Going through a tough time? Read this

The fastest way out is always through

Full disclosure: I've had a pretty shitty week. A couple things happened in my personal life that left me way more affected than I initially thought. 😒😒

Thankfully, I know enough about trauma and the importance of grief to know it's not only ok but essential that I allow myself to be sad, go through all the emotions and process this loss.

At first I tried to shrug the situation off and pretend like it didn't affect me, but it did. For a moment I stepped into old familiar patterns of thinking "what did I do wrong, how did I not see this coming, etc," until I realized I didn't do anything wrong and nothing was my fault. I could not have changed a single thing. This is life, and life has its ups and downs.

So, I've been hanging at the house, eating all the chocolate and watching all the shows, because I know that the sooner I go through this grief, the sooner I'll be out of it.

It sucks that we always think we need to keep a brave face, stay strong and walk with our head held high. We don't. We need to give ourselves permission to be sad, be angry, cry, hold our head down and do all the things people tell us not to do. This is the only way for us to heal.

Suppressing emotions and not allowing ourselves to feel sad & vulnerable only sets us up for failure, depression and more permanent health and mental issues down the road.

We've got to change the perception of grief in society. Grief is not just about death, but for any loss or unwelcome change in our life. We have to honor it all, and that's what I'm doing.

Remember that the fastest way out is always through.

What are your core values? And are you living from them?

What happens when you stray from integrity, and how to get back to it.

I listened to Marie Forleo’s latest Marie TV with Martha Beck and wow, it was a good one.

This interview aligned exactly with things I’ve been working on myself, specifically regarding integrity and authenticity. 

Integrity happens to be one of my words for 2021. The more I talk about my life, experiences, and how it’s made me the person I am today, the more it’s crucial for me to live in my integrity, authenticity, & to follow my heart regardless of what’s happening around me, what others think or what the majority is doing. 

For someone that was groomed from childhood to be a people pleaser, forced to act a certain way because of my status in the cult & constantly told “everyone is watching me", each time I acted out or tried to be my own person, I was shamed and told I was bad & wrong. Needless to say, undoing all the brainwashing was hard for me.

Listening to this interview helped me connect things I’ve talked about here recently regarding fear, shame, and depression. Martha Beck says the cure for unhappiness staying within your integrity. That’s it. Separating from that not only affects you emotionally, but physically as well. "Once you leave your truth, your immune system function goes down, your heart rate goes up, adrenaline spikes, and stress hormones increase.

I started asking myself how closely am I adhering to my truth on the deepest level? If I’m staying true to my integrity, I’m happier. If I'm fearful or sad, most likely I’m not in line with my integrity and internal guidance system. 

That is SO SIMPLE. When we're living in integrity, we have peace, joy, love, & freedom. It's what we are & what we all yearn for. When we split from one or all 4 of those things, we stay rooted in fear and depression until we return to joy. 

Freedom and integrity are my two core values, my guidance systems. If I’m not getting those things, I’m not within my integrity. I’ve veered off course and strayed from my truth. 

If you’ve been feeling sad, off kilter or unbalanced, check in with yourself. Ask if you’re walking in the path of your integrity. It’s a hard question, because many of us THINK we’re living in our integrity, when really we’re just doing what we think we should be doing. That’s not our truth. It’s everyone else’s.

It may take awhile to figure this out. But think of two words that represent your deepest core values. Just two. Courage, integrity, faith, family, money, adventure, love, career, whatever. Once you’ve found those two, figure out if you’re living within those values. If not, then you’ve veered off course, and that’s probably what’s making you sad, angry, confrontational, unbalanced. That’s that’s fine. Now you know, and you can change it. 

You can change it by finding the pieces of yourself that are stuck in false beliefs. The things we think we should be doing, but really it’s what we think others think we should be doing. Recognize it, let it go, and change directions. Start living closer to your truth, your core values and your integrity. It’s a huge shift, but it’s worth it.

Everything that happens to us is happening for us. Every ache, pain, and depression is a gift, a sign post that is telling you to go a different way. Obstacles are always detours in the right direction, usually telling us that we’ve strayed from our values, and it’s time to get back to who we really are. If something isn’t working for you, don’t try harder, try a different way completely.

No matter how far we’ve strayed, we can always come back to wholeness, to yourself. The moment we decide to trust ourselves and follow our truth, that’s when immediate healing begins. It’s that simple.

Shame vs. Guilt and how it manifests in my life

Rather than the Oxford English Dictionary, I used Brené Brown’s definition of shame, which is a clear explanation that rings true for all of us.

Brené says she believes there is a profound difference between shame and guilt. Guilt can be adaptive and helpful, like holding something we’ve failed in up against our values by feeling psychological discomfort.

Shame on the other hand, is tied to something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do that makes us believe we’re unworthy of connection.

Shame is huge for trauma survivors, in particular those who have suffered abuse. Many times the perpetrator gaslights us to believe we brought the abuse on ourselves, or that we even wanted or enjoyed it. Over time this creates a huge sense of cognitive dissonance as we feel one thing, but are made to believe another.

Shame is one of the biggest issues I've had to work on, both with myself and my clients. It's easy to pretend we don't suffer from shame as many times we don't even understand what it is.

When you understand how shame affects your life through your emotions, actions, beliefs, habits and relationships, you realize how much shame controls your life.

When I lived in shame I felt I was bad because of my past. I lived with a subconscious sense of disgrace, chronic self-reproach and personal failure, all stemming from my childhood.

To heal shame I first had to understand how it sabotaged my life, held me back from reaching any goal and stuck in the mentality that I wasn't worthy of love, respect, and connection. This manifested in my sub-par relationships, lying about my life and denying to look at some really hard truths about my childhood.

The first time I felt no shame, I knew it was something I never felt before. You will know when you're shame free because you'll feel different, just like you feel something is off when stuck in a shame cycle.

I still have feelings of shame and I always will. But now I can recognize the old shame feeling, acknowledge it, be like "oh, it's you again" then move on from it. Being aware, acknowledging it, noticing how it feels through your body then moving on has been the quickest way to get out of a shame spiral.

When secrets take over your life

Keeping secrets gives them power. Here’s why I stopped.

The whole reason I started a healing journey was because I was tired of lying about my life. I didn’t want to keep making up stories, then bursting into tears whenever I talked about my past.

I was tired of running from the truth, denying my past experiences & feeling jealous of all my friends with “normal” lives. I just wanted to be ok with myself and my life.

Last year when I went to the Texas Book Festival I watched an interview with Adrienne Brodeur and she said the following words which I furiously wrote in my notebook and have stuck with me ever since.

“When you deny and oppress secrets, that gives them more power. When you shine a light on it, you’re able to get over the fear and surpass it.”

I realized that by running from the truth in my life, hiding my past and keeping secrets, I gave them power. That meant anyone who “found out” about my life growing up in The Children of God cult could immediately use that information against me somehow, and people did.

I became convinced that somehow I did something wrong, I should be ashamed, I should hide my life and my past, and everyone was so much better than me.

Turns out that by hiding my past I gave that past power over me. And when others found out my “secret”, that gave THEM power over me. Not anymore. I was over it.

I no longer wanted to give away my power. I wanted to face it head on. Sure, it would be hard. Sure it’ll be uncomfortable, and sure, I’ll make a ton of mistakes along the way. But getting over my fear of talking about my past was worth it.

When you keep deep secrets, things will continually happen to get the attention of that secret. Your life will not be yours until you address the thing you fear the most.

It’s only been a little over a year since I first started openly talking about my life, and wow, what a relief it’s been. I’ve made deeper connections with others & myself. Slowly but surely I made order out of chaos and meaning out of pain. Sure, it felt vulnerable and exposing at first, but it was totally worth it.

If there’s a secret you’ve been keeping, and things continuously keep happening that force you to keep looking at that secret, consider facing it head on. Accept all possibilities of what could happen when you face it, and know that the outcome will most likely be nothing that you expect.

When you speak from the heart, when you tell a deeply personal story and share your journey, no matter how fearful you are or how scary it is, it will resonate with someone, and people will respect you for it.

I know because it happened to me.

Spiritual Identity Crisis...do I be who I am, or who I think people think I should be?

Throughout my journey in life I struggle with a huge identity crisis: being healed, a healer & leading a more spiritual life, all while staying true to myself and who I really am.

After life-changing experiences and healing moments, I thought I needed to appear different. More "healed", "spiritual", "wise", like I’ve got everything together & life is wonderful.

I tried to show how different I was and I'm never going back to my old ways. I projected a newly-constructed image of myself based on how I thought I should behave.

This resulted in a huge identity crisis. While trying to fit a mold of what others believed spirituality should be, I repressed my who I really am. I felt conflicted following the path of others, my true self screaming to be let out.

I knew I needed to make a change, step away from other's opinions & forge my own path. I needed to stop taking myself so seriously & acknowledge things in me that will never change.

The truth about me is that I’m goofy, really spacy, I don't have it all together, I'm a bit clumsy & make poor decisions when rushed. I love to have fun, go out and dance in clubs. I'm wild & do things for shock value to rattle people's cages. Many times I’m a walking contradiction.

I thought being spiritual meant I couldn’t drink, go out, or do what I used to do in the past for fun. I thought I needed to meditate every day, follow a strict diet and face every event as something I had resistance towards that I needed to surrender. While yes, some of these things are good, there is a balance. Not everything you dislike means you have resistance & must surrender. Not everything must have a profound meaning that I have to ponder for hours or I’ll never learn the lesson. Life does not need to be so serious.

This journey has taught me about balance of being who I really am, not just portraying some image on social media. It's about joy and fun, being able to laugh at absurdities and finding pleasure in life.

The times I get the most comments about being at peace and happy in my life is never when trying, but just being myself.

When you're happy, successful, and at peace, you don't need to show or tell anyone, people know. The same for healing. People see the change in you. They see you’re different. They may not like it, but it’s there. It may bother them at first, they may tell you that you’re not spiritual, they may tell you they’re disappointed or disillusioned in you, but these people are put on your path to mirror to you what your greatest insecurities are.

Healing for me is personal, it’s private, but it’s also a never ending shift. It’s the ability for me to say and be who I want, to not sit back and take criticism, and to share my story with others because that’s how we all heal, by learning from everyone else. When you're healed, you’re not healed alone.

Who do you take criticism from? The armchair warriors or those in the arena with you?

Time and again I see “armchair warriors”, speaking from the sidelines, giving feedback and advice, calling people names & spewing hate. You guys, these people do not matter.

Brené Brown elegantly articulated that when we receive feedback, focus on the feedback from those who are or have been in the arena.

Research and qualifications are great, but have they actually been there taking risks, doing deep healing work, going into the deepest, darkest places of their soul, walking through, coming out the other side and speaking out like you are? If not, they have no business telling you what you can and can't do, and you have no business listening to them.

I always ask my coaches and mentors what's their experience “in the arena”. One of my mentors told me, "If anyone comes at you who hasn't done the work, tell them to take a seat. You wouldn't take life advice from them, so why take criticism?" This was some of the best advice I received last year.

Everyone I've learned from has been in the arena. Everyone I take advice from has been where I've been, and going where I want to go. These people know what it's like to walk through the fire, lose friends and family along the way, but come out stronger than before, with a renewed sense of life and purpose.

I'm not interested in your opinion, feedback, or armchair advice unless I ask. Unless you too have have stood naked on your mountain, barring your soul to the world...unless you've been in that arena, I don't care what you have to say about me and my life.

I can say this because I've been through the fire, I'm in the arena, I know what it takes to get here and I can tell who hasn't gone down that road.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” ~ President Theodore Roosevelt