Healing is a Multilayered Journey

Hello my fellow healers!!

It’s been some time since I have had a chance to write.  I have been working, expanding my practice in both locations, maintaining and developing new relationships in my personal life, all the while continuing my own healing journey.  Many of you know that I have an affinity with uncovering, recognizing, and healing inner child wounds that manifests itself in many ways and I have made it no secret that I am on a journey of healing my own.  I believe in being truthful and transparent about my own struggles as I heal for many reasons; however, the main reason is to let you know that although I am a therapist, I am a fallible human first and foremost.  Because of this, I rely heavily on my faith to get me through many challenging situations as well.  I identify as a practicing Christian for those who do not know.

Having said all that, 2024 has been a true journey that has challenged and stretched my faith and trust in God.  One of the scriptures that I have been meditating on lately is Luke 1:45 (NKJV) which says, “Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord”. One of my inner child wounds continues to center around trust and belief.  Because I have had a plethora of experiences of being abandoned, rejected and/or being disappointed by people who gave their word but saw no need to keep it.  These people were very casual and cavalier with me and that is something that was a very real issue for me.  Side note: from this point forward, I will be speaking of this particular wound in the past tense, as I have recently healed from it and you will see how.

But back to the subject at hand.  2024 has challenged me with negative self-talk, cognitive dissonance, and questioning what God truly has for me. At the same time, I am getting close to entering another decade of life throwing me into another life cycle phase.  In July, I will be entering my last year of my 40’s and as I do my review, life came up lacking to say the least.

Let me provide a bit of clarity on some of the terms I have used: cognitive dissonance in a nutshell is holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time.  What that looked like for me was believing that I could be a successful group practice owner with multiple locations and at the same time questioning if it was possible for me.  Coined by Erik Erikson, a life cycle phase is a series of psychological developmental phases that presents new challenges or struggles as we grow with age.  These life cycle phases occur roughly every decade in life and question who you are as a person, priorities, significance, etc. 

The negative self-talk that went into alignment with the cognitive dissonance and the questioning went a little like this, “are you sure you should be building this practice”? “What do you think you’re doing and why are you when you don’t know anyone else who is doing this”?  “Why don’t you go back to corporate America and get a six figure job with benefits because this is too hard for you”.  At the same time, I am meditating on this scripture and seeking God through prayer and all I hear is….radio silence.  I mean the level of crickets I heard was astounding!! I am not saying that God was not talking, what I am saying is I was not hearing Him because the level of anxious overthinking I began to do was heavy.  Because of that, I was leaning on my own understanding without seeking him to direct my path.  Yes, I talk to God through prayer every morning, however, instead of truly casting my cares upon Him, I allowed my human nature to take over and sabotage myself.  I hesitated in posting the positions I needed to hire for because I wasn’t confident in thinking that a clinician would want to contract with me for employment, I was slow to respond to potential clients and I began to talk myself out of things I wanted to do for myself because I didn’t feel I’d performed enough to warrant it, whatever IT was.  This went on for some months however, where my healing began was when I challenged my alignment with negative self-talk.  These are the steps I took:

1.    I had to revisit one of the original offenses from my childhood.

a.   I went back to the age of seven where I had one of my first experiences with rejection and disappointment that I can remember. 

b.   I had to sit with my seven-year-old self by remembering:

               i.    what I was going through at that age,

                ii.    what my world was like

                iii.    what I wanted to happen at that time that did not

                iv.    Then I had to give myself what I needed which was being seen and acknowledged.

What did this look like? I posted the positions I needed to post and I said yes to the things I wanted for myself and I affirmed myself by step two.

2.   Remind myself of the things that God had spoken to me.

a.   I asked God to remind me of the promises He made to me.

b.   I began to read old journals that I’d written various promises.

c.    Had conversations with friends that remembered things I had not.

d.   I wrote them down and continue to do so.

3.   I reframed the negative thoughts.

a.   Instead of agreeing with the negative, I spoke and wrote what was real and true.

b.   I gathered scriptures that spoke to and reinforced what was real and true (like an affirmation)

c.    I also challenged myself on why I allowed myself to think such negative thoughts which caused me to start back at number one and revisit another experience and the age at which I remember experiencing it.

If you don’t take anything else from this post, please take this; healing is a continuous journey that we are on for the rest of our lives.  It’s not to be thought of as a burden but a gift of true freedom by releasing ourselves to build and nurture the life we say we really want.  Let’s face it, no one will give us the life we want because it will never magically appear.  If we are consistent with ourselves by stepping outside of ourselves and the unhealthy behavioral patterns we were raised in and with, we can create the healthy patterns that can sustain us on this healing journey.