Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.William Shakespeare
Our gift to the world sits next to our greatest wound
What we do best and have to teach others resides in the challenges we have had to overcome.
This is particularly true for wounded healers.
People in helping professions often recruited themselves as emotional caregivers to parents early in life. This is a noble sentiment but too much for a child. Trying to rescue a parent from their pain is many people’s first failure in life. It sets up a sense of helplessness that reaches into adulthood, until it is addressed.
We can only step fully into our power when we have tended to the vulnerable child within us who is desperate to be of use but does not feel good enough. It is so important to keep reminding our younger selves that they’re gonna be ok.
Every challenge is an opportunity to clear pain
Every time you are triggered there is an unmetabolized emotion offering itself for recognition and release.
A trigger is an event that reminds us of something traumatic that we’ve not fully processed. It is an emotional flashback. We feel it in the body. It feels like the original event is happening all over again. We see it in what draws our attention in the world around us and the people we attract.
Our undigested personal and ancestral trauma will keep nudging us until it is metabolised. It is through the body that we receive signs that there is something to look at. It is through the body that healing happens.
The body offers clues like tension, restlessness, numbness, annoying people and illness to bring attention to inner discord.
The body is an astonishing gift. Although in recent generations we have learnt not to listen to it. It is far smarter than the brain.
It is a barometer for where we are at in our lives.
It is the most sensitive bullshit detector.
It is a conductor of the collective unconscious to which we all belong.
Why we feel messed up
Inside us all is a kindergarten of confused kids and an epigenetic tangle of ancestral baggage.
The two main areas I work with:
Individual
Something happened, usually in childhood, that put us in survival mode. We decided that life would be a certain way from that point onwards, and we haven’t updated that belief. Childhood trauma often leaves us in a freeze-state. We need a safely held space to revisit such places to bring about acceptance and to move on.
The worst of our pain comes from lack of connection.
There is a lost child within us who believes they are alone, separate, different.
It begins early in life. Overwhelming events happen and we find ourselves insufficiently supported in our distress. Trust in our parents gets fractured and we make this mean that we are disconnected from the very source of life.
We believe there is something wrong with us. The inner critic comes on board when we are toddlers to keep us in line and we form core beliefs like:
- I am not enough.
- I am too much.
- I am unloveable.
Trauma is not what happened to us, but what we made of what happened and didn’t let go of. Bad things that happened and good things that did not. Distressing situations that were left unresolved and how we learnt to cope going forward.
When the nervous system got stuck in fight or flight and didn’t get soothed back down, we grow up focussing our attention on things outside of us that might be a similar source of danger. Everything is a potential threat. We get triggered. We get flooded.
We yearn to feel safe.
We seek solace in people and things that we think will alleviate our pain. We engage in behaviours that bring temporary relief but exacerbate the feeling in the long term. We get involved with people that originally look like they could make it all better…and wind up being shown that we still have work to do.
Systemic/Intergenerational
Human systems have a memory.
Something traumatic happened in our family system that left a blueprint that we were born into. These invisible guidelines tend to limit our possibilities, until we acknowledge them and free ourselves up to live differently. These subtle contracts require sensitive attention and respectful acknowledgement.
We were all born into systems that hold the energetic charge of ancestors who did not have the language or means to process emotionally overwhelming circumstances. Huge events leave an impact on systems. We are all influenced by the wars of the last century. Famines and migrations, un-mourned deaths, unatoned betrayals.
Our characters are formed from out of our genes responding to the environment that we grew up in, and all that came before. Epigenetics shows us that we carry the unprocessed emotional trauma of our ancestors. As this branch of science is relatively new, we cannot yet say for certain how many generations worth of trauma we hold. For rats it has been shown to be at least 7 generations, likely more.
It is the family secrets that most powerfully influence how we navigate our lives. That which is unspoken and unresolved is the elephant in the room. Those who were forgotten or excluded get re-membered. Tensions are epigenetically and resonantly passed down. The hidden dynamics that came before us lead us to perpetrate patterns of survival that are long outdated.
How unmetabolized trauma shows up
Addictive and compulsive behaviours
Destructive relationship patterns
Depression and anxiety
Self-hatred
Issues around money
Feeling numb, empty and disconnected
Feeling alone, different, isolated
Shame and self-judgment, lacking confidence and conviction
A sense that your life is not your own
Feeling persistently unsatisfied and unfulfilled
Fear of rejection, over-sensitivity
Being avoidant, unable to commit
Poor boundaries
Resentment, feeling victimised
Feeling unsafe in the world
Persistent inexplicable muscle tension and depleted immune function
Integration and healing
It is in relationship that we get wounded, and it is in relationship that we heal
Healing and integration work is best done in connection with another person. Preferably someone who has walked the path at least a few steps ahead of you. Whether you choose to work with me, or someone else, just don’t try to go it alone. Connection is key.
Suffering comes from resistance to feel our pain
Reluctance to look at and work through our stuff creates inner tension. This tension is usually more uncomfortable than that which we are avoiding.
If you don’t do the work life will keep throwing hints at you. The same old situations and dynamics will keep popping up. They nudge us to evolve, and they dysregulate us until the associated emotions are digested.
At best life will feel like it’s going nowhere. Or the feelings inside will build until it all feels unbearable. Your adaptive habits will become less effective. Addictive patterns may amplify. You will become progressively more difficult to live with.
If you do the work of growth and integration you will increasingly understand and like yourself. In turn you will become more patient and compassionate to others. You will be able to regulate yourself better and guide your life in the direction of your choosing.
You will confidently bring your unique gift and expression out into the world.
Love will flow progressively more freely. There will be more of a sense of belonging.
You will have more experiences of peace, wholeness, safety, softness and openness.
The path of love is one of acceptance
We cannot change the past, but we can continually see it with fresh eyes and allow it to organize behind us in ever more resourceful ways. We can move into the future with greater expansion if we accept life as it came through to us.
We often have the desire to be a strong, creative, spontaneous, philanthropic, adventurous force in the world, but not know how to get there.
Integration comes with accepting the parts of us that we hide from ourselves and everyone else. Growth comes from turning towards the shadow parts of us that we would rather avoid.
Personal authority means taking full responsibility for our feelings and reactions.
If there is blame, then there is something to be looked at.
Inner freedom is feeling, not suppressing, our emotions. Feeling through uncomfortable residual emotions like shame, fear and sadness helps them release. It sounds paradoxical, but consciously feeling into our discomfort brings inner peace and lasting change.
The body is our most powerful resource. It is a conductor of the information of the knowing field that surrounds us.
Every unresolved experience we have lived stays in the body, awaiting resolution. Our task is to outgrow its influence.
Healing and integration work requires patience and self-compassion
This journey is a continuum, not a fixed destination. An ongoing series of moments of choosing love over whatever it is you’re sabotaging love with. Of having more good moments than crappy moments.
It is a process of gentle unburdening and mini excavations.
This can be a little frustrating for those of us brought up in a world framed around instant gratification. The inner journey to true self is not a ready packaged sandwich. We sometimes need to take a couple of steps back, in order to move forward with conviction.
The work of stripping back layers requires motivation and faith.
Rough patches are part of the deal. That’s where the growth happens.
You know you’re making progress when you stop begrudging these growth spurts and start meeting them with curiosity.
Personally, I think the exploration never stops. The more curious I am about what part of me is showing up in the world I manifest, the easier it is to meet the challenge.
Trust and Love
My personal journey has been one of learning to trust.
That it’s all about love.
Trust that I am a good thing in the world. Worthy and belonging.
Trust that people are fundamentally kind and loving. And if they are not, that they are seeking love in a way that somehow makes sense to them. Every human behaviour reflects a desire to love or be loved.
Trust that the universe is doing its thing and has my back. Indeed, that I am part of its whirligig of love.
Trust that my challenges are part of my growth, within the universal movement of love.
The path of integration is one of ending the nightmare and stepping into the dream.
Life has your back
There is a part of you that is infinitely wise.
The quantum bit. The universe in you. The knowing field. The spirit part. Life force. Pure consciousness.
We all have a different concept of it.
Some do not believe it exists.
I do. I feel it.
This evolutionary part of you that wants to do the work and grow is more than well resourced. It is the wisest part of you. It is tuned into the bigger picture. It will guide you through the tough bits. It will open doors for you.
You are the universe experiencing itself subjectively through the filter of a bunch of ideas and beliefs about who you think you are.
We don’t always have a choice about what happens around us, but we have absolute choice in how we process it and what we feel.
We have choice in what story we want to live.
The bigger picture
I believe in an intelligent organising energy that permeates everything.
People give it different names.
I call it love, life force, consciousness, probably god.
We are all part of one consciousness that is split into a zillion parts, all experiencing itself subjectively from different perspectives.
I am inspired and guided by the philosophies of Taoism, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Pantheism, Shamanism, quantum physics, and many more. There’s a golden thread of love and truth that is the sweetness of all concepts of the bigger picture.
It saddens me when people lay claim to empowerment over others in the name of whatever doctrine they’re pushing.
We don’t need a middle-man.
We are all part of it.
My heart knows to be true what my mind cannot understand.
I’ve seen some kooky stuff. Things that my brain cannot find a box for.
Most constellation gatherings are a cosmic soup of affirmation and astonishment.
I don’t know what happens when we die. My logical brain says it’s the end of the line. Yet I have communed with ancestors who are as here as right now. So perhaps time really isn’t linear and conscious awareness is infinite. I find it easier to just be with what unfolds and not try to pin it down or label it.
I do think that we need to become more friendly with death. Death-phobia tends to keep us on tenterhooks.
Maybe we live many lifetimes.
Maybe we join the other dead ones.
Maybe we swirl back into pure consciousness.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe all or none of the above and some other stuff.
This life is a small window in a vast expanse of space and time.
It’d be best if we bathe in its juiciness.
I don’t know what it’s all about, and I’m getting ok with that.
Who are we really? Or what?
When we strip back the ideas and sensations and opinions and beliefs and emotions and all the rest…what are we really?
Is it pure consciousness? And what is that?
And so ad infinitum.
I’ll keep looking and let you know what I find.
“Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life are not chance or haphazard. They are actually yours. They are specifically yours, designed specifically for you by a part of you that loves you more than anything else. The part of you that loves you more than anything else has created roadblocks to lead you to yourself. You are not going in the right direction unless there is something pricking you in the side, telling you, “Look here! This way!” That part of you loves you so much that it doesn’t want you to lose the chance. It will go to extreme measures to wake you up, it will make you suffer greatly if you don’t listen. What else can it do? That is its purpose.”
A. H. Almaas
