Episode 6: Turning Pain into Power

The host, Femi the Divine, discusses pushing through pain, past hurts, disappointments, and how to turn them into personal power.

Online self help group community - Intotherooms.com

Therapeutic Writing Workshop - Writing for my Sanity Therapeutic Writing Workshop
Will Resume 1/5/2022

Book - The Recovering Spender by Lauren Greutman

Contact info

IG @divinehealingpodcast
www.thedivinehealingpodcast.com
femithedivine@gmail.com

Contact info - Femi the Divine

 IG @divinehealingpodcast

 www.thedivinehealingpodcast.com

 femithedivine@gmail.com

Transcript

0:31

Welcome to the divine healing podcast. I'm your host family, the divine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into this week show. If you are a brand new listener, thank you for pushing the play button and if you're a returning listener. Welcome back. So before we get into today's show, I just want to again, say thank you all to everyone who has listened everybody. That's reached out to me personally and provided positive feedback. I'm happy to hear that you all are listening that this is making sense to you. Okay. I think the information helpful just as I've seen it in past episodes, this was literally something I was supposed to do by spirit, for me to share things that have helped me along my healing journey. And I'm happy to hear that that's actually helping that this is actually happening. Again, anything that I discussed in this podcast, these are the things that I've personally gone through. These are personal things that I've worked through, you know, either on my own or with someone on my team. This is just me sharing. What has authentically worked for me. So I'm happy to hear that the things that have worked for me, you all have found some value in that. Today's topic is going to be turning pain into power. Experienced life as we go through things on this human journey, we will deal with painful experiences. It's inevitable. I'm speaking specifically about mental and emotional pain here. As some of us do experience physical pain, sometimes as a result of emotional pain. Part of my life, as you all know, I am a chronically ill person. I'm a spoonie, so I get boats. But in this particular episode, I'm speaking specifically about mental and emotional pain here. Sometimes once we reach adulthood, we're still dealing with situations from our childhood or young adulthood. Maybe we're dealing with painful situations that are fairly recent. Either way nobody goes through life with. Painful situations. And sometimes we let that pain hold us back instead of propelling us forward. Sometimes the situation may be something that has been done to us and maybe it was beyond our control. Sometimes it's something we did to someone else. It could have been as a direct result of some pain that was inflicted on us. Something we're still dealing with. It could have been a choice that we made at the time that maybe wasn't quite the best choice or. I thought it was the best choice with the information that we had available to us at the time. Sometimes it's, you know, us reeling from a painful response from something we did to somebody else, but let's be honest about it. Most of the time. At least something we have contributed to, we've all heard the saying that there's two sides to every story, but I mean, the realistic thing is most of the time there's three, you know, there's something that you did. There's something that they did and there's something that you both contributed to, but that doesn't make any. Painful, you know, regardless of who did what to whom it doesn't necessarily make the situation any less painful, you could be in a situation where you're feeling stuck. You're feeling confused. You're following and self pity. Maybe you're feeling like a failure because you've tried everything that you could and, you know, things didn't work out the way that you would've liked them to do. But pain is a natural part of life. Life is not always going to be peaches and cream and roses and rainbows and unicorns. And. The things that are out of our control, but understand that being stuck in where I would consider to be your victim hood is not the answer. If you're stuck on, oh my goodness. Everything is happening to me. Why is this happening to me? You may have. And your victim. Sometimes it's a situation where, you know, somebody does something to you. It's painful, it's a difficult experience and you're stuck in, why did they do this to me? They did this and that. And everybody you come into contact with, you're replaying that situation and they did this and this and this to me and so on and so forth. While that may be true, it doesn't benefit you to stay stuck in that particular energy. Okay. Staying there and constantly replaying the situation and going over what was done to you. You're stuck in your victim hood, and really you are allowing that person, not even so much to take your power. You're giving them too much power over your life. First of all, but not even really. You're allowing them to take the power. You're really just giving it away. You're really just giving it away to them because you. The stock in this spinning hamster wheel or on this real, because you can't move past it. Sometimes we don't move past things because maybe we haven't had an opportunity to fully process the situation. It's not even a matter of avoiding it. You really haven't had time to process what has happened. We'll be in your you're dealing with emotions. You may have emotions that you don't understand. You may have emotions that you don't even know how to articulate. You can't explain how you feel or why you're feeling that way. You may still need time to process that may take time depending on how grave the situation was. And not only that, but how deeply it impacted you. We'll go through the same exact situation and have different outcomes. We all come to the table with different past experiences. We are all at varying levels of emotional intelligence. We all have different coping skills. So two people experiencing the same exact situation, you know, will not deal with it the same way we may say. Then our victim hood, because we're feeling afraid, we've settled into this identity, maybe inadvertently, and we don't know how to let it go. We don't know how to move forward. This is all we know. And maybe we're waiting for somebody to swoop in and save us and provide directions. Instructions. Sometimes we say stuck because we just don't know what to do again, waiting for somebody to come save us or provide instructions. Okay. I feel like in that particular situation you deserved, whatever happens to you. If somebody else inflicted some sort of painful situation or caused some sort of painful situation in your life, please understand you didn't deserve it. Or you. I feel helpless. I feel like moving forward from here, isn't going to change anything because again, you've settled into this identity. We've all been there right? As we come to a point in my life where I to realize that staying there did not serve me. It was not benefiting me in any way to stay in my victimhood and to continue to real over and over about the past. I had to come to the realization that I had the power to relieve myself from that particular situation. From those thoughts, from those actions, from feeling sad or disappointed or. I feel hurt or any of those things. I had to come to a point where I had to be like, okay, I'm over it. I'm done. And it's time to move on. Now. I'm not saying don't sit with your feelings because you're entitled to feel the way that you feel about anything that's happened to you just don't stay there, get to a point where you work through it and you pick your. And you move on. Also keep in mind that when we say stuck in a particular situation or a frame of mind that you are allowing that to be a hindrance to you as a blockage, don't allow pain to dictate how you will live the rest of your life. You deserve more than that, you deserve better. Joe allow your life to be robbed of all of the wonderful things that you want to go on and do all of the pleasurable things that you want to experience, because you just literally can't get past a mental blocks. We're all going to go through painful situations. And sometimes those things change the trajectory of our lives. Sometimes there's things that we can't where we. Control over the only person you literally can control is you and you can make the choice to move forward. So how do we do that? Let's talk about that. You have to learn how to push through. So the first thing I would say is to sit with your emotions about the situation. Really think about what it is that is bothering you. What is the root of the issue here? What are your triggers? Sometimes when we have a painful experience and we're upset, we're in our feelings, we're sad. We're feeling down, we're angry. We could be upset. We can be angry. We could be bitter, whatever your response is. Think about what the root of the issue is because sometimes. It's really not what we think it is. It could be that we're being reminded of a past experience that we've never dealt with. It could be that there's something in this situation that is triggering from something in their past. It could be that maybe this particular situation is painful, but this is the straw that broke the camel's back in a sense. Of painful experiences. And at this point you're like, you know what? This is it. I can't do this no more. The next thing now that you've sat with your emotions and please believe that may take some time. You may not wake up tomorrow or next month or next week, or even next year. It'd be in a space where you totally dealt with your emotions and you've been able to release that. Let that go take the time to do what you need to do. If you need to scream, if you need to cry, if you need to take a staycation, if you need to journal, if you need to. If you need to physically release all of your anger into something, do that, literally channel that pain into something else. I mean, nowadays, you know, people, you can go and you can go places and you can ask, throw, or I saw something. Facebook, not too long ago, somebody posted on my timeline and they went to an event and I think it was called a break room or destruction room or something like that. And literally they pay for a session. They had a certain amount of time in this room and they could destroy pretty much everything in the room. I think. Except for this one table and the floor. I don't know what the table of four had do with anything, but they could just pretty much just go ham and destroy everything in the room, get all of their aggression, their anger, whatever it is that they needed to release. They were able to get it out in that session. Sometimes people go to the gun range. Sometimes people meditate, they do yoga, all the things that we've talked about on this podcast, but it, once you have settled with those, you have sat with your emotions and if you still feel like you need to release them, find some way to release. So you can let it go and move on. The next thing you want to do is take a deep breath, take a step back and reassess the situation. So now that you've had time to process, what has really happened here, what has really bothered you and the why take a step back and take ownership. This is where acceptance comes in. This is where accountability comes in, make the commitment to grow from this particular situation, right? necessarily, except what has happened to you. I'm not saying necessarily take accountability or blame yourself for what happened. That's not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is take ownership of the fact that this is your life. You are choosing to not allow. Situation person, place thing, be a hindrance to you anymore because you are ready to move forward and take ownership decided that this is my life and this is what I am going to release. This is what I'm going to put behind me. And I am now going to push through and move onward and upwards take ownership of your life from this point forward. Take some time to think of. What did you learn from this situation? Sometimes we learn things that we want out of life when situations don't go the way that we want them to go. Sometimes we learn what we want by experiencing what we don't want. And it makes you take a step back and think about, okay, well maybe I thought that was what I wanted, but maybe it's not, maybe it wasn't. Were there any, are you saying any repeating habits or behaviors that have sprung up as a result of that particular situation? Are those now a hindrance or a blockage to you moving forward? Those things. What would you do differently next time? If anything, maybe there isn't anything different that you would have done in this situation, but maybe there were ways that you could have improved or maybe taking a step back and realizing, okay. Maybe I did contribute to the situation by doing this and that maybe in the future, I'm not going to handle things that way. Take a look at where. Particular pain from this situation is playing out in your life. That goes back to those repeating habits and behaviors. I know I talked about this in, I believe it was the first or second episode where I had a job that was really horrible and I ended up leaving, but something that I realized. As I moved into my next job, there was some, I don't know, I guess it was unresolved or residual energy from the last experience. I don't even know if I want to describe it as maybe PTSD, but just feeling. When I moved into a new role, completely different job career path company, all of that, it was like every time I got called into the office about something, or I got an email about something and somebody needed to speak with me about something they wanted to meet with me. I was just full on panic. Like, oh my God, what's happening. Am I in trouble? Am I getting written up? It was like being called to the principal's office. Oh my God. What's happening. I must be getting fired today. Like just completely flipping out. And I realized that it was from a direct result of the horrible experience I have with my last employer, because that literally was what happened. Every time I turned around, I felt like I was being pulled up about something. And the thing was, you know, it was a brand new job. It was a brand new department. There weren't policies or procedures in place. I was the only person in my role. So I didn't have anybody I can go to for help. And then on top of all of this learning, everything being new to me, I was battling a chronic illness at the time that was sucking my energy dry, that was causing pain, discomfort, all of that. So trying to balance the two and the rest of my life. Snowballed into a whole lot of mess, but it seemed like every time I turned around and I was being pulled up about things and some somewhere rightfully so, because I wasn't doing well at the time and others, it was petty shit. Like for real, it was stuff that wasn't important. It was stuff that was being nagged and complained. It was stuff that was misinterpreted. And when I moved on to a new situation, I carried all of that panic and anxiety. And insecurity about my performance at work, into the next role. And please understand that every job I ever had before. Most of the time when I would get a job, I would go on the interviews. Interview will go, well, I would get the job I would get in my role. I would figure the job out maybe about six months or so, and then I'll be born and ready to move on. I always was the top performer in every role that I had, whether it was something I did before or not, or I learned, you know, it was a new role that I learned at that point in time. I always would blow everybody on my team. And the department, whatever out of the water effortlessly, I always excelled in everything that I ever said in life. That that was just my intention. That's what I came here to do. So just being in a situation where I was doing so poorly, much of which, because of things that are automatic. And they're failing miserably. I carry that experience into the next role when I shouldn't have, because it should have been a clean slate, a fresh start, you know, but it was just, it lingered in the back of my mind because it was just something that I just could not move past because I was afraid. Situation replaying itself. Again, I'm in a situation where things are new. Again, I'm in a situation where I'm having to now be trained and learn things that I've never done before. I mean, in the last job, they ain't even train me, but that's a whole nother thing. But realize that. Anxious insecure. Panicky behavior was a direct result from a previous situation. That was not something I ever experienced in my life as it related to work. And I had to take a step back and be like, wait a minute. What is going on here? And think about the why. So what I figured out the why. Okay, well, what am I going to do now to move out of this head space so that I can move on and be successful so that this doesn't impact my. Does it hinder me from being able to learn the things that I need to do, and this doesn't hinder me from performing great. Like I know that I can. The next thing we want to think about is shifting our perspective. Is there a silver lining here in this particular situation? Yes. It may have been painful. It may have been uncomfortable. It may have been undesirable. Where you really think about it. Did you Dodge a bullet? Think about the situation from a space of not why is this happening to me, but what is this teaching me think about? What am I supposed to learn in? Away from this situation to use as, you know, background or experience to navigate the next one. So shift your perspective. Yes. It may have been a horrible situation or a horrible experience, but you survived it, you survived a hundred percent of all of your worst days so far. Cause you're still here. Right? So shift your perception. Reframe the experience, figure out what it is that you can learn and take away as you move onward and upward. The next thing I want to talk about is seeking support. We've talked about positive coping skills, almost every episode, maybe support is your therapist. Maybe it's a trusted family member or friend. Maybe it's a trusted advisor, whether it's a spiritual advisor or. I don't know, maybe a mentor or a career advisor or somebody that you go to for advice, maybe seeking support there, maybe seeking support from some sort of support group or community that could be online or in person. I know I talked about the therapeutic. Group that I used to go to. I think I talked about that in episode one. I posted a link about that as well. Cause she's still hosting that on zoom and that's available to everybody it's free on Tuesdays. Apple's the information about that in the show notes. But making sure that we're using positive coping skills and mechanisms that we're not practicing escapist behavior scape his behavior or things that we do to avoid. We do them to avoid dealing with the situation at hand right then. And there are we sleeping too much to board our problems? Are we overeating? Are we spending too much money? That was mine. Have a good day, treat yourself, have a bad day. Treat yourself. I had to get out of that pattern because it was impacting my finances. I had a mountain of credit card debt that I had to deal with because I was an emotional spender. If that's you, there is a book called the recovering spender. That's really good. And it talks about basically emotionally spending and spending, being in addiction. I suppose the information about that in the show notes as well. Are you drinking too much? Are you eating too much? Are you using drugs? Are you overusing prescriptions? Are you taking a lot of sleeping pills and other things like that to numb or to get rest because you need to calm your mind. Are we overworking? That's a big one. Are we keeping ourselves so busy that we don't have time to think about the things that we need to work through? Overworking is a big one. As we live in this hustle type of society, people say, oh, we'll sleep when we're dead. One thing about me, I'm going to take me a nap. Okay. Use your tools, use whatever tools that are available to you for support. If you are dealing with some sort of addiction, whether it be alcoholism, prescription drugs, illicit drugs there is a website called into the rooms.com where you can attend. You can attend them on zoom anonymously for free over the telephone over video. And one thing I noticed, one of my clients in my day job was utilizing that service. And I went on there to look at it just to see what it was about. They have rooms that about other things other than that. I thought that was pretty cool. So I'll put that information in the show notes as well. I was called into the. Dot com, but there are a lot of free resources, even just Facebook groups or insecure and pages. You know, those types of communities can be free and you can chat with other people who are dealing with the same type of situation that you are, or if you have someone in your life that you're seeking to assist, maybe join so that you can gather some of that information as well, but just seek out support. There are lots of resources out here available to us, and many of them are free. The next thing we want to do is to make adjustments. Address those things that came up during your assessment. So I talked about how I had to take stock and reassessed. Why am I having all this panicky behavior as it relates to work something else that I had to deal with. And I've talked about this in previous episodes about, things that were related to my husband I was married for a period of time. I'm actually. In the process of divorcing my husband and I are no longer together. And part of the reason that we're no longer together is because I started to do this particular healing work and realizing that. There were a lot of things that needed to be addressed and in an attempt for me and for him and us to address them collectively, it was just time to end that relationship and move on from my perspective. But something that I had to deal with and make adjustments on is, you know, dating is new. And I realized that my husband was a Stonewall man. So whenever. He was in his feelings about something he didn't wanna discuss. He was mad at me about something. Sometimes it was over something that really had nothing to do with me. Sometimes it was, I did something he didn't particularly care for. I didn't do something he wanted me to do. He was. Stonewall mate, meaning he would just not speak to me, not acknowledge me, how do you live in a house? Somebody you don't acknowledge, but I realized that that was playing out in my relationships with other people, because I would be compassionate when I would reach out to somebody and they didn't get back to me within, I don't know, some arbitrary amount of time. So too long to me. And it always would take me into this spiral of, oh my God, they're avoiding me. Did I do something wrong? Like, are they upset with me? Like what's happening here? Why are they not talking to me when the reality of the situation. Maybe they were just busy. Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Is it possible that they were boarding me or they're upset with me? Right. Do something to them. Yeah. But the value situation, that was not the case. 99% of the time people are PC. But every time I was in a situation where it seems. Someone took too long and too long for whatever I felt like it was too long. I don't have a number of the amount of time or days or whatever it is. It caused me to go into this panic because it took me back to that space of feeling like I was being punished sometimes for something again, that I had no control over or something that I couldn't do, because remember I'm still working through being disabled and being chronically ill, or maybe I was just exhausted and I couldn't get to it. And it's not even a situation where I wasn't communicating those things, but he had his own things that he had to work through and he legit was Stonewall. Like not talk to me for days. And I had to realize. That was spilling over into other situations in my life, especially after he and I chose to part ways. That's something that I had to take a step back and reassessed like, okay, calm down. You have no reason to believe that that's why this is happening. You can't bring your past situation in this instance, into this one, because what it resulted in is one me panicking and being all weird and too, in some situations being extra clingy with people. They're feeling like there was this need for reassurance that they weren't mad at me. They weren't upset with me, but I didn't disappoint them. It realized that. I need to seek approval for myself before seeking it from outside from other people. And it would just be the most asinine, like silly situations. But I realized that that was a trauma response from what I dealt with with my husband. I really had to take some time to take a step back and look at it from a different perspective and then make adjustments because now I know to be more cognizant of that, and I'm not going to say that those feelings never creep up because sometimes they still do even now. And he and I have a bit together for. Year and a half, almost two years, but realizing that, okay, calm down. It's not that deep people are busy. Like aren't you busy. Sometimes they don't have time to respond to that. Everybody's not mad at you. We just live busy lives. I also think that, given the fact that we all have cell phones, people sometimes think or feel that we're supposed to be available to people 24 7, you know, immediately because we have that cell phone and that's really not the case. You're not obligated to respond to anybody if you don't feel like it, or until you get to it. But we, you know, we kind of live in this popcorn society where everybody feels like, just because you have a cell phone, you're supposed to be available to them at all times. And that's just not. You know, if you don't feel like it's your phone, don't answer your phone. You need to go do not disturb. That's something I've recently had to start doing, because I felt like every time I laid down to take a nap to my recall. So, no, I'm not available to you because I've taken a nap, but it could just be, I'm not available because I don't feel like being available right now. That's something that I had to think about logically, like, okay, calm down. They're not ignoring it. But I realized that that was a trauma response from years of dealing with stonewalling in my marriage. Also keep in mind that you brought, we are listening to this podcast and you may be working on your own healing, or maybe you are listening and you want to assist others in your life with your healing process. Maybe you're the person that caused the pain and the other person is healing. And you want to help them to try to recover this situation. There's someone in your life, that's going through something painful, understand that there may not be anything that you can do directly to help them, especially if they're not ready, sometimes there's nothing that you can do directly to fix it. Especially if it's something big, like you're dealing with generational, hurt and pain for people not working through their own banks. But you can support and help them to just feel safe. Every assure them that you love them. And that you're there for them. You have their best interests at heart that you want to support them. And sometimes that's really all you can do. Don't feel. It could be an understand that I can be frustrating, especially when you feel like you're drilling your healing work and the other person is, and maybe it's just not their time. Maybe they're not there yet. Maybe they haven't gotten through the processing piece or they're still working through their things. Sometimes when you're dealing with deep seated hurt, it may take years. It may take years of therapy. It may take years of healing. I understand that maybe. Those things have built up over time. It's going to take time to break them down. So if you're in a situation with someone where they're not at the place that you are just love them through it, offer resources. If you can be a listening ear, you have the capacity to do that. Be a listening ear. It may be a situation where maybe they don't want your advice specifically, but they just may want you to listen. Maybe there are conversations that need to be had to facilitate this healing process. So folks can move on. Maybe they need to get things out. Maybe they have questions. Maybe they want to talk through it. Maybe they. But let them take the lead in this situation and just reassure them that you're there for them. And you want to support them and help them in any way that you can and ask them how you can be of support. A lot of times we tell people, oh, let me know if you need anything. I'm here. If you need me, but not ever really explicitly stating the, how I can be available to you and help you, how I can be there for you if you need me and also not asking the person how you can help because. Your idea of helping and supporting them may not be what it is that they're seeking or needing. Sometimes we don't know what we need, but I mean, at least if you, make the statement or you ask if they're in a position to do so, they can let you know what they need from you. Now that we've, through the steps of. Working, pushing through our pain. So we've sat with our emotions and we processed. We have taken a step back and reassess the situation. We've shifted our perspective on things we've sought support, which may be an ongoing thing. I mean, you may not just seek support once or twice or however many times that that's going to be ongoing. And lastly, now that we've taken stock of the whole situation, you know, we've made adjustments, take your power back. in making the commitment to do this work and to work through a painful experience so that you can move forward, you're taking your power back, make the conscious decision to take the steps to move forward. Are the actions that need to be taken. Do you need to go back and address people that were involved in this situation? Maybe you need closure. Maybe you need clarity. Take some time to think about how you want to approach that is a person in their frame of mind to receive that at that point in time. And maybe you feel like you don't need to, I don't know why in this society, we have this whole idea that we need clothes, your own things. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes the closure is you making the step to put it behind you and move. Because sometimes you're not going to get answers from people. You're not going to get the apology that you want. You're not going to get the why. Cause sometimes they don't even know why they did what they did, but I would not hinge my healing on waiting on somebody else to tell me why they did something to me, because the reality of the situation is sometimes it's just because they felt. Because they want it to, and sometimes it's a direct result of things that they have not healed from painful situations that they haven't dealt with and I'm not, and that's not an excuse, but just understand that you may not get closure. You may not get the apology. You may not be in a space where you feel like you need to forgive them. We talked about forgiveness. In another episode, I practice African traditional religion and spirituality. Forgiveness is not. That is taught that's Abrahamic religion as Christian does the Christian belief that whole terminal or the cheek thing, I don't believe in none of that. You need to forgive people to move on and that's part of your healing journey. Then do that. If not, and you don't feel like you need to don't I don't subscribe to the whole forgive and forget thing. That's just me personally. I don't know. But are there actions that need to be taken? Maybe the action is choosing to move on and choosing to end a relationship and move on. I had to do that. Maybe it's choosing to leave the job. Maybe it's choosing to leave the friendship. Maybe she's in a move, think about whatever steps you need to take and check. Everything that you've learned into that experience. All of those emotions, all of that built up energy into your next step, convert it into something positive. Are you now using that energy that was previously consumed by anger, by sadness, by bitterness, by confusion, by depression, by anxiety, by all of those negative things that you were feeling, channel that into something positive. Maybe it's a new hobby or project you're working on. Maybe it's just physical healing, maybe it's rest and relaxation. Maybe you're channeling it into art or music or something. Creative. Are you sharing and helping others? Are you sharing? Experience channel all of that built up energy that you were using before, that was being consumed by your victimhood and being in a space of pain. Now that you've walked away and you've left that behind you, or you've started to make the steps to cause keep in mind that healing is not a linear process. You're not going to say, all right, I'm over this. And tomorrow is a new day. You never think about it again, because that's not realistic. Things are going to continue to pop up. You're going to be triggered and you may remember things, but now that you've taken time to think about these things, you released your emotions, you change your perspective, all of the work that we've talked about doing in this episode, when it does pop up in the future, you'll be better equipped to handle it and deal with. Even if it's just a little bit more equipped over time, you're going to continue to build upon your skills. You're going to grow emotionally. You're going to mature emotionally. And because you have done this inner work, keep in mind, that's my right here, because you have done this work and you're continuing to do this work is going to help you be more prepared to deal with situations when they pop up. Because again, All going to deal with painful situations in life. That's not something that we can avoid that's beyond our control, but we can choose how we're going to handle it. We can choose to be active in our healing and we can choose to move forward. That's all I have to say about this particular topic. Just remember that on this journey you are choosing yourself. You are choosing to deal with all of the difficult, all of the uncomfortable, all of the painful things so that you can release them so that you can move forward and you can live your best life, whatever that means for you. The life that it is that you want to live free of hindrances free of blockages free of past hurt and pain. Before. I'm going to leave you off with an affirmation as always. I affirmed I'm turning my pain into power. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye