Do you ever feel stuck, disconnected or striving to control all the things in your life that make you uncomfortable?
That pretty much sums up the first 30 years of my life! Outwardly, I was achieving so much but on the inside, I never tasted the satisfaction of those achievements. Inside I still felt like the outsider, the reject, the girl who wasn’t good enough.
So often when we feel insecure or weighed down, we try to change our circumstances- we push harder at work, we get tougher on our body, we butt heads with people, we try and control things. Anything to get rid of the feeling of unrest deep down in the stomach.
And none of it works.
So we choose our preferred emotional buffering method and we numb out – shopping, Netflix, overworking, drinking, overeating or even through exercise. These are all attempts to quell the way we are feeling inside by external means.
So the problem never really goes away.
Because you’re still the same you, carrying around the same unconscious habits, emotional reactions and perceptions as before. Not only is the whole cycle painful -It’s draining and causes serious energy leakage!
“I would say about 80 to 90 percent of people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless but because of its dysfunction and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will know this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.” – Eckhart Tolle
Can you believe that?! Most of who we are is just a memorised set of behaviours that functions like a computer program. The pain stems from the disconnect between what is going on inside of us and the way we are conditioned to show up.
Recovering from my own performance mentality and emotional dysregulation (it’s still a work in progress) have taught me how to spot the major roadblocks that keep women from enjoying their most important relationship – the one you have with yourself. Want to know what they are? Here, let me share from the pages of my diary:
- People-pleasing: You need to be right in the eyes of others to be okay. Your confidence and peace of mind are always in someone else’s power.
- Overachieving: You see achievements and accolades as the means of receiving love and worthiness which keeps you stuck in a constant cycle of doing.
- Stuck in your head: You are entirely reliant on logic and constantly get stuck in your head, prone to worry, anxiety and stress, leaving you disconnected and unable to be present in your body or with loved ones.
- Imposter syndrome: You don’t really know who you are (deep down) which leaves you susceptible to bouts of unworthiness and struggles with confidence.
- Purpose Poverty: You want to feel significant, and help people and maybe even change the world- you’re just not sure what your calling is or how to find it.
- Basic Burnout: You don’t know how to look after yourself and push your body to the limits, or build inhabits to keep you healthy.
- Femininity failure: You have a picture in your head of what femininity is meant to be and you feel you have failed to make the grade. You either push down the feeling or you become obsessive about achieving it.
Which one of these do you struggle with? One? More? I had the 1-2-3 combination myself!
Please know, this is not about shaming you. You didn’t even come up with these ideas. The conditioning started when you were just a little girl and entered via the back door (aka your subconscious).
The good news is that with awareness, you can start to change your programming. When I am working with a client, we start by looking at what you really really want in your life, then what is blocking you. From there, we just reverse engineer the thinking, emotional patterns and behaviour to get you there.
Sound simple? It is. But it’s also messy and requires you to surrender things you used to desperately want to control. But the results are SO worth it- more freedom, acceptance and satisfaction. And these changes are not just in your head, this is a connected dynamic, living relationship that you feel in your body too.