I am grateful you are here,
Jerry
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Returning: Meditations and Reflections on Self-Love and Healing
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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
Only purpose for that thinking pattern that there's something wrong with me is to try to keep you safe, is to try to give you some sense of control over your environment and over yourself, that if I can discover the thing that's wrong with me, then my life will change, then things will show up better for me. But here's the problem the thought that once was serving you to try to keep you safe, to try to cause you to figure out how you could change you in order to stay safe, ultimately begins to trap you. Hello friends, it's Jerry and welcome to the Permission to Love podcast. The podcast is dedicated to helping people understand how to heal their relationship with themselves, because when we heal our relationship with ourselves, everything in our life changes. How we feel about ourselves changes, the relationships that we have changes and what we manifest in our life totally changes. You can live a life where you're at peace with yourself, you have healthy relationships in your life and that you're manifesting the things that you so deeply deserve and desire for your life. So I'm glad you're here and I hope you enjoy today's episode.
Jerry Henderson:From time to time I get requests to go a bit deeper on the subjects that I discuss in podcasts. I'll mention something, a phrase or a thought or a concept, and I'll get feedback that you'd like for me to go a little bit deeper with that subject. So today I'm doing exactly that, and actually this is one of three episodes that is drilling down on a particular subject or a particular feeling, and it's that feeling as trauma survivors that we're chasing normal. It's that feeling that there's something wrong with us. We're constantly trying to fix ourselves and we think that there's this place that we're going to get to where we feel normal, and so we wind up constantly chasing after what we think is normal. So this is part one, and the topic today is that there is nothing wrong with you. The next episode will be about how to stop feeling like you need to fix yourself, and the final episode will be around the difference between self-acceptance and self-improvement. How do we keep those things in balance? In this series, I'm hoping to make the connection for you that there is this core belief that many of us have that there's something that's wrong with us. That leads then to a never-ending sense that we need to fix ourselves, to find some solutions, which then never allows us to accept ourselves. So I'm hoping in this series to help you unwind some of that, allow you to get peace with yourself, to realize there's nothing about you that needs to be fixed, and then move into a place of pure self-acceptance and, from that place, begin to make the choices about things that we want to improve in our lives.
Jerry Henderson:I want to take a quick moment and talk about my book Returning. It's a collection of meditations and reflections on self-love and healing. I designed this book to help you on your journey of moving from shame to self-love. It's divided in three sections. The first section is about seeing seeing that you're not alone. The second section is about understanding that healing is possible. And the third section is designed to remind you and to show you that loving yourself is the path back to yourself. I've heard from a lot of people that they're using it as a daily reflection guide, where each day they're selecting a passage, reading it, meditating on it, journaling on it, and it's really helping them in their healing journey and helping them understand that they are worthy of love, that they can heal, that they're not alone, and I know it can do the same for you. So if you haven't picked up a copy yet, please take a moment to do that, and if you have picked up a copy already, it would mean a lot to me if you'd take a moment and review the book, because the more positive reviews the book gets, the more likely people are going to become aware of it and benefit from the work. So thank you, thank you for picking it up, thank you for reviewing it and thank you for passing it along. Maybe, when you're done with it, you can pass it along to somebody else or pick up a copy for somebody else that you know could benefit from the work. You can get it on Amazon or you can simply see the show notes in this episode to get your copy.
Jerry Henderson:So let's first start by examining this feeling that there's something wrong with us, that sense that we can't quite put our finger on what's going on inside of us and why we carry this feeling and why it's so difficult to explain it to other people. It's a very real feeling. So I don't want you to get the idea that I'm dismissing that feeling because I carried that feeling for 40 plus years and that feeling caused a lot of challenges in my life, that I'm dismissing that feeling because I carried that feeling for 40 plus years and that feeling caused a lot of challenges in my life that have been very open and vulnerable about in this podcast, and one of the things that it did was it led to some real anxiety, this sense of low self-esteem, imposter syndrome and many of the things that go along with that feeling that there's something wrong with you. So I want to be really clear that I'm not minimizing that feeling, I'm not discounting that feeling, but I want to shine light on what it actually is so that then we can begin to see it through a different lens and have a new perspective, because perspective changes everything. When you get a different perspective and a different insight on something, it can transform the way that you approach it, and the way that you approach it is absolutely everything.
Jerry Henderson:So what is that feeling? Well, thank goodness that modern approaches to mental health have really shifted over the last decade and now we look at that view or that sense that there's something wrong with us as a coping mechanism, a way to keep us safe. The belief that there is something wrong with you is not a truth. It is a trauma response. It is a way that your body, your mind and your nervous system has learned to keep you safe. It kept you safe at one point in your life. Otherwise you wouldn't have it. You wouldn't have that belief system if somehow it wasn't serving you. Everything we do is an attempt to serve us. Yes, even the most unhealthy, dysfunctional things that we do are attempts to serve us. So carrying the belief that there's something wrong with you is something that's trying to serve you. So we want to get to those layers underneath about how it is trying to serve you, so that we can approach it differently and get our needs met in a much more healthy way. There is nothing wrong with you.
Jerry Henderson:Now your initial response or thought to that might be well, you don't know me. I know me. I know the things that I've done. I know how I behave. I know how I feel about myself. I feel so, not normal, and I've carried that feeling for so many years. I understand I felt that I lived with that and the thing that was the breakthrough for me was understanding that I was trying to keep myself safe, that that thought pattern was actually a loving behavior towards me, and understanding that the trauma that I had experienced had wired that into me. And how it got wired was I had an experience, or had multiple experiences of trauma and I made decisions from there. I made decisions about life, people and, most importantly, about myself. And the decision that I made about myself was there's something wrong with me.
Jerry Henderson:Unconsciously, I made that decision that there's something wrong with me, and the reason that decision kept me safe was it put some sense of control into my hands. It allowed me to see that if I think there's something wrong with me and that's why I'm experiencing the abuse, that's why I'm experiencing the trauma then I can begin to examine what is wrong with me, what can I change? And if I can change it, then I can be safe. If I can change my behavior, then maybe I won't experience the abuse. So then my radar right begins to pick up everything about me and begins to get laser focused in on myself and my behaviors. And how can I change this? Or did I do this wrong or say that wrong? And so I'm in this constant sense of vigilance about myself, doing self-examination, but in a very unhealthy way. Not a self-examination, but in a very unhealthy way. Not a self-examination for growth, but a self-examination for survival.
Jerry Henderson:And the decisions that we make when we're in survival mode often aren't the most rational or reasonable thoughts. So beginning to blame myself wasn't the most rational thing for a child to do. It was subconsciously done and that's often the case for many trauma survivors, and that can happen in childhood or it can happen in toxic relationships or other painful experiences in life. I mean you can make a decision that there's something wrong about you because you experienced the loss of a loved one or you've had a painful health condition and maybe you begin to think thoughts like what's wrong with me that life is treating me this way, or what's wrong with me that God is allowing these things to happen to me? Well, once again I want to encourage you. There is nothing wrong with you, you. There is nothing wrong with you. Only purpose for that thinking pattern that there's something wrong with me is to try to keep you safe, is to try to give you some sense of control over your environment and over yourself. That if I can discover the thing that's wrong with me, then my life will change, then things will show up better for me.
Jerry Henderson:But here's the problem the thought that once was serving you to try to keep you safe, to try to cause you to figure out how you could change you in order to stay safe ultimately begins to trap you. It begins to rob you of your self-confidence, it begins to rob you of your ability to trust yourself. It begins to rob you of giving yourself the life that you want, because you believe that you don't deserve it or that you'll screw it up or that it'll be taken away from you because you're not worthy of it, because fundamentally you're flawed and you're broken. And then you carry that sense about yourself and then you distance yourself from relationships, you keep yourself out of intimacy because you think that it's just a matter of time until they find out who you are, until they see you the way that you see yourself, and so your entire life begins to revolve around that belief system. That limiting belief about yourself begins to control everything else in your life. That's why I talk about it and I keep saying it over and over your relationship with yourself determines everything else in your life.
Jerry Henderson:So as long as you believe that there's something wrong with you, you're going to self-sabotage, you're going to mess things up, you're going to stay stuck, you're going to get passed over for those promotions, you're going to limit your ability financially, relationally and every other way, because you're going to continue to try to align with that belief about yourself, that false limiting belief. And it is a false limiting belief and you're going to hear me say that over and over. I'm going to repeat that a lot because I want to break that thinking, break that cycle in your mind that there's something wrong with you, there is nothing wrong with you. So when we have that belief, that impact that I just talked about, we carry with us everywhere and what that does is it then reinforces the belief that there's something wrong with us and we get trapped in this constant loop. And it goes like this I believe there's something wrong with us and we get trapped in this constant loop and it goes like this I believe there's something wrong with me.
Jerry Henderson:My subconscious belief then causes me to sabotage relationships, jobs, success or whatever it is. And then that sabotaging reinforces the belief that there's something wrong with you and you say things like I knew that wasn't going to work out, it was too good to be true, I don't deserve those kind of things. Knew that wasn't going to work out, it was too good to be true, I don't deserve those kind of things, or whatever that is. That goes on inside of your head. That then reinforces it cements that core belief, then what happens is you manifest that behavior again that limits you and that keeps you stuck. That once again has an outcome that reinforces the belief. So it becomes a very devious trap that we get stuck in.
Jerry Henderson:And the reason it is so destructive is because the message that there's something wrong with you. It will put you in a state where you feel like things will never, ever change. Why? Because you see you as the problem and if you're the problem, you can't get away from you. You can't change enough, because the person who always sees you as the problem will still be there, seeing you as the problem, even when you make all of the changes that you think you're supposed to make. The you who sees something wrong with you is going to keep finding ways that there's still something wrong with you. You might think when I accomplish this, then it'll prove to me and to others that there's not something wrong with me. Or when I fix myself in this area, then things will be okay.
Jerry Henderson:But the challenge and the truth about that you'll find all of the ways to discount that about yourself, any truth that confronts you about why there's not something wrong with you, your core belief system is going to discount that truth about you. It's going to continue to shove it away because it doesn't want to validate the truth that there's nothing wrong with you. Because if you validate the truth that there's nothing wrong with you, because if you validate the truth that there's nothing wrong with you, then that feels unsafe for you, because thinking something is wrong with you has provided you a sense of safety and a sense of control, and to let go of that feels scary. As much as you think you want to get rid of that core belief, to get rid of that feeling that there's something wrong with you underneath, you don't want to get rid of it because if you did, you would, if you did want to get rid of that belief you would have. Now that might sound harsh, that may sound judgmental, that might feel uncompassionate. That might sound harsh, that may sound judgmental, that might feel uncompassionate, but it is a compassionate statement that's trying to take you to a place to see that that core belief is something that you can let go of, that you're choosing not to because it's serving you in a certain way, and that if you were to let go of it, it feels really scary. So you do things to reinforce it, go of it. It feels really scary, so you do things to reinforce it and then you also reject evidence that goes contrary to that belief. All of that is good news, because what it does is it creates the distance from you and that belief and, as I've always said, we just need a little gap. We just need a little crack between a belief and the reality of who we are. And by creating some distance, by letting you know that it's something that you could choose to let go of, but you're not, because it's scary and you don't have anything else to hold on to, you don't have something else to go to.
Jerry Henderson:Okay, and that's the challenge sometimes with healing. There's this in-between space of letting go of something that has served us but is no longer serving us, and yet not having anything else to go to, to hold on to. Well, that's often a lot of the ways that healing works. We have to go through this process of trust, letting go and being in that no man's land where we just don't know what's going to happen next, but we're choosing to believe that what's coming next is more healthy than what we've been in. And this is why people stay stuck in toxic relationships, because they're afraid to let go of what they have, even though it's terrible and it's not serving them, because they don't know what else they're going to be able to grab onto when they leave. And that leap of faith and that trusting of letting go of something being in that place of uncertainty, that lack of control, that lack of having something to make us feel safe and secure, is really scary. But it is an important part of the healing process.
Jerry Henderson:And in today's episode, I want to help you move from that place of there's something wrong with me and help you move from that place of there's something wrong with me and lessen some of that fear, lessen some of that sense of no control, to then allow you to move to a new core belief, which is there's nothing wrong with you. There's never been anything wrong with you. Okay, so how do we begin to heal and let go of that core belief? Well, the first thing is doing exactly what I'm doing right now shining light on the core belief that there's something wrong with you as a false, limiting belief. We're just going to call it for what it is. Now, before I move on, I want to help you with something.
Jerry Henderson:As I talk about healing and letting go of this belief. I am pretty sure, if you're anything like me in your healing journey, these things are going to start to pop up in your mind. You're going to start to think things like, well, yeah, sure, you can talk about this because you're healthy, you're healed, you're whole and you didn't have the same experience that I had. Or I'm different and I'm uniquely broken. Or, yeah, I see people who can move on and heal, but for some reason I can't, and that's because I've got this problem or that problem. All of that is that thing of believing that there's something wrong with you and it's popping up because you're scared to move away from that core belief. Let me say that again when you make all of the excuses in your head about why somebody else can heal but you can't, and you create this dissonance between, yeah, this person, because they have this, this and this and they didn't experience that, that and that. That's why they can get healthy, but I can't what all of that is is it's that core belief coming up and manifesting in a different way. So if you experience that, that voice begins to visit you as I talk about all of these things, I want you to recognize that that's what it is okay.
Jerry Henderson:Now here's a second powerful realization that can help you. The first one shining light on the fact that there's that belief. It's not true. It's something that was designed to keep you safe. The second is this statement which, when I first heard it, it really shifted things in my mind, and the statement goes like this Maybe the only thing that's wrong with you is the belief that there's something wrong with you. When I heard that, that really opened my mind. It opened up my ability to look at it differently. It's kind of the same statement around the only thing to fear is fear itself. And it's the reality that the only thing that's limiting us is not that there's something wrong with us, but it is the belief that there's something wrong with us.
Jerry Henderson:But it is the belief that there's something wrong with us, that it is a belief that we've held on to, and it is simply that a belief. And you might say well, now I've got a lot of evidence for that belief. Now you have evidence that reinforces a belief that when the belief gets let go of, the evidence won't be there because you won't be looking for that evidence. You'll start to look for evidence that says that you're not broken, that there's not something wrong with you, and you'll start to gravitate towards seeing beautiful things that are in your life and you'll stop selectively paying attention to all of the negative and you'll begin to see the positive. It's like anxiety for many of us that the anxiety around having anxiety kicks in anxiety itself. The fear of having a panic attack is what will often kick in a panic attack. So that core belief that there is something wrong with me is the thing that then causes there to be something wrong with us.
Jerry Henderson:Okay, so I'd encourage you to write that statement down. Really, sit with it, that maybe the only thing that's wrong with me is the belief that there's something wrong with me. And if I can let go of that belief, then my whole system will begin to change. My whole beliefs will begin to change. My whole beliefs will begin to change. The things that I look for, the relationships that I'm in, all of that will begin to change, because I'm no longer trying to support that belief about myself.
Jerry Henderson:Now, the next thing I want to discuss about letting go of that belief I want you to sit down and do some journaling around it. You might say, well, I'm not really a journaler Well, I wasn't either. But what journaling around it? You might say, well, I'm not really a journaler, well, I wasn't either. But what journaling did for me is it allowed me to put things on paper and examine them more objectively, because as long as it stays churning in our mind, we can't see it, we can't really understand it, we can't get our hands around how unrealistic some of that thinking is. But writing it out really helps us, and often what happens when we begin to journal is we go into more of a flow with it. We begin to move past just writing a statement to then reflecting on that statement, and what does that statement reveal? And it begins to really lead us down a path of some aha moments or some truths. And so, in healing, I think journaling is really important.
Jerry Henderson:However, that journaling would work for you, and here's the question I have found to be very helpful for many people in journaling around this topic, and it's this question who would I be without the belief that there's something wrong with me? Let me say it again who would I be without the belief that there was something wrong with me? And as you write that sentence out, take time and sit with it, meditate on it, visualize who you would be if you didn't have the belief system or the thought that there's something wrong with you. What would transform, what would change? What would you feel like? Okay, let all of that come up Really connect with it, really feel it.
Jerry Henderson:Then I want you to move on to this next question what scares you about being that person? Is there anything about being in that place that brings up feelings that you're not comfortable with? And if there are, I want you to write that out. Write out why that feels uncomfortable, why you're afraid of that. For instance, if you have a desire to be promoted in your workspace and you realize that when you get promoted or you begin to get into that position, that there'll be more eyes on you, more expectations on you, and then, all of a sudden, you understand that, well, that might expose that I don't deserve to be in that role, or that might put too much pressure on me and I can't handle that, and it might trigger things in my life. See, that's that fear that's underneath there. That's saying to you that you feel like an imposter, you feel like there's something wrong with you, and when you get into that role, there'll be even more light shown on you, and that's potentially why you continue to sabotage yourself out of going for that, out of going for those positions and doing the things that you know would be necessary in order to get there.
Jerry Henderson:So that leads us into the next journaling prompt, which is how is that fear keeping you safe? So you've written out who you would be if you didn't have that belief, and you've really dreamed and you've really thought about it, and then you've uncovered some things that cause you some anxiety around those dreams and around that person. And then we now want to ask the question how is that fear keeping me safe? How is that fear reinforcing the belief that there's something wrong with me? And what all of this journaling is doing? The reason behind it is to bring us to a place where we can identify what a core belief is that we have, and you'll often then begin to identify where the core belief came from.
Jerry Henderson:You didn't always have that core belief. Okay, I want you to understand. You were not born with the core belief came from. You didn't always have that core belief. I want you to understand. You were not born with the core belief that there was something wrong with you. It was something that was handed to you. You had experiences that gave it to you and it wound up becoming a predominant belief about yourself. It became one of those core, fundamental beliefs about who you are.
Jerry Henderson:The true, authentic you is still underneath that belief, and so much of this work is about unlayering all of that and returning to the authentic you that you are before that belief ever showed up, and to begin to shine light on the fact that it is this false belief and that you can return. That's why I titled my book Returning Returning to the Authentic Self. The authentic self where nothing has been able to touch it, nothing has stained it. You've always been light and love. We just get confused, we just get deceived with things that get layered on us from experiences in life, and then we reinforce those experiences and we get super confused and we get lost.
Jerry Henderson:And so much of this work is about returning to that person, that authentic you that sits underneath that core belief that's just waiting for you to see, that, just waiting for you to let go of those beliefs. And so much of that hinges on how is it making me safe? Because when you identify how it's making you safe, you can then begin to identify other ways to feel safe. And that's the last journaling prompt that I'm going to ask you to do as a part of this exercise is to ask yourself the question what's another way that I could feel safe without having that core belief? And then let whatever answers come up and write that out. Okay, what other ways could I provide myself safety or feel safe without that core belief that there's something wrong with me? And what that question is gonna do is it's gonna help bridge the gap, that scary place of letting go of the sense that there's something wrong with you but yet not having something else to hold onto. Yet right. So we're trying to give ourselves just something to hold on to in that space as we transition away from that core belief.
Jerry Henderson:So what's another belief? Or what's another thing or behavior or something that you could do? It might be a mantra that you develop that you go to. It might be a place that you go to. It might be journaling that you go to. Whatever it is that gives you the sense that that core belief isn't true and you can begin to let go of it, still feel safe, and move back to yourself, your authentic self. And in closing, I want to give you this phrase that you can say that can help with that transition, and I want you to actually work through this with me right now, and it's this phrase, or this statement I am safe and I allow myself to let go of the belief that there's something wrong with me. I am safe and I choose to allow myself to be the beautiful and amazing person that I already am.
Jerry Henderson:Well, thank you for being a part of another episode of the Permission to Love podcast.
Jerry Henderson:I'm grateful that you're here and, finally, I just got a few more things that I want to share with you today.
Jerry Henderson:Number one is I created a guide for you, a self-assessment guide, about how to have a healthier relationship with yourself.
Jerry Henderson:It's really designed to help you and to prompt you each day to examine the five key areas of what a healthy self-relationship looks like, or the five key areas that we can begin to measure around what a healthy self-relationship looks like. So you'll find a link to that free download in the show notes of this episode, or you can simply go to my website at jerryhendersonorg, and I also want to take a quick moment to remind you if you've not yet had a chance to subscribe or to follow this podcast, please take a moment to do that. That's going to keep you updated on when new episodes come out and if you haven't had a chance to rate it or review it, please take a moment to do that, because that's going to continue to extend the reach of this podcast so that other people can become familiar about the work of how they can heal their relationship with themselves. And finally, I want to remind you, as always, that you are worthy of your own love.