My spiritual awakening started when I opened my mind to researching about all kinds of religions and spirituality, but I felt my heart drawn towards one idea from the very beginning: love. How can we begin to love each other more? How do I crack open my heart and begin to fully feel the compassion I see in my sister every day?
My sister, I have now learned, is an empath, and she has taught me so much about caring for the people around you and doing something about it. She has been involved in numerous missions and even learned to crochet in high school, just so she could crochet hundreds of hats for children with cancer. She has always been emotional because she feels the hurts of the people around her and the collective world.
I, however, cannot relate. Either my bipolar meds have shut down some hormones and made me emotionless, or through my numerous heartbreaks and my many manic episodes, I have learned to disassociate. I think it’s the latter. When I met my fiancé, my heart exploded with feeling (and I was still on my meds). I had to learn to let him in. When we disagreed, I would shut down as usual, refusing to speak, and he waited. He told me that he would wait there until I was ready to talk, and he finally broke me. I was terrified of being seen, of having my heart cracked open and bared before someone. I didn’t want anyone to see all of the hurt and sadness I had carried with me from relationship to relationship and friendship to friendship, that lovely baggage everyone talks about. I was too afraid he would leave like everyone else. But it’s just like Brené Brown says, “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they are never weakness.”
I had mistaken my rough exterior and refusal to show my true, hurt self as a form of protection. In reality, it was a barrier between myself and feeling love. In my defense, I had disassociated from difficult situations in the past to protect myself. My ex and I had a toxic relationship, and our fights often turned into yelling matches. I would often be brought to tears by his scarring remarks. He knew exactly how to cut me to pieces with his words. I would cry for hours, scorned deeply by the person I cared about the most. To this day, I am brought to tears, remembering those horrible arguments and how I put on a smile every day and acted as if everything was perfect. I wish I would have asked for help from someone, but my bruises weren’t visible. I just remembering telling myself he was my only chance at happiness. I wish I had valued myself more, but that would come later.
“We no longer get our energy from people; we get it from the environment.”
I have embraced therapy in the last couple of months, not just because I am diagnosed bipolar, but because I need to forgive myself and my abuser, for all that happened in that relationship. I still have triggers today that stemmed from that relationship and other relationships in my past.
And here is where Shadow Work comes in…
Shadow work is the act of looking at all the dark parts of ourselves and integrating them into our whole being. I know I have a lot to work on. I am a people pleaser and have a pride issue where I think that people are always talking about me. It was blown up during my first manic episode. I was so paranoid that I thought everyone was playing a prank on me. I soon realized that people are more concerned with their own lives than mine; it’s just a shame technique. If my shame can’t get to me through my thoughts, a person’s side glance or eye roll will get me there. Even if we’re not talking, I assume it’s about me.
I’m not alone in people pleasing either. Many of my decisions are made not for me but because I want everyone to like me. We all have a certain degree of this desire, whether it’s as small as making sure I put on my makeup before leaving the house or as crippling as never writing because no one will like what you write (this is my latest fear). I have become such a perfectionist in my writing that I didn’t write much of anything for three years because I was too afraid of people’s judgments, when really, I was projecting my own judgments (I am highly critical of myself). I have to remind myself constantly that my fiancé and my family think I am a great writer. For now, that’s all that keeps me writing.
As we find our “flaws,” or traits we have tried to hide, through shadow work we can discover why they’re there. What childhood experiences made us create these damning fears? For myself, as for many others (Rachel Hollis mentions growing up with this in her bestseller, “Girl, Stop Apologizing”), I grew up being rewarded for accomplishments. Now, I believe that my worth comes from accomplishments. I beat myself up when my work isn’t recognized (and that happens almost on a daily basis). I tell people often how much I’ve been doing, like “Oh, I created this website yesterday!” or “I have a new blog post, guys!” I am not trying to boast; I am just trying to be recognized because I crave that attention, that approval.
I went to a shaman last week for a reading, and she told me something I repeat to myself every time this common theme (or pattern) comes up in my mind: We no longer get our energy from people, we get it from our environment. Every day, I repeat to myself that I can pull that energy from the trees, the clouds, the soil. I no longer need others’ approval, and I can create an environment where I don’t crave that exchange anymore. It’s a process but I’m getting there and just putting my thoughts down on paper is fighting that constant voice in my head.
She also saw that I have an upside down tetrahedron, which explains why I often feel spacey and “out of body” and possibly why my feet often feel numb. She put her hands on my legs and told me to feel my feet, to feel gravity. I need grounding. I used disassociation as a coping/survival technique while with my ex. I would “check out” as he was yelling at me and live totally in my head. I am more comfortable now living in my head, rather than feeling. I would rather live in the fantasy dream world I’ve created in my mind than be on this planet having heartfelt exchanges with other people and having to experience true compassion or disappointment.
The shaman explained to me that that is no longer serving me. My energy is escaping my body because my force field is incomplete. As seen in the photo above, she said my tetrahedron shape is meant to look like a triangle. Through grounding, I can consciously align my energy centers and create a complete force field of protection, often depicted in Heart Math photos. I believe it’s called a cardioid.
Although I like living in my head and totally checking out from everything around me, I learned it is not benefiting my energy (this could explain the fatigue I constantly feel). Shadow work is difficult, and we often fight what we are totally. I seems easier to live with the coping mechanisms we’ve developed as protection, but we must remember they are no longer there to serve us. Those events happened in the past. It’s important to find out why we coped in this way and learn to recognize it when triggers bring us back to that place. Slowly, we can choose to let go and choose love over fear.
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