Episode 21 The Power of Being Alone.....I'm Not As Important As I Think I Am...

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Episode 21 

The Power of Being Alone..

I'm Not As Important As I Think I AM..

Now I Am Full Of Me...

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hello and a huge big Scottish welcome.
Episode 21, Sleepless inGranada.
I woke up at 6am this morning,full of energy.
My furry girls groaned and wentback to sleep.
I'm sitting outside now with mymug of green tea and my world is
very still.
It's dawn.

(00:23):
The sun has not quite risen yet.
I'm waiting patiently.
I love this time of morning andsummer.
The days are 15 hours long.
I have learned that one of themost powerful things you can
learn is how to be alone.
I mean, actually alone.
No noise, no people, nodistractions.

(00:44):
Just you and your darkestthoughts.
Most people can't do it.
Oh yeah, you say I'm independentand all that.
But are you always out, alwaystalking and planning the next
adventure because deep downyou're scared of silence, scared
of what comes up when the noisedies down.
Do you know how many people jumpfrom plan to plan, country to

(01:07):
country, person to person, justbecause they just can't face
themselves?
But here's the thing.
My dad actually told this to mysister repeatedly.
No matter where you run to orwho you try to hide from, each
morning when you wake up, it'salways you that you see in the

(01:27):
mirror.
So if you can sit in a room withyour own mind and not lose it,
if you can spend time alonewithout having to numb yourself
or run away, that's being incontrol and that's peace.
It took me a long, long time toget here and it was sore, so

(01:47):
very sore.
But the end game, oh my God,it's so worth it.
It's absolutely fine not to beliked by everyone.
It's okay to be with yourselfwhen there's no one else around.
Self-control is your real power.
Not sending that text, notsaying what you really want to

(02:08):
say, not trying to hurt someonejust because they hurt you in
the first place.
Anyone can react.
Anyone can make noise.
Anyone can shout and scream.
But holding your peace andchoosing silence over ego,
choosing control over chaos, nowthat's a totally different level

(02:28):
of strength.
I finally get it.
It's me.
I'm the huge problem.
I skip into people's lives fullof love and positivity, energy,
loyalty, peace and joy.
Something that they've never hadbefore.
I totally disrupt their comfortzone of chaos.

(02:49):
They are uncomfortable and arenot used to real.
You see, these people areaddicted to dysfunction.
and that's why they behaveweirdly towards me, but I'm okay
with that.
It's because my presencerequires growth and they're not
there yet.
One of the hardest lessons Ihave ever learned is that I'm

(03:10):
not as important as I think Iam.
I could be falling apart, barelyholding it together, but you
know what?
Nothing stops.
The world doesn't pause.
time doesn't slow down life justkeeps on going and going and
going with or without me that'sjust the way it is it doesn't

(03:31):
matter how loud or how heavy itgets inside your head the truth
of it is you're you are oneperson one moment one tiny
little speck I know it soundsreally, really harsh, but it's
strangely grounding at the sametime.
Because if the world won't stopfor you, then maybe you'll stop

(03:51):
expecting it to.
So you breathe, you get up andyou keep moving forward.
How empty of me to be so full ofyou.
This was a quote that I heardsome time ago.
And for the life of me, I can'tremember where I heard it, but
it stuck in my head.
I became so conditioned that Ifelt as if I was nothing without

(04:16):
him.
I had to fill my emptiness withhis validation.
His problems, I was there forhim.
I made it my job to put a smileon his face.
And that happiness I saw once ina while.
used to fill me up and I somehowfelt of value.
I felt important.
But now, now that I've healed,I'm full of myself.

(04:40):
I'm content, at peace and happywith who I am.
I no longer have that need tohave someone or something fill
that empty void within me.
The reason we're attracted topeople who are really bad for us
or use and manipulate us, peoplewho we know that we mean
absolutely nothing to outside ofwhat we have to offer them, it's

(05:04):
because we feel so empty withoutthem.
But we are not just emptywithout them.
We're empty with or without themin our existence, in our lives.
That false fullness that we feelwhen we allow them to use and
manipulate us, that's not a realfeeling of fullness.
It's It's a fake feeling.
We are filling ourselves up, butour hearts and souls are never

(05:26):
nourished.
They're still starving.
I never had that feeling of, Iam accepted.
I can be who I really am.
I had to ask myself all thetime, what is it that's stopping
me?
What is it that's stopping mefrom cutting him out of my life?
That was my key to freedom.
I became so aware of thetoxicity that he constantly

(05:49):
brought into my life.
only treating me horribly.
He depleted all my energy.
The poison of pain took time toenter me.
It took what seemed like aneternity to leave me.
I thought I was weak, that therewas something very wrong with
me, because I couldn't instantlycut him off, even though I knew
he was bad for me.

(06:10):
Bit by bit, though, I learned toextract him from my life.
I didn't get over it.
I just got really good atdisassociating.
Survival mode isn't the same ashealing.
Your body still remembers.
Insight isn't healing.
You can know every traumaresponse in the book and still

(06:32):
not feel safe in your own body.
You've got to feel it, not justname it.
Avoiding emotions didn't meanthat I'd mastered them.
It simply meant that my systemhadn't felt safe enough to let
them in.
Being self-aware isn't the sameas being self-compassionate.
You can understand why you reactthis way, but are you gentle

(06:52):
with yourself about thisreaction?
Healing.
You can't fix a body problem bythinking about it.
You have to come back into yourbody.
It's not about intellectualisingit.
Sometimes it's not even aboutunderstanding it.
It's about creating the space tofeel it.
So if you're constantly avoidingdiscomfort, if you're constantly

(07:15):
chasing feeling better, if youdon't want to feel that icky and
sticky discomfort, the body willalways find a way to discharge
that energy and it's sometimesthrough the skin and auto-
immune condition or throughpain.
We all need to feel theemotional pain that's driving

(07:35):
the physical pain.
When I was with my monster, Ihad eczema And I always felt
icky and had headaches and justfelt tired and listless.
And since I've been on my ownand before I had met him, I
never had a day's illness in mylife and I've never, touch wood,
had a day's illness since I'vebeen on my own.

(07:56):
It's incredible, isn't it?
We all need to learn to get outof our heads and into our
bodies.
We need to learn and understandthat our body has a way of
moving things that our mindsjust can't comprehend.
We need to learn to sit with ourpain.
Where are you feeling it?
And breath work, this resetsyour nervous system.

(08:17):
Learn to listen to the internalsignals.
No matter what anyone tells you,at the end of the day, your body
knows itself.
You just need to get quietenough to hear it.
Give it enough space to tellyou.
This disembodiment isn't becausewe really don't know what we
need.
We depend on other people totell us.

(08:39):
I am my own greatest tailor.
I trust in myself, I listen tomyself, and I give myself space.
This wasn't always the case, andI used to think it was a lot of
gobbledygook.
Everything I speak about in mypodcast is my own lived life
experiences.
I am in no way an expert.

(09:00):
I'm just sharing my healingjourney from the invisible
little mouse to the warriorwoman survivor that I am today.
Before I learned to regulate mynervous system, my thoughts
about myself were not to betrusted.
I would spiral over somethingreally small and I would repeat

(09:20):
the same harsh thoughts over andover again.
Making one mistake would make mea total failure.
It would consume my thoughts.
If this is you, you aren'talone.
It happened to me all the time.
The freeze response thathappened to me began in
childhood.

(09:41):
If I made the tiniest mistake,my tiny inner voice would
immediately go, you're stupid.
What's wrong with you?
Why do you always do this thing?
I wasn't consciously trying tobe perfect.
I just had this inner feeling,my inner voice, that told me to
stop messing up.
That feeling is shame.
That voice in my head wastrapped in my dysregulated

(10:04):
nervous system.
And an instant freeze responsefrom childhood, I often felt my
child was chaotic and at timesunsafe.
As children, we know we can'trun or fight.
Our bodies do the only thing,which is to freeze.
It's a survival response.
It's safer for the child tothink, I'm bad, rather than

(10:24):
blame the parents.
We learn as kids not to makemistakes because if we do, we
get shamed, punished, yelled at,cast out and labelled.
The body starts associatingmaking mistakes or being wrong
with danger.
I swam in this ocean ofuncertainty for decades.

(10:45):
One of the reasons I'm a goodspeller is because of the daily
ritual in school that Iabsolutely hated.
Every morning at nine o'clock,we were all lined up in class
along the wall and we had toremain there if we got the words
that we were asked to spellwrong.
You can imagine the shame feltby the kids who were not good at

(11:05):
spelling.
I often get into huge troubletrying to mouth the answers to
my fellow classmates.
It was embarrassing, it wasshameful and it was so fucking
stressful and I was only sevenor eight and at that age we
shouldn't have to endure suchthings.
I put myself under such pressureto always be correct and yet we

(11:28):
learn these things from anearly, early age.
When our body feels safe, ourthoughts will naturally soften.
I became more compassionate andmore curious about the inner
child in me.
I became less cruel to her andless critical about myself.
It's great when you make amistake and can move forward

(11:49):
without spiraling intoself-doubt and self-criticism.
Always pause before believingthe thoughts in your head
because they might not betelling you the truth.
You may just need to experiencemore safety in your I wish I
knew this 50 years or more agothe dwelling shadow of this
thing I call life and the colddark prison of reference

(12:11):
experience.
The reason we believe somethingis because of our reference
experience.
No one loves me, so what is myreference experience to that?
We don't have a reference forsomething we are trying to
create.
We have to create it internally.
The mind has a very difficulttime differentiating between

(12:31):
what is actually happeningphysically and what it is seeing
in our mind's eye.
When you are giving the mind areference experience visualising
first, you're giving the brainthe context to be able to
recognise it in the externalworld.
Most people don't even realisethey have experienced trauma.
Reality is most people haveexperienced some kind of trauma

(12:55):
in their lives.
We need to take a fresh look attrauma.
First of all, what is trauma?
Distress without resolve happensin all demographics across all
social classes to humans of anyage, race, class, religion or
sex.
Trauma changes the course of ourlives.
It alters our entire perceptionof the world, the choices we

(13:17):
make and the things we do.
Trauma changes the way we think,the way we feel, changes the way
our physical bodies operate.
The symptoms of trauma canmanifest as anything from
changes in your personality todysfunctional behaviour patterns
in relationships to difficultyin regulating anger and other

(13:39):
emotions to a general feeling ofemotional numbness to physical
disease and other illnesses, lowself-esteem to self-harm to
chronic pain, mental illness,simply having this lingering
feeling of a generalunsatisfactory or painful life
and so, so much more.
If you've suppressed a memoryand don't have conscious

(14:01):
awareness of it, the only aspectyou have of this memory left are
the triggers, the emotionalaspect of memories which comes
up in random scenarios when youare triggered.
We need to expand our minds andstart thinking about memories as
more than just the visual aspectof memories.
When we think of a memory, wewant the visual part and that's

(14:21):
how the mind makes sense of it.
There's a visual part of amemory, there's an audio part of
a memory, there's a smell, anemotional part and a feeling
part.
So all of these five constituteone memory and all that I'm
getting is the emotional part.
It's still accessing the memory.
We get frustrated because wecan't get the visual aspect.

(14:45):
Trauma.
Don't ever tell someone, justget over it.
If that certain someone wasphysically broken after
suffering life-changing injuriesin a car crash, you would never
be so cruel as to say, just getover it.
We completely understand crueltyon a physical level, but do we
understand cruelty on anemotional level?

(15:06):
I think we need to startchanging our mindsets the body
is being told all day every dayby our thoughts we are thinking
and the way that we are feelingour physical body is not a
separate machine most people whoare suffering and struggling
from a physical ailment have noidea that there is a mental and
emotional root to every physicalailment healing happens in

(15:30):
layers today this might be theday that you're ready to shed
that layer and next week ortomorrow I know.
This is what happens.
The healing process is natural,right?
I don't need to focus on my hurtshoulder in order for it to get

(15:52):
better.
My emotional healing and thehealing of my consciousness are
the same.
The layer that is ready to healwill just come up, deal with
whatever arises.
We can heal that.
The outside mirrors the inside.
And now a piece of writing bythe actress Meryl Streep.

(16:13):
Let things fall apart.
Stop exhausting yourself tryingto hold them together.
Not everything is meant to lastforever.
And forcing what is alreadybreaking will only drain you.
Sometimes the best thing you cando is let go.
Let people be upset.
Let them misunderstand you.

(16:34):
Let them criticise and judge.
Their opinions are reflectionsof their own perceptions, not a
measure of your worth.
You do not need to explainyourself to those who are
committed to misunderstandingyou.
You're not responsible for howothers choose to see you or how
they react to your truth.

(16:54):
Stop feeding the unknown.
Stop asking, where will I go?
What will I do?
As if the universe has notalready carved a path for you.
Loss can sometimes feelunbearable, but sometimes it's
simply clearing the way forsomething better.
What is meant to leave willleave no matter how desperately

(17:17):
you try to hold on to it.
What is meant to stay will finda way no matter how uncertain
things seem.
Life always finds a balance initself, even when we can't see
how.
There's a rhythm to life, anatural order of endings and
beginnings.
When we resist the flow, wecreate suffering.

(17:40):
We cling to what is breaking,fearing that nothing good will
ever replace it but this is anillusion the universe is
abundant constantly unfoldingnew opportunities new love and
new purpose the only thingkeeping you from it is your
attachment to what no longerbelongs to you and never never

(18:02):
for a second believe that thebest is behind you Life does not
stop offering beauty justbecause you have endured
hardship.
The good has not run out.
There is still more joy to beexperienced, more love to
receive, more peace to be found.
But you must be willing to makeroom for it.

(18:22):
So ask yourself, what am Iholding on to that is holding me
back?
And when you find the answer,trust yourself enough to let it
go.
Something better is already onthe way.
And don't I just know it.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of Sleepless in Granada.

(18:42):
I would absolutely love to hearfrom you.
Email me at sleeplessingranadaat yahoo.com.
Next episode to follow soon.