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common misconception when people come and find me and engage in my work is that I’m going to make them feel ‘better’. Let’s bust that myth right now. I’m not.
Firstly not because that’s not what the work I do results in. It actually does. More so that firstly I cannot ‘heal’ anyone or ‘do it for you’ if you don’t actually want a change for yourself.
Ultimately you have free will and get to choose if you stick or twist. Free yourself or dive further into discomfort. Nobody else. Others might have created the conditions where you are in some way traumatised or hurt, but you are the only person that can now resolve that and reclaim your life.
Please take this as a positive thing. It means ultimately that you’re in control of your destiny and not reliant on outside sources for your happiness. It is definitely helpful to seek external support, in fact for many it is highly beneficial and necessary. Especially when we are speaking of deep trauma the most effective way to begin unravelling it is with a trusted person by your side. When you get stuck, confused or overwhelmed they are there as a lighthouse to guide you back to the resources you already have within. Especially when it gets messy, because it does.
Many people are seeking relief from their symptoms, yet unaware that in order to heal and become healthier they will be required to change.
I listened to a talk about emotional release last week and the presenter made a great point. They shared a client asked how many sessions they would need to start feeling better. His reply was this – it’s not about the number of sessions but how willing you are to take difficult actions in your life. Essentially to change the toxic environment that you’re living in. All the healing in the world will bring you back to ground zero if you’re not prepared to change your circumstances. I don’t mean moving to the other side of the world and living in a cave whilst you figure things out. Some people might need that but what I’m referring to is – leaving a toxic relationship, having a difficult discussion with a family member, changing your job, engaging in an exercise routine, cutting addictive substances out of your life.
Healing and health is both an inside and an outside job. If a plant is not thriving we don’t blame the plant! We change the soil, water, position etc. That’s to say we change the environment. With humans this is slightly more complex as we have both our inner and outer environment. The outer is a reflection of what is going on within you at some level. Much of our inner environment is restrictive and not really reflective of our truest nature. This includes our deepest beliefs, thoughts, self image, traumas and negative experiences. It also includes all the emotions we are not willing, able or prepared to feel and release. Hence they remain bottled up beneath the surface like a bomb waiting to go off. It might be an unwitting passerby that’s on the receiving end, or it might be detonated and aimed at yourself (i.e. self criticism, judgement, toxic shame).
Almost every human on the planet has this bomb inside of them. The older you are, the bigger it tends to be. This is because humans are fundamentally ‘feeling’ beings. We are having an experience, we feel e-motions – energy in motion. Can you accurately describe in words to another person how you feel right now? No. Language is not sufficiently complex to describe our feeling sense. Only we know what is going on inside. Many of us have become numb to emotion, believing this is a good thing. Actually it’s not. Being numb to emotion is actually being numb to life. If you shut down your feelings, good or bad, you are suppressing your very life force energy. You are suppressing your soul. That never ends well.
The reality is that the majority of people are suppressing their soul and believe it’s normal to do so. Numb is not normal.
Living a full and vital life REQUIRES feeling. Feeling everything, not feeling nothing. Wondering why you feel half dead? It’s for this reason. Shut down. You might be physically alive but you’re marching one day at a time closer towards death. Depression is the final phase of shut down. It’s a signal that all of your energy is going into repressing who you really are. And who did you learn that from? For the most part your parents. Your feelings and emotions were too ‘big’ and they weren’t allowed, so they got shut down. Then you ingrained that behaviour into yourself because, well, that’s how life works.
Unfortunately life simply DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY.
Feeling numb, detached, ‘ok’ is not how we are designed to live. We are gifted the entire range of emotions by creation. Our bandwidth is unlimited but we have chosen to live in a microcosm, and most of those ‘chosen’ emotions are not really the ones we want!
Do you want depression, sadness, grief, pain, imposter syndrome, fear, doubt, anxiety, hopelessness, apathy, panic, numb as your regular life experience?
I’m guessing not, but that’s where most people are calibrated to and it saddens me. The more unwilling we are to feel, the more pain we will experience. It’s a vicious cycle that my work is here to break.
We either live in our past (and old emotions) on a daily basis and wonder why we are in so much pain or lacking fulfilment, or we begin to address the root cause.
Yet resolving emotional baggage does not mean you’ll feel ‘better’. It means you will get better at feeling. Through that process, incidentally, you WILL feel better. However the only way out is through. You take one step towards what you desire and it will take one step towards you.
Through millennia of cultural conditioning we have been misled about what the human experience entails. We are not automatons but living, breathing, feeling beings. Love is a feeling. How can I know and experience it if I cannot feel? Desire is a feeling – how can I know what I really want to do if I’m numb? Short answer is – you can’t.
Emotions are the navigation system of life. Isn’t it time you turned on the GPS of the real you?
Remember
Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.
Philippa xo
Please reach out if you’d like some 1:1 support.