Healing the Worthiness Wound

Growing up, I had overachiever/workaholic tendencies- first in school, and later at work.

My productivity was linked to my worthiness. The more I worked, the worthier I was- of love, of attention, of validation.

When I got really sick, and wasn’t able to work for 2 years, I replaced this wound with healing. I felt a compulsive need to always be finding the next modality, the next mindset shift that would heal me. I always felt like I needed to be doing MORE treatments, taking MORE supplements, seeing MORE doctors, listening to MORE podcasts, reading MORE books. Of course this was all healthy to a degree, but I would beat myself up if I didn’t notice changes in my life, thinking that I wasn’t doing enough.

I started to realize that I couldn’t heal this worthiness wound by trying to DO more. The answer, although it didn’t make sense to my logical mind, was actually DOING less and BEING more. This meant more stillness, more connection with myself, giving myself permission to do nothing and rest, playing, reminding myself everyday that I was worthy- no matter how much I’m doing or not doing- and taking a break from actively “healing,” which actually ended up creating the most healing.

What if I’m worthy doing absolutely nothing? What if I’m worthy when I’m not working AND not actively healing? What if this in fact is the most healing for me right now? And what if this is what my body was trying to teach me all this time?

So that when I’m ready, I could show up in the world feeling more inherently worthy of everything I desire?

Using Gratitude to Bypass Healing

I discovered the power of gratitude years ago, when I got really sick with Lyme, coinfections, mold toxicity, and everything else that comes along with it.

At the time, I was too sick to leave my apartment for anything other than doctor appointments. I started keeping a gratitude journal. Every night before bed I would write down a few things I was grateful for that day. It helped me to retrain my brain to find good things each day at a time when I hit rock-bottom.

I began to realize how powerful gratitude was, and I started thinking OK, maybe I should be grateful for everything that’s showing up in my life, because it’s teaching me lessons, and it’s triggering me so that I could have more awareness and grow and heal on deeper levels. And yes, all of this is true. I do have gratitude for everything I’ve been through.

And, but- I was using gratitude to bypass the deeper healing. I noticed that when difficult things were happening in my life, and the emotions became too overwhelming, I would tell myself “I should feel grateful for this experience.” I was using gratitude to avoid doing the deeper healing, which involves feeling, allowing, and processing intense emotions.

I learned that while gratitude is super powerful, I can’t use it to control my healing- to speed things up because I want to make things better more quickly.

I have been learning to hold both- gratitude AND emotional healing. Gratitude AND acknowledgement that life can be challenging, and there’s nothing wrong with me for feeling that way. Gratitude AND taking all the time I need to heal. Gratitude AND support because sometimes it’s too much to process alone. Gratitude AND compassion for myself.

Being vs. Doing

Before Lyme, I was go go go. I worked a lot, did yoga a few times a week, met friends for dinner (sometimes all of this in the same day) and pushed myself even when I was tired. Weekends were filled with back-to-back activities or day trips. Over the summers when I was off from school, I spent long days acting on set. I had FOMO and felt liked I always needed to be doing something to be productive.

Enter Lyme. It came in slowly, and then completely knocked me out. I was bedridden, had to stop working, and couldn’t do anything. Forget about yoga or dinner- I couldn’t even cook, clean, shower, or do errands. I was forced to just BE. To lie in bed and do nothing.

At first, this was really difficult. I felt guilty and mad at myself for not being able to do anything.

Eventually I let myself be. Be angry, be sad, be embarrassed, be scared, be happy. I meditated and listened to music. I lay there feeling all the emotions, while trying not to judge myself.

I eventually realized that being is just as productive as doing. By being, I was learning more about myself than ever before. I was too busy “doing” before to really get to know myself. “Being” helped me have more clarity in exactly what I should be doing. It taught me to stay present and listen to my body. It showed me my strengths, and what I needed to work on to become more authentic and happy. It was when I was most creative and open to new ideas.

Now that I have more energy, I’m able to “do” more most days. But I make sure I have a good chunk of time each day to just be. And I realized that’s the key- finding the balance between being and doing.

Five Ways to Feel More Empowered While Healing

Disempowerment.

That can be major side effect of chronic illness, which strips away our dreams, our goals, our entire life and leaves us feeling powerless.

We give our power away to doctors. We deal with doctors who invalidate us or tell us diagnoses that we know feel wrong, but we listen to them because we are desperate to get answers.

We give our power away to toxic people. We deal with toxic people who tell us our symptoms are in our head and our treatments are crazy, and we question everything we are doing.

We give our power away to others we don’t even know. We compare ourselves to others, especially on social media, and then wonder why we aren’t getting better as quickly and question if we are doing something wrong. Or we feel bad being honest about how we feel because other people “have it worse.”

So how do we take our power back?

1) We follow our intuition and trust what we feel. Only we know if a doctor feels off, if a treatment feels wrong, if we feel worse or better. We don’t let anyone convince us that how we feel is wrong.

2) We don’t let people make us feel a certain way. There will always be people that test us and trigger us, but we have the power to respond rather than react. We have the choice to not take things personally and to remind ourselves that if people are judging our medical decisions, that says more about them than us.

3) We feel our emotions. All of them are valid. By suppressing or resisting them, they become overpowering and we can feel like they are in control of us. But actually sitting with and feeling difficult emotions is extremely powerful and healing.

4) We realize everyone is on a different path, and everyone’s body and medical situation is completely different. Just because one person responds well to a certain treatment doesn’t mean that it will work for us. And that’s ok. We realize we are all doing our best to get better, and that will look different for everyone.

5) We take all the energy that we spend worrying about things we can’t control (symptoms, flare-ups, diagnoses) and instead put it into things we can control, like giving ourselves what we need in the moment ( rest, sleep, a long cry, a bath, going out with friends, texting someone, etc.) and taking care of ourselves like we do others.

No matter what others say or do, and no matter how we feel, we can always make empowering choices during in each moment.

Three Ways to Move Emotional Energy in the Body

For most of my life I suppressed emotions- especially anger, rage, and grief. I didn’t know that during the time- I thought I just never got angry. Anxiety, sadness, frustration- yes. But anger, rage, and grief- nope. It didn’t feel safe to feel those emotions.

Then I got really sick, which cracked me open- and all of the suppressed emotions came out with a vengeance. It was intense, uncomfortable, and overwhelming.

I didn’t know how to feel and process anger, grief, or other emotions in a healthy way. Unfortunately, it’s not something many of us are taught at home or in school. Or at all.

It wasn’t until I got really sick that I learned the relationship between emotions and physical symptoms- trapped emotions can actually manifest as physical symptoms, and over time, trapped emotions can create disturbances in our energy field that prevent us from healing.

Actually starting to feel my feelings was ugly, messy, and painful. I mean, who wants to be laying on the bathroom floor, curled into a ball, hysterically crying because a deep overwhelming sadness knocked you over? Who wants to be laying in bed, shaking with anger with no energy to get up and release it? Who wants to frustrated, anxious, depressed, and overwhelmed, all at the same time?!

And worst of all, who wants to feel all of these emotions when you barely have the energy to stand up, take a walk, or even breathe?! And when you are in excruciating pain?!

But as I started to actually sit with these emotions and let them come up, they always passed after a while, and I would feel better- lighter and freer. The phrase “feeling is healing” is true. It’s not fun, it’s not easy, and it’s not pleasant. But it is healing and liberating. And I definitely noticed improvements in my physical symptoms.

There are three ways to help move emotional energy in the body- movement, breath, and sound.

Movement- this can look like shaking, jumping up and down, dancing, walking, yoga, stretching

Breath- I start each morning with a few minutes of breathwork (using the Pause Breathwork App) and do longer sessions about 1x a week. There are different patterns for different emotions, but something you can always do is take long, deep inhales through the nose and long deep exhales through the mouth.

Sound- I take long sigh breaths (taking a deep breath in through the nose and sigh it all out), scream into a pillow, or make whatever noises feel good to me in the moment.

Incorporating all three of these- individually or at the same time- even just for a few minutes- has been a game changer.

Try these and let me know if you feel a shift!