In this episode Lisa Dawn explores the themes of overcoming victim identity, utilizing creativity, and confronting the shame tied to chronic pain and illness.
She discusses how creating something new requires letting go of our past selves and our defensive mechanisms, ultimately preventing us from achieving deeper connections and intimacy.
Lisa also touches on the concept of triggers, emphasizing how familiar patterns and reactions often hinder personal growth. She advocates for a shift in perspective towards these challenges, encouraging listeners to seek the learning and growth opportunities in their pain and triggers.
She suggests that wisdom comes from the integration and embodiment of this knowledge, rather than letting it breed anxiety and regret. The episode underscores the importance of embracing pain and challenges as a path to liberation and fulfillment.
In this episode Lisa Dawn explores the themes of overcoming victim identity, utilizing creativity, and confronting the shame tied to chronic pain and illness.
She discusses how creating something new requires letting go of our past selves and our defensive mechanisms, ultimately preventing us from achieving deeper connections and intimacy.
Lisa also touches on the concept of triggers, emphasizing how familiar patterns and reactions often hinder personal growth. She advocates for a shift in perspective towards these challenges, encouraging listeners to seek the learning and growth opportunities in their pain and triggers.
She suggests that wisdom comes from the integration and embodiment of this knowledge, rather than letting it breed anxiety and regret. The episode underscores the importance of embracing pain and challenges as a path to liberation and fulfillment.
01:04 Navigating Life's Challenges and Embracing Creativity
01:58 The Journey of Creation and Facing the Unknown
03:55 Understanding Triggers and Breaking Free from Patterns
07:44 Exploring the Depths of Shame and Victimhood
08:31 The Power of Embracing Pain and Building Capacity
10:36 Reparenting Ourselves for Healing and Growth
15:08 The Somantics of Shame and Its Impact
21:43 Reclaiming Resilience: A Course on Somatic Healing
23:02 Rebuilding Self and Overcoming Victim Identification
27:43 Finding Empowerment and Trust in Ourselves
29:43 Conclusion and Invitation to Share
Lisa:
Hey friends, Lisa Dawn here coming at you with this week's episode of the Healed Now What Podcast. Woo. I got a lot of thoughts today and it's actually been hard to articulate all of the things I want to share with you. So this day has been a bit of a train wreck for me. I had all these plans to get up early, record this podcast and carry on with the day, but life just kind of took on. its own accord. I've had some irritating health issues arrive, arise over the past few months that have been making me also aware of how easy it is for me to fall into victim identification. And so this is going to be part of what I'm talking about today. Creativity, victim identity, shame, and rediscovering our inherent good. So perhaps any of you listeners can relate. This is an identity I know very, very well. I've also been witnessing how hard it is for me to even admit when I'm not feeling well. As someone who has journeyed with chronic pain and chronic illness, there is this place within me that continues to be ashamed of not feeling well. Sneaky, sneaky shame. I must be bad or wrong to be in this amount of pain. Ever had that show up in any circumstances in your life? But before we get into all of that juiciness, I want to talk a bit about creation and the unknown. So when we're trying to create something new, part of us will always be flailing around because suddenly we're in a space we've never been in or we're experiencing a relationship dynamic we're not used to. And here's the fun part, there's no map, which In and of itself is beautiful because it means that we are doing something different and it's also an opportunity to create new habits and witness something new arise within us. Essentially, we are being called to walk the path as it appears before us. So new awareness can arise from this place, and so much happens here. Fear and excitement can pretty much present the same in our bodies, but being able to notice the difference and then act accordingly is like such a gift. So the things we want require the abandonment or death or letting go of who we used to be. And alongside them, the defense mechanisms that we have to protect us from getting hurt, which ultimately end up preventing us from experiencing the depth, the love, and the intimacy we want. We have to get to know what we are protecting ourselves from. Whether that's being shamed, rejected, lied to, abandoned, we want to get to know these places. But instead of getting to know these places within us, we end up somehow just recreating the same scenarios over and over externally. Sometimes as the catalyst for our change and evolution. And I want to talk within that, um, just briefly about triggers as they are basically a recognition of a pattern that is familiar, a feeling that is familiar, you know, a facial expression, body language, some smells or scents. the way a person looks at us that is familiar, these things can get encoded into our systems that essentially cause us to have a reaction. Then the reaction is from the familiar circumstance or feelings or events and we are often from that place creating familiar circumstances, feelings. and events. So because our whole self recognizes this as familiar and comfortable, instead of a possibility to create something new, we just keep going in the same direction because it feels safer, more predictable. And so instead of taking the trigger as like, wow, this is something that's familiar, it's a pattern and it's something that I want to take a deeper look into, we oftentimes just ignore it or we place blame on the other person for, for triggering us. And so in so many cases, we. end up living in the symptoms of our excuses, of our distractions, of our unwillingness to peel back the curtain to see what's there. So in many ways, we subconsciously reinforce these patterns by, you know, dating unavailable people or maybe even being unavailable ourselves. We do this by staying in victim identification, ruining relationship. any kind of relationship. We have all these mechanisms to prevent ourselves from going into uncharted territory where the thing we most want swells and it's just there waiting for us in love, connection, depth, possibility, incarnation, and creation. What lives there is the thing we want the most, but it's also where we've been hurt. So, again, instead of going into our triggers, our shame, our victimhood, to garner the wisdom and the mastery that comes from all of those things, we choose familiar without exploring what lives beyond it. And then when we can go into these things as willing adults and ask ourselves, what skills would I have needed to meet this challenge? Who would I have needed to be? What would I have needed to access in order to find my agency in this situation? When we can ask ourselves these questions and answer them truthfully, we can begin to say to our wounds, teach me instead of enslaving me, teach me how to learn, how to grow, how to become, how to step out of this self that is hurt and running the show. So the wisdom. comes from the integration of knowledge because knowing something but not doing anything becomes really useless and just adds to this energy flowing through our bodies, but now it's in the form of anxiety and regret. We have to be able to live what we learn to embody it. And when we are living in a body full of shame and victimhood, our biology follows suit and it is present in our posture, our words, our behaviors. Oh God. I remember a time when probably many times when it was so painful to look within myself, all I could muster was blame for others. and my circumstances. And part of the reason is because I had never fully acknowledged it. There was this little person in me who had feelings she couldn't feel. There was a little person inside of me who wanted to be seen, but wasn't. There was a person, a little person who wanted to be protected and wasn't. And so now here I was as an adult who, and didn't know how to do this either. Shit. These tender life experiences. It is. But also, what a waste of our pain. not to let it in. We rob ourselves of the freedom that comes from embracing our pain because our past equips us with wisdom to step into the next unknown of our lives. How can we develop the willingness to walk out on the ledge? Part of this is we can begin to listen to the call of our passions, the call of our needs, the little voices of excitement, the novelty of allowing ourselves to suck at something. But we also want to rush to the moment where we already did the thing, or it's already been created. We can sometimes skip over the day to day bits and pieces that give life to this new thought, idea, or transformation. But as we know, this isn't how life works because our desire and our capacity are two different things. And just to speak a little bit about this, desire is limitless and dreamy and full of potential. And capacity can be thought of as our blood, our cells, our muscles, and our bones, and it is finite. We have to be able to build it to hold and tend to our desires, and we do this by going inward. We also build it for the times when things don't work out the way we had planned. Of course, I'm talking about our physical biology. how we influence our stress hormones, how we change internally first so that the inconveniences, the patterns, the triggers don't swallow us whole anymore. And all of this takes time and a willingness to step one foot closer to the edge. I just want to take a moment to pause. with all I just shared. This is an aspect of reparenting. We want to create the kind of self that goes towards the things that we fear and look for other places in our lives where the story we are telling ourselves may not be true. And by doing this, we restore the integrity to a body that is severely depleted, soul sick, and tired. So the trick is to be able to build a system that is able to digest and metabolize our life in a way that feels expansive. And let me tell you, this is not just about willpower or forcing things to happen. Part of true embodiment is feeling the things we never wanted to feel. We usually know how to think about them and how to talk about them. But do we, do we know how to transmute them? I know I didn't. We don't just get out of our shame, our grief, or our victimhood. We transform it. We go deeper into the parts of ourselves that haven't been tended to. So not escaping is actually the opportunity. The question then becomes, how do I create the safety that allows me to continue to make mistakes but also celebrates the new pathways I'm carving for myself? Are my desires outside of what my body can handle right now? That's such a huge question. Are my desires outside of what my body can handle right now? And sometimes we have to choose to hang out in this liminal space of not knowing. Perhaps it's, I don't have all the answers, but I know that the answer is making itself available. I just show up with my hands, my language, and my intention, and the words eventually come. I notice things that make me happy along the way. I offer my words as prayers, but I also cannot skip over the discomfort of looking a bit deeper into the ways in which I want to give up. And we have to learn how to be with that a bit first. Where does that feeling live? What habit or addiction or distraction do I wish to turn to, to avoid it? Can I show it some love, touch, or even. Give it a bit of my attention because again, we always want to rush into the knowing, but we don't get to the not knowing is a necessary part. I struggle with this too, even though life has shown me time and time again, that I can trust it. I still have my moments. But what I do know is that life orchestrates itself around the courage to take that first step and that first step is always made by me. So how does all of this tie into shame and victim identification? Well, I want to touch on these two things because they can become the basis for how we relate to the world and to ourselves when left unchecked. Why and how so many of us grow up having our natural impulses dismissed or vilified, you know, don't be so sensitive, get over it, calm down, stop being so angry. So instead of being acknowledged and recognizing that we all have our own inner authority, that is indeed valid and intelligent, we have well meaning folks society who disregard all of that and begin to educate us from the outside. And so it begins. Advice is great and all, but when we only know how to listen to that, we lose the ability to internally manage ourselves, connect with our knowing and make decisions based on what is right or wrong for us. This also ties into people pleasing. And of course, this happens over a lifetime where our natural behaviors as children are called misbehaving or acting out. And so we are punished. And so our inner relationship with ourselves is not solid. And so part of this journey is learning how to connect with the truth of our own experience. But first, let's talk a little bit more about the semantics of shame. So shame or humiliation is such a negative and disruptive feeling. So the experience of toxic shame fragment fragments us. and our sense of self and its various aspects. When we feel shame, our body language, learning capacity, and communication significantly change. So essentially, shame is in the body. When we're experiencing shame, we lower our eyes and break off our gaze. We may bow our heads and droop our shoulders. We may become clumsy or uncoordinated. Shame has the power of controlling our perceptions. We become unable to hear or see what is going on around us. It interferes with our thinking. When we feel shame, we automatically defend in various ways. And it also interrupts emotions and emotional communication, which limits intimacy and empathy. Shame shows up as a contraction in the body and moves us away from a positive sense of self to one of not good enough at our core. When we are in shame, we become hypersensitive to perceived criticism. And another important thing to note is, you know, when shame emerges, people tend to lose their muscle tone and vitality throughout their entire body. So energetically, this can feel like shrinking or diminishing. You know, this experience is frequently described by my clients as feeling heavy or small or wanting to fold in on themselves and urge to disappear and hide. So more on the semantics of shame is it speaks to. the body's involuntary ability to shut off excitement through neurochemical signaling. During a shame attack, we are physiologically cut off from pleasure, vitality, mobility, and reasoning. So part of what happens is our parasympathetic nervous system temporarily takes over and we can find ourselves unable to move, speak, look at another person, or even think. So this is similar to what some might experience as collapse or a freeze like state that we would experience if we were facing an overwhelming threat to our safety. So this is excruciating and an overwhelming freeze like state that we experience as shame. And so what can also happen within that state is that shame combined with whatever emotions we are taking in place inside of us at the time that the shaming occurs, whether we are aware of these feelings or not. So it kind of, it's like a marriage of shame with these emotions or states, for example, shame can often combine with feelings of fear, high anxiety, excitement, grief, rage, disgust, and this creates so much bound up emotional layers, and it's one of the main reasons that shame feels this. Transcribed overwhelming. And oftentimes when we are shamed for having needs, we learn not to trust ourselves. We learn that something is wrong with us. We don't trust ourselves and then we look to others to tell us what is right. So often we didn't develop the skill to look within for what is right about us, for us. and find it hard to attune to our own feelings, insights, or intelligence, because we are taught that who we are is dangerous, unreliable, and punishable. So instead of being with ourselves in a way that is compassionate and loving, we turn compulsively to try and fix ourselves. And the thing about that is every time we put our trust in others to fix or save us, the more we affirm the belief that we cannot help ourselves. Of course, this is not to say that we don't need others, but it's like this chronic tendency to self help and it will never be enough until we realize that we are enough. And that is a felt sense. So this dynamic in which we are wrong can only be transformed by finding our own life force, following it, and learning how to trust it. So instead of self abandoning our inner knowing when something unsafe happens, we can stand in the truth that we actually do know what is best for us. We begin to believe our thinking, trust the validity of our emotions, and be confident that our instincts and intelligence are in fact working well, and you know, we can also regard our intuition as an intelligent guide. Shame and victimhood, or victim identification, basically get in there and say that our experiences don't matter. The number one symptom of a shamed person is this sense of disconnection from our own discernment. The part of us that indicates what's right or wrong. And like trauma, shame is not just the event and the impact of what remains within us, but this also includes the witness, the person who saw it or didn't see it, or heard the story later or should have known. So depending on how we were received in our pain, this also reveals how we internalize it. Now, if we didn't have a compassionate witness who listens to us, honors that we weren't able to defend ourselves, witnesses the injury with concern and love, in enters shame. For those of you wishing to dive into the world of somatic healing and get a taste of what it's like to discover the wisdom of your body, I'm offering a hundred dollars off my signature course, reclaiming resilience to the listeners of this episode. It is a self paced five week course that teaches you how to be with big emotions and sensations. It expands your capacity for more joy. More love and more pleasure while you also learn how to access your boundaries, intuition, and build safety within your body. Essentially, you'll be learning how to harness the power of your nervous system and welcome in more clarity, authentic communication, and fulfilling relationships. In the program, we are changing the way that we perceive ourselves, our patterns and our limiting beliefs, as well as finding our unique voice. Use the code ALLCAPSFEELGOOD at checkout. And for those of you who are seeking one on one support, I also offer coaching and therapy packages and one on one sessions. I'll pop all of that information in the show notes. And now let's get back to the show. So a huge priority is to rebuild and reconnect with our deeper sense of self. And when we begin to reconnect with that, when someone does something to us, we can begin to trust that what we feel, see, and know is true. And this also leads in to the work of victim identification or a wounded person. And I call this phase the sacred victim. However, it is a phase and just like everything else it is meant to be honored and moved through. But before we can heal our victim identification, we need to claim it and see how it is playing out in our lives. So of course this identity begins with being wounded or victimized. But what happens when we are no longer in the same environment but still continue to act as though we are the victim? We become the victim of our lives instead of the co creators of it. We begin to view ourselves as victims in various areas. That was my journey. Within chronic pain and within anxiety and CPTSD and all of these things, I became a victim. I began to blame others. I believed that no one could be trusted. And for a period of time, I also stopped taking responsibility for what was happening in my life now. I did this through spiritual bypass, um, which is also, um, a really important part to healing. Sometimes things are just too overwhelming to be with. So within all of these decisions that we make, there is an intelligence, and that's why it's so necessary to acknowledge that Most of the time we are doing the things that we're doing because the pain of what happened to us was so much. Yeah, and I also want to name that we can't talk solely about personal responsibility without talking about how society, cultures, subcultures, family, and relationships play a big role in our struggles. You know, these are shadow material of a larger community issue, and we know that there is no symptom that belongs to only one person. We seek healing as individuals, and our healing and our suffering is connected to others, but this belongs to us all. Another way victim, identity played out for me was just the words I can't. I can't was such a big part of how I related to myself and my whole body began to cave in on itself through my shoulder and my upper body. I can't became my predominant posture. I can't became how I approach life. It became my number one belief. What can also happen is that we begin to believe that we are righteous in blaming others because of the pain we feel inside. When we allow victimhood to run our lives, true healing can't really take place. And if we look at victim identification on a large scale, Suddenly, we see groups of people who can justify killing and taking action that in most situations we would consider horrific and morally wrong as excusable because both parties believe they are 100 percent justified and right, while the other people or party is 100 percent wrong. Which makes it damn near impossible to resolve conflict since no one is capable of taking responsibility for their actions. And again, this is not to say that folks are not justified in feeling this way, especially when we take a look at the atrocities that are currently unfolding and will occur, will continue to occur when we stay in this state. It just does not allow for the pain to be fully felt. So that compassion, humility, and something new can arise. So when we hang out and victim, we are stuck in our story, our misery, and our identity as a sick or traumatized person or people. And therefore, we become chronically disempowered. So we need to bring in or usher in a new reality for ourselves of self knowing, empowerment, and trust. In our relationships, we can also play into this role by thinking of ourselves as the one in the relationship that has the most amount of trauma, needs the most amount of help. And sometimes we even put our partners on pedestals. I know for me, I made Tim my savior and my knight in shining armor instead of regarding myself as someone it was an honor to be in relationship with. I'm broken. And I need to do all of these things to find some level of okayness, of okayness began to be replaced with I'm actually pretty wonderful. I'm an incredible mystery that is always unfolding and full of possibilities. And that is the kind of shift that we're looking for here. And although for a time Tim obliged willingly this became a prison for both of us of identities that neither of us wanted to wear any longer. So we can come to see our needs as shameful because we were not witnessed when we were sensitive to something. And this does not have to be the way that we perceive ourselves in the world around us forever. We can come to see our needs as solutions, as feelings to honor. They're natural and normal. We can descent into ourselves, into the depth, the unloved parts, to find the being within who is incredibly wise and solid. And the truth is that they never left. So I hope that anyone listening out there today found some value. And if so, please send it to someone who could also use the extra support or encouragement right now. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next week. Bye for now.
