IRRITABLE? EDGY? DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WRONG?
You might be an INDY WOMAN.
It was upsetting to her that she was getting so irritated and edgy with her partner about the most trivial things. It was a signal to her that something was wrong, because basically she’s happy with him and happy with her life.
So we began to look at where something might be missing. And we started with the obvious: appreciation, validation, being noticed for the things that she does. And while that was true, and we came up with some ways to improve that, it was only scratching the surface of how deeply irritated and upset she would get.
So we began to go deeper, which is what we do when my clients and I work together.
Because let’s face it, if you want deep and lasting change, the “fast food” of spiritual life is not gonna make it. You’ve got to go deep and you’ve got to be true. So when we went deeper, she began to remember that recently, she went with her young daughter to a re-gentrified part of town with really cool cafés, interesting restaurants, funky shops and she just loved it so much! It was such a deeply enjoyable experience.
And more importantly, it brought her back to a part of herself from a couple of decades ago, when she was living a much less conventional life. It had some of the funkiness and the coolness and the interesting vibe that she pretty much lived in back in the day. And she realized how much she was missing that…even though she loves her life now.
And so we began to talk about how a part of our soul can be left behind when we move forward in life, even in directions that are really good for us and that we want.
Parts of us, in a sense move out of the way to make room for us to move forward and that’s a good thing for our evolving lifestyle into more and more satisfaction and authenticity. But the other thing that can happen is that we end up unconsciously deeply, deeply missing that part of us that was left behind.
I had that experience myself a few weeks ago, looking through old photographs. I came upon a photograph of myself from decades ago. There in the face of that 28-year-old me, was something that I was missing today. And if I hadn’t seen it in her face in that photo, I might not have recognized that I was missing it.
It was, as I expressed to my client during our session, a ”ME-ness“, a relaxation into me, a confidence in me, a feeling about myself, and even a certain kind of love and recognition for me that shone through in my face. It was unmistakable!
From that experience, which, honestly hit me between the eyes, I was led to travel back in time and ask myself what kinds of things I was experiencing back then that allowed me to feel that way about myself in those days. And I definitely got some answers, some really important soul-based answers.
And so I led my client down that path, asking her to travel back in time, to back in the day when she was leading a less conventional life and was feeling that “ME-ness” about herself. We talked about the things that she could do to bring forth that part of herself, and one of them was to have the “artist dates” that Julia Cameron talks about in her book The Artist’s Way. These are commitments to have plans to go do things with parts of yourself, like your Inner Child, or Inner Teen, to nourish and affirm them… and they can be so very satisfying and affirming to that part of us that tends to get neglected in the course of living life.
I also suggested that she that she travel back in time and begin to make a list of those experiences and things that she had back then that were so satisfying and interesting and enlivening and authentically about her and her vibe. All of this is a way to invite back that part of her soul that was left behind.
Now mind you, it wasn’t deliberately left behind, but nevertheless it was abandoned on the path to a new life. It happens to all of us, and we can all benefit from looking back on those times when we were experiencing the deepest levels of that”MEness”, and discovering what we could bring forth into life now that would offer that to us once again.
Soul retrieval is sometimes, but not always about traumatized parts of us fleeing the pain. It can also be simply about the withdrawal of our energy from certain part of ourselves as we flow it into another part of our self.
So rather than a pathological process, we can look at it as kind of ‘taking turns’ among the various parts of ourselves. The journey I took with my client assumes that all time is NOW, even if we are calling it “past, present and future”, and we can access any and all of it for our enjoyment, satisfaction, and healing into wholeness
If what I’m talking about in this article strikes something within you, then I’m guessing there’s a part of you that got left behind as you pursued other things in your life, and other parts of you came to the forefront.
What we’re after here is balance; we’re not wanting to put that former part of our self in charge now, and as my client and I talked about we’re not going to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”! Now we’re simply wanting to bring that former energy forward in a way that allows us to feel more satisfied, more balanced, more authentic, and in the end, more ME.
This pattern figures strongly in the lives of the INDY Women I deal with in my business. In case this a new term for you, INDY = I’M. NOT. DONE. YET!!
You can read more about that in the eBook I wrote about INDY Women, and which you can download as my gift to you, at www.JaniceMasters.com/Healing-Resources/
If you relate to this, CONTACT me with the link below and let me know and we can schedule a chat.
Jan XO
www.JaniceMasters.com/contact/
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