I just completed leading the “Crystallize Your Vision®” retreat. It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to do the next one this fall! Retreats where I lead you in a process where we go deep to create our future self and get clarity on our dreams are an amazing way to rejuvenate and get excited about the goals we are working on and create the life we want to be living. However if you find that despite amazing peak experiences and enlightening retreats you continue to go back to the same place and sabotage yourself in the same ways, if you find yourself going over the same hurtful past experiences, if you still feel the same feelings of shame, guilt and regret haunting you, then it may be time to do a deep cleaning of your basement and rebuilding of your foundation.
What am I talking about? I am talking about healing the adverse childhood experiences where you got stuck growing emotionally. I am taking about healing the dark places that lurk beneath the pretty shiny surface. I am talking about building that strong foundation that everything else rests upon.
I used to be someone that went from retreat to retreat and learned skill after skill but seemed to continue to stay in the same place year after year. I would make a little bit of progress, discover more about myself but the big leap eluded me. I was not in a place where I could take the risks necessary to be living the life that I truly wanted. I continued to work for others, while I longed to work for myself. The voice of my ego would tell me, “this is a very good job, I can’t complain,” “I have such great benefits,” “how will my family make it without this job.” This was the voice that wanted to keep me confined to my small box. The voice that wanted to keep the status quo because it was safe. I did not yet have a strong enough foundation to take the ultimate risk for me, which was starting out on my own without a safe government job to give me a feeling of security and self-esteem.
I Have a Process to Deal with the Overwhelm
It was through the power of doing Amate Growth Work (AGW), that I was able to unleash the self-healing process that we all possess. AGW is the only program I have come across that effectively teaches us how to heal our own inner wounds and how to continue the process in the future.
Once you have healed the Inner Self, thoughts of unhealed fear, guilt and shame no longer come to mind. The memories begin to fade and they no longer have an emotional charge to them. The deep healing brings you a sense of peace and stability that no matter what comes my way, I can handle it. I may feel pain and overwhelm, but I have a process for handling it. I don’t have the concern of who can I trust? I trust myself.
I can focus on and effectively deal with the challenges of today because unhealed events of the past are no longer stealing my vitality and life force. We can learn so many techniques and enjoy peak experiences, but like a fancy facade that cannot cover up structural problems in the foundation of a home, these will fail us. When there is a deep dark wound of shame about our very nature of who we are, that wound literally steals our energy. One way this will show up is self-sabotage. Self-sabotage such as procrastination or continuing to go to the next amazing experience, but without implementing any action in between. That feeling that we need to get the next degree or learn the next skill or take the next workshop before we can step into actually doing something.
I spent years in this place. I continued to learn more and did my work for free, but I went around in circles as to why I could not just step out and start doing my work. Deep down I was afraid. I did not think I had much to offer and most of all I did not think that I could handle it if something went wrong. Now that I have learned how to take care of myself I can go through all kinds of challenges to my ego, and challenges from my ego, and I still know that I can count on myself to deliver. I can also count on myself for self-soothing when things do not go my way. I can do this without blaming others and causing damage to them. I know how to retreat and take time to take care of myself. I know how to honor my true nature.
You Can Indeed Change the Past
It is not true that you cannot change the past. I tell clients: your emotional brain cannot tell time. You precisely can heal the past in the present. The process is called Inner Work and there is nothing like it for healing childhood traumas.
In an article, called Emotional Memory Management: Positive Control Over Your Memory, Joseph M. Carver, Ph.D. talks about how our brain does not know if an event is real or imagined.
Our brain creates files out of information from our senses or from our thoughts. For example, when you are on vacation you experience certain feelings of joy associated with it. Looking at photographs of that vacation will also bring up those feelings of joy, though you are not actually there. Your brain only reacts to the file or image. It does not matter how the file or image got there: by actually being there, by a thought of being there or by a photograph of being there. Since our brain cannot tell imagined from real files, we can actually change our past and create it the way we would have wanted it to be. It is this process that we learn how to do in Amate Growth Work. This process is what heals the traumas and solidifies the foundation we stand on. It also feels really good!
Going through the AGW healing process does not mean that we never will face another emotional challenge again. Quite the contrary, we are now ready to grow more and more, because we are unstuck. We have the confidence to continue to grow, knowing that we are there to pick ourselves up and care for ourselves from a place of great strength that no one can shake.
So make sure you are not making decisions out of deep seated fears or avoidance of hurt and inconvenience. Make sure you are not continuously chasing the next bright shiny thing instead of staying focused. Stay focused on one path and see it through, rather than keep switching in hopes of finding the perfect one, and if old fears and doubts surface, take the time to do the deep work of cleaning out your basement and solidifying your foundation. I am here to help you every step of the way. Call me to set up an assessment of what is the one big block still in your way, Dr. Eva A. Malanowski 303-242-7824, drevam@icloud.com
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