Coming out of an awakening portal feels like waking up from a nightmare that stole an immeasurable amount of time away from you. Just as dreams are easily forgotten, so too can the pain of waking up to who we are on a deeper level. We often only remember the good things that happen in life, don’t we? The bad things we seem to chew on until they turn into a pulp, then digest them in order to birth forth the good that came from the lesson, if we permitted ourselves the time to do so. When we’re waking up, everything slows down dramatically. I remember spending at least 3 months pushing myself out of bed in the morning and feeling like someone had slipped a hit of acid in my mouth an hour before getting up.
Keeping up with life, getting up for the kids, continuing to work, was like trying to push a giant bolder around every where I went, but I did it, we do it, it’s amazing how resilient we are. I truly understood pain on a whole new level, it wasn’t like I had lost someone close or found out someone was sick, this pain was different, deeper, if that is even possible. I tried not to look at it like selfish pain because that’s what I had done to myself my whole life. I never dared complain about my feelings, it was a given I would push myself aside to help the person in front of me that needed it the most. This was my role growing up so this is what I knew how to do best. My feelings were always insignificant compared to the emotional upheavals happening around me, this felt like a very normal way to be.
Growing up in a home where feelings are not acknowledged or worse when you are shamed for expressing any emotions, you become desensitized to your own feelings to the point where you don’t even know when you are being violated outside your home, you have no reference point to what is normal. The way we compensate for this is by growing a really thick layer between ourselves and the world. It’s very easy to develop a screw the world attitude because we established earlier on that no one close actually cares how we feel, nor do they wish to help us accomplish anything that could possibly make us feel good about ourselves and if they did, somehow it was a trick.
The thawing out process from this state of disassociation is very humbling. First having to acknowledge how diminished and compromised you were as a child is painful enough and second having to realize that because of that, you trust no-one and are so self-reliant to the point where you disconnect, even from the people who genuinely care for you.
During the healing process it’s necessary to keep a safe space for yourself by focusing on yourself and your needs only (finally!), as you build yourself back up to a healthy relationship with self, the people in your life and community. When your sense of self-worth was compromised it becomes a crucial part of the healing process to be seen, heard, acknowledged and to do what feels good to you, rather than everyone else. Creating this ‘selfish’ space for yourself is a necessary step before coming back into healthy balance and stepping into self-empowerment.
If you were constantly shamed as a child, you grew skin thick enough to not allow shaming to cut you emotionally anymore. This suppressed shame can be dangerous because it creates space for lack of empathy to emerge and for anything, slightly considered unacceptable, to turn into deep seated shadow behaviour. All a child wants, is to feel loved and accepted and when he/she is not being met with compassion in this regard, the walls go up and often so high and too thick to continue feeling the pain of those around them. We can only meet people where we are at, so it’s impossible to acknowledge something in another that you yourself have suppressed within your own being. We are blind to our own needs and therefore we are blind to the needs of others.
This type of upbringing, where you had to fight for your every last sense of self can leave you very apathetic to the world, if left unattended it can flip into deep rage. Often the people who have been the most neglected, shamed and unloved as children will have built up so many walls that they can no longer express their feelings as they naturally rise up, turning them into a ticking time-bomb of repressed emotions.
I’m sure you’ve all seen this many times in your life, a person explodes in rage and two seconds later burst out in tears, finally the self-acknowledgement of emotions that was needed! Hopefully not after having harmed another person. These fits of anger are often not done out of malice but rather out of a desperate need for their emotions to be seen and validated within themselves first and foremost and then by the other. Through learned, continuous self-violation of neglecting their emotions, they continuously shove their feelings back down, time and time again to please those around them. This not only causes repressed anger but also anxiety attacks, manipulation tactics, covert shadow behaviour, the need for extreme privacy or exaggerated transparency and a general lack of empathy towards others feelings.
Authentic expression is where healing can truly occur because it allows us to be in a state of self-acceptance to what is arising. When we gently allow ourselves to open up to who we are and what we are feeling, admit these feelings to ourselves and then the world, we are no longer held in a choke hold by them. Our need to stay in the loop of self-sabotage and self negation–that keeps us fragmented and emotions pent up– is no longer necessary. We can finally step into our truth which is a state of self-love and self-acceptance. Once in a healthy state of balance within ourselves we can develop healthy relationships with the other people in our lives, not needing to keep everyone at arms distance, nor needing to cling to them in fear. Simply allowing ourselves to feel, finally once again, is the beginning of saying YES to life, the beginning of truly connecting with others and co-creating in a healthy and heart based way.
One Love,
J
Image source
So on point Thank You Jessica🌠