The Time I Listened To A Healer Over My Heart

What I Learned About Seeking Guidance

My Soul has been pleading with me to share the following personal experience for quite some time. I’m now trusting myself enough to honor that request.

Each time the memory of this experience floods through my mind, it feels as if there is a volcano erupting inside of me.

My heart begins to race.

My body begins to fire up from the inside out.

Heat seeps through the pores of my skin and rage swirls through my veins.

Oh that goddamn rage.

It’s real.

It’s strong.

It’s fierce.

It’s the rage that comes from me disconnecting from myself so much so that I felt the need to listen to someone other than myself.

It’s the rage that comes from listening to someone who projected their unhealed issues onto my personal experience.

It’s the rage that is pushing me to string these words together in the hopes of giving another permission to travel to the depths of their own truth despite what anyone else has to say.

It was a time when I felt myself drowning in what was the beginning of an incredibly disempowering relationship. I couldn’t fully see it yet, but I sure as hell was starting to feel it. I could sense that I needed to end the relationship, but I was holding back because on some level it felt right to stay.

What I didn’t yet realize was that I was caught smack in the middle of choosing between comfortable patterning and the wisdom of my Soul.

I decided to seek out guidance. I longed to be guided back to what I knew was true underneath the confusion, self-doubt, and inability to hear what my soul was trying to communicate to me.

I am emphatically aware that I am responsible for my own choices. However, I’ve also experienced the following to be true.

Healing is a very delicate process. It has often felt like traveling down a windy road filled with many twists and turns. It has been an incredibly fragile time of growing in self-awareness, inner strength and confidence. Healing has required a willingness to move through experiences while mustering up the courage to self reflect so that past trauma no longer stands in my way. It has been a continuous process of unraveling and letting go of what was never mine to begin with. Healing is not for the faint of heart and seeking guidance from someone who is just as committed to their own healing can be a beautiful experience.

As I was moving through this particular relationship, I longed for a neutral comforting source of love and compassion that would help to support and validate what I was feeling. I was longing to be guided back to what I was already sensing but couldn’t quite yet see. I needed the space and proper questioning that would help me to determine my own conclusions and ground me in what my intuition was trying to convey to me. I needed questions like…

“How does it feel to be engaged in this relationship?”

“Let’s explore these feelings”

“Do these feelings feel familiar?”

“What does this relationship remind you of?”

“If your heart couldn’t be wrong, what is it telling you about this situation?”

“Are you doubting the voice of your heart?”

“Let’s explore where these doubts might be coming from.”

“What is this person trying to teach you about who you really are?”

“What if you set all confusion aside and you knew what was right for you in this moment?

“What action would make you feel the most powerful in this moment?”

These are the questions that would have put me back in the driver’s seat.

Instead of questions however, I got statements. Statements that left no room for me to feel into my own truth. I heard statement that sounded like…

“You’re being triggered.”

“Your guides are rooting for you and they want you to work this out.”

“You haven’t given it enough time.”

What I needed more than anything else was help in bringing awareness to what I was feeling and support in knowing that I could in fact trust what I was feeling. Instead I received these statements that reinforced the wounded little one inside of me that learned that her feelings were always wrong and therefore she couldn’t trust herself.

A more powerful piece of guidance would have been, “your guides want you to trust yourself?”

I mean even if I didn’t believe in guides, at least the power was being put back into my hands.

I walked out of this “Healing session” even more wounded than before I walked into it. I was guided into deeper self-doubt and experienced even more heartache, mental and emotional abuse within the relationship. I also experienced a loss of precious time where my path could have gone very differently.

I will never forget the confusion that washed over me during that session. Past me could not move from the chair I was sitting in. Present me would have run for the hills.

I could feel the stirrings of my Soul speaking to me and still I did not listen because my wounds were familiar and so very comfortable and hearing words that validated my wounds more than my truth only confirmed that I should remain in what felt comfortable.

It has taken a long time for me to sit with and hold compassion for this part of myself that stayed in that session and believed that healer over myself. There was a time where I would reflect on this experience and not allow myself to feel anything at all. I would tell myself that I shouldn’t be angry and that ultimately it was my responsibility to make the right choices.

And then one day, it hit me. I realized by not allowing my anger to surface I was engaging in the very pattern that got me into this situation in the first place.

“Stay quiet, Denise.”

“You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, Denise.”

“You don’t want to place blame on anyone but yourself, Denise.”

These bullshit stories were not allowing me to gain the wisdom from this experience.

I was caught up in the pattern of feeling like it’s wrong to make others wrong and I was hearing that terrifying spiritual teaching in the back of my head. You know the one that says, “we are responsible for everything we create in our reality.” BULLSHIT.

I am clear that I did not create this experience in this session. I sought out clarity and deeper healing and I left with even more confusion and deeper wounding. I am not responsible for “creating” that.

What I am responsible for is what I commit to learning from this experience. The lessons have been endless, but the one that stands out the most is that the anger that exists within me from this experience is not something to keep hidden. It exists to alert me of what is important to me and when given the proper attention, it has the ability to guide me to make powerful decisions. My anger has been nudging me to write this because seeking out support only to be guided into deeper wounding is not something I or anyone else should ever have to experience. My anger is speaking to me loud and clear because we need a world of responsible and integral leaders and healers.

And Yes, I am writing about Spiritual growth and pointing the finger at someone other than myself all in the same sentence. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary to point the finger in order for healing to occur. Healing is not black and white and there are no concrete rules. Knowing when and how to utilize teachings so they empower me to grow and stand my ground has been one of the most powerful lessons I have learned. There is a time and a place to apply a teaching and being able to know when and how to do this happens as we commit more and more to our own healing.

Sharing this experience is a testament to trusting myself in the most profound of ways and with a deep sigh of relief my Soul says, “Thank you.”