What if this could be the year that you let go of the pain of past relationships, the burnout from past jobs or the trauma caused by a lifetime of living out of alignment with who you really are?
What if you looked back a year from now with the centered, wisened eyes of a human who stands in their full power? How could your life change? What would you do next?
Healing takes time, but it doesn’t last forever. What lasts forever is being stuck in the pain of the past too afraid to deal with it for fear that it will consume you with failure. But guess what? Whether you want to look at it or not, that pain is holding you back from things you badly want in life.
And you can break free.
I know because in 2023, I did just that.
I began the year determined to figure out – once and for all – what I really want in life. It felt like a ridiculous goal: At 41 years old, shouldn’t I know myself already?
Turns out, I hadn’t a clue. But setting my intention to heal, to find my authenticity and to live it was enough to launch a wild chain of events:
Within six weeks, I realized that I might be autistic. The confirmation came a few months later. And the months in between were spent absorbing as much information as I could find on the autistic brain.
Within a month of my diagnosis, I began to integrate and accept my high sensory nature. That’s when I started wondering about my nervous system.
Within the first six months, I realized my public affairs careerpath had become too littered with traumas to sustain without driving myself into further traumatization. Six weeks later, I found nervous system training. And that’s when the healing really began.
Beneath the big milestones were two tiny shifts in my day-to-day life:
I started walking a three-mile circuit around my neighborhood once or twice a week.
And I developed a morning routine of reading, writing and mindful breathwork.
There is no doubt in my mind that my morning routine made the milestones possible, and here’s why:
Carving out time to read every day, even if only a handful of pages, introduced me to a broader worldview which, in turn, brought curiosity back into my life. Curiosity is among the most powerful of healers because it silences the inner critic. What a relief to have my curiosity back!
Writing two to three morning pages (by hand) made me think deeply about my past, present, future and the issues that fill my brain with looping ruminations. This allowed me both to externalize suppressed pain and to increase my overall awareness. The reward? In May, I began to recognize when my writing voice shows up, and now I can harness those moments to sit down and write. (Result: I wrote a draft of a book I hope to publish by the end of next year!)
Meditation has always vexed me. And yet this summer, I finally found a way to sit for (gasp*) 12 full minutes and turn inward. No, it is not a calming exercise. No, I still haven’t broken free from the tyranny of my thoughts. But the unique blend of music, breathwork, visualization and interoceptive awareness that I’ve now cultivated is allowing me to move through big, scary emotions and cleanse them from my nervous system.
But perhaps the most important aspect of morning routine was that it gave me a natural place to add daily nervous system training when I discovered it. And like I’ve already said, that’s when the real healing began.
Nervous system work re-established a relationship with my body, from which I’ve spent my life dissociated.
As I’ve slowly come out of lifelong dissociation, I fully understand why I became so skilled at living in my head. My body is filled with a level of fear that I still can’t tolerate for very long. This underlying fear drives my anxiety, my perfectionism, my inner critic, my social aversion, my ruminations, my over-working, my people-pleasing and so much more – all of which erode my ability to feel safe showing up as my authentic self.
And thus we come full circle.
The work is ongoing, but I’ve become an expert in rescuing my nervous system as I doggedly face the demons of my past. They can’t scare me anymore, at least not permanently. They’re shrinking by the day. And, miraculously, I’ve seen a glimpse of the person I’ll be once the traumas have been processed and my past put to rest, where it belongs.
Now it is your turn to heal. I’ve walked this path. I know its contours and risks. I know its triumphs and rewards. And I firmly believe that no one deserves to live a life on the run from their own body because its secrets are too immense to hold.
Let’s work together to make 2024 the year you [finally] heal.
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Curious to learn more? Nurture that curiosity by saving the date for a free workshop on January 19, 2024 at 10 a.m. Pacific.
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