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You Make Sense
Processing Endings and Making Space for New Beginnings
00:44:07
In this episode of You Make Sense, Sarah explores the profound shifts that occur as we heal—both within ourselves and in our relationships. She delves into the challenges of evolving while being in partnerships, the difficulty of letting go when growth outpaces connection, and the natural distance that can emerge between those on different healing journeys. Sarah also answers listener questions about navigating major life transitions. From unfulfilling marriages and moving forward when a partner is unwilling to grow, to forgiveness and releasing resentment following a betrayal, these questions spark a powerful conversation about trauma, self-protection, and reclaiming life after pain.
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Sarah
Hi, I'm Sarah, and welcome to youo Makesense. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner, an expert on trauma resolution, attachment parts work, and nervous system regulation. This podcast is a manual to understanding your human experience so that you can navigate the world with freedom, ease, empowerment, and create the life that you desire. Remember, you make sense all parts always. So, in this episode, we're going to talk about the experience of endings, whether that's the ending of a relationship, a job, a friendship, or something else in our lives that's coming to a close or transitioning. And I think for so many of us, we can feel like an ending means that that thing was a failure. And our culture really sends us that message in a pretty profound way. I mean, think about this. When a marriage is, you know, 30 years long or 40 years long, people generally just celebrate it, right? They say, well, congratulations, that's amazing, without actually inquiring, well, was the marriage amazing, or was it an experience where there was a lot of trauma or abuse or neither person was happy? But we weren't able to look at the challenges, and we weren't able to leave because we felt too afraid to leave. So we just stayed in the thing. Or maybe someone's been at a company for, you know, a decade and, you know, that's celebrated like, wow, what a loyal person you are. But maybe I stayed in that job because my parts didn't feel safe enough with me to actually take the risk and step into my purpose. So, of course, something lasting for a long period of time can certainly be a thing to celebrate. But I think that our culture as a whole just kind of automatically and reflexively celebrates something that lasts, Lasts a long time, rather than inquiring about if it was actually something, something good and healthy and worth celebrating. Whereas we tend to, societally speaking, look at things that end as a failure. So in this episode, we're going to talk about the process of healing, and as we heal, things are going to change. It's actually not possible for things not to change as we heal. Think about, like a. I know this. This. This metaphor may be overused, but a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, the caterpillar actually dissolves and. And its DNA changes, and then it becomes this new creature. And as we heal, that's sort of what's happening to us and around us, and our experience of the world shifts. I wouldn't say, per se that we're becoming anything. We're coming back to who we actually are. And that means as we change internally, our external world is Going to have to change, too. And change is a natural part of existence. You know, everything in nature is constantly changing with seasons, right? Everything is shifting and changing. And nature doesn't resist change the way that us humans do, right? Nature just allows the natural unfolding of things, and it also allows that unfolding to happen at the pace that it's meant to. And so the leaves on a tree don't, you know, say, I'm not going to fall to the earth. I want to be on this tree forever. That leaf says, I'm excited to become something new, to compost into soil. And then it gets to be a whole new thing and experience existence in a different way. And so I think that if we can come into change from this place, it will really allow us to step into. Further into the life we're desiring with ease, of course, and will allow us to let go of things that aren't for us. Now, the only way for us to really allow for that kind of change that I just named in nature is if we have an internal sense of connectivity and safety inside of ourselves. If we don't have that internal safety, then change can feel like danger. But the more that we feel safe inside, the more that change is not something that's dangerous at all, but instead it's an invitation into the beautiful unknown and possibility that is beyond what's happening right now. And so there's a lot of beautiful things that happen as we heal and we come into this internal safety. Surrender being one thing, but allowing or relinquishing control and letting life do its thing is a really big part of that, too. And that, again, means accepting and experiencing change. Human beings, one of the things I think we ignore the most is the fact that we're going to leave these bodies that we're currently inhabiting. And we don't talk about that in our culture very often. And I think it's because we're so afraid of it. The afraid of the thing that we don't know, afraid of the thing that we actually don't have control over. And so the same goes with the endings that are constantly wanting to happen in our lives. And I really mean that the endings are wanting to happen. They are really, really trying to get our attention so that we will listen. Because as we allow change, it allows us to grow and become more of ourselves and step further into the life we are here to live. So as we heal, the way that we relate to ourselves begins to change. And that means that the way we relate to the world changes as well, and this includes the roles we play in the world. So if I, historically speaking, was, you know, a workaholic and I was going, going, going all of the time, because that's how I gained a sense of worthiness and love. Well, when I actually feel an internal sense of love and worthiness, I no longer have to do this external thing to gain a FL sense of love. And that means there's going to be a change or ending to how I actually navigate stepping towards my purpose. And it doesn't mean I'm going to stop stepping towards it, but that striving or avoiding of the other things in life that will fulfill me is going to shift. And so the more that we heal and our internal landscape changes and we are in a foundation of internal safety, the less I have to do things or be in things or avoid things that, that, that externally that are giving me a sense of safety when I engage in them or don't engage in them. And so again, healing, of course, is an inside job, but it then changes everything outside of us, including our relationship with others. So as we heal, we begin to reconnect to our own internal desires and our needs. Many of us have been disconnected from those things because we had to be overly focused on others to ensure our saf, because perhaps our needs were chronically not met. So we learned how to disconnect from them entirely. And as we heal, we come back into both of those things, what my needs are and the deep desires that I have. So as we begin to heal, there are a lot of things that occur. And before the process of, you know, going down the road of healing, of course we're going to be in relational dynamics. So let's say that you're in a marriage or a partnership that you got into before you started healing. Well, you get into that relationship with an unwritten contract. And that means that we're coming together. And there are certain rules in the relational dynamic in order to make it function. So we each show up with different roles that we play, and in order for the relationship to work, we both have to play those roles. For example, I might show up in a relationship, and I did actually, before I started my healing journey, and I had no needs, and I was a caretaker and, and that gave me a sense of fulfillment, a sense of love, a sense of control. So there were secondary benefits to me having that role. And then that meant that I found, or not often always found people to, to do that dance with. So I found people who took up a lot more space than me. Who had all of the needs, whom I could be invisible with. And together we made this dynamic work. But the thing is, the more that, that we start healing and the more that I started to heal, what happens is we begin to make contact with our truth, our needs and our limits. So what is actually true for me and, and what am I experiencing inside? So instead focusing on your reality, I'm no focused on my reality. And I'm also connecting into what I actually need based on that reality, what I need from myself that I'm now not giving all of my energy to you, I'm going to give some energy to me and do things that nourish me and maybe I start having hobbies and I'm spending some time solo instead of just being with you. And so that's really shifting what's happening with my energy. And it's also shifting my expectation of the other as I come into having needs. So now instead of, you know, just meeting your needs, I am needing that other person to actually step up. And then I have limits, right? That's, that's a part of having boundaries. So there are things that I'm saying actually I'm not okay with this anymore or you can't speak to me in this way, or I'm not okay with over giving anymore to you. So as you can see here, what's actually happening is I am changing the unwritten contract in that relationship. And so the ripple out effect of my healing and me coming into my needs and my truth and my limits is that that relational container is going to have to change. And I think, you know, oftentimes in the healing journey this process of change isn't really talked about. And it can leave us feeling really confused or feeling like the relationship has to end altogether. And that most certainly isn't true. But what does have to happen is the dynamic has to shift. Because you know, in many ways, just like you can't unse see what you see, you can't unknow what you know and you can't unheal what you heal. So once I come into all of these things and I am now in my body, the options are to be chronically with the embodied experience of not having my needs met or to get them met. And our toleration, and this goes into the next point, our toleration for suffering actually goes down as we heal. So you might find yourself seeming like you're a more sensitive person. And the truth is human beings are exquisitely sensitive creatures, really all animals are. And the more you have healed, the more you're in your body. And it means you're like a finely tuned animal where you can sense and know what is occurring with you at any given moment and your capacity to tolerate suffering goes down. So that means that, you know, if I'm in a relationship and I am tolerating things like my partner projecting their childhood childhood onto me and getting angry with me a lot, which is really much more about their childhood or snapping at me a lot, and that's just repressed anger that they have towards their caregivers maybe, but it keeps coming towards me. Well, the more that I heal, the less capacity I have to receive that. And so the only options are that that dynamic changes or that I have to leave the dynamic. So again, as you can see here, as we begin to heal, it's really in many ways a non negotiable that change is going to occur. Or maybe in the workplace, maybe you have been pushed, you know, to such a place that you're experiencing burnout and you're stressed all of the time. And the more that you heal, the less you're going to have the capacity to be in that. You might notice that, you know, after a long day you start to feel sick. You just can't handle that level of chronic stress because you're much more embodied, you're not shut down anymore. So that dynamic is going to have to change. And a lot of times as we come into these sensitivities, people can feel like they're going backwards. Like I everything used to roll off my back. I hear people say that a lot. Like nothing used to bother me and now things do, even things like, you know, I hear people say this a lot when I'm eating things. I used to not even, you know, notice feeling bad at all. And now I feel terrible when I don't eat well. And the truth is, well, you did feel terrible, but you weren't, you just were disembodied, you weren't present to what was actually happening. So all of this is not going backwards, it's forward and it's a natural part of the healing process and the change that occurs inside of it. So another thing that starts to occur is we begin to give ourselves the things that we never got. So we start to reparent ourselves. And that means that the energy that has maybe gone externally to other people or to other things in my over giving is now being reoriented towards myself. And there may be people in your lives as that's happening that feel scared about that they feel scared that you're going to go away altogether or that pokes at something in them where if they weren't constantly or chronically tended to, that they felt like they weren't going to be okay. So as you heal, you might notice in your friendships that instead of being incredibly focused on them at all times and feeling like you can't let them down, and almost feeling like you're showing up as a parent for your friends, that that's going to change. And now I'm showing up as a parent for myself. And that is actually bringing health to the friendship and that relational dynamic. And at the same time, you might notice that the people on the other side of that might at first be challenged as you're making that change. And everything that I'm sharing is really the ripple out effect that occurs as we heal. And at first that ripple out effect might feel like a tidal wave. Like it might feel really disruptive and scary and overwhelming. But as we allow ourselves to build our capacity to be anchored in our truth of who we actually are and what we actually need, that tidal wave begins to become like a, like a ripple, like, like a ripple in a pond and one that we have the capacity to navigate and also can anticipate that that's going to arise. The more that I heal, the more that things are going to change. And you know, the interesting thing is, is in other areas of our lives, we wouldn't question the change process and we might even look forward to it. For example, if you were, you know, wanting to exercise a lot more and create change in your body and become stronger, your body is changing, right? And it's changing in. If that's something you're wanting, then it's changing for the good. And you might notice you're becoming leaner, your muscles are becoming stronger and you would be frustrated probably, probably if that change process wasn't occurring. But when it comes to our healing, I think because it's not seen, can be, you know, feel quite invisible in some ways that we don't expect the change to happen in the way that it does. And so my hope is, as we're talking about this, that it really normalizes that, yeah, change is going to occur. And as we have the experiences that we're wanting, like the change that we want in our lives, I think oftentimes we don't think about how is that then going to affect or ripple out into all areas of my life. And most of the time when these changes are occurring, the people or experiences or job, whatever on the other side of it may not welcome that change at first. And that isn't because those people, you know, aren't supportive of our healing. It's because that, again, as I named before, change can be a real cue of danger for a lot of people. And to our nervous systems, it can feel like give us a sense of out of control. So another thing I want to say about that process of giving ourselves the things that we never got is that we're really changing our baseline for what love is. So the more that I give to myself, I'm giving myself these internal experiences of love that I desperately needed. And then that changes my expectations of what love is in my relationships. And so no longer do I have this really low bar expectation of the people in my life. I'm raising the bar. And by the way, that's a beautiful invitation for them. In all of these scenarios that I painted. It's a gift that you are giving the person or the experience on the other end because you're inviting them to step into a more expanded version of themselves. And I'll say this, that a lot of the time, we only change when the fear or consequence of not changing is greater than the fear of change itself. So if you're in a relationship with someone and your bar of love changed, and I'm expecting you now to raise the bar, I need more from you. I need more intimacy from you. I need more love from. From you. You are really inviting them to shepherd themselves into a greater version of their own healing. And most of the time, us humans don't take the invitation unless the consequence of not taking the invitation is more threatening. So the idea of losing that person might feel more threatening than the fear of changing it. So I just want to say, you know, at first, when we step into these things in our relationship and it creates some bumpy roads, I don't want you to think that you are being a pain in the neck for someone that you love or you're causing them pain. You are inviting them into an initiation in their lives that's really being asked of them. And the same goes for when people invite us to do the same. So another thing that happens as we heal and we create this internal safety is that now our system feels safe enough for us to step into the bigger life that we feel called to or are called to, which means being seen more, using our voice more, being out in the world more. And so that means our role in our families might change. For example, so maybe you're someone whom has stayed home with your kids. And as you're healing, you're like, you know what? There's this other thing I'm also here to do in the world, and it's going to require me to start this business or to step into this work. And that means that the time that I am going to be spending in the way I'm going to be spending it inside of my family dynamic is going to change or maybe it's going to call me to move to a different place. And that means that some of the relationships that I'm in are going to transform or change because I'm not going to be around those people in the same way. But what's really important is that we don't inhibit these changes that we're being pulled to or called to as a way to try to, you know, make things easier for the people around us. The more that we do that, the more we're going to be left feeling the pain of not living our right life. And when someone is on their healing journey and they are stepping into their right life, it is always, always, always a gift for everybody around them. Now, everybody around you does not have to take the invitation of that gift. That is up to them, of course, but it is an invitation nonetheless. And it's really important that, that we see it that way. And the last thing I want to say about this in terms of things that shift as we heal is, you know, the more that you heal, the more that you are able to see parts of yourself that you didn't know before or invite yourself into areas of your own internal landscape that you haven't visited before. And before we begin our healing journey, you know, again, as I named, we're surrounded by people or community whom are like us. Everybody does that. We surround ourselves with people who mirror back to us the level of our own healing. They mirror back to us our own interests and beliefs and desires and so on and so forth. And that's what makes us feel a sense of belonging and seen and known. So the more that I heal, the more I am seeing more of myself. And as you start off on the healing journey, you know, and you're, you're, you're going along, you might see some parts of yourself, but not, you know, there hasn't been a total transformation yet. So when I go back into these communities or this connection with people in my lives, I might start to notice there's like, there's something that's not exactly clicking or I'm noticing the misattunement of, oh, they can't really get this about me because they don't get that about themselves. People can only know the parts of you that they know within themselves. So the further we go on our healing journey, the more that there can feel like there's this chasm between us and them and we can feel like we have less in common with them. And we might notice that we start to feel painful, pained, like, ah, they don't get me. This certainly can happen with our family of origin, by the way. As we begin to heal, we can feel like we have less and less in common with them or they understand us less and less. So it doesn't mean that that's a failure. If that starts to happen in our relational dynamics. It is, it is just a natural part of the healing process that happens for us. And if the people around us aren't joining us on the healing journey, then we'll start to notice more and more that, oh, there's a, there's a distance between us or there's a space between us and it's just important to name and normalize that. It's something that happens for each of us as we venture on the healing journey. So as all of this occurs and we are changing internally and that means that our external world has to change. There's a few choices. And I don't want you to think that this means immediately that a relationship has to end or a friendship has to end, or a marriage has to end, or your relationship with your job has to end like entirely. What does have to change is the unwritten contract. So the dynamic between the two of you has to transform in order for that relationship to be healthy and to thrive and to function. And I call this the rocky road of the healing journey. So let's take a romantic partnership first. So let's say that you've been with your, your spouse for, you know, a decade or two. You came into that with an unwritten contract probably before you began your healing. And now you're on this journey and all of a sudden in many ways you're not like the person that you were now. You're actually who you are. You're not a self protected version of yourself. You're you. And that means you're going to show up really differently. And it doesn't mean that you're going to all of a sudden not love your partner. It means that the way that you relate to one another is going to have to shift. And oftentimes one person is further down the road than the other in this process. And As I come to my partner saying, I need this relational contract to change, oftentimes the first, you know, response that our partner might have is to be resistant. And the reason being because when I am asking them to change the contract, that means I'm asking them to venture down their own healing journey. The only way for that contract to shift is, is if they also begin to change and shift. And so a lot of times we might notice that our partner resists it because they're afraid of it. So they might say things like, I don't know. I. I don't know if this is actually working. You seem like you might not be getting better. You're going in the other direction. That happened to me, actually, in a relationship of mine as I started to have needs, because now I was saying, hey, this doesn't work for me, or I was getting mad about things, and that was shaking up that contract. And so the person on the other side of that didn't like it because no longer were certain behaviors okay. No longer was it okay for me not to have needs. And that was a beautiful invitation for them to step into their own work, too. So we can't make anyone do that. But. But it's a beautiful opportunity for them to grow and then us to grow together. So at that juncture, there are only those two options. Either the relationship is going to have to come to a close, or. Or a close in the way that it currently has been, or the contract is going to have to shift. And in that changing of the contract, rewriting of the contract, things are going to get messy. It's like creating a first draft of a book. Things are messy, and we're editing it, and there's papers everywhere. And then the more time that we spend really renegotiating it, we then end up having this beautiful final draft that is our new contract. And that deepens the level of connectivity and intimacy and aliveness and fulfillment in ways far beyond your wildest dreams. And then, as we both heal more, the contract gets rewritten again. But the hope is, after that first rewriting, what I usually find is that both people begin to see the benefit of rewriting the contract. And so then we continue down this journey of growing together, and the rewriting of the contract becomes easier and easier, because now we're doing it in our partnership. Harville and Helen Hendricks are a couple of really wonderful couples therapists, and they say a lot, that a good marriage has many divorces. And this is exactly what they mean by that. That we are constantly growing Renegotiating the contract, healing the past in our present, so that we can be who we actually are, the person that we've always been can actually be present in our lives. And that deepens the bond in such a profound way when we can do it together. And if that's not able to happen in the relational dynamic, whether that's in a work dynamic, with a friendship or with a romantic partner, we have done, you know, everything on our end to invite in the possibility for the rewriting of the contract from a place of regulation and loving kindness. And as a team, if we continue to find resistance, resistance on the other person's part, or they're digging their heels in and saying, no, I'm not going to do that, then that relationship will likely have to come to a close. And there is nothing about that that makes it a failure. That is a beautiful, beautiful success because it is a marker of all of the work that you have done that you should be so incredibly proud of. For myself, I. I was married for 10 years with my ex husband for almost 13 years. Really long time. I met him when I was very young, and it was a beautiful, safe container that I was able to heal inside of. And I spent an entire decade really focused on my healing. And that meant that the person that I was towards the end of that marriage was not the person that I was when I came into that marriage. And I can't make the person on the other side do their own, own work. And so the ending of that experience and us not being able to be in partnership in a way that really provided an experience of thriving and, and being in health, that was not a failure. In no way do I look back on that and say, wow, what a failure I am, because I got divorced. I say, wow, look what I was able to do. And that relationship is something I'm deeply grateful for. And that divorce is something, something I celebrate. It's also a celebration of enough internal safety that I was able to leave because for so many of us, we aren't able to leave relationships because our. We don't have the internal safety to do so. Our younger parts are running the show so much in our lives that they don't feel safe to leave. And so when we're actually able to do that in a relationship, in a job, in a friendship, when something isn't for us, that is a really beautiful celebration. And endings, whether it is the ending of a contract and the relationship lasts a lifetime, or it's an ending of the relationship as it was, it is what allows a new beginning to arrive. And everything in nature is constantly doing that. It is blossoming and then it's coming to the end of that cycle and blossoming again and coming to the end of that cycle. And when we are in real aliveness for ourselves, we are constantly in motion, we are constantly in change. We are constantly growing into the fullest version of ourselves. And that means endings are going to be a part of that too. There's still time to sign up for my free live training called Nervous System Starter Kit. I'm going to give you tangible, somatic tools and actionable steps to help you start feeling better on a daily basis. Click on the description to sign up. All right, so we're going to get into the Q and A portion of this episode. We have some audio in video questions, so we'll get to the first one. Now my question is around leaving relationships. So I've been married for 13 years, together for another five on top of that. And I for the last truly five years have been unhappy. And every time I try to bring this forward, I'm not met with a willing partner, kind, nice man, but not willing to do this work. And I am just stuck. I cannot bring myself to the next steps to actually find it in my system to do what I know needs to come next. So would love to hear a podcast episode around this and I know you've been there, so I would just really love that. Thank you. So when we reach a place in our healing where the dynamic is no longer serving us, although that can be a really scary place to be and a painful place to be, it is a marker of the work we've done. So I just want to name that for this person. And endings are really complex, right? Because as they were saying, he's, he's a sounds like a lovely guy, a nice person, and yet he's unwilling to look at these scary things. And we cannot make someone do it. And so what occurs when we get to that juncture and we have the clarity around I have tried for a long time and they are giving me the verbal and non verbal messaging that they're not going to do it, then the relationship must shift. And if the resistance is happening, that means that there's a younger part of us present that does not feel safe to leave. So I really invite you to get curious about whom is that part of me. It's likely not adult you who is afraid of that. It's likely a younger part. And if we have a young part that has in many ways looked to Our, our partner as their primary caregiver, meaning our source of safety. Even if it isn't a situation where we're getting our needs met, it does create a safety for that part. That part's not going to let us leave until they feel safe. So our work has to be to focus on how do I get to know who that part is, is and become their primary caretaker. So creating the consistency in safety, in attunement and protection is really important for that part of myself that they never got. And the more that you become your own internal home and that part feels safe with you. Now I can leave, meaning adult me. And I'm not asking a 10 year old part of me to leave because to that 10 year old part, that's like being alone in the world. So that's the work that I'd really invite you to focus on. That was the work work that I had to do to leave my marriage. I spent many years just like this person was saying in that cycling of like I'm not getting, I know I cannot get my needs met here and was trying like butting my head up against a wall and couldn't make it happen. And then I couldn't make it happen to leave until I had enough of that internal safety and then adult me was able to. And I want to also name even when you leave something that, that you're completely certain it is right for this to end, there is grief involved in that. You know, if you spend, I think this person sounds like over 15 years with someone, they do become your family, they do become your home. There are, you know, little inside jokes you have and ways of doing things and there's grief that comes with that, even if it's the right decision. So as it's transitioning, we really want to also allow ourselves to have that grief process. It's really important grieving not only what happened, but the, that it was negative, but the beautiful things that it was. And that makes room for what can be. So let's go to the next question that we have today.
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Listener 1
Hi Sarah. I'm so happy that you're doing a podcast. I just loved the class that I took with you. You make sense. I, I've applied those principles to my life since I completed the class and it definitely helps have me a better, have a better life. Helps me have a better life and regulate every day. My question is surrounding the concept of resentment. I have ended a 34 year marriage with betrayal being a part of that. And I find myself extremely resentful of my Partner, ex, partner. And I'm not quite sure where that fits in with my nervous system. I know I do feel more resentment when I'm dysregulated, but I'm wondering what your take is on resentment and if you have any suggestions or opinions or facts to help me through getting through resentment. I really do not like feeling the resentment and I would like to pretty much remove it from my life if possible. So thank you for any insight you can provide. And I just think you're wonderful. Thank you.
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Sarah
Sarah, thank you so much for this question and for your kind words. I know it's going to help a lot of people. So resentment is a clue that we have unprocessed, healthy aggression or an unaddressed unrest, unmet need. And in. In this situation, it might be both things. But what I for sure know, because you said there's betrayal, is that there's. There's unprocessed healthy aggression here. So what I want you to do is it see if you can begin connecting or making contact with the underlying somatic feelings in your body that you have around what transpired or occurred. We don't want to feel into all of that energy at once. We just want to feel into small amounts of it that feel tolerable for us. And then what's really important is that, that healthy aggression does not become internalized, which, which it currently is being internalized, but can actually be fully expressed. Now. We don't have to express it to that person, to your ex husband or ex partner, but it does have to come out of us. So ways that we can process healthy aggression are. We've talked about this in previous episodes are by allowing our body to make sound that exemplifies the feeling and sensations in our bodies. We can squeeze something like some squeeze something really hard as we make a sound. You can break something, whether that's like breaking a stick or even if you have like a backyard and you've got some old plates, like breaking a plate. So allowing my system to take that energy that's inside and move it outside of myself, you can also have your healthy aggression write. So picking up a pen and doing some stream of consciousness writing, letting that appropriate healthy aggression come out, if you're working with a somatic practitioner or clinician, they're gonna help guide your system into experiencing and expressing that healthy aggression in session. The more that we do this and we are able to finally express the appropriate response to what occurred. And by the way, in this situation, it's probably not gon to be about just that one betrayal. There are probably, you know, many moments of betrayal that happened before that, or many moments of having unmet needs that transpired before that. The more that we do this, the more that our system says, okay, I did the thing I needed to do, and now that's marked as complete, and the thing that occurred in the past can actually be in the past. If we find ourselves ruminating or not being able to move beyond something, it's a clue that my system has not been able to have the appropriate response it wanted to have because it wasn't safe, because I historically have internalized things, and it won't let us off the hook, meaning it won't let us just move on. It's saying, now you got to get this need met. You have to protect yourself in this way. You have to express yourself in this way. And then when that occurs, we are actually able to let the past be the past, and we're able to energetically disconnect or end that cord of connection with them. So let's move on to the last question we have today.
- [36:52]
Listener 2
I was wondering how you found it in yourself to forgive the people that had abused you. And kind of like, for me, it's like a problem of forgiving myself more than the people. I think because I'm 28 years old and around 21, I went through a lot of abuse. And since then, I really haven't been able to do anything. Like, nothing feels safe, but sort of like you described, like a beautiful, like, little prison you make for yourself. Like, I can only go for walks really close to home around my block. I can only see, like, the people that I have seen. I don't feel comfortable, like, meeting new people. I don't feel comfortable doing the things that I really desire to do. I could not travel. Like, everything's just. Everything feels like too much. So I feel like I just lost, you know, most all of the best years of my life, or that's what the story is in my mind, that I wonder how you were able to move beyond.
- [37:53]
Sarah
I'm so sorry to hear about your experience. So much of it I can relate to as I am approaching being 40. And I remember saying what you're saying right now in your late 20s. I can promise you that. I know this is like, oh, my gosh, such a corny thing to say, but there's so many amazing years to come. You have not lost your best years, for sure. And the more that we heal, they just keep getting better and better. That's really what's true. So a couple things I want to address here. Forgiveness can only happen when we have accessed the appropriate healthy aggression to what occurred. And that means the appropriate experience of protecting and defending ourselves that was inhibited at the time of the trauma we experienced or the traumas if they were consistently happening to us. And we have to build our capacity to hold that energy. As I've said before, the healthy aggression, you know, is going to be bigger based on the level of trauma that we experienced. And in my own experience, when it came to my childhood trauma, it sounds like you've heard me talk about it before, that was pretty extensive trauma, pretty violent trauma. So my level of healthy aggression that I needed to access to process that was really high. High. So for me that meant allowing my system to go back to the state dependent memory, so meaning the, the feeling within my nervous system of what occurred at that time and defend myself in a way that I wasn't able to. And so because of the pretty violent nature of what happened to me, that meant some pretty big energy of self protection needed to be present in, in, in my own semester work. That looked like my body feeling into this really intense self protective energy and rage. And my body, it felt like my body was, was actually trying to, to kill this person that was hurting me in such an intense way. Obviously I wasn't doing that in real life. This is inside of a therapeutic container and it's just my system engaging in the energetic act of self protection. And again, it will always match what occurred. That is what is also necessary to remediate shock shame. So shame is the internalization of what happened to us. And I heard you say I blame myself, which is an experience of shame. You've internalized it so you cannot talk your way out of that. There's no way that you could rationalize to yourself why it wasn't your fault. You can try, but I can tell you it won't work. I tell you that from personal experience too. And that's what somatic work and trauma work tells us. When I can access the appropriate healthy aggression to what transpired, it's taking what's internalized and getting it out of myself and giving it back to the place that it rightfully belongs. So this is not what happened to me, does not make me bad. That person was bad. What happened to me was bad. So accessing that appropriate healthy aggression helps us come out of collapse where shame lives. Then shame truly begins to dissipate from our experience and not be a part of our story or our somatic experience in our bodies. And then lastly, I want to say you never have to forgive. You know, I have not forgiven the people that harmed me to such horrific degrees, you know, that I didn't want to be on this planet because of them. I had to spend decades trapped in this hellish place inside of myself because of them. Now what I have done is if is disconnected energetically from that experience and from them. So that's a form of forgiveness. But it's not in the way that, that we might think about it like I forgive you for what you did. I, I actually don't forgive them for what they did. There's no excuse for it. It doesn't matter that they're, they did that because they experienced trauma in their own lives. That's why we all do things that we do because we experienced trauma in our own lives. And I have not certainly done the kinds of things that they did. And I was traumatized in pretty, pretty terrible ways. So what I'm really saying is the type of forgiveness I'm talking about is I am letting go of this past because it's finally in the past and you have no power over me and there is no energetic connection. So that's a form of forgiveness that might be something that you end up landing in or it could be that, you know, if the person or people who harmed you are really loving people who did their best, but they got things wrong. That's a really different type of forgiveness. And with that person, I might want to still be in relationship with them. So I do forgive them. They were doing their very, very best and they didn't mean to harm me. So very different scenarios. Lastly, I just want to say the small life that you're living currently is simply because your nervous system does not yet know that what happened when you were 21 was over is over. And the more that we reshape our nervous systems, we show not tell our nervous system systems. We are here in this moment and this moment is safe to be in. The more that we address the younger part, that 21 year old part, who is trapped in that experience and we come to her aid and we give her the things that she never got. And listen to some of the episodes on Park's work to do that, the more she finally gets what she never got. And when we have that kind of internal protection and safety, when we finally are able to show our nervous systems, the past is the, the past we become free. And that is possible for you, and that is possible for each of us. So thank you everybody for listening to this episode. I hope that it's reorienting you to a different way of seeing and approaching endings. Maybe this week just go out into nature and look at how things are constantly in motion and constantly moving and that is a part of existence. And in order for us to be in our fullness and alive, it means us being in that kind of constant openness to change too. See you next week. Enjoyed this episode and want to go even deeper into somatic healing. You can join my email community for free Weekly Teachings, More resources and live events. Sign up using the link in the description.