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Life after depression…

Life after depression… After writing Diggin’ Your Dark Side I went through various emotional encounters. The writing experience was confronting and freeing simultaneously as I felt the energy surrounding my darkness lighten as word took to paper. Once I had my story before me, I felt my old insecurities come up and started challenging what I was doing. Is this good enough to be a book? Will this really help anybody or is it a crock? And the biggest was, holy sh!t, I feel so vulnerable telling everyone all the crazy things I have done! Will my clients and staff judge me and think less of me? I had to come back to all my tools and stay connected to my purpose, I had to smile and thank my old story of not being worthy and release it as it didn’t serve me any longer. I had to trust my gut when I felt pangs of worry around having no secrets left. I had to let so much crap go when I published my book and trust that this process was guided, how else would a Year 10 dropout, C grade English student write an entire book within a few months? I had to keep coming back to faith, love and courage. Faith, love and courage are my core values. My default core values before realising I had the ability to choose were; don’t fail, security and certainty. These core values kept me in a place of fear, always worried of failing, caught up in needing reassurance – all the time and trying to control my situation wherever possible so I could feel certain and safe. When I chose to make better choices for myself and value love, faith and courage all I needed to do when fear popped up was remind myself that I AM LOVE, I AM FAITH AND I AM COURAGE. And those nasty feelings dissipated. The next emotional encounter was getting feedback on my book. When the emails and Facebook messages started streaming in from readers I was so touched. There are incredibly beautiful stories and experiences people are having from reading my words and connecting my experiences to their own life situation. I felt completely empowered and reassured reading the stream of messages. This emotional switch was divine. But I soon realised that I was once again, relying on others feedback of me to decide how I felt about myself so I needed to come back to my heart and let go of my ego. I chose to be grateful that I could be of service to others but not get caught up in it and use it to validate myself. I am sharing my life post-depression with you because I want you to know that even after the darkness loses its grip over you, you still need to keep reminding yourself of the new you. It is not magic and old thought patterns do not disappear without a trace. You will still encounter life experiences that throw you for a six and you will need to pick yourself up, dust it off and remind yourself of who you are. You will also find yourself in situations where you think you have worked on a damaging story and healed your heart only to realise that there are more residual scars you hadn’t acknowledged yet. Last week I had a confronting realisation that I was still living out an old story in an effort to protect myself from events in my past. My husband and I were at counselling, we had decided to see someone about our challenges around his ego triggering my pain body. When Glen gets frustrated his ego loves to attack his issues with anger and my pain body is terrified of feeling disconnected, so I become incredibly needy and want him to show he still loves me but I do it from such an ugly place of fear that it pushes him further away so it is a vicious cycle and we can get stuck in it for hours on end. We are enlightened enough to know that the topics we fight about are not the problem but needed assistance getting to the bottom of it, so we took the option of having an intermediary sit with us to work on this little speed bump in our relationship. Glen was sharing that it is vital for him to have freedom, he needs to be able to do what he wants and when I voice my opinion he feels controlled. I was sharing that I had a strong desire to be an equal in our marriage and that is why I wanted Glen to consult me before making reasonable sized decisions. The counsellor pushed me further, why is it so important for you to feel like an equal she asked. I couldn’t answer her. I kept telling her I don’t know, I just need to feel like I am equal, that I have a say too. I need to feel heard. But why is this so important to you? she relentlessly asked. I still could not answer so she asked me to close my eyes and tell her where in my body I felt the pain as it was clearly hurting me as I sat with tears rolling down my cheeks completely unsure of why I was so emotional about it. I put one hand on my stomach and another on my heart, I feel it in my heart and stomach I answered. If you were to share one word to show how you feel right now what would it be? She asked. With that I burst into uncontrollable crying. It hit me like a lightening bolt. After being sexually abused as a teen and not having a say in what was happening to me I had made an unconscious decision to never let myself be powerless again. I will always be an equal and I will always have my say. This had become incredibly important to me. I sat in full realisation of my pain body and sobbed to release the emotional blockage for minutes on end. I reflected over all the scenarios in my adult life where I have put my foot down ensuring I was heard, all the times I felt like I was powerless and how I met this feeling with a fierce energy in an effort to never feel it again. I had done so much work on this old trauma. I had worked on my story around men and trust and I had worked on my story of sex = being wanted. But I had no idea that I had another story from this experience that I was still living out. This is going to happen in life, we are always learning about ourselves. We need to keep our hearts open all the time, ready to acknowledge who we are being verse who we truly are. We need to be open and ready to confront a story and choose to wipe it out and recreate our thought processes. If we truly want to continue evolving as individuals and as a collective energy then we have to be ready to face our responsibilities. A beautiful and special client of mine shared a Will Smith video with me the day after this all occurred, ironically, because it was a synchronistic message for her to align with the workshop I ran the week before on this very topic, healing your heart. Little did she know that this was also a synchronistic message for me to feel convicted of this truth I share with you now. As Will Smith puts it, it is not my fault men had taken advantage of me when I was younger but it is my responsibility to ensure I do not let it ruin my life now. It is my responsibility to ensure that I heal my heart and live a life full of love and be aware of limiting beliefs and stories and throw them out the window when they try to take me down. I could choose to point the finger at my husband, you make me feel unheard. I could take the approach of, you make me feel… instead of I make me feel… The truth is I was doing this to myself. I was making myself feel unheard, unvalidated and powerless out of fear of feeling unheard, unvalidated and powerless. Crazy how the pain body and ego work, trying to protect itself against the very thing it keeps causing! As soon as we step back and observe this we are disconnecting from its power and taking control of ourselves once again. The last thought I want to leave you with is this, if you are arguing with a loved one just stop. Stop speaking, stop reacting – just stop everything and ask yourself this; are they really the bad person I am making them out to be in my mind right now? Ask this from your heart. Your ego wants to make them the villain and you the victim, this is much more comfortable for it to deal with but your heart knows better. Stop reacting and letting your emotion take charge and sit in your heart. This person is dear to you and if you reach out from your heart and know that conflicting ideas do not mean disconnection you will diffuse your emotions and theirs within seconds. Try this next time your ego and pain body take charge and watch your true self shine through. Sending love to all who are open to change. You have got this xx  

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