brutal treatment—is the greatest crime that there is. It is a crime to discipline children so much that they become blind, or numb to their our pain and mistreat and then, later, to deny the whole thing.
The world has not changed, there is still so much evil and meanness all around me, and I see it even more clearly than before. Nevertheless, for the first time I find life really worth living. Perhaps this is because, for the first time, I have the feeling that I am really living my own life. And that is an exciting adventure.
Asking for help is a sign of self-respect and self-awareness.
It is important to realize that your feelings, no matter how intense, do not signify a lack of will or frailty of character. They are normal and part of a process that leads to healing and change. So stop being afraid of being a victim and identify the part of you that was victimized.
The mistreatment of children is the basest, meanest crime human beings can commit against their fellow human beings and against humanity in general, because it insidiously deforms the personalities of the generations to come.
Sometimes people can’t name what they are going through. They may have been emotionally abused and neglected a child, grown up with an alcoholic parent or felt excluded from their peer group at crucial moments, but are detached from the root of their distress. Having lost touch with the source of their wounds, many resort to quick fixes and gratify themselves with food, alcohol, shopping, or other people. Or they become addicted to self-help lectures, books, and tapes. But all of the self-medicating and soothing words in the world will not erase the distress. In order to do that, you must embark upon a journey that addresses the underlying cause —the childhood trauma/wound itself. This is a journey from which all people can benefit.
Facing your trauma and putting what you have experienced into perspective prevents you from turning your anger inward. As you learn to resist the gravitational pull on your self-esteem, you gain strength and emotional endurance. Rather than feeling defeated by your experience, you emerge from it wiser, more self-reliant, and more capable of love.
There are some feelings no one wants to talk about because they involve fear, despair, and self-doubt so intense that you’re naturally humiliated and ashamed by them. Until these intense feelings are addressed, people tend to suffer them in silence or try to deny them. Eventually, these forgotten, deeply buried feelings are transformed into an elusive mental illness.
People going through the anguish of childhood trauma often feel that their lives have been permanently altered, that they will never be the same, will never love again. I’m writing to assure you that as devastated as you may be right now, your feelings of despair and hopelessness are in fact temporary, and they are a normal part of grieving over a relationship. In fact, only by grappling with the feeling that your life is over can you cleanse your deepest wounds from past and present losses and build anew.
You can’t change the length of your legs, the width of your hips, or the nature of your parents.
Don't be concerned if the people you were once close to, are turning into enemies. They are just tired of pretending.
You will be a much more happy and confident person once to accept that instead of obsessively learning about red flags in friendships, workplaces, or romantic partners, you just learn to trust yourself to leave when it's no longer safe for you.
If you want to live a fulfilling life, find out what myth you are trapped in. Are you a boy-man, chasing the bragging rights of an adolescent. Are you a martyr, sacrificing yourself hoping to be loved by others because you don't love yourself. Or are you a trickster, a manipulator that deceives to get objects that look like success. Living in a house of cards. Do not cheat yourself out of a fulfilling life by serving an archetype that only serves itself.
However well-educated and well-intentioned we may cause others harm. That is why we need to always be open to being held accountable.
Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our upbringing.
You are not set in stone. We change all the time. What you liked when you were younger no longer suits you. You have different tastes, opinions, habits, styles, inclinations, friends and routines. There is no set you. You are forever evolving, which is scary sometimes (because change is always hard, even within ourselves) but also exciting.
Practice gratitude for all that I have, and all that is yet to come.
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