Are these healing myths keeping you stuck? We are unpacking the 5 biggest misconceptions about healing and personal growth that might be sabotaging your progress and blocking your spiritual gifts.

You’ll discover why:

• Healing isn’t a one-time project—it’s a lifelong practice.
• Recurring challenges don’t mean you’ve failed.
• Even “small stuff” is worth healing for real growth.
• True healing moves you forward, not back.
• Processing pain is actually empowering.

If you’ve ever felt like you “should be over it by now,” this conversation will shift your perspective. Healing is not about erasing your past—it’s about evolving through it with awareness, compassion, and courage.

As Brené Brown says, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.”

By the end of this episode, you’ll see healing as an empowering journey of awareness, compassion, and self-kindness—one that allows you to expand your spiritual gifts, deepen your relationships, and live more intentionally.

Join me Live on Zoom for my Free Monthly Community Healing session! You'll receive a blend of Reiki (Energy Healing), Chakra & Aura Clearing & Balancing, Color Healing, Grounding, Cord Cutting, Trance Medium Healing & more. 

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Episode Transcript:

Hey, beautiful soul, welcome in for another episode of spirit speakeasy. Today, we are going to talk about the five healing lies sabotaging your growth. Many of us think that healing is a one time project, something to complete, to check off and then move on. What we often get wrong about healing and personal growth is that healing is truly not just a task. It's an ongoing, intentional practice. Healing is an essential part of self care, because the way we engage with our emotions, our experiences and our own energy shapes every area of our lives, our relationships, our goals, how we express ourselves, even the depth of our spiritual gifts. It's an easy misunderstanding what personal growth and healing actually involve. Some people believe that once they've quote, unquote, done the work on a situation or a challenge or a pattern that they are finished and can move on and shouldn't have to revisit it. Others think that healing maybe, is only for those that have experienced capital T major trauma, and others still might even feel like that, revisiting old challenges means that somehow they've failed. So in this episode, we are going to unpack five of the most common misconceptions about healing and personal growth. We'll talk about why healing is not a task to check off, why it isn't about erasing the past, and why working through recurring challenges is not a sign of failure. It's actually quite the opposite, as you'll learn. We'll also explore why healing matters for everyone, no matter what your history is or how you feel you may or may not have been wronged in the past, and how it can actually help you live more consciously, more intentionally and more authentically, as Brene Brown reminds us, this is a quote from her, owning our story can be hard, but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Healing isn't about erasing what's happened. It's about evolving through it, stepping into each moment with awareness and self compassion. So I want to give us a working definition of healing for this episode, because, as we talk about here, often some of these terms can mean so many different things. So for this episode, we could be on the same page with this healing definition. Let's define healing for our purposes today, as the ongoing, intentional practice of engaging with your emotions, experiences and energy in a way that allows growth, integration and conscious living. It's not about erasing the past or checking off a box, but about evolving through life's challenges with awareness, compassion and self honesty, so that you can live more authentically, expand your gifts and respond to each moment with clarity and choice now, just like you, I'm under no illusion that our world right now is looking peach, keen and shiny. I know that there is a lot of chaos going on, and I know that's true globally. I know that's true in several different individual countries, including the US, including Canada, including many countries in South America. And the tension feels like it's building on on a big level, but also in our interpersonal connections. People are more separated. We are more at odds with each other. We are feeling oppositional, and sometimes when life gets loud, and we haven't even mentioned things going on in our personal lives or our personal communities, our worlds, our smaller groups, right when things get loud, we can go into more of like a damage control mode externally, and we can forget to consider, oh, how am I feeling about this, what's rising up for me here? Am I slipping into old patterns, old beliefs? Am I looking at what's actually coming up for me right now, or am I just reverting to an old version of myself trying to keep everything safe and secure, and there's no judgment about any of this? It's just, I know some people might be wondering, well, with everything going on in the world, why are we needing to talk about personal development and personal growth? And the truth is that how we feel inside, the decisions we're making as we move day to day through the world based on our own stuff, let's just say, is affecting everything, how we relate to ourselves and understand ourselves is how we relate to everything and everyone else. So really, why I wanted to create this episode now is I feel like it's perfect timing to be talking about our own healing and personal growth. The other reason is, many of you have reached out to me recently. Are telling me that with everything going on, you're just feeling stuck. Some people are even reporting feeling hopeless, feeling like I don't know how to move forward. I don't know how to be in a spiritual practice. I don't know how to find my intuition with all of the chaos that's going on in the world. So just know this episode is, in some ways, in response to everything that's going on and not avoiding everything that's going on, because we are living this experience and going through this experience collectively, but also as individuals. So I just wanted to throw that in there to let you know my intention with this episode and why I think now is the perfect time for it, actually. So let's dive into our first of these five misconceptions. I already did it, and now I'm done. So the first misconception that might be sabotaging you and keeping you stuck and not growing is this idea that some people have, oh, I already did it, and now I'm done. Healing is not a task to check off, even if you have worked on something about yourself or your history, your family of origin. Let's just say the way I often hear it presented is like, Oh, I did therapy, and I'm good. I'm done. I understand all of that. I understand all about me. But really, healing is a practice of continuous evolution, so ongoing practices can look like keeping your emotional side of the street clean, right? I think we've all I've been guilty of it, certainly myself. Maybe you can raise your hand quietly in your own little car or room as you're thinking about this. But how many times have we been in a situation where someone's emotions explode kind of all over us,
maybe way out of the context of the situation, maybe their response is way bigger than whatever the situation is that's happening in that moment. Well, that's keeping your own emotional side of the street clean. I definitely have had big reactions or little bit of road rage I can claim here and there. And really, it's not about, you know that car, it's about, why am I so tense? Why do I feel like I have more of a right to be in this lane than this other person? Right? There are a lot of things to unpack in any experience or as we go through our day to day. Sometimes it's about the big things in life, of course, but sometimes it's about how our own emotions, patterns, beliefs are affecting us in those little day to day ways might even be affecting the way you create your schedule or the way you don't create your schedule. So it's important as part of these ongoing practices to continue with self reflection and introspection. We all have things that rise up, even that little road rage example that I just gave. It's not about just letting it go, but sitting with it, self reflecting, kind of looking inside. Why did I get so upset so quickly? Why was I just in my little happy, peaceful zone and then all of a sudden, someone else's behavior? I allowed myself to go to a place that I don't like to be? Why was I not just live and let live in that moment? Right? So kind of introspective. What else is going on for me? What else is this emotion tied to? And there's lots of ways to do this, as we'll continue to talk about. Of course, there are a jillion I feel like at this time, modalities of therapy, and many of them can be helpful for any of us, but there are also additional ways so we can continue to regularly evaluate how experiences affect our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, and some of the reasons why it matters is this ongoing process continues to shape how we treat ourselves and then how we treat others. A little example here is, you know, sometimes culturally, particularly in the US, we are in this kind of hustle culture mind where we don't always have a lot of permission to take a break. It's what have you done? What are the list of things you've done today? What do you have going on? You know, when someone asks you, What are you up to? Often, they expect a list of the tasks that you have going on in your life, or the things that you have accomplished this week, if it's in a work setting, or the goals that you're chipping away at, right? But it doesn't always have to mean that. So if you are treating yourself like, Oh, you have to be hustling every minute of the day. That's what I expect. That's what you're going to expect of others, and it's not judging whether that's right or wrong. But is that how you want to show up? Do you want to be showing up as the school mom with tapping the ruler on your hand, saying, What have you got done today? Or are you wanting to be available for people to share and come to with challenges or come to with celebrations, right moments of happiness. So part of this, I already did it, and now I'm done. You know, even if we've done some version of therapy or introspection or. Or reading books, or, you know, all the versions that there are energy healing. We continue to live, we continue to grow. We continue to have other challenging personalities and situations that show up in our lives. That's really happening. We really have emotions about it, even if you're someone who like where I'm from, I was often encouraged to, like, turn down my emotions, turn down what I was thinking and feeling about situations. If you've ever heard things like, Oh, you're too much, you have too many emotions, you feel too deeply, You're too sensitive, that's something to look at for you, because even if you've worked on whoever or whatever caused you to form that thought pattern, right? Maybe it's people in your past telling you, Oh, you're too much, you're too sensitive. It's still going to affect you, even if you have done wonderful therapeutic processes and processed out of it and understand, okay, that's not true about me. My sensitivity is a good part of me when you're uncomfortable, when I'm uncomfortable, certainly my tendency is to sometimes revert back to tucking my sensitivities away or not being aware of my emotions moment to moment, or not creating time to look at the emotions that I might have experienced in a day In a situation. And of course, as we grow, these become more fine tuning, right? Maybe you have already done a lot of work and have unpacked the bulk of it, but as you continue to live and grow, that continual evaluation lets you know how the shades and reflections and echoes of those challenges or beliefs or sticking points are still showing up for you today in ways you might not realize. Other words, it also helps otherwise. It also helps us if we are in pursuit of goals and opportunities. Goals and opportunities within themselves are not intrinsically bad, necessarily right for many of us, for me included, it does help if I have a goal out there, somewhere or something I'm working towards or working on that just feels good to me. But sometimes those sneaky little patterns of our past can create self sabotages along the road of those goals, right? It could mean that we're not managing our time properly, or we're being too hard on ourselves too. I'm thinking about someone I know that's working on writing a book. And guidance I was given about writing books years ago was that you write it all and then you do the editing later. Well, in this person's pursuit of their goal of creating this book, they are really nitpicking themselves along the way, they have this, this old pattern that's rising up for them about this little nitpickiness, because this new goal is out of their comfort zone and and a big, a big thing that they're working on. So sometimes shades and echoes of those old patterns will rise up, and maybe what's actually happening is a fear of expressing themselves. Let's just hypothetically say, in this scenario, well, the self sabotagers can look like becoming busy with everything, aside from writing this book or convincing yourself that you need to really self censor in the writing process. So it can show up in ways that feel disconnected from whatever the pattern or emotion is. That's why this ongoing self reflection looking at how am I acting, how am I behaving, how is what I'm saying I want different from the actions I'm doing or emotions I'm feeling around what I want, right? So for so many reasons, this is important. It's not and I already did it, and now I'm done. And the other area where I've seen this in my personal life quite a bit, is in the expansion and expression of our spiritual gifts, particularly in mediumship. But it's also true in intuition, in healing, in the psychic work, in any type of gift that we have, that we want to express. It's true in arts of all kinds that when we have an emotion that we're not willing to look at, or something that we've already processed, that was uncomfortable, that is a part of who we are, right? We might have a little bit of a I know. Let me just use myself as an example here. I really put myself on blast today, guys, so hopefully you will give me some extra hearts and sweet comments around this episode, because I'm coming out of my comfort zone. This is one of my sticking points that I often find creeping up and sabotaging me in strange ways. I sometimes get scared to really show my whole self publicly. That's a scary thing. Well, when it comes to the expression of our gifts, if your gift has to do with any other person, right? If you want to read, if you want to play with oracle cards, if you want to create writing or art or something that's going to be seen by others, those fears of self expression don't just magically go away. Way, because we've worked on it previously. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Has this happened for you, or is this maybe currently happening for you as you're thinking about the work that you're doing on yourself, or maybe the work that you're resisting on yourself, and I've already worked through this fear of fully expressing myself publicly numerous times, as you guys know, I express myself publicly pretty regularly in some areas, but that doesn't mean that there's not these other areas, these other exciting things that I'm wanting to create and share in the world, that I am finding sticking points around this self censorship, or around creating delays or just not putting it on the calendar, and then it's not happening, which is not forcing me to then step into the public and express myself in certain ways. So these little sneaky sabotages can show up in so many ways. But in this first misconception, have you thought or felt? Or do you know someone else that has felt? Oh, I already did it. I already processed that, I already healed and grew through that, and now I'm done. If so, please share this episode with whoever that is. So the takeaway from this little segment is healing is a lifelong journey, not a one time achievement, even though it's important to celebrate our achievements of healing and personal development and coming to deeper levels of understanding within ourselves. It's okay to celebrate that, but celebrate it as a milestone along your journey, not as a box to be checked and then tucked away in a closet somewhere. The second misconception that might be keeping you stuck, sabotaging you or not allowing you to grow, is this idea that I sometimes hear from clients, oh, nothing bad ever really happened to me. So I'm good. I don't need to do personal growth or personal development. I'm good. I have nothing to look at. Personal growth is not only for those with traumatic histories or even with a capital T trauma. Of course, it is for those people, but it's also for everyone. It's for anyone who wants to live consciously and evolve emotionally, even small frustrations, childhood patterns or internalized beliefs benefit from conscious reflection. I know someone. I know not everyone loves the word trigger, but it's what it's the word I have to use in this situation. I know someone that can be incredibly triggered to a point of anger if they feel like something's unfair for them. It often shows up in their workplace, right? If they feel like someone got a day off and they didn't, they got denied for a day off, or someone got to work in a certain way, and they were told they couldn't work in that certain way. And the level of frustration that comes out of this person is indicative that, hey, there's something to investigate here. And this person in particular, when it comes to personal growth and personal development, they often Shoo it away and say, Oh, nothing's really ever happened to me that's not bad. That's for people who have, like, big traumas or big terrible families or horrible events in their lives. I never really had anything significant happen to me, so I'm good, but maybe we've never had anything that would be under the umbrella of a capital T trauma or even a lowercase t trauma. But it doesn't mean that we haven't made beliefs and decisions and don't get a certain lens that we're looking through, that maybe it's the lens of unfairness or justice, maybe it has something to do with the fear of not being treated as equal as others, and that might even be a valid fear or a valid concern, wanting to be treated equal as others, but it's the emotions that come up for us that sometimes can be the key. If you're letting yourself have permission to feel and acknowledge your emotions, some of us don't even do that. I've definitely gone through times in my life where I shoved my emotions down so hard because I was in a really bad relationship, for example, and new I don't want to look at any of this stuff, because this is all bad, and I'm not ready to leave and and so I'm just going to push down these emotions. But the emotions were there, eventually they'll come out in other ways. So it doesn't have to be a really big trauma or a big event or a big loss that warrants us doing this personal growth and development healing is about understanding ourselves fully and stepping more into our authentic life in a very intentional way. How do we want to show up and in that person that I was describing that often gets a little bit lit up around their career? Well, there are some different solutions for them. They can look more honestly at okay, that person got the day off. I didn't get the day off. I got denied for for my different day off that I asked for. Why am I so upset about this? I feel like this is being done to me. Is that true? Is this actually being done to me or. Or is there something going on in our corporate structure that, oh, it just doesn't make sense to permit someone this day off. Could I take a different day off? There's lots of little solutions in there, but it's the getting so upset about it and immediately deciding that something's being done to us, rather than being able to move into a more neutral place, or showing up more intentionally, even to have the conversation with the supervisor that's denying the day off, and it doesn't have to be about that other person who did get the day off. Sometimes that's a good clue. If we're wanting to make it about someone else and not about ourselves. Maybe there's an option to go to the supervisor and say, Hey, I realized I got denied for this day off. I just wanted to check in. Is this a bad timing for our office? And maybe I could choose a different day, or maybe expressing why you need that particular day off. You know, I've got this doctor's appointment, and it's been really tough to get so I'd like to not move it, but I understand if that's, you know, not going to work out. So communication could be part of it. And sometimes when we're resisting even the communication, it's because something in us, even if we're not doing this work consciously, something in us knows, oh, I have so many emotions in here. I can't even formulate the words to have this conversation with this supervisor. Or maybe you're the supervisor not giving the day off, and you're not open to the conversation because you feel like it challenges your authority. There are so many sneaky ways in every area of our life that these can show up if we are not pretty continuously in personal development. Now, it doesn't mean you can do all day every day, but as you're engaging with people, as things are sticking with you, as you're just noticing throughout your world what's coming up for you, that's part of evaluation, and it will help with your personal growth. So really, just accepting that healing personal growth, personal development, doesn't always have to be looking at one big trauma that happened in our life, or if you're someone like in this number two misconception, nothing really Bad's ever happened to me compared to everybody else. Well, that doesn't mean you don't have emotions about the day to day, things coming up, or you're not making comparisons with other people, or you're not making decisions about yourself based on old patterns or old thoughts, right? So that's the second misconception. When I listen to these types of episodes, and even as I'm writing them, I'm always trying on the hats saying, like, does that fit for me? Have I experienced that? Do I know that what that is? So I invite you to do the same if you like to process that way. That's how I like to process. Okay, so this third misconception that I often heal when it comes to growth, healing personal development is this idea that, Oh, I already worked on this person, situation, this thing, why does it keep coming up? For me, I feel like I'm failing this one's really common, and there are several reasons why this can happen, which we're going to talk about. But once we work through a challenge, it may resurface. It doesn't mean that we've failed. I often find this with people that have done personal development or healing or growth around like, let's just say, a family member who's particularly been challenging in their life. You know, a lot of therapy works on the mother wound, the father wound, if we have siblings, those relationships so or maybe it's a situation. Maybe it is a trauma that's happened, maybe it is a heartbreak that's happened. Maybe it is a significant event that's happened in your life, and you really gave your all and did the work and, you know, did the therapy, or read the books or whatever it was that you did. Why does it keep coming up? Am I failing? What is going on? I thought I already cleared this out of me. Well, healing isn't about becoming emotionally neutral to a situation. It's about feeling, sitting with and processing the emotions as they arise. So in some instances, it might because that might be because that person is still in your life, and the way that they show up, maybe intentionally, maybe not intentionally is triggering for you or lights up those old parts of you, maybe takes you back to a 10 year old version of yourself where you didn't have the authority to express yourself. Let's just hypothetically say so it could be a reason like that, but even if that person or situation is not a part of your life at all, it can still affect you, even if you have already worked the energy, the emotions, and really, we want to keep showing up as our whole selves as much as possible, not censoring parts of ourselves, not slipping back into those dynamics where we are the kid and We don't have power. Don't have a voice. We can continue to release lingering patterns to gain deeper understanding. And that's what each recurrence, or each time this comes up for you, is giving you an opportunity to do, to integrate the lessons you've already worked on and learned, to help. This ongoing evolution and help you sometimes to see it from a new perspective, the way I often think of it is, especially if you've done any version of soul searching or personal development or emotional work on yourself. For me, then even more, of course, it's going to continue to echo or show up in different ways, usually lesser ways.
We often hear it as like, for me, I feel like I've called in very similar versions of the same type of person over and over, to continue to heal, to continue to grow as an opportunity to make different choices, behave differently, be a different self that I'm living into, right? So that's one way it can show up. But as we grow and expand and change, of course, we're going to look at things of the past with a new perspective. Just think of it as like climbing this mountain of life, and as you reach the midpoint, you're going to look back over the path and see where you've come from, and wow, look how high I've climbed. Yeah, of course, you might realize I got a little bit to go there still, but we don't have to take it as a negative. So as you evolve and become these different versions of yourself, these more integrated versions of yourself, in some cases, old habits, patterns, challenges might loop around, just to be reevaluated from this new vantage point. You're a different version of yourself. Maybe you have totally different emotions about it that can be healing. Maybe you have a different perspective and can look at that younger version of you. I've had to do this work so much with past relationships, where, as I've grown and changed. I've looked back at that younger version of me that was engaging in that really challenging relationship and been able to do additional healing by giving so much love and compassion to that version of me that showed up in that relationship, messy as hell, doing her best, even though it was messy, trying so hard to create the life that she wanted, even though I was banging my head against all the wrong walls, so to speak. But I can look back and love that version of myself and see how far I've come. It's not about judging those versions of us, or kind of using this new vantage point wherever you stand now to Yeah, judge or like, excommunicate those versions of yourself. It's about integrating those versions, loving those versions of yourself for helping you to get here to where you are today. One of my favorite teachers that you guys probably hear me mention all the time, Ian levanzant, reminds us in her own words in one of her amazing books. In the meantime, it's a quote from her, the way to achieve your own success is to bodily embrace the very or, sorry, let me start over. The way to achieve your own success is to boldly embrace the very things that scare you the most. Sometimes these old things loop back around for us, because we might not realize that we are currently behaving in a way, or being stuck in a fearful thought pattern or fearful belief totally unconsciously because of something that happened in the past, because of a fear that we held in the past. Oh well, when I was younger, I did some public speaking, and I got ridiculed, and that was really painful, and maybe you've worked through it, maybe you've processed it. Maybe you even have come to a place where you love that version of yourself for getting out on that stage and trying their best. But maybe the behavior that's coming up for you now is that you pass off public speaking opportunities to other colleagues, or you don't challenge yourself to share with your safe community or your friends things that you are learning about the spiritual world. Let's just say it can show up in really sneaky ways. Maybe you turn over authority to other people because you don't like to use your voice. So you think, I'll just let them say what they have to say, and I'm not going to chime in here, even though I really do want to share something so that's part of this ongoing evaluation. And just because old patterns, old habits, old beliefs, are showing up, it doesn't mean you failed. It's quite the opposite. It means that you are ready to look at, to feel, to experience, to gain wisdom that will bolster you even more here, that will help you even more to move forward and live into the version of you that you are intending to become. Let's move on to this fourth misconception. This misconception is that healing is about putting things back how they were before this mythical, magical time and place before we can't go backwards, the only moment is now, obviously, many of us, and if you're here, I'm sure you've heard that healing doesn't restore the past. It's not like this emotional, energetic, um. Uh, energy healing, emotional healing, processing, personal growth, personal development, living authentically. It's not the same as getting a cast on your foot to repair a break, which I have had. So we all know when we break a bone, or when someone we love breaks a bone. You go into the doctor, they X ray, they assess, and they put the cast, or do the surgery to put it back to working order right, to get it back as much as they can how it was before. Well, that's not what emotional growth, healing, energetic healing, that's not what it's about. True healing involves learning from your experiences, so that you more deeply understand why you showed up that way, what that version of you was trying to hold on to or trying to help achieve in the relationship example, I've had just so many clients with challenging relationships lately, so maybe that's why it's so top of mind. But when we're looking at a relationship that we were in in the past, or even a current relationship, I sometimes work with people who are currently having relationship challenges, and sometimes they think, well, let's just heal this so we can put it back like it was before. Well, we're always growing and changing, and there's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. So it's really from learning from these experiences, sharing, growing, releasing emotions, rather than shoving them down, like we were talking about, understanding what those emotions are connected to why they're even coming up. I'm thinking of a friend who is going through a challenging segment of their relationship, and they are feeling such deep sadness very frequently, is the emotion that they're labeling right now, and what they were telling me is joy. I just really wish it could go back to like it was before, and I wish I wasn't feeling all of this sadness about this partner and some of this for this person, in this instance, brings me to my next point, being honest with yourself about your feelings while this person is resisting looking under the sadness to understand, well, why are you so sad? The sadness is there. Let's feel
it. Let's let it linger, because it's there.
Don't shove it down. So that's a great part of the process. But let's be honest, what is this sadness about? Is this sadness because you maybe thought the relationship was going to be different? Is this sadness because there were things we agreed to in the relationship that maybe are no longer being fulfilled in this person's instance, the sadness is because their partner's changing and evolving, and they're wanting them to go back in the genie bottle and not have so many feelings and not want to carve out space for themselves. And they're wanting it to be the same version of the relationship, and especially in relationships, we don't have control over other people's growth or resistance to growth, over their free will choice. We can make agreements, but however they show up, or whatever they choose. We get to make our own choices about that, and have our own feelings about that, but we don't get to control theirs. And in this situation, this person's having a lot of feelings about the growth that their partner's having, the expansion that their partner's living into the things that their partner's wanting to experience, even though, from someone looking from the outside might seem like, oh, that seems like a fun experience that they're wanting to have, while the person that I is my friend is like, I don't want them to grow in that way. I don't want to do these experiences. I don't want to go on these treks and travels, and I didn't sign up for that. So then the negotiation is being honest about how you feel about that and what it means for the relationship. And a lot of that's in the coming together. Some of this work is all in ourselves, obviously, if there's another person involved, yeah, maybe they might need to be involved. But really understanding why that's getting so lit up. And for this person, I love them dearly. My belief is that there is a fear of abandonment happening under there, and as we lovingly have these chats, I know that they will eventually. They don't listen to the pod, but I know that they will eventually come to this place if they continue doing the work and processing realize, Oh, I'm having a fear of abandonment, and that's why I feel so judgmental that this person, now that they have a little more time, is wanting to do this part of their dream, and that might be a different conversation for them within themselves, of whether they can continue in the relationship, While this person is also pursuing part of their dream or or perhaps they have a choice as to whether that doesn't resonate for them anymore, but getting to the bottom of it and understanding that fear of abandonment is only going to come through the emotional processing. It's not going to come. Through the resistance and continue saying, I want you to be like you were before. I want to be like I was before. I want to go back to how it was before. A lot of us would like our collective world to go back to a different period in time, or even our personal worlds to go back to. We often hear a simpler time. Well, that's not real. So while we can fantasize about whatever we want. It's not going to help us grow forward, and it's going to keep us stuck to continue demanding a version of the past that doesn't exist anymore. The way through is to understand, to be honest with ourself about our feelings, to continue to investigate, to release and process emotions rather than suppressing them. The goal is growth, expansion, expression, becoming more evolved versions of ourselves at every stage of life, not going back to a different time that doesn't exist in the same way anymore. Okay, let's move on to our fifth and final of these misconceptions that are sabotaging your growth, that are keeping you stuck, that might be not allowing you to grow in the way that you desperately want to and are striving to. So this misconception is this idea that, Oh, it sounds negative to keep just processing all of my old pain and rehashing all of my emotions that feels really negative. To think about my emotions, to talk about my emotions, another version of this is Oh, that's very self indulgent. And even that, in and of itself, is a pattern, a belief, a program that came from somewhere else, often someone in our past telling us, oh, that's very indulgent to think about your feelings. That's very negative to be processing your emotions. And the truth is, it's not, first of all, you can keep it private so it doesn't have to sound negative to anyone. But maybe the truth of this sentiment is what feels really terrible to be processing my emotions all the time. And one, emotions are only challenging. They're happy too, right? And sometimes we resist celebrating we resist celebrating ourselves. And even that is something to be looked at, but choosing to work through. Let's just use pain in this example, because I feel like that's the prickliest one. That's the prickliest emotion that we can work here. It sounds negative, processing all my old pain, choosing to work through pain, is empowering. It's not regressive. Ignoring pain, or really emotions of any kind, doesn't neutralize the effect of it. It actually really exacerbates the effect of it. It festers. It. Ignoring pain or ignoring emotions shapes our thoughts, our choices and our energy. Unconsciously, it's still shaping us right think about fear. Unconscious fears still affect our behavior, even if we're not willing to look at them. Unconscious pain or old festering pain and hurt. It's still affecting us on a day to day level. It's still affecting how we show up, how we engage with others, what we're giving ourself permission to do and not do. It's not invisible or not there just because we're ignoring it. Right? It's like the elephant in the room sometimes is our pain, and often just from my work in grief and with people who are deeply in grief and pain.
If you've ever been around someone that is deeply in grief or in pain over a long period of time, you probably know, yeah, it's an elephant in the room, even though they're trying to act like it's not there, or we don't talk about it all the time, it's definitely there. It's definitely affecting their decisions, how they're caring for themselves. I often actually see it when someone comes to me because they're worried about someone else who is in pain or in grief and not knowing how to help them. And obviously we can't do someone else's work for them. We can support them. We can lovingly know that it's okay to share or even ask them what help looks like for them, or what support looks like for them. We can, I suggest therapists. There's a lot of things we can do to be supportive, but it's there and present and affecting everything, even if we are trying to ignore it, even if we feel like, Ugh, this is negative. I don't want to look at this pain. I don't want to look at this hurt. I know someone who's just a beautiful soul and they are withholding themselves from relationships because they had a very painful past relationship. It was, it was a very beautiful loving relationship at one point, and then became very painful in the dissolution of this relationship. There was a lot of pain, a lot of hurt. And that very hurt version of them, those many years back, kind of swore to themselves in a subconscious way, oh, we're never doing this again. Yeah. And I think that's a common sentiment when a lot of us that have gone through pain or something really traumatic or like, Oh, we're never doing this again. I'm never going here again. I'm never going to experience a person like this again. I don't agree to this, and that's great, but we can't just stop there, right? I mean, we can. We have the free will choice to do it. But is that really living? Is that really letting ourselves enjoy life is that really building connections with people? No, it's withholding ourselves. So while this person has been working on themselves and as a point where they agree to have friends, they really kind of secretly want a relationship, but they're very afraid because they have old pain that they don't want to process because they feel like, oh, it's negative to process. I'm just not going to look at it. I'm just going to hit my classes. Those of you that have studied with me know sometimes we say I'm just going to put it in my backpack. Well, you carry in that heavy backpack everywhere you go, and it's affecting everything you do. You have a heavy backpack full of pain. You might say that hill looks a little too big. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna climb that hill and put myself out of my comfort zone, because this backpack pain is heavy. Well, why don't we just unpack the pain? Why don't we just look at how that pain is currently affecting you? What decisions are you making based on this commitment that a different version of you made, that, Oh, I'm not going to experience that. Because sometimes what we're saying when we say, Oh, I'm not going to experience that anymore, means I'm not going to engage anymore. We can't possibly know or predict what the experiences in the world are going to be. So then we unconsciously make a decision that I'm going to have no experiences at all. I'm going to just wall myself away and build these walls of protection, which actually become walls of isolation that affect us, no matter what our career is, no matter what our family situation is, no matter what our economic situation is, or where we live or what our spiritual gifts are, everything is tied together. Everything affects everything. So ignoring pain doesn't neutralize it. It actually supercharges it to work in the background, in the shadows of your life, affecting everything you do. And then people come and say, Oh, I feel blocked. I feel stuck. I'm not growing. And I don't know why I've worked on things before, or I don't really have anything to work on, but I feel stuck. I don't know what's going on. If you feel stuck or like you're not growing, I can guarantee that there are other emotions underneath in whatever area of life you feel like you're not growing in working through your pain, like in this example five, it sounds negative to keep processing my old pain, working through it intentionally gives you clarity on your emotions and actions, conscious understanding of who you were, who you are now, and who you're wanting to become. And it even gives you freedom, the freedom to respond to anything that shows up, rather than to react from a previous version of your experience. So in closing, one of the things I want to really highlight is that healing is a journey, not a destination. And whether you like the word healing or personal development or personal growth or introspection, each moment that we pause to reflect, to feel, to release, is an act of self love. It definitely counts towards your self care. So those of you that struggle to feel like you're actually doing self care, or if you're like me and you're like, Yeah, bubble baths are not it for self care, this counts.
It's really a conscious choice to involve
evolve, evolve, a conscious choice to evolve, and a conscious decision to participate in your own evolution. Life will continue to bring challenges, to highlight old patterns and to remind us of the past, but with each encounter, we have this opportunity to meet ourselves with greater awareness, greater compassion and even courage. The path of personal growth, it's definitely not always comfortable. In fact, it's often not comfortable, but it's deeply rewarding, and it's the only way to get from here to where you want to go. So where can you start, or how can you easily integrate this into what you're already doing? I'm not supposed to announce this yet, but I'm going to give a little teaser. I do have a free workshop coming up in the beginning of October, very soon after, when this is being released. So if you are not already on my email mailing list, it's free. I want you to get this workshop. It's going to do a lot of this work that we're talking about, but in a really fun, delicious psychic practice, kind of a way, it's for all levels. So make sure you are on my mailing list. You can either get the free mini course on my home page of joyful medium.com and that will get you on my VIP email list. Or if you don't want to do that, just email. Mail admin at joyful medium.com, and give your email and your first name and your permission to be on the list. And I will have you put on that list myself, because that's an exciting opportunity coming up to do this if you feel like you want some support, some community, if you feel like you want some tools and to have some fun. But since that's going to be only for a limited time, and this episode's evergreen. I want to give some tools here right now as well. Start simple. First of all, give yourself permission to start simple, because sometimes we also have this little voice, oh, simple is for failures, or that's too little, or you're not doing enough, or this is not making enough a difference. So ask that voice to just wait, or just help you understand the emotions that are rising up about even keeping it simple, but give yourself permission to start simple. Take just a moment to ask yourself, How can I show up more intentionally today, at the end of your day, or maybe sometime when you have a break in the day, consider taking a few moments to reflect on some or all of the interactions you had that day, and notice how you showed up, and if it if it was, if the way that you showed up is working or not working for you currently, this is like an inventory. It's not putting yourself on trial or putting anyone else on trial. This is not about blame or shame. It's just about noticing, taking an inventory. How did I show up today? How did I show up with every single person that I met with today or came in contact with today? Did I show up in a way that is working for me or is not working for me? This also means acknowledging where you do like how you show up, right? Because personal development is not all about looking at the challenging emotions. It's also looking at how you do like how you showed up along the along with areas where we can improve, right? Let's be honest about what we can prove on but let's also acknowledge, oh yeah, actually, you know what? I did help that person who couldn't who dropped their keys and couldn't find them, and I saw them right there. I that was I liked how I showed up there. I could have just walked by and ignored them. So it doesn't have to be big instances, just little interactions throughout the day. If you have more time to contemplate or have like even time to sit for 20 minutes to journal, even if it's just once a week or every few days, ask yourself, what story am I ready to embrace or release or rewrite? Because often we're working from a story that is a group of beliefs that we created, often unconsciously or subconsciously from experiences we've had. We collect the data right? Our little brains are always working, and we make beliefs or decisions or standing choices or ways to act in certain situations. So what story that you've created Are you ready to release? Or what story are you ready to embrace? Maybe you're ready to embrace the story about you stepping into your full power and being successful and not being apologetic for your success and being a kind leader as part of that success. So you can rewrite the story in any way you want. It often has to do with some release and some embrace. Healing invites you to step into the fullness of your life, honoring where you've been, appreciating who you are now, and often how you got there and courageously becoming who you're meant to be. Because even if something's you know meant for us or the highest expression of us on our path, we still need courage. It still is often outside of our comfort zone, even if it's something we know you want to do. So remember, every small moment of awareness and self kindness matters. You're doing better than you think. Every step forward, no matter how small, is a victory, and you are fully capable of creating your learning and creating love and learning to love and live. I'm so proud of you for even being willing to have this conversation and to look at these misconceptions within yourself, because we don't want to believe these healing lies. We don't want to sabotage our growth, but often we just can't see the path forward, and the path forward is through acknowledging and working with your emotions and fully embracing yourself so until we meet again. Big hugs. Lots of love. Bye for now. From inside spirit speakeasy,