Liberation from Emotional Pain

Liberating myself from emotional pain is empowering.  As the energy of relief flows through my body I feel a sense of peace, a deep knowing that the unseen wound is healed and I am free — liberated from the emotional pain that had unconsciously been all consuming.  

You may be curious to what caused the pain. Giving my power to story, engaging in the story’s patterns and my belief in the story — they all worked together keeping the story alive in me. I am talking about story that is rooted in the overarching patriarchal story, a story that I allowed to define me as a woman.

A story by itself is just a story and remains neutral unless engaged with; it is given power when one believes that it is true.

For example, if I believe, within the boundaries of the patriarchal story, that I am not equal because I was born a female, then I have given my power to that story and the story now lives out through me. If I believe that I am equal, then I am in resistance to the story and I am still giving the story my power. Either way, I am trying to prove that I am enough.

The story of not enough is insidious and its threads are woven deeply into each of our stories. 

The patriarchal success path, which we often unconsciously subscribe to, is created from the wounded masculine and feminine archetypes, creating separation, inequality and disempowerment. It is all about gaining power. Power is the reward of the success path for males and females, and people constantly strive for power, cling to power, in an effort to feel ‘enough’.

Freedom!

The patriarchal success path follows these steps:

·      proving you have value

·      proving you are needed

·      proving you are of use

·      proving your worth

·      gaining acceptance

·      garnering support

·      generating money and prosperity

·      gaining the reward of power

However, there is a caveat. The amount of power you achieve is decided by those who are more powerful; one can’t forget that the patriarchal system is a hierarchy.

In being a woman there is one additional step before she receives the reward of power: gaining equality.

However, the patriarchal story is not a story of equality. In this story, females are not born equal and will never be equal because that is not the story. It is also a story that supports hierarchy and those at the top hold the highest power. Females are therefore required to play the game as if they are males (and prove that they are ‘equal’), to prove they are worthy of that power. It is a game of winners and losers — and those who fall in between.  Individuals who have more power than a looser but not enough power to be a winner squeeze into their own place in the hierarchy, but it is a place where feeling ‘not enough’ is the dominant force. Their focus is to prove their value, their worth and that they are equal; however, they often feel like they are swimming against the flow of the river. Constant pushing against the energy of the story causes emotional pain that may manifest in physical pain in the body. It has been well documented that there is an emotional connection to physical pain.

One of the characteristics of the patriarch is the avoidance of pain.

How fast and how far can I run from it? How quickly can I annihilate it so I don’t have to feel it?  How can I avoid being triggered so I don’t have to feel the pain?  Avoidance may show up as blaming another so the person inflicting the pain doesn’t have to be accountable for their actions and the pain they caused, disempowering another person so they don’t have to feel their own powerlessness, or using chemicals to numb the emotional pain. These are all examples of common unconscious patterns of self-protection that humanity engages in.

The irony is that when we engage with the patriarchal story — in other words, live the story — it causes immense pain and suffering for all humans. Whether we believe in the story or resist it, we all have an active part in creating pain and suffering. This is a difficult truth to grasp as it is not how we want to see ourselves. We need to remember that it is not the story itself that causes the pain, it is our engagement in it. When we become aware of this story and how we are engaging in it, then we have the choice to take our power back and to stop creating pain for ourselves and others. 

One of my guides once asked me a profound life-changing question: when do you think you will have experienced enough pain to feel worthy of life?  

That was a big life question. I hadn’t equated feeling enough to being worthy of life. It was a question I could not answer without guidance as I could not get beyond my ego. Through that journey, I discovered that the way to heal my pain is the opposite of how we are conditioned to deal with it. Truly healing pain involves moving through it — not away from, over or around it, as that is giving it your power. Instead I was guided to embrace it, allow myself to acknowledge it, validate it, honour it and then release my attachment to it. Moving through pain, I took my power back from it. I freed myself from the story and the pain associated with it.  

Awareness of story and unsticking from it is part of the process of moving through the pain. The pain and the avoidance of it is what keeps you in the story. It is what keeps you creating more and more pain. The patriarchal story has thousands of threads. It is a well-established story that has developed over thousands of years. The story of not enough is one of the core threads, so when you unstick from it, an immense amount of emotional pain is released.

I created the Birthing Your True Self process to guide my clients to liberate themselves from their story of ‘not enough’ and birth their true self. It is a journey of self empowerment. There is nothing to prove. You are enough!

Photo Credit Priscilla Du Preez