Hope
There was a time in my life where I was at my greatest emotional low. I felt as if everything had been stripped from my life, and a lot of it actually had been. My emotions were raw, life was unbearable. You’d never know by looking at me today that this was a few short years ago because so much has changed within me in that short amount of time: I found hope.
Hope for me is …
A better way
A better life
Personal freedom
Living my personal truth
Individuality
Happiness
Truly free to be me
The trouble was, in the past I didn’t really know who the real me was, therefore I didn’t hold out hope for things to get better. I had spent the better part of 10 years helping others find themselves through therapy as a mental health counselor. I personally have spent years in and out of my own therapy. But still, I didn’t know who my authentic self was.
Yes, I’d heard about the concept and thought I was living my authentic self, but I never truly knew me. Instead, I was who I believed other people thought I was, who they expected me to be, and who I believed I could and should be based on my successes and failures and positive and negative experiences.
I had spent focused attention on my own healing, making my best attempt at going first down the healing path. But I really wasn’t as healed as I needed to be and it got me into trouble. I had too many triggers, or buttons being pushed by myself, my life, and others that needed to be resolved. I was really mostly seeing myself through the negative experiences and failures. I wasn’t even close to living my authentic self, and I just felt hope was just not coming to me.
But something changed at the darkest time of my life because I was looking for relief from my own bottom of the barrel pain: I was exposed to new concepts about the way we heal and grow and how we can do it quickly without bringing all the ick to the surface! And, I’m not talking just about the heavy trauma we experienced, but also the little disappointments life throws at us every day.
I spend my energy learning, training, growing in my healing craft so I can help others through their healing journeys. Not only am I skilled in bringing change into your lives, I am a consumer and dedicated believer of this system of change that truly changed me, released me of the burdens that were getting in my way.
I don’t know where I’d be today if I didn’t have this in my life. This gift of these concepts, the inner work that’s really inner work way down inside my survivor brain system where all the traumas were stored, truly led me to being in a place where I’m so free, free of the heaviness of fear, shame, and guilt that had a hold on me for 50 years. And now the true me is emerging. The true me who says “Holy #%&!, let’s not do that anymore! Let’s not do what the world expects from me. Let’s be who I want to be and use the gifts I’ve been given in the way that is authentic to me.”
“They” say I “should.” They aren’t me. They don’t know me. Now that my brain is spending much, much less energy in protective mode. I speak and write my way. I no longer feel the constraints of doing things the way others have manipulated me to.
And yeah, manipulated. We are all taught from the moment we take our first breath to do things based on what other people expect from us, whether it's good or bad, right or wrong.
And so manipulate is to me, for me inside, a perfect description because if I had been given the choice, I would never have taken the path that I took
I want you to recognize that there is hope for you; I want you to know that you can release all the goo in your survivor brain and truly find hope for yourself.
