One of the greatest turning points in my life was in a moment of complete bewilderment. You know that stunned feeling of mind-numbing disbelief. Everything about life was murky and dark, my unmanageable life had taken another unexpected flip out and I knew my relationship was beyond repair. I had given it all I believed possible and I had totally lost myself along the way.
It was a head in my hands, slump of defeat. I didn’t have the energy to hold all my unexamined feelings of failure down any longer. I wanted to wrap myself up in a blanket, lie on the floor and wait until the storm passed. ⠀ Have you ever discovered yourself in an all too familiar place and wondered how did it get to this, again? It could be your relationship to finances, substances, food, entertainment, drama, social media or other people. The nature of this relationship is controlling and demanding. You can move house, get a new job, enjoy the company of different friends and still be having the same internal struggles with addictive behaviours and thoughts. My way of living had left me numb in my body and noisy in my head.
Can you identify with being so busy and exhausted with looking after others that there’s nothing left for you? You have a sense that somewhere on the journey you lost contact with yourself. Â
⠀ You cannot heal what you refuse to acknowledge. I was stuck in a destructive cycle because of my complete denial of my emotions. I was addicted to changing the circumstances around me despite feeling trapped and powerless. Have you ever felt that stuck? My relationship with myself and the patterns of my limiting beliefs were not providing me with a strong secure scaffold to build a life of happiness. ⠀ It took raw courage and support from mentors to step outside the protective walls of denial. The darkness of my soul was a calling for me to unravel the untruths that held me captive. I was gutted and often confused with emotional overwhelm. There was no quick fix ‘aha’ insight, the life-saving ‘goodreads.com quotes’ made no difference to my heavy-heartedness. Nothing on the ‘outside’ provided me with the key to unlock a pain that was surfacing from the fragments of my childhood memories. My body was addicted to the emotions of loss and fear. I craved emotional freedom and leaned into the tools for stress reduction to re-wire my brain and disconnect the circuits of looping feelings.
My transformation was a process that took me to a lonely landscape of childhood adversity. I discovered my main problem was my perception and fear of separation. I took decisive action, after a whole lot of confusion, to find a place of safety, growth and healing. My experience reminds me that the journey inwards was initiated by tough times. The paradox became clear: the moment I took responsibility for everything that was happening in the storm that was my life, was the moment I was empowered to change my life.
It was a conscious choice to own my story and learn my lessons.
I took ownership of my role in the mess that was my life. Only at that point did I have the power to change anything. The person that most required my love and understanding was me. My personal metamorphosis was clunky, there was nothing elegant in the way I changed my perception of my ‘sense of self.’ Mindful awareness of the blocks that held me back was an unfolding that required patience. It’s like peeling away the layers of the onion. ⠀ Are you ready to do the work of finding you and learning how to rise above the confines of limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging behaviours? This might be the toughest journey of your life so far but it will be worth it! There is far too much at risk to resist letting go of the old way of turning up in your life. Transformation implies compassion and a shift in the way you view yourself.
Stand in front of that ‘skinny mirror’ with your hands on your hips, give yourself an empowering ‘kick butt and fly’ stance and live your next chapter of your brilliant story fully heart-connected to the whispers of your wildly intuitive soul’s song! As you celebrate the wonder and miracle of who you are, you will give permission to those you love to show up in a new way too.
Sue Anne Fuller