Archive for My Healing Story
How I Got Through A Huge Healing/Trauma Response
Posted by: | CommentsLast week, I attended three days of an online business retreat that I thought, at the time, was fantastic.
I experienced transformation. I got ideas. I connected with people.
And it threw me into a massive 4-day healing response.
It was, apparently, too much, too fast.
Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash
The next day after the retreat, I was the usual Sunday tired.
On Monday, however, I was in pain. More stress hit when I had to drive my husband to a dental appointment in the teeming rain, where I couldn’t see in front of me and I was flanked by trucks also navigating construction barrels on the two highways I traversed.
Tuesday the pain got worse. It seemed to move all around my body. (I learned from a trauma expert that this can be a sign of trauma—trapped energy stored in the body.) I slept poorly that night.
Wednesday I could barely move, I was so tired and in pain. I rescheduled a client appointment–something I think I’ve only done two or three times in the past 13 years of coaching. (I’m nothing if not dependable!)
Hidden Stressors-Part Two
Posted by: | CommentsIn a previous post I wrote about how my symptoms were beginning to flare, and how I prayed and got some insights into why.
The first was that I wasn’t honoring my sensitive nature enough, i.e. that I have the inborn trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity: a nervous system that’s more finely tuned than 80% of the population. That makes me a Highly Sensitive Person.
The second insight was related to the first, but with more of an emphasis on recovery: Your nervous system needs to recover from the traumas you’ve been through.
I have known for a while now that Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) characterized my past, ever since I came across Dr. Jonice Webb’s excellent books, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect and Running on Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships with Your Partner, Your Parents and Your Children. (You can take the CEN questionnaire on my Free Tools page.)
I believed that I had overcome it all by now, between The Healing Codes and some therapy.
However, when my mother died and I had to deal with settling her estate with a co-executor (sister-in-law), I saw just what my family of origin really was like. A plethora of traumas revealed themselves—though a few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought of them as traumas.
That’s the thing—what our nervous system interprets as trauma might not be what our adult minds interpret as trauma. Read More→
Why Your Issues Might Not Even Really Be Yours
Posted by: | CommentsI was speaking to a client the other day, and she brought up the question of past lives.
I wrote about that, here. I do not believe in past lives, but I do think that it’s possible that people can access generational memories, which I believe are stored in the information energy pattern in the DNA that gets passed down.
There is more and more scientific knowledge to back this up. My favorite experiment is about how mice exposed to cherry blossom scent while being shocked passed down the fear to subsequent generations. You can read about that from any of the articles here.
So some of our stuff may not even be ours, or it wasn’t ours originally, but because we were born with the “filter” of that passed-down trauma, we might start to interpret our own experiences through that lens. Thus the issue then becomes our own. And that may be why the generations rarely evolve and get better; they more usually devolve from the accumulation of sins and these negative patterns and “programming.”
Unless someone breaks the pattern.
That someone can be you.
If you have a background that is less than ideal in any way (who doesn’t?), remember you can break the cycle. You always have the ability to choose. You can break free from any negative family pattern and create a whole new pattern.
You do that by healing yourself.
How do I know this to be true? Because my life proves it.
I didn’t know, until I went through the 17-month ordeal of attempting to settle my mother’s estate as co-executor, just how negative and damaging the family patterns were. Oh, I could see how the patterns have shown up in my siblings’ families, but I escaped it, right? I employed what one of my counselors called “the geographic solution”–I moved away 1000 miles right after college, and rarely looked back.
I made different choices in life than my siblings and my parents. And I have managed, by God’s grace (I do not say that lightly at all), to have stayed married to a wonderful man for 42 years; reared two children who are leading productive lives (despite what they inherited from their parents—more on that later); and enjoyed a wonderful, interesting and productive career.
Settling the estate, however, brought me face to face with what has not yet healed.
I am so very thankful that, before my mother died in November 2020, I had already developed additional tools, beyond The Healing Codes, that helped me not only stay relatively healthy despite the stress, but to also recognize and heal the hidden wounds that were uncovered.
And, beyond healing, to transform and become aligned with my divine design. To have an inner knowing that I am on the right path for me, and a peace that as I walk Next Clear Step by Next Clear Step, exactly the right things will unfold for me to live out my unique purpose in life.
If this stirs something in your soul . . . if you long to heal from past patterns and align with your divine design so that you can also experience that sense of peace, purpose, and fulfillment, I invite you to check out my new Align with Your Divine Design program and fill out a Clarity Questionnaire. Then we’ll hop on a call to see if either of these programs is a fit.
Next time, I’ll show you how to pass on your healing to others. It starts with you committing to your own healing and transformation.
Impossible Relationship Blocks
Posted by: | CommentsHave you ever been in a relationship in which you want to love the other person, but you and they are coming from such different places, that all you can do is set a firm boundary and try not to get sucked in to all the drama or manipulation or dysfunction?
In such a relationship, often the other person wants something from you, and will resort to all sorts of manipulation tactics to get it. Some examples might be:
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guilt-tripping and attempting to pull you into the Dreaded Drama Triangle by trying to make you the rescuer or perpetrator of their victimhood
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gaslighting, where they ignore, distort or twist your words, actions or intentions to something other than you meant
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playing on and exploiting your generous or compassionate nature, knowing that you want to think of yourself in these ways so will do what they want to keep up your image of yourself.
Having dealt with a few of these relationships in my life has been an interesting experience. (By the way, as I’ve healed and Aligned more and more with my Divine Design, there have been fewer such relationships in my life. That can be true for you, too.)
Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash
In these unhealthy relationships, I saw all my “buttons” that were being pushed, and that awareness was actually a gift. It was an invitation to more transformation and growth. Self-awareness led to consciously healing the issues, with more of a sense of freedom and personal empowerment as a result.
I want to say a special word to you if you were born with the trait of High Sensitivity. (If you’re not sure, go here to find out more and take the quiz.)
We who are Highly Sensitive seem prone to attracting dysfunctional people. I think there might be some kind of invisible energetic radar that certain people like narcissists and predators pick up on. They can somehow sense the kind-hearted, generous people who will give anyone the shirt off their back.
It was so very helpful for me to become aware of this dynamic. It has led to a lot of discomfort, since I’m not used to being as “hard-nosed” as I’ve had to be in dealing with these kinds of relationships. I’ve had to contend with guilt, judgment (from the other person who knows this is one of my buttons, as well as myself), and the cognitive dissonance of having to “turn off” some of my best traits (like compassion) when I recognized the other person’s attempts to exploit them.
I’ve had to initiate some uncomfortable conversations in which I confronted the person with truths they didn’t want to hear, and who would then berate me to others for it.
And I’ve had to remind myself a lot of the wonderful 12 words I think God gave me awhile ago to deal with my guilt over not rescuing people from their own folly: “You must allow others the dignity of living with their choices.”
I’m also grateful for such painful relationship experiences because I think they help me understand perhaps a bit of what God might feel toward us, his children.
God longs for a close relationship with us. Too often, our distorted thinking and attempts to make him be what we want him to be, rather than who he truly is, make a relationship impossible. Yes, God can do anything. But he won’t do this: he won’t violate our free will. He himself allows each of us “the dignity of living with our choices.”
Even if that choice is to live in eternity without him.
I guess God prizes freedom that much.
(Do we?)
If you too would like to transform some old negative patterns and Align with Your Divine DesignTM , check out my coaching at HealingCodesCoaching.com.
The Inspiring Story Behind The Healing Code Book
Posted by: | CommentsEvery Labor Day weekend it hits me: If what happened on that weekend in 2007 hadn’t happened . . .
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you wouldn’t be reading this blog.
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The Healing Code book might never have been published.
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you and thousands, perhaps millions of others might never have heard of The Healing Codes.
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and thousands and thousands of people may not have been healed.
What transpired on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, 2007 set off a chain reaction that led to all these things . . . and more.
It showed me how seemingly terrible incidents can lead to much good.
So what happened back in 2007 on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend? Read More→
What 43 Hours Without Power Showed Me . . .
Posted by: | Comments
This week we lost power for almost 2 days.
CC BY-NC by sjrankin
The outside temperature was 90°F/33°C, with a dew point of 73°F. (I have learned that the dew point is a better indicator of humidity than “relative humidity,” and anything over 60°F is uncomfortable. I haven’t seen a dew point much higher than 73°F here, so this was nearly unbearable.)
On top of that, the night before the power loss, our kitchen faucet handle was about to break off. I called at least eight potential handymen (before we lost power). Only two got back to me. One said he could come the next day to fix it at 5pm, but then texted me at that time saying he couldn’t make it after all. At 5pm the faucet handle broke off completely. Two and a half hours later, with a lot of dishes to be washed from dinner, the power went out.
It reminded me of the children’s story I used to read to my kids: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.
For us, it was two days.
I can’t honestly say it was all terrible, horrible, or no good, though. Very bad, yes. But here’s how God helped me, and what I discovered about alignment, intuition and, surprisingly, electricity and sleep.
Hunting for the Graces
Because of what I had learned about how gratitude fosters resilience, I kept looking for things to be grateful for.
First: the storms that knocked down trees and power lines did not dump a lot of rain. With the power out, the sump pump would not have worked. Had it rained heavily, the basement could have flooded. That potential disaster did not happen, despite the storms that hit both nights our power was out.
Second: A handyman came that first morning after we went dark. He installed the new faucet my husband bought the night before. He did it in the dark kitchen, with a flashlight (bless his heart!). He left his phone and a screwdriver behind because it was so dark he couldn’t see that he’d set it down. Soon enough, we had a functional kitchen, which lessened the stress a little.
Third: A neighbor said we could put our frozen food in his freezer.
Fourth: We have a gas stove, so I could cook.
Intuition
As soon as we lost power, I went up to shut down the computer correctly. I have a BackUp Universal Power Source that is a surge protector and a battery backup. It allows your computer and peripherals to keep going in a power failure until you can shut it down properly.
Here’s where the intuition part comes in. Read More→
When God Flips the Switch
Posted by: | CommentsThe voicemail was less than two minutes long. It was intended to hurt and to arouse guilt and fear.
For a few hours, it succeeded. In that time I felt, thought, and prayed my way through it all.
Then God stepped in and “flipped the switch,” giving me the miracle of several shifts in perspective.
(I wrote before about how we can deliberately “flip the switch” from positive to negative. But sometimes we need God to do it, because we don’t know how or we’re too upset to remember to do it. That’s the time to pray and ask God to open your eyes to a different way of seeing.) Read More→
Flip the Switch
Posted by: | CommentsI was talking to my friend the other day, telling her about the two current big stressors in my life.
With one, there is an end in sight, though when exactly that will come about is uncertain.
With the other, there is no end, at least not a good one, unless some miracle happens. (Which I believe is entirely possible.)
I told my friend that what produces the most anxiety is that I never know what’s going to happen–when some unexpected thing concerning either of these two things will hit me. Seems like I’m derailed daily by things out of my control.
But then I remembered some of the unexpected good things that happened to me in the past week. And it hit me: Instead of living in dread of the unexpected bad things, I could “flip the switch.”
CC BY-SA by Marcus Q
Many mornings these days I’d wake up feeling anxious, with that sense of dread over “what might I be hit with today?” Some of it is no doubt “emotional inflammation“: me as a Highly Sensitive empath picking up on “what’s in the air.” But what if I could counter the automatic response with something deliberate?
What if I intentionally switched the “I wonder what will hit me today?” to, “I wonder what unexpected good thing will happen today?”
(You may recall that I wrote about how the same circuit in the brain where anxiety and fear reside, curiosity also dwells. You can’t be anxious and curious at the same time.)
Intentionally activating curiosity, and anticipating that good things will happen unexpectedly, totally shifted things for me. I become very excited about the day. My mood, my creativity and productivity skyrocket.
I’ve already been in the habit of ending the day by looking back at what went well, keeping a “gifts journal.” It is a good way to end the day.
This new practice provides a great way to begin the day as well. It’s done wonders to decrease anxiety levels.
It’s not just “positive thinking,” either. It’s based on truth and initiates a shift in perspective. God does give us many gifts in a day, if only we open our eyes to see and receive them. (I published a whole book on this, Abundant Gifts.)
Try it, I think you’ll really like it!
And if you’d like a custom Healing Code and some coaching to help you heal those things that stress you, and integrate this practice into your life, check out my coaching packages at HealingCodesCoaching.com. Also my Abundant Gifts blog, where you can find instructions on how to keep a “gifts journal” and a couple of ways to do it.
The Nature of Things
Posted by: | CommentsI planted my flowers and plants a few weeks ago, and I’m amazed at how they have grown so quickly.
This was a tiny parsley plant just a few weeks ago.
As I look at how life busts out all over every spring, I’m struck by this truth:
It’s the nature of things to grow.
When connected to the Source of Life, as nature is, what happens is growth. And as you get more in touch with that Source of Life by healing the heart issues that block this flow of Life, growth is inevitable.
As inevitable and natural as an apple tree producing apples once the blossoms have been pollinated.
However, there’s another thing about “the nature of things.”
That is: it’s the nature of things to fall apart as well.
This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Everything decays. Disorder always increases.
Without a gardener to tend the weeds in the garden, enrich the soil, water as needed, the weeds tend to take over. Or the other plants take over, as sadly happened in this garden.
Yes, things grow, but they need to be tended to reach their full potential.
And so, of course, do we. We need to expend energy to restore order, create beauty, and foster growth.
The key to your growth is commitment to “tending your garden.”
Then growth will happen naturally. You can’t force the growth, you need only create the conditions for growth to happen naturally.
Doing Healing Codes regularly, praying often about everything—these two things are the cornerstone of my own healing and growth.
When someone confronts me about how I’ve hurt them, I need to acknowledge that “weed” and pull it out by the roots. This is painful, but when I do, I receive the blessing—and so does the other person. There is now space for new growth to happen.
How well are you “tending to your garden” these days?
Do you want it to look like this:
Or this?
It’s your choice.
And if you’d like some help in “tending your garden,” check out my coaching packages at HealingCodesCoaching.com.
