Hurt, hardened, healed, whole

I’ve had three therapy sessions since I’ve been in Scotland. 

Not because I’ve been in Scotland, I hasten to add - I’ve actually been enjoying the novelty of winter in July here on the north, north, north east coast, especially as I was in sweltering hot Portugal before. It’s been nice going for bracing walks and snuggling up to my fleece-covered hot water bottle!

But anyway, back to the therapy.

First of all, I hadn’t planned to have therapy. I’d actually booked three sessions with a life coach - a wonderful woman named Lexie, who mentored me when I did my training to become a life coach many years ago.

I want to get back into coaching others later in the year so I thought it would be a good idea to book myself some sessions in preparation, plus I’d become aware that I was blocking myself in certain areas of my life and wanted to do something to try and shift this.

When I said this to my coach she suggested we do something called Mind Shifting, which I think is a relatively new technique that involves minimal talking on the client’s part, and consists of a cycle of simple questions and visualisations designed to properly process the events that caused the limiting beliefs and rewire your brain so you don’t think them any more.

I’m not really a fan of therapies that involve sitting around moaning about your past for hours on end. When I’ve tried them before they’ve felt great initially, in the way that getting something off your chest often does, but the old damaging stories and subsequent limiting beliefs still remained, reinforced by the retelling, so trying a modality that didn’t involve any talking was very appealing.

In preparation for each session with Lexie I just had to condense what I felt my issue or underlying limiting belief was into one sentence. No need for detailed stories, just a few words that encapsulated the essence of the problem.

Then she worked her magic and took me through the cycle of visualisations, asking me what I saw or felt each time, and at the end of the hour it really felt as if something had shifted.

In my first session we worked on a limiting belief I have around career success.

In my second session we worked on a limiting belief I have about romantic relationships.

This week we had our third and final session together and it was so powerful and moving I wanted to share what happened here, as I have a feeling that what I experienced is universal, and may well resonate with you.

At the start of the session, I shared a limiting belief that was planted in my childhood and, although it’s not something I think about on a daily basis at all, I’m aware of it in the background, like a low level bassline in the soundtrack of my days, and every so often, at key moments, it increases in volume and drowns everything else out.

The belief is that deep down ‘I’m not loveable.’

Lexie asked me to think of the time when this idea first took root.

I saw myself at about eight years old sitting on my bed, being told something that cut me to the bone, and stamped ‘I’m not loveable’ inside of me like the writing inside a stick of rock.

A little later in the session my coach asked me to think of any other key incidents I’d experienced that had reinforced this belief that I wasn’t loveable, and how old I’d been at the time.

I saw myself at 14 experiencing a seismic loss, one I’d end up blaming myself and my lack of ‘loveableness’ for. I also saw something hardening around my heart like a suit of armour to ensure I’d never experience that level of pain again.

Then I saw myself at 26, sobbing on my bathroom floor, having suffered a brutal betrayal. And I could hear the voices of the 8 and 14 year olds inside of me softly whispering, ‘They wouldn’t have done this to you if you were truly loveable.’

My coach asked me to feel what I’d felt back in those moments.

I felt the pain and the sorrow. And then I felt anger, fresh and raw, as I realised that in each one of these instances, I hadn’t been to blame at all.

She then guided me through a process designed to really feel those feelings in my body without getting tangled up in the stories of what happened.

I felt a tight ball of anger in my stomach and a stabbing pain in my heart.

After really feeling those feelings for a while my coach asked me to start bringing love to those parts of myself.

I saw my current self, full of wisdom and love - and randomly accompanied by my lovely dog Max who sadly passed several years ago -  going back in time to my eight-year-old, fourteen-year-old and twenty-six-year old selves and hugging love into each of them.

Max and me

Then suddenly we were all magically transported into a meadow where the four of us held hands and started dancing in a circle, with Max bounding around us barking excitedly.

As we danced faster and faster we grew lighter and lighter until we’d turned into gold (I swear to you that I hadn’t partaken in any substances or ‘plant medicines’ before the session!)

The whole thing was very trippy but it also felt really healing. And when I thought about it afterwards it all made perfect sense.

I’ve read enough to know that when we experience traumas in our life that part of us can become disconnected and frozen forever in the feeling of pain.

And then, as we continue making our way through our lives, those frozen parts become a kind of macabre chorus in our heads, telling us that we aren’t good enough, or loveable enough, or enough enough, as a messed up way of trying to protect ourselves.

But the irony is, of course, that these thoughts don’t protect us at all. At best they hold us back and at worst they hurt us even more.

The wonderful and hugely therapeutic thing about my coaching session this week was that it felt as if the older, wiser, loving me was able to time travel back to those disconnected parts of myself, and - with the help of my lovely dog Max! - I was able to love, and dance, those hurt and hardened parts back inside of me. 

I was able to love myself whole again. It was the sweetest feeling.

And I had the sudden and profound realisation that it’s impossible to be ‘unloveable’ when you’re Love itself. And I truly believe that we’re all Love at heart.

I felt that so deeply when I saw myself dancing with my younger selves.

Love is our truest and freest and most natural state.

But shit happens, and people hurt you, and so we can become disconnected from that true and free and loving way of being.

I wonder if any of this has resonated with you?

That if, while reading, you’ve thought of a limiting belief you know you hold. 

Can you picture who and where you were when the seed of this idea was first planted?

Maybe there have been other times in your life when the belief has been reinforced.

If the older, wiser, loving you could time travel back to those former, younger selves, what would you say to them? What would you do?

It might be interesting to journal about this, or even write your younger self a letter from you now, a letter from Love. Or close your eyes and visualise yourself giving those parts of you a hug.

I hope you find it healing.

Until next week - when I’ll be preparing to travel back to Ukraine for the rest of the summer - here’s to loving ourselves whole again.

Siobhan 

My next novel, The Resistance Bakery, (featuring WW2 spies, the Paris Resistance, forbidden love and mouth-watering pastries!) is available to pre-order on Amazon now and here for just £1.99 / $3.99. HUGE thanks if you do!