Calming the Storm Within

If I had to pick a song for my life, it would be Crazy Train by Black Sabbath.  It was the song my husband and I walked into our wedding reception with.  It's the song my boys rock out to when they are feeling a bit spunky.  This song describes how I felt for much of my life.  This song is also how I implemented humor into the darkness that I felt for so long.   

I had spent most of my life wondering if I was going crazy and truly broken beyond repair at my core.  My childhood was chaotic.  I created even more chaos in my teenage and young adult years.  I created chaos in the earlier years of my marriage.  Chaos was all I knew.  It is where I felt comfortable.  It's why I 'fell into' my profession at addiction treatment centers-which are always filled with chaos with the patients who are detoxing and learning to live a different life, and the staff who all tend to thrive in chaos themselves.  

Soon, I began to feel exhausted of the emotional turmoil I was living in.  I was tired of being "on" all the time and in survival mode, just waiting for the next fire to extinguish.  It was putting a strain on my personal life.  I felt disconnected from my husband.  I felt distant and preoccupied with I was with my kids.  I was isolating from my friends.  I stopped laughing.  I knew there had to be a better way to live.  There just had to be. 

It took a lot of soul searching and self forgiveness to heal from the conditioning of my past.  I spent endless hours in therapy.  Stacks upon stacks of self help books.  Workshops and trainings.  It was my personal spiritual journey that offered me the emotional freedom I was searching and longing for.  Don't get me wrong...I have 40+ years of conditioning to combat, so I still have urges to stir things up once in a while (and now I know this is my Conditioned Self, which I will get into shortly).  When things are going really well, I still sometimes feel that pit in my stomach that is 'waiting for the other shoe to drop'.  This is when I remind myself of a mantra that one of my friends (who struggles very similarly) once used "Boring is good".  

Along my journey I have learned a thing or two that I want to share with you in the hopes of you either not having to endure that same suffering, or if you are already suffering, you know you are not alone and you know there is a way past the pain!

1. The Soul Sucking Conditioned Self.  It is my belief and personal experience that many of our depressive symptoms come from living from our Conditioned Self, and out of alignment with our Life Purpose. The best way to describe the Conditioned Self is that we all have experiences throughout our life that negatively impact us and leave a part of us hurt feeling unsafe.  In therapy, we identify this is the wounded inner child.  This part of us drives our behaviors for most of our life.  This is also the part that resides in our unconscious for most of our life.  Yep...you heard that right.  We are basically allowing our unconscious to drive the bus in our life.  We are living on autopilot for anywhere from 85-95% of our day.  That's crazy right?!  The main purpose of our Conditioned Self is to create a sense of safety.  Our Conditioned Self is filled with fear of judgment, people pleasing, perfectionism, doubt, and heavy energy.  It is the house for our inner critic that tells us things like "you don't deserve happiness", or "you are broken beyond repair", or "you know you will just fail if you try".  It is the part of us that keeps us in our suffering because it believes that staying with what we know is safer than venturing outside our comfort zone into the unknown.  It is the part of us that keeps us small and invisible to the world.  The Conditioned Self's job is to keep us safe.  From what you might ask...from being hurt, and it believes that the world can hurt us. 
2. The Wildly Beautiful Authentic Self and Finding Life Purpose.  Although I have studied the concepts of authenticity through Existentialism and Jungian Therapy, I did not fully grasp the meaning until I went through my own mid-life awakening, or others identify it as a mid-life crisis.  I was at the best job and organization of my professional life when I decided to leave Corporate America.  I was working as an Executive Director of an Addiction Treatment Center.  I thought this was it.  I thought I had landed the job I would be in for the rest of my life.  I started out just like all of my other job moves-enthusiastic, determined, and highly motivated.  Before long though, I found myself unsettled and frustrated, just like all my other jobs.  I felt confined.  I felt frustrated with myself because I could never just be happy with all I had.  This is where I always begin believing I am broken.  From the outside, I had it all-the 6 figure job, wonderful marriage, great kids, comfy house-what more could I possibly want and ask for? My husband didn't understand.  My mom didn't understand.  I didn't understand.  Until it slapped me upside the head.  I was completely out of alignment with my Authentic Self and Life Purpose.  I was trying to fit in the box that my family and society told me I had to fit in.  I thought I was supposed to find a secure and stable job and just stay there and be happy.  So I couldn't identify why I was so depressed.  It's because my soul is inspired to think big and be big.  I am, in my full essence, a visionary.  My drive is to make an impact and change the world.  I am a creator.  I also don't like to play by rules of confinement, so the treatment center world was definitely not for me with all of the rules and regulations of the state, county, behavioral health system and I had a special rebellion against insurance companies.  So I found myself trying to fit in a round hole when I am a star shaped peg.  No wonder why I was so miserable!  My Authentic Self is expansive.  It has no limitations when I am aligned with my Life Purpose and Spiritual Gifts.  My Authentic Self is my essence, my spirit.  It is who I was brought into this physical world to be and it is the message I carry within every cell of my being.  It is my light.  It is my purpose.  My Authentic Self is filled with faith, expansiveness, hopefulness, feeling fully supported by the Universe, and feeling energetically light.   That is when I chose to leave the corporate world, which is a story for another time.
3. More Joy?  Yes Please!  A few times every week, I find myself crying tears of joy.  Since I have aligned with with my Authentic Self and Life Purpose, I am taken back in awe as I look at my life.  I am able to see endless possibilities as long as I am in alignment with my Spiritual Connection and Authentic Self.  I am able to quickly notice when my Conditioned Self is kicking in again because now my body and spirit is used to living in a higher vibrational energy.  So when anything lowers that vibe, I take quick notice of it so I can get curious and heal that part of me that is filled with fear.  I am able to experience all of the joyous moments around me and know that I, and my family, are fully taken care of.  I am filled with faith that the Universe is leading me in the direction my soul is meant for. I am no longer filled with the daily struggles of scarcity and lack-not enough money, time, love, laughter, etc.  My marriage is thriving.  My spirit is filled.  My heart is filled. I have awesome connections with my kids every day.  I am filled with abundance-filled with moments of joy, laughter, love, learning, opportunities, and growth.  

These are only the a few learning moments I have endured through my healing journey.  And I am beyond blessed to be able to offer them to you.  To learn more about the roadmap to Authentic Living and Life Purpose, be sure to sign up for the virtual free 5 Days to Align with Your Next Level Life Purpose Workshop.

Sending much love and light, LJ