Unaltered Voices

Bea Sz. on Unsplash As I evolve in my learning, I realize what I believe affects me emotionally and my behavior. If my thoughts towards myself are off, emotionally, I will be off producing off behavior. There was a time I believed I wasn’t loveable. There was a parental love I wanted so bad, but I did not get it. Yes, years later, I understood my parents loved me in the capacity they received love, but at the moment, I felt rejected and confused. I had a great understanding then that love was not supposed to make me undergo the levels of pain I felt in relationships, so when I kept getting the same thing, I began to internalize that as I wasn’t worthy of love. This thought process haunted me, and it affected every relationship, intimately or socially. I gave all of me away because if I’m not worthy, why bother with the other stuff. All of me physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I was never there for myself. It was about what I believed and the hope that maybe ...

    Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash We are so selfish , self this and self that. We need to focus on God are the words I heard from someone while participating in group coaching. I cringed in my chair as I discerned the inner outcry from those needing help. I began to hurt as I felt the pain the guests were in and the direction they needed. God is in us, so why aren’t we encouraged to get in tune with who we are?  Why are we still speaking of the creator as an entity outside of us? Why are we still quoting scripture to people without cracking the codes they are? I could feel it in the room that the participants needed strategy, and once again, they were failed and left to figure their way through the loads of horrible advice they received. “Self-Mastery is often defined as self-control, the ability to exert a strong will against your impulses to steer your future. Self-mastery requires having a vision for yourself. We learn self-mastery by getting out of our way....

Photo by STEPHEN POORE on Unsplash I remembered these words  “Just Be Nice” spoken to me often. After hearing it one too many times, my inner man rejected it, and I rebelled. I began to become frustrated, and I felt pimped.  It did not matter how deplorable treatment towards me was; I was encouraged to remain silent, translating into denying my feelings and suck it up. You need them right now, so chill out; you may need them in the future, so don’t start anything; you are wrong for how you feel, the violation is acceptable, it is okay to be mistreated and mishandled, it is okay to receive less than what I deserve from man. Just be nice to them and not hold anyone accountable for their ways and how they mistreat me. Suck it up and keep pushing; the 2% is better than nothing. However, it is a different story if someone says I am the culprit. It is “off with her head at that point.”   This magnitude of settling is an automatic response due to conditioning. We wa...

Photo by  Aimee Vogelsang  on  Unsplash HELP, why is this happening to me?  Why am I going in circles? Do I fight through this, or do I succumb to the pain? When does it end? I cannot keep this up. The robust exterior, while internally I am fragmented, is over. I cannot do this anymore. The pretend has worn off, and I can no longer keep up appearances. It is showing up in everything I do. I am attracting more of how I feel than what I want. More brokenness, more hurt, more pain. Everything I touch turns into the state of my being. I didn’t meet my goals; I stop before I start. With every setback, I relived the trauma I experienced ten years ago. It doesn’t matter how big or small; it all hurts the same. I am tired, and I want to be free. Whatever that is, I want to be me. Pieces of me are everywhere. I am shattering more with everyone I find; what will I have left? These were the thoughts that ran through my mind during those severely depressive states....

Casualty- a person killed, wounded, or hindered by some event. Medically speaking, this word means a severe or fatal accident.    You can be a casualty of your childhood trauma, but this article is about how we fail to pay attention because we are so in love, which causes us to suffer in relationships. Has an event wounded you? Was the blow of the pain incapacitating? Were you able to catch your breath, or did you find yourself paralyzed by the hurt you suffered? In a single moment, the trajectory of your life can change. One minute you are enjoying a movie, the next, a knock at your door ushers in a heartbreaking discovery changing things. Imagine being a casualty of someone’s unprocessed childhood trauma. I have. Before seeking proper treatment, I was also the culprit. I have been in relationships that typically ended after years of tolerating the individual not showing up altogether. The root of this toleration for some represents their father’s ...

I meditated at length on a dream I had yesterday when it finally hit me that I was seeing how we make unproductive choices without giving much thought to what we are doing. I won't go in detail about the dream but there was an act done that many do. The person I saw in the dream I personally did not know them to do it, so I had to look deeper. There was a point in my life I would have dismissed such a dream and questioned my thoughts, what I saw on TV, or what I was listening to prior to bedtime. This time it was different, something would not allow me to dismiss a potential clue. I read about this in the Old Testament but I was not reading then from the lens I read from now. And to cross reference I do see it in the New Testament. We have gifts, we have talents, we have purpose, we have opportunity, yet we remain unproductive.  When we learn that answers lie within us we will be more careful to really understand what we are seeing and how it applies to us individu...

I am screaming internally for help, but something is preventing my mouth from opening. It won’t open, so I chock on what’s overwhelming me. Someone sees me choking then performs the Heimlich Maneuver. The maneuver saved me, thank God.  But what happens when my choking goes unnoticed and the moment, I am about to succumb to such distress is the day I am supposed to break free and learn to seek help, but I refuse.  Last year I was a guest on the podcast Dope Conversations with Erica Warren. We spoke about a few things, but the “Strong Woman Syndrome” was the conversation topic. I have had an issue with this for years. I recall a time in my life I was about to lose everything because I would not ask for help. I got a second job and attempted to fix it myself but never asked for help. Having that second job was not producing what I needed, and it was wearing me down: mentally, physically, and spiritually.  In a moment, I felt comfortable sharing with someone ...