What's Important to Healing?

[Intro] Hi and welcome to my podcast. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive guide and the owner of Change Radically. My intention both here and in private sessions, is to come alongside you in a way that feels safe and empowering. So many of us are experiencing similar things and feeling common emotions, but we won't know that unless we talk about it. I specialize in helping people pleasers change patterns and create a life they feel good about. Life should not be consumed by doing things you feel obligated to do.

Do you want to feel a lot less frustrated than stop living in a way that benefits everyone else at your expense? Empowered to Thrive as a place of safety, Conversations focus on topics that impact our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Parenting comes up too, because I'm a mom to four kids and it's natural for me to talk about the impact that has on life.

The bottom line, you're always welcome here, no matter what type of day you're having. Your friends and their friends are welcome too. Please share the podcast. Let's create a place of community and connection that is saturated by authenticity and transparency.

I'll start now on today's episode.

Hello again. I'm happy to be with you and I'm glad you tuned in today. I'm grateful.

We're going to be talking about the key components of the healing journey. And maybe you are already on the healing journey. Perhaps you're just about to begin it, or you're contemplating whether or not you should change the pace of your life, and incorporating more sleep and rest, in general, is super important to your healing.

Now you can start small if you currently live your life. 

Go, go, go.

Maybe not getting much sleep at all. Not feeling comfortable with naps and relaxing during the day. Sometimes we have these underlying beliefs that it's OK to relax in the evening. It's OK to watch a show in the evening, but that's not OK during the day.

And it's good to get curious about those reasons, the way we think and the beliefs underneath them It might be because of what was modeled to you and how your parental figures and caregivers thought or it could be for totally other reasons, but. practicing a slower pace is important, so you can start anywhere that might mean you eliminate one activity from your weekend, so there's one less thing that you're doing on the weekend or you eliminate something from your week.

Maybe it's gonna look like starting to get 15 minutes more of sleep each night and then once you've been doing that for a couple of weeks adding another 15 minutes you're getting now 1/2 an hour extra of rest each week. Whatever you do to bring in a small incremental change, be sure to stick with it for a little while before you bring in another change. It's really important to make small incremental changes, not lots of things or big changes all at once I mean, sometimes that'll happen, but it's not a good way to practice and especially if you're just starting on the healing journey you have to start small because you want it to last.

And you want to practice whatever that change is, and I use the word practice because you need to do it on repeat It's a new thing we're doing. So practice it for a while before you then bring in another new change cause you want all of this to stick and last. And I'm guessing a lot of us can relate to that idea of a New Year's resolution, or a list of New Year's resolutions, and jumping into it super strong but then petering off before even the end of January, or at least by springtime.

That's not the goal of this. The goal of this is to incorporate changes and lifestyle patterns that last that that last forever, or at least ebb and flow with the seasons of our life.

I want to jump in with a quick example of what might happen though at certain times or the further along you get on the healing journey. There may be a very large change that you need to make all of a sudden but because I've experienced that.

But what other components that are playing in is that it's been a gradual progression behind the scenes like you've been doing all these other deeper things you've been working it out on a deeper level, so that what seems to be this big change all of a sudden was gradually happening. You were preparing for it in ways you probably didn't even realize.

And I say that because, like, even I didn't realize the way that I was preparing for certain things, at all of a sudden just felt like now is the time. And yes, this is a very big pivot, but now is the time for this. And I can say three years later, like, I'm still practicing whatever change it was a very abrupt pivot. But It was a slow progression underneath the surface and so keep that, keep that in mind another very big key to the healing journey is practicing mindfulness.

And becoming more self-aware so what I think of when I say mindfulness is this idea that you know why you do what you do. You understand the deeper reasons, and you're not just going through the motions you are more connected with yourself and not just saying or doing things because it's the way you've always done it but recognizing “Oh no, I want to do this”

And here's the reason why I want to have this conversation with this individual because I do want to be closer to them. I'm not just having the conversation because I feel like it's the appropriate thing to do or I'm not. I'm having the conversation. Maybe you're just mindful, you're just realizing I'm having the conversation because I hope that they'll like me more, I hope that they'll understand me more. I mean, that might be your reason for doing it. That's OK, you're aware of it at least, It's really helpful to have that insight in knowing why we do what we do I use an example often.

A few years ago recognizing that I would be in the middle of stressful moments with my kids. It was crazy in the house around me I would go to grab something sweet. As an act of comfort, I wanted to feel more relaxed, more comfortable, happier, and I felt like that sweet treat would do it for me. So once I realized that I could decide to still have that sweet tree and I would be choosing it mindfully or I could say, would I rather just go outside and let the sunshine hit my face? Would I rather have a glass like a glass of water or maybe some protein? Like do I need to eat the sweet tree right now or can I? Substitute it for something else and it's not to say that the sweet tree is never good. But I knew in those moments that it was a formed pattern because sometimes I don't even want dessert I just want a second helping of dinner I don't crave dessert, but I was very customed to after dinner, you have dessert, you don't have a second plate of food. So I've had to connect with my body and become more mindful of what's going on for me. Am I just living out of what I was conditioned to live out of? Like I was conditioned to think you have dessert after dinner, not a second plate of food. But I don't always want the sweet thing. 

On Mother's Day, we took my mom and some of our family to an ice cream shop. It was planned and I knew even when we planned it, I don't think I want to get anything there, and I didn't, I had a couple of bites of my husband's ice cream because I wanted to try it.

But that was it I just didn't want it then. It doesn't mean that I never want something sweet. Please don't take that away from this conversation because I like sweet things. But there are times when that is not what I or my body wants or needs. So just listening to those cues. And it's OK to even do things that you say “I don't like the reason I'm doing this.” It's better to do it mindful than to do it disconnected.

Something else that's important? On the healing journey Is becoming self-reflective and we could just kind of talk about it with mindfulness, but just really like pausing considering.

Who we are? How do we show up? Why do we do and say what we do and say?

Just reflecting, getting curious, curiosity, being curious, super important. Not thinking everything is this way or that way. Black and white thinking this or that thinking. It is a byproduct, oftentimes of trauma. A lot of times what was, what was when modeled to us? Like, this is right or wrong? I grew up hearing that all the time I was a part of a faith community where that was very custom, like, it's right or wrong. A lot of times there's there's more than that.

So, get curious. And I have to pull myself back. Oftentimes I might draw a conclusion about something or someone and I have to, like, stop myself and say, Corinne, we don't have to figure this out. Like, let's just let it be unknown. It's OK. There's safety in figuring things out, and we love to feel safe. It's an innate need within us and again, it's not wrong to want to feel safe.

That's perfectly fine, but we don't always have to understand everything or know what's happening. We can remind ourselves: We're safe in this moment. We're safe at this moment. Even though we don't understand at all, even though we don't know what's coming in the future.

I am safe. I am safe. I am supported. Help is close by.

That is what we needed to know as a little kid, and if we didn't hear it, man, we are going to crave that. We are going to have a strong need to do things in adulthood that allow us to feel this byproduct of safety. Connected with being curious is becoming playful and having fun.

I was a parentified child. I lost a lot of my childhood years. In high school, a part of me wanted to be on some of the sports teams, but I was doing a lot for my family at home, so I was working after school, making some money to help us get through private school. I was responsible for making dinners at my dad's house, or I took on that responsibility. A lot of this was me taking it on. But as a kid, a kid could take something on and their parental figure could say no, you don't have to do that, I'll do that for you.

So it goes both ways, I am responsible for my choices and my actions, but my parental figures are also responsible for not stepping in.

Helping me to understand like this isn't what you're responsible for right now, but they were just doing the best they could at that time too. They were struggling to get by, and I recognize that as an adult, I'm not excusing them. I think it's important to recognize, but not need to excuse the behavior of others. We can have an understanding of what's going on deeper for people that don't need to translate into us excusing their behavior. Fine line there, I'm sure. It is complex because we care about people.

We don't want to sound rude or disrespectful, so sometimes we just brush things under the rug or we make things look prettier than they are, but anyways, learning to have fun and become playful again. Maybe something you need to practice, because, like I, I stopped. The fun in my life stopped like y, really, really shot down and become callous.

When my parents divorced and my life, had I been already very responsible and parentified as a child before the divorce. Things only got worse after the divorce, and I used to look at the divorce as a trauma point, but now I know that I was experiencing trauma before then. It was complex PTSD. It was so interwoven in my childhood, I had no idea that it was there. Now people would say I grew up in a dysfunctional family, a dysfunctional home. I knew some of the components, but it was my normal.

I remember it was a marker moment, some of my friends were graduating from college and I was a couple of years younger than they were, but I had already graduated from high school so I would have been in college. It was college-age. I was there for their graduation. Observing their roommate's mother interacting with her daughter, the graduate. On the day of graduation. And I remembered having this moment of awakening where I was like, whoa, this mother is doing things for her adult daughter. Just nurturing things, kind things. I don't remember what it was. Maybe, preparing some food for her. Something nurturing and kind that an adult mother could easily do for their adult daughter and it would be healthy and fine. And I reflected like it was so strange to me to see this and think at the time: “I don't have that.” Like what is that? I don't even know what that is.

Now, my mom's done a lot of her healing work over the years, she's very different than who she used to be, and I'm grateful for that. We have a much better relationship than we used to have, and yet I still recognize the things that I never experienced, because of the dynamic of the relationship I had with the mother I had. So I've had to learn how to be playful and have fun. But it's been easy the longer I've gone on the healing journey and it's been almost two decades, so it's it does take a while.

I don't say that to be a downer, I just mean to have expectations, have realistic expectations. Some people I have a client who in the two years I worked with her, her life radically changed.

It doesn't mean that it takes like, two decades every for everything to change. I'm just saying that's my story that more and more keeps healing and changing. The longer I go, the there are more layers. I'm still on the healing journey. I'll always be on the healing journey. And that's fine. There's no shame in that. But becoming playful, and having fun is easier. It's much more natural the further out I am on the healing journey. It's such a byproduct of everything else.

So is incorporating rest slowing down the pace of my life? Getting more curious? Being mindful. Learning how to become self-aware. All of these things have become easier, more natural as I've gone on the healing journey.

So if you're considering my support or you're finding support elsewhere, keep these things in the back of your mind. As focus points as things to expect to be a part of your healing journey. And this is not an exhaustive list, this is a few things that quickly came to my mind when I considered them.

What's important to healing? What is important to focus on? No matter where you're at on the healing journey. So I hope it was helpful. Let me know, if these are things you're already experiencing or if you haven't started on the healing journey yet.

What are you looking forward to out of this short list or something that I didn't even talk about that you know, this is what I'm looking forward to in the future, and share it with me. I would love to hear it.

All right, until next week. Take care.

[Ending] We've come to the end of another episode, and I'm so glad you were here with us.

I hope that you'll consider what you heard today and start to put into practice something that resonated with you. Meet us here next week, and between now and then, please share the episode with a friend.

Remember. Who you are is good, and I'm so glad that you're alive.