How to Start Healing Yourself: The Choice

Over the next several months, I will be sharing step-by-step the process I went through to learn how to heal the childhood trauma I experienced, my life, and my relationships by healing my relationship with myself. 

In this episode, I share the first step, the choice to heal, and how to make that choice stick.

We often choose to heal, but shortly afterward, we feel the backward pull that ultimately causes us to give up on our healing journey.

Part of making the choice stick is understanding that change is possible, that change is possible for us, and that we are worthy of healing. 

As a part of this series, I would love to have you share topics and questions with me that you would find helpful for your journey.

You can heal, and it starts with the choice to start healing. 

I am grateful you are here,
Jerry

1:1 Transformational Coaching:
Learn More Here!

Pick up your copy of my book:
Returning: Meditations and Reflections on Self-Love and Healing

Want to Change Your Drinking Habits?
Reframe App

How is your relationship with yourself going?
Get your free-self assessment guide

Watch On Youtube

Website:
www.jerryhenderson.org

Support the Show:
My Patreon

Get Your Free Weekly Healing Tips!

Free Guided Self-Love Meditation:
Get it Here!

Instagram: @jerryahenderson

Disclaimer

Transcript

Jerry Henderson: 0:00

You know the number one question I get asked. It's the question how, how do I go about doing what you're sharing? How do I learn to heal? How do I learn to love myself? That question either gets DM to me, email to me. You're asked in person a lot.

Jerry Henderson: 0:17

So over the next several months I'm going to be sharing, step by step, how I went about healing my life. What did that look like? How did I go from a person who was carrying 40 plus years of unhealed trauma, the resulting shame and self-hatred, the haunting inner critic that led me to drinking myself to death in and out of rehab, burning through two marriages and really just destroying my life to the point where I didn't want to live anymore and everything was falling apart around me? So how did I go from that to a person who loves themself, who's in a beautiful relationship, who's sober and has learned the processes and the practical ways that a person goes from that to being in love with life, to being healed and being whole? I'm going to try to do my best to break that down step by step. Now, everybody's story is different, everybody's experience is different, but my hope is that, as you hear this, you will find hope that you, too, can heal. Now you might be a person who's tried traditional talk therapy or other modalities to try to heal and you just haven't been able to figure that out. And that's okay and that's common. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you, and I hope the things that I share with you can serve you in truly healing, because you can truly heal. You can heal your life and you're going to do it through learning that you are your own healer and you're going to learn to connect with that healing part of you by loving yourself, by loving all of the parts of yourself that you're rejecting. So I'm going to go through that process with you over the next several months. I'm going to be sharing as much as I can to try to get the message across about how we heal and doing it very practically. You know, one of the things that I've noticed about the self-help industry is that we often talk in theory or we give quotes, and hey, I do that myself, right, I give quotes and I give thoughts about healing, but when it comes to how do I practically and actually implement that, that seems to be the missing component, the missing piece in this industry, and so I want to be as helpful as possible and I want to be able to share it from a place of just trying to give back, to give back to this community. So, as I share these things, I hope that you're able to absorb them and customize them for your journey and how they're going to serve you.

Jerry Henderson: 2:50

Now. I've been doing this podcast for several months and I've shared a lot of topics and I've tried to be as practical as possible and it's been very topical the way that I've shared it, and that's been fine and it's served the community in the way that it has been presented. But over the next several months, I want to get as specific, as step by step as possible in the healing journey. So I might be recovering a few of the topics that I've shared before, and that's just so that I can drill down into it a little bit more and have it be a part of the overall journey. It's not meant to be repetitive, it's meant to be cohesive, and I also want to ask you a favor as well I want to ask you to DM me or email me with comments or with thoughts or questions that you have that I might need to bring some more clarity about because we're going to go on this journey together.

Jerry Henderson: 3:44

This isn't just me sharing. I want you to actually engage as well by asking questions, presenting topics. Now, when you do present a topic, it doesn't mean I'm going to be able to insert that right away. I'll have to look at it and insert it in a way that makes sense on that overall journey of how we heal. But don't let that prevent you. Please submit topics, submit questions for clarity, and probably what I'll wind up doing is, on the back end of some episodes, answer some of those questions, or I might dedicate an episode once a month to answer those Q&As.

Jerry Henderson: 4:18

So I'm excited about this. I'm excited to go on this journey with you. I want it to once again be as practical and applicable as possible that you could put this into practice and begin to see the progress that you want to see, the progress that you're worthy of. Now. Another thing I want to ask you to do is share these episodes with other people, people that you know are on a healing journey and need some practical steps about how to move forward. You can also use these episodes to kind of do a little group discussion with one another, compare notes and to see how they're applying these principles and how you're applying these principles, because healing doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in journeying together and it happens in community and it happens as a part of us sharing our story with other people and learning from one another, learning how others are healing. So I'm excited to go on this journey with you. So let's get started. Let's dive into this first episode. Hello everyone and welcome to the Permission to Love podcast. I'm your host, Jerry Henderson, and I'm grateful that you're here.

Jerry Henderson: 5:22

Today we're going to be discussing the topic about how we heal, and this is the first of a series of episodes about how we heal. And today we're going to be talking about the choice to heal. How do we make that choice, how do we follow through on that choice and why are we not following through on that choice? Why do we feel so much resistance to the choice to heal and how do we begin to overcome that resistance? Now, before we get into the rest of this episode, I do want to remind you if you haven't had a chance yet to subscribe or to follow, please take a moment to do that.

Jerry Henderson: 5:56

That's going to keep you updated on when new episodes come out. And then also, if you haven't had a chance yet to share it with somebody else and to rate it and to review it, please do that, because we want to continue to get this message out about how people can heal, especially this series about the practical steps that a person can take to heal their life, to heal their relationship with themselves, how they can learn to love themselves. And so, if you're finding value, if this is helping you in your journey, just know that there's other people out there as well who can benefit from it. And the two ways that we can get the message out is to share it, so you can share it on whatever social platforms you are a part of, by hitting that share button on this episode, and then also by rating it and reviewing it, because the more reviews and ratings we get, the higher it goes up, the more people are likely to see it, and that's going to help them in their journey as well.

Jerry Henderson: 6:50

So let's go ahead and get into today's topic, the choice to heal. Now, some of the things that are really important to understand in the choice to heal is number one we're free will agents, right, we get to decide whether or not we heal, and that's good news, and that's bad news at the same time. Right, because we are autonomous individuals. And so now, when I'm saying all of that, I don't want you to get the idea that I'm saying that we chose the original source of pain. It was not your fault what happened to you as a child. It was not your fault the behaviors that other people displayed towards you and to you. But we do now have a choice if we're going to stay where we're at or if we're going to heal. That choice is yours, the choice is yours alone, and we have to take responsibility for that, and nobody else is going to be able to do that for you. Nobody's going to come into your life and force you to change. People are going to try to help you, they're going to try to encourage you, but they can't do the work for you. And doing the work, the very place we have to start is to make the choice to change.

Jerry Henderson: 7:59

I remember when I made that choice. I remember the room that I was in. I was sitting on a couch and I was drunk at like nine in the morning and I finally decided that I had enough of that pain and I wanted to change that. I needed to change. There was something very different about the decision that day. There was something that rose up inside of me that made me finally decide that that was the moment that I truly needed to change. It wasn't a change based off of what others wanted me to do. It wasn't a change or a choice to change because I thought that's what I needed to do to make other people happy or to be the person that other people wanted me to be. I made the decision at that moment to change because I wanted to change. I knew that I needed to change for me. I couldn't live that way any longer, and that was the day that I got on the phone and I voluntarily myself decided I'm going to rehab.

Jerry Henderson: 9:00

That day I remember how desperate I was, but also how hopeless I felt. I felt like I was never, ever, ever going to be able to change. I felt like I tried everything to change and in that moment, I needed to give it one more try. I needed to make one more choice to move towards a life that was better than the life that I was living. Maybe this time the choice would be different. So I want to encourage you you may have made choice after choice after choice to change. And you might be thinking to yourself why would me making the choice to change this time be any different than every other time I've tried to change? What would be that difference? Well, I don't know, but I do know that each choice you make to try to change is moving you closer to that one choice, that when you make it, everything changes. You're only one more choice away from transformation. You're only one more yes away from your life completely changing. I know that can sound cliche, but I'm here to tell you, as a person who made that one more choice, said yes one more time. It was that time that changed everything. So don't give up. Don't stop saying yes to trying again, don't stop making that next choice, because you never know when it's that next choice that's going to stick.

Jerry Henderson: 10:30

So let's begin to talk about how do we make that choice to change stick, how do we give it a better chance, because we've all made those decisions right to change. Then, all of a sudden, we begin to feel that backwards inertia, that backwards momentum, drawing us back into old patterns, old behaviors, and all of a sudden we find ourselves exactly where we don't want to be, which is back in that pain, back in that relationship, back into that bottle or whatever your story is, or back into that self-loathing beating yourself up, or back into that place of depression and panic attacks and anxiety. So what's happening is we're just kind of finding our way back to what feels familiar to us and, most importantly, what we feel that we're worthy of. So we have to change what we believe that we're worthy of. You see, choices to change will not stick when you don't resonate with that future that you're hoping for, when you can't see yourself in that future.

Jerry Henderson: 11:31

So there's really three important things about that decision of changing and causing it to stick. And number one is that you've got to believe that change is possible and we'll do that right. We'll believe that change is possible, we'll be motivated. Or you'll listen to this podcast and you'll think you know what I'm going to change, I'm going to make those changes. And so you make that decision and you start changing things in your life. You say I'm going to do this differently, or I'm not going to allow this person to treat me this way, or I'm going to stop drinking, or I'm going to stop medicating myself, or whatever that decision is.

Jerry Henderson: 12:05

And then slowly it starts to drain out of your system because of the next point, which is we have to believe that change is possible for us. It's not just about believing that change is possible, it's about believing that change is possible for you. Now we're going to get into what do you do if you don't believe change is possible for you? But it is possible for you and you can change. But you're going to have to believe that it's possible for you to change. The third thing that causes us to get pulled out of those changes that we've committed to is that we don't believe that we're worthy of change. So three things have to happen we have to believe that change is possible. We have to believe that change is possible for us and we have to believe that we're worthy of that change. Right, because you could believe that change is possible. You can see that. You can know that. You can watch other people do it, but that doesn't mean that you're going to believe that change is possible for you. Now, even if you believe that change is possible for you, you've got it in your mind that you know what I could change. I can change. I've seen other people do it. I know I've changed some things in my life. So, yeah, I believe that change is possible for me.

Jerry Henderson: 13:22

You're still going to have to overcome that barrier of believing that you are worthy of that change, that you deserve that change, and that's the big part of rewiring. That's the big part of things that I work with people on coaching is that peace, that internal core belief that you have about yourself as to whether or not you deserve and are worthy of change. You see, once that shifts, once you come to that place, that you believe that you're worthy of change, you then believe that it's something that you have a right to pursue, to go after, and you begin to see yourself in that place and that begins to shift you to a place to know, yeah, change is possible for me, and you begin to see yourself in that place of change. And so that's something that's really important, because as long as you don't believe that you're worthy of change, you don't believe that you're worthy of a better life, a better relationship, better health, a better relationship with yourself, that you're worthy of your own love and talking to yourself differently and treating yourself differently. If you don't believe that, then you're going to keep shaming yourself out of the healing process and we're going to share about that in another episode of how we can learn to not shame ourselves out of the process.

Jerry Henderson: 14:40

But what you're going to do when you don't believe that you're worthy of that is you're going to talk yourself out of it. You're going to shame yourself out of it. You're going to start looking for and noticing the things that you're doing wrong instead of noticing and looking for the things that you're doing right. You see, you made this decision to change and you'll have one mistake, you'll have one mess up, and that's where all of your energy and your focus goes, because that's what you believe you're worthy of. That's who you believe you are. And so when you notice that, you're going to put all of your attention and focus in on that mistake and that's going to undo any momentum that you have. And so a part of making that choice to change is seeing the good things that you're doing, seeing the positive things that are happening in your life, and so you have to celebrate when you do something positive.

Jerry Henderson: 15:30

You can't just notice when you do something negative and expect that choice to change to stick. You have to be able to see and celebrate that one. You made the choice to change and then you have to celebrate any progress that you've made in that change, because in doing that you're teaching yourself and rewiring yourself to look for and to notice the positive. When you look for it and you notice the positive, you begin to reinforce the thought or the belief that yes, change is possible for you. So the first step, the first thing in changing, is the choice to heal, the choice to change.

Jerry Henderson: 16:09

We have to take full ownership that that is our choice, that we're the only ones who can make it. We have to be willing to say yes to trying to change one more time, even if every other 999 times that we've tried to change it hasn't stuck. We have to find a way to believe that maybe this next choice, this next decision to change, will be the one. Then we have to be able to believe that change is possible and that change is possible for us and that we are worthy of that change. And that is going to cause that decision to stick, because a lot of times what happens in the change process? So we make that decision to change and then we just white-knuckle it. We just get to a point where it's like, okay, I said I'm going to change, I'm going to try to change, I'm not going to drink, I'm not going to go back to that person, I'm not going to do this, and you're white-knuckling that decision.

Jerry Henderson: 17:09

How do we get away from the white-knuckling holding on, hoping that somehow this time it's going to stick and be different? You see, when you feel that, when you feel that you have to white-knuckle something, you're fighting against your core belief system. And yes, I want to acknowledge that, if there's an addiction in place, that you are fighting against the physical, the mental, the emotional, the chemical, all of that as well. But there comes a point that even when you get past that stage, you still are white-knuckling, you're still trying to figure out how to make that change stick. And that's because your system is fighting against you. Your system's fighting against your will and your willpower. You see, willpower will only go for so long. Willpower cannot overcome your core beliefs about you. Your willpower can point you in the direction. You can make that choice. You can use your willpower to point you in the direction of healing.

Jerry Henderson: 18:11

But a key part that's going to have to happen is that internal core belief system about who you are and what you deserve. That's going to have to change and when that changes, you will find yourself free from the white-knuckling. You'll find yourself free from that constant temptation to go back to whatever pattern and behaviors, because you'll begin to see that you are worthy of better. And when you believe that you're worthy of something better, you stop wanting to choose the things that go against that core belief. You know, there came a point for me where I believed something shifted in me and I believed that I was worthy of not drinking myself to death, that I was worthy of not destroying my own life. And that caused me to make decisions to not drink, to not be tempted to go back and, you know, drown myself with alcohol, because I was no longer trying to drown away the narrative and story that I had about myself, because I now believe that I was worthy of something. I now believe that I was worthy of my own love and that love then caused me to make decisions for myself and about myself that put me in the direction of making choices for my healing instead of making choices for my destruction.

Jerry Henderson: 19:35

And if we're making choices for destruction in our lives, if we're making choices for pain in our lives, it's because we believe that that's what we're worthy of. I know that that's a hard truth, I know that that might sting and you might initially push against that and say, well, hey, I didn't make the decision to do X, y and Z and this person did that to me. Once again, I'm not talking about other people's behavior, but if we are putting ourselves back in those scenarios and those situations over and over by our own free will, it's signaling to us that we have a belief system that that's what we deserve. And yes, even your addiction to that relationship and your addiction to them treating you that way, and your addiction to convincing yourself that that's what you're worthy of and you deserve and you'll never find anybody else, or your addiction to whatever chemical or escape that you're using or whatever it is, your addiction to thinking negatively about yourself All of that is a manifestation of what you believe that you're worthy of. And so, on this journey of me sharing these episodes or these next several months, I'm going to be talking about how we change that core belief of what we're worthy of. And when that changes, you're going to find that out of you flows this gravitational force, this pull that's going to start leading you to make choices for life and healing and beauty and all of the things that you hope for and want in your life. That's going to come from that core belief changing and then that's going to lead you in the direction of choosing what you're worthy of, and we're going to be covering that in future episodes. For today, I just want to delay that foundation of choice, that number one.

Jerry Henderson: 21:29

You have the power of choice. You do not have to remain a victim to your circumstances. Things happen to you. I absolutely understand that. Things happened to me and I had to come to a place where I needed to heal my relationship with myself and the first thing I had to do was I had to take full ownership over my choice that I am going to make the choice to change. I'm going to make that choice and I'm not going to wait for anybody else to make that choice for me. Nobody else was going to show up and drag me off of that couch. Nobody else was going to make that phone call. I had to do it and I had to own it and I had to let go of this story that was telling me that I couldn't change that. I tried to change all those other times. And because I tried to change all those other times, and hadn't that meant that I wasn't ever going to change? I had to drop that story and I had to come to the place to understand and to see that change was possible for me and that I was worthy of that change. That's what's going to cause that decision to stick.

Jerry Henderson: 22:40

So I want you to be encouraged. You can change, you can transform your life. You can find that place where your energy is moving you towards change and healing and not pulling you back to pain and suffering. Now here's an exercise I want to ask you to do before the next episode comes out, and so this week I want to ask you to do a couple of things. So I want you to write down what you want. What is, what is your heart's desire in your life for healing? Where do you want to be? Who do you want to be? So write that down. Then I want you to take time to sit down and visualize you in that state, in that condition, and really see yourself there and really connect and attach your emotions to that version of yourself. Really begin to see that, because what that's going to do for you is it's going to allow your brain and your body and your nervous system to start believing that you can be in that reality. Because the reality is.

Jerry Henderson: 23:52

The majority of our thoughts about ourselves when we're in places of pain and suffering are usually negative. We're thinking about who we used to be and all the decisions that we made that caused us pain. We're thinking now about we did that meeting and it didn't go the way that we wanted, or we said something to somebody and we beat ourselves up and judge ourselves, or we relapsed or we did whatever. The story is that we're carrying with ourselves, and so we see that and we just keep seeing ourselves in that place, and anytime we think about ourselves, we rehearse our failures. We rehearse our past failures, our current failures, and we start projecting that our lives will never be fixed, and so our brains and our bodies are just full of emotions and visualizations about the worst parts of ourselves, the worst case scenario, and so no wonder we don't believe that we can change, because that's the story and the narrative that we constantly hear, see, feel and engage with. Now I want to encourage you just because you're repeating patterns doesn't mean that that's who you are and that you're always going to be. It's not true. You can change, you can heal, and that's why I'm going to ask you to do that visualization. We need to start seeing ourselves in the state that we want to be in Now.

Jerry Henderson: 25:10

You might think that, well, okay, visualization, all that stuff is just kind of like hocus pocus, and you know new AG or this, that or the other thing, and you know woo, woo, it's not. It's your brain visualizing and seeing who you can become. I mean, if you ever had a moment where you revisited a past mistake in your mind, you just thought about it. Well, what happens? All of the feelings of that moment come back, that pit in your gut, that voice that starts to beat you up, and all that emotion. You might start to get depressed and you might start to seek and escape as a result of that, and so you drink or you take a drug or you run back to some relationship or whatever that escape mechanism is for you, because you're trying to avoid all of that stuff that came up.

Jerry Henderson: 25:55

So I want you to understand how powerful the brain is. It can take something from the past, recreate it in the moment, give you all of the emotions to such a degree that you're going to try to find some type of escape to get away from the powerful sensations of those emotions. The brain has the same ability to project into the future who you want to be and to pull that future into the present, have those present feelings of loving yourself, of a life that you want, and then when you do that, you're going to be drawn towards that, just like you're wanting to escape the past. When you begin to visualize a future that you want for yourself, you're going to actually begin to pull yourself towards that future that you want. That's a lot of my healing process has been that process visualizing emotions, examinations, reflections and so a lot of inner work, and we're going to get into that in future episodes.

Jerry Henderson: 26:55

So I don't want you to discount your brain's ability, your emotions ability, to connect with that future version of yourself and to be able to see you there. We have to get to the place where we see ourselves in that condition, because what that's doing it's giving you the belief that you can change because you're seeing yourself there, you're feeling yourself there and then that ability to see yourself there will actually begin to wire that part in you of feeling worthy of being there. But we first have to start with seeing ourselves there. I hope that helps you in understanding that number one. We have to make that choice, understanding, maybe, why those choices don't always stick, that we can't give up on making that next choice, and some ways that you can help make that decision to change stick by seeing yourself there, by feeling yourself there and beginning to realize that it is the sense of unworthiness of being there that is causing you to self-sabotage, causing you to shame yourself out of the healing process.

Jerry Henderson: 28:11

Well, thank you, friends, for joining another episode of the Permission to Love podcast. I'm always so thankful that you take your time to listen. It's because of you that we're a top 10% podcast. So thank you for being here and thank you for sharing this episode with those who are on a healing journey and who could benefit from the content. And as I close out this episode, I want to remind you of a couple of things.

Jerry Henderson: 28:34

One, group coaching. It's going to start February, the 19th. It's not too late to sign up. You can go to jerryhenderson. org/ coaching. I'm really excited about the folks that we already have signed up for it, so I'd love to have you be a part of it, because we're going to take things like this episode, unpack them a little bit more, discuss them and figure out how you can really learn to apply it in your life. The second thing is my book Returning. It's a collection of thoughts and poems on healing and self-love, and it's designed to be somewhat of a daily reflection. As you read it, you make notes inside of it, and so I want to encourage you to be on the lookout for that. And if you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet, you can go to jerryhendersonorg forward slash newsletter, sign up there, or you can simply go to the show notes. And finally, I want to remind you as always, you are worthy of your own love.