This is the third of a 4-part series called, Clear Your Blocks to Healing.
The purpose of this series is to help you find the blocks and limiting patterns that are standing in the way of your progress. The exercises will also stop the unnecessary suffering caused by discouraging beliefs.
Part 1: Clear Your Blocks To Healing: Judgment, Self-Criticism, and “Shoulds”
Part 2: Clear Your Blocks To Healing: Feelng Worse, Symptoms Flare-Up and Cravings
Part 3: Clear Your Blocks To Healing: Adaptations, Patterns of Coping That Don’t Serve You
Part 4: Clear Your Blocks to Healing: Victomhood & Fear
Staying committed to healing and realizing who you are and what you truly want isn’t easy. There will be times when you question whether you are actually making progress. And if you don’t see progress, you’ll doubt if you are on the right track.
You might even start to wonder if all of this is a waste of time.
The fact is, everyone who is dedicated to working on themselves, you will experience blocks at different points in your healing journey.
As you heal, each step brings you closer to your true self – and it can also reveal blocks and limiting patterns that were put in place to protect you.
This is actually a good sign! It shows that you are making real progress, and your awareness means the block is ready to be cleared!
You may do some great healing work, take a necessary and important step, and believe you have healed an issue completely. But some time later, you may find yourself re-experiencing the issue, feel like a failure, or become hopeless. Both the belief that “I am done” and “I am a failure” add unnecessary suffering to your healing process.
Understanding that healing includes times of apparent setbacks, and knowing how to handle them, lets you enjoy your progress with realistic expectations about the process.
This 4-part series will provide you with journaling exercises to help you find the blocks and limiting patterns that are standing in the way of your progress. The exercises will also stop the unnecessary suffering caused by discouraging beliefs.
These are actual blocks I’ve seen and heard from most clients as they go through the Core Emotional Healing process. While they appear as resistance to the work as it is occuring in the moment, some are also a part of long-term patterns or wounds, and clearing them can require deeper healing.
For example, the belief, “I can’t do this,” may rest in deeper feelings of disempowerment, shame, or feeling undeserving that came from early family conditioning.
So, while I include specific suggestions on how to move through your blocks so you feel supported and empowered, there are also “Deeper Exercises,” that you can try on your own. If you remain stuck, you may need additional support and guidance to heal on a deeper level, which can be found in the additional programs my husband, Doug Miller, PhD, and I offer.
I recommend that you use a dedicated journal to work through all of the exercises. You can come back to them over and over again whenever you need to and reference what you’ve done to celebrate your progress.
I created the Core Emotional (CEH) Process to help you more fully and completely heal the root causes of your emotional symptoms, relationship issues and other problematic patterns.
Most treatments, energy clearings, and other healing techniques don’t help you to access and feel your repressed emotions. Those approaches don’t teach you the processes and skills to give your wounded inner child and yourself, what you have always needed.
You need to be supported through the process to feel and heal your core wounds. This involves identifying and replacing long-held adaptations (false self) and protections (coping mechanisms) that no longer serve you but have been causing you suffering and have been getting in the way of you taking care of your emotional needs and expressing your true self.
Focusing only on treating symptoms, and changing beliefs and behaviors can help you feel you are managing better, and can help you feel a little better, but it’s not lasting and takes significant effort while your symptoms and patterns remain.
What is actually going on is that your core wounds and traumas create subconscious beliefs and adaptations that keep you disconnected from your true needs and feelings, and your intuition. This disconnect not only creates imbalances in your body and in your life, but deprives you of some of the most important sources of true information that can powerfully guide you and help you live how you really want to and get what you truly want.
Examples of Adaptations That No Longer Serve You:
- Being strong, capable of doing it all, no weakness or vulnerabilities
- Having a perfect body, objectifying yourself to be desired (sex = love)
- Overachieving and performing, perfectionism to prove that you are good enough
- Ignoring feelings by staying busy or numbing them with alcohol, food, sex, work, fasting, etc.
- Staying busy and in your head to not risk expressing your creativity and intuition, playing it safe.
- Eating clean / having a spiritual ego and obsession with spiritual practices, portraying yourself as “all knowing” to overcompensate for toxic shame
- Staying sick for attention and not taking responsibility for yourself,
- Staying small keeps you safe so you don’t risk failing because you don’t believe you can do it and/or you are afraid of embarrassment and shame
- Dissociation, checking out, feeling confused to not feel
- Busy taking care of others, handling it all to avoid your feelings
- Staying quiet to not rock the boat and upset others, people pleaser
- Dependant, needing others to take care of you
- Being angry, judgmental and blaming
EXERCISES
Adaptations, Patterns Of Coping That Don’t Serve You
I am overthinking, researching, and reading to understand how to feel better:
- Take flower essences (watch the last video under Lesson One in the CEH Self Study to learn more) to help process your emotions.
- Meditate, breathe deep, do yoga, go for walks in nature.
- Deeper Exercise: Connect to your inner child, journal, ask them how they are feeling and what they need, share this with us during a session.
I catch myself slipping back into results driven mode:
- Focus on the process.
- Write down your small successes.
- Know your self-worth comes from taking care of and listening to yourself, not from doing/getting results.
I am rationalizing what happened, trying to make what others have done to me okay, and saying things like, “They had a difficult childhood, too” or “They did the best they knew how” and/or
I am comparing to other people, saying things like, “They had it worse”, minimizing my own experience:
- These defense mechanisms were designed to protect you when you were dependent on your caretakers, and now they are keeping you from healing, being your true self, and getting what you really want.
- Write with your non-dominant hand, answering the question: “How did it feel?” Honor your inner child’s feelings and feel how the behaviors of your caretakers impacted you.
I would love to hear how this goes for you, and if you have any questions.
If you feel that you need more support, learn more about the CEH Self Study here.
Sending you so much love,
Elicia