The Importance of Self-Validation and Facing Discomfort [edited transcript from a Facebook live]
When We Don't Validate Ourselves
When we don't validate ourselves, this is how we keep Shadow in Shadow. We're trying to make a change. We're going to this coach, that coach, therapy, or whatever you're doing, but you keep program hopping from one to the other, to the other. A lot of the reasons why you buy programs and don't finish them is because when you start a program, everything in between you and your goals has come to realization, has come to your awareness, right?
The gap between you and it, the life changes and stuff gets bumpy. It really doesn't matter which coach you go to or which therapist or what program you buy. It really doesn't. What matters is that you don't run from what's trying to come into your awareness.
The Reason for Stopping and Starting
A lot of times that starts and then stops is because what comes to your awareness is unpleasant. You don't want to know that you are the source of your discomfort. It may have started in childhood, it may be ancient patterns, but we are the ones who continue it. We are the ones who run when things get uncomfortable.
When we stop and turn around and face the dragon or face the demon, or whatever you want to call it, or have your dragon and use it to face the demons, which are you, then change happens.
The Effectiveness of Different Modalities
The reason why I say it doesn't matter who you study with is there's plenty of research out there that 80-85% of people get better and make progress no matter what modality they use.
So this was looking at therapists, and I got exposed to that in my graduate program, is that, pick the modality you like, pick the teacher you like, that you resonate with the teacher who won't collude with you, the one who will call you on your stuff so that you can wake up and get through the hard stuff to have the permanent transformation.
The Need for Radical Honesty
So, you know, at that time, it was like, be a humanist, be an existentialist, be a rationally emotive behavioral therapist, which is the source of Byron Katie, and so many other mindset things, right? Itt doesn't matter because what people need is someone to help them through exploring radical honesty it requires to wake up to what's really going on. Because until you wake up, you don't have a choice. You don't. In theory, yeah, you have a choice, but if you can't see the choices, do you really have choices? I don't think so. But what makes up the ability to choose is you have to be aware first.
Facing the Discomfort
But if you have moments of awareness and then you shame yourself, harm yourself, beat yourself up, feel like an idiot, do damage to yourself with self-talk, how likely is it do you think that the parts of you that need to be witnessed are gonna come forward? I wouldn't. I hide from myself because I don't want to hear what some parts of myself have to say about things. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear what the problem is, and I don't want to hear my reaction to it.
I don't want to deal with any of it. That's human life. We don't want to deal with it. But then we're stuck because we don't deal with it. We have to deal with the recurring pattern, pattern, pattern, repetition, compulsion over and over and over again, coming back to that Familiar Bad Feeling Place because we won't deal with the discomfort. We'd rather deal with the discomfort that we're familiar with, the devil, you know, right?
Embracing Discomfort for Growth
I'm always telling people, your life is uncomfortable and you are going to be uncomfortable periodically in your life no matter what. Since you know you're going to be uncomfortable, at least go consciously into the discomfort that is going to get you somewhere. That is going to bring an end to those patterns; that's going to make the space for you to allow these parts of you to come into the light, so to speak, be seen, be witnessed, be validated, be integrated, so that then you have that permanent change.
That whole process of those steps is horribly uncomfortable, but isn't it equally horribly uncomfortable to keep finding yourself back in the same place? Different actors wearing different faces, different locations, same underlying theme. It's that same underlying theme, that Familiar Bad Feeling Place, your go-to stress response. However you label that, that will never change if you aren't continually making it safe for yourself to reveal yourself to yourself.
The Kaleidoscope of Self
Like it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? It's you talking to you, little you talking to big you, and all the parts of you. A kaleidoscope is the best way I can think of to describe it, but kaleidoscopes are beautiful little bits of broken glass. And when we are focused on one tiny little piece of broken glass, we don't have the space and the perspective to see the beauty of the big picture and these shadow parts, these parts that are that we don't want to hear. We don't want to hear them. We don't want to see them. Those parts are the ones in the driver's seat.
Using Tools for Self-Discovery
So, I use a number of different tools. Most of you know I use Human Design to help find the shadow parts. I have an old Shadow Blessings course, the very first course I ever made for $49. It's all recorded, do-it-yourself content, but it's all the different tools to find the parts of you that you're not hearing.
But the main point of today is we have to make it safe. I will always have a coach. If I can't find a coach I like, I'll find a therapist because I need help; we all do. And if you're a Projector or have a lot of Open Centers in your Human Design chart, and honestly, for most people, talking things out is a way to find and reveal those things to yourself.
What I Do
Yeah, so I go to coaching every week. I had a session this morning, and I was like, okay, I can identify the exact point I slipped into victim thinking and why I'm feeling powerless in a situation because of someone else's stuff. I don't want to talk about it, but the point is, find that place you keep coming back to and question it. Look at it, feel the discomfort of it. Let your memory show you where it started, have your feelings about it, and then you have the awareness. Then you can make the choices.
Then, you can disassemble the structures that are holding this pattern in place. And then once the structure is released, there's all that space that you need to build a new structure. But if you're exhausted by your own Familiar Bad Feeling Place and the toll it takes on your mental energy and your physical health, if you're exhausted by all of that and ending up headfirst in a box of donuts or whatever you do to yourself, find the help that you like. It doesn't matter if they're this kind of coach or that kind of coach. You really just need witnessing. You really need someone to hold space for you so that you can hold space for yourself so that you can see and make it safe for the parts of you that need to be seen again, so that you can destroy, dissolve, tear apart, take your hands off of it, and it will collapse the structures that hold you in that repetition compulsion.
The Process of Change Sucks
You are, in a sense, trapped there in a loop until it's safe for you to expose, reveal, shine the light on, and bring to conscious awareness what is happening. Then it's highly uncomfortable. But if you get comfortable with being uncomfortable, stay with it; everything falls apart, and then everything can be rebuilt. That pattern decreases or gets longer between the times it repeats, and then it decreases again when it shows up again, or it's gone forever.
If you have a pattern that's not gone forever, chances are the parts of you don't feel safe in revealing themselves to you because of the reaction you have when they do reveal themselves to you and get punished for it.
The Jungian Approach [which can be found wayyy back in ancient texts as well]
Okay, so I was watching; I've learned a lot of Jungian stuff from my graduate program and from different teachers. Cathy Skipper's wonderful Jungian program for menopause and others for Shadow work, pei-menopause, all that kind of stuff.
And Carolyn Lovewell reminded me of it today, but she does Jungian work, as well. Highly recommend her. It was Carolyn Elliot; she changed her last name to Lovewell and she’s the author of Existential Kink. Anyway, she mentioned this morning, "solve et coagula" - to dissolve, which gives you the energy to re-coagulate, to bring it back together. Smash it apart, and let it dissolve. Now you have the energy to consciously see, witness, hold space for yourself, allow the feelings, allow the thoughts. Validation leads to dissolution. Validation has to come first. Otherwise, it's not safe.
The Steps to Permanent Change
Validate, dissolve, acknowledge, witness, hold space for yourself, allow some time, and then the energy is available for you to go, okay, now what? This happened; how do I want to feel about it? What are my options? Make a choice. Go. And then, see, does the pattern repeat itself? Does it happen again? Okay, good news. You get to work it again.
Everyone hates Byron Katie's work at the bottom, where you have to do the turnaround, where you look forward to this thing that you have been resisting happening so that you have the opportunity to work through it again. If you're a Line 5 Profile in Human Design, this is excellent work because people are always projecting on you, and they don't see you clearly. And you have to get comfortable with these things happening where people are not happy with you. And you have to find a way to be okay with that because you're a karmic mirror for them. You're giving back to them. You're giving them an opportunity that usually creates an opportunity for us as well, right?
Final Thoughts
Same spheres, rotational, vibrational proximity. Yeah. So let go, when you have yucky things pop up in your mind, don't run from them. When you're praying for a pattern to stop, the answer to the prayer usually is not what you want. If you want a pattern to stop, you have to make it safe.
So make it safe. Recognize if a pattern is happening; you can 100% bet it's happening because of a hidden part, right? So you can consciously say, "I recognize that this Familiar Bad Feeling Place is here again, which means that some part of me needs some time and attention and some love." Okay, part of me, you can journal this, you can talk it out. You can go to therapy and find a coach. And then the work is, where am I doing that? Where's that coming from? What's the essence? What's the bottom line feeling?
Which is usually just one word: helpless, powerless, trapped, stuck. It's usually just one word. So when you find that you explore the history. "Where did I first feel that?" So you can explore that, and then you can validate the feelings, validate the anger. You may want to act outwardly, you may turn it all inwardly, but awareness won't come until it's safe. Awareness will not come fully and stay fully present in your head so that you can work with it if you beat yourself up over it, if you allow yourself to shame yourself over it.
I hope this makes sense. Validation comes before dissolution. Validation leads to greater awareness, and greater awareness is uncomfortable, but that repeating pattern is equally, if not more, uncomfortable. So to stop the pattern, wake up, make it safe, feel it, validate it, become aware of it, and then your options become much broader. And then you have the experience of being radically honest with yourself, radically responsible for your own life. You have the energy available then to make the best choice for you.
XO,
LMW
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[Head, Heart, and Hips SOMATIC WRITING]
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