What To Do If You Want To Stop The Hurt
I coach women who hurt.
Women who are strong, independent and self-sufficient. Women who are smart, creative and successful.
But they hurt. Something has happened to leave them feeling less than themselves. Less than who they believe they are. Less than who they want to be.
It’s an emotional shit-kicking. We’ve all had them and they hurt like hell.
It’s the lousy upbringing or the parent who really wasn’t there for you.
It’s the unceremonious dumping by a love parter.
It’s the firing after you gave your all to that job.
We all hurt sometimes, even when we feel like we have our shit together in every other area of our lives. And when we do, it can rock every cell in our bodies and leave us doing things that we never expected to be doing.
Things like questioning our abilities, our worthiness, and our right to be happy. Things like not standing up for ourselves, and being ok with not being ok.
That’s what happens when we hurt. It’s not just about our shit-kickings, it is also what happens after that. Those emotional shit-kickings start to soak into our body, our mind, and our heart. It may start with just the experience, then it becomes like a cancer. If left untreated, it moves on to the next organ and then the next.
First we take the hit. We plug along thinking that we can manage it because we’ve always thought we needed to be strong and independent, right? But the deeper the shit-kicking soaks in, the easier it is to loose our footing.
Our self-confidence starts to feel fragile. Our relationships become places of drama. And then we question every inch of our self-sufficiency. Maybe we feel like we’re ready to fall apart, or maybe we feel like we could easily knock the head off the next person that gets in our way. Whichever it is, we’re not happy.
Ignoring your emotional shit-kicking can start a long and painful spiral. That spiral is full of reminders (often showing up as more shit-kickings) that there is inner work or healing to be done. It’s like the Universe is reminding you to get on it. And it’s true what you’ve heard. If you don’t change, nothing will change.
Are you ready to stop hurting so much? Give these strategies a shot. They may just get you looking in the mirror at your former self.
Identify your shit-kicking. Call it for what it was. It’s not that you can change it or erase it. but it helps to take a look at it on your overall path. Map it out. Where and when did you start to feel hurt and disempowered? How did you feel about it and yourself at the time?
Get clear on how your hurt has progressed. How have you been different since then? Take a good hard look at how satisfied you truly are with every area of your life. What isn’t working for you? What feels like a huge knot in your gut? What triggers you to feel pissed right off? What’s happening in your life that you’d rather hide from or avoid? Where are you feeling stuck or held back?
Accept your past as just that, past. Like I said, you can’t change it, but you can accept that what has happened to you was part of your lived experience. It doesn’t have to define you and you don’t have to be a victim to it’s circumstances. Accepting it as part of your past allows you to accept who you are today and intentionally plan who you want to be in the future, with all the learnings and all the messiness that comes from being beautifully human.
Know you’re not alone. Reach out to women who have been through similar circumstances as you and lived to tell the tale. Be vulnerable and open, you have nothing to fear from telling your truth. Find out what others did to kick their own asses, and how they moved from being a victim of their circumstances to a personal diy creator of their own future.
Stop focussing on the shit kicking and turn your attention to what you now know about yourself. What have you learned? What did it take for you to get to where you are right now? What else do you need to do or be to feel strong and get back on track?
Start today living like you are completely in charge of all your experiences. Emotional shit-kicking or not, you have control of your experiences of life. Allow yourself the choice of how you want to manage whatever comes your way, how you want to feel today and every day, and how you want to care for yourself through the ups and downs, and even through those regular days that feel pretty good. An empowering mindset is a choice over a disempowering one; so intentionally choose it every time.
And your choice right in this moment?
Give yourself permission to start.
Dianna xo
Dianna Leeder is thewomenscoach@cravemorelife.com/.
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