Permission to Love with Jerry Henderson
"Your relationship with yourself determines every other relationship in your life."
When we create a healthy relationship with ourselves, everything in our lives begins to transform.
Join us each week as we discuss topics such as overcoming shame, letting go of limiting beliefs, dealing with imposter syndrome, finding healthy motivators for achievement, transforming trauma, and learning how to practice self-love and self-acceptance.
The Permission to Love Podcast is dedicated to helping people have healthier relationships with themselves and find the permission to fully love and accept themselves.
About Jerry,
“When I realized I was the source of my own suffering, I realized I could also be the source of my own healing.”
Jerry is a Master Certified Transformational Mindset Coach, author, speaker, and host of The Permission to Love Podcast.
He works with high-achievers to help them create a happier, healthier, and more sustainable life grounded in self-acceptance and self-compassion.
Jerry has helped thousands of people have a healthier relationship with themselves and uncover the limiting beliefs keeping them from the life they so deeply desire and deserve.
He uses a combination of transformational mindset coaching, positive psychology, trauma-informed approaches, IFS, and NLP to remove limiting beliefs and connect with their authentic selves.
Jerry has an undergraduate degree in Political Science, an MBA in global business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and is currently completing his Master's degree in Psychology at Harvard University.
Before becoming a Transformational Coach, Jerry spent most of his career in Philanthropy, raising over $1 billion USD for not-for-profits. He is a survivor of childhood trauma and now helps individuals learn how to create the lives they want from a place of healthy motivators and remaining mentally, emotionally, physically, relationally, and spiritually healthy.
New episodes of The Permission to Love Podcast come out every Monday.
To learn more about Jerry, find additional resources, or submit a topic or question, check out: www.jerryhenderson.org
You can also connect with Jerry on Instagram: @jerryahenderson
Permission to Love with Jerry Henderson
Best of Series | Healing Our Relationship With Ourselves
The best of the Permission to Love Podcast playlist.
In this special series, where I am re-releasing some of the top episodes of the Permission to Love Podcast, we are starting with the very first episode, "Healing Our Relationship With Ourselves."
In this episode, we take a look once again at the profound impact that our relationship with ourselves has on every other relationship in our lives.
By exploring the root causes of our feelings of unworthiness, we can begin healing this critical relationship.
This episode also provides practical exercises to help listeners connect with their inner selves, confront past traumas, and start the process of self-healing.
Key Topics Discussed:
- The importance of healing our relationship with ourselves
- How self-love is foundational to personal transformation
- Jerry's personal journey through trauma, addiction, and recovery
- Understanding why and when we began feeling unworthy of love
- Practical exercises for self-healing and self-love
- The role of self-inquiry in addressing internal pain
- Resources for additional support and healing
Resources Mentioned:
- Coaching Services: jerryhenderson.org
- Book Recommendation: No Bad Parts by Dr. Richard Schwartz
Call to Action:
Take time this week to practice the self-love exercise discussed in this episode. Find a quiet space to reflect on when you first felt unworthy of love, visualize that version of yourself, and extend unconditional love to them. Remember, you are worthy of your own love.
Connect with Jerry Henderson:
- Website: jerryhenderson.org
Timestamped Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
01:33 — Beginning the Journey to Self-Love
02:36 — The Impact of Our Self-Relationship
04:00 — Barriers to Self-Love
05:44 — Jerry's Personal Story of Trauma and Addiction
09:34 — The Turning Point: Rehabilitation and Self-Discovery
13:27 — Understanding the 'Why' Before the 'How'
16:06 — Self-Love Exercise
19:47 — Becoming Your Own Healer
21:15 — Resources and Support
22:00 — Closing Thoughts
I am grateful you are here,
Jerry
Setup Your FREE Strategy Call:
Schedule Call
Website:
www.jerryhenderson.org
🔗 Access the course "Learning How to Love Yourself" here:
How is your relationship with yourself going?
Get your free-self assessment guide
Pick up your copy of my book:
Returning: Meditations and Reflections on Self-Love and Healing
Watch On Youtube
Get Your Free Weekly Healing Tips!
Instagram: @jerryahenderson
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jerryahenderson
Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Permission to Love podcast. I'm your host, jerry Henderson, and, as always, I am so, so grateful that you've taken time out of your busy schedule to invest in yourself by listening to this podcast. Now, today, we're going to do something a little different than I've done before and we're going to revisit some of the older episodes of the Permission to Love podcast. Over the next month, I'm going to be resharing the top four podcast episodes of all time. As a part of doing this podcast, I often get messages from the listeners, and some of the messages I get are what are the top episodes that they should listen to or that they should begin with as a part of engaging with this podcast. I thought I'd make that easy for you and just go ahead and repost the top performing or the most impactful podcast episodes that I've done so far. And in today's episode, I'll be resharing the very first episode of the Permission to Love podcast about how we can heal our relationship with ourselves. This episode serves as an intro to the entire work of the Permission to Love podcast and, yes, while there has been some evolution of myself and the content through the last year and a half. The foundation of this episode still remains true to the work of the Permission to Love podcast. So I hope you enjoy this journey of going through some of the most impactful episodes of the Permission to Love podcast, and I hope you enjoy today's episode. I want to welcome you to this first episode of our podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for taking your time to listen.
Jerry Henderson:I want to go on a journey together, and this journey is about how are we going to move from self-hatred, from shame, into self-love, self-hatred, from shame into self-love. What does that look like? How do we do it? I mean, we hear a lot about we need to love ourselves or we need to practice loving practices towards ourself, but we get stuck because we don't know how to, we don't feel worthy of it, we haven't talked about it enough, we haven't been trained to do this. This is work, and I often talk about it being sacred work, the work of the sacred relationship that we have with ourselves. But here's the thing, here's what I want us to think about Our relationship with ourself is going to determine every other relationship in our life how we view ourselves, how we talk about ourselves, how we think about ourselves. How we act towards ourselves is going to determine every other relationship that we engage with, because that's the lens. That's the lens we're seeing the world through.
Jerry Henderson:We often start with things outside of us. We start to think, well, how can I be more loving towards this person, or how do I repair this relationship, or how do I fix these things in the way that they're showing up in my life? And that's all good and that's where we start often. But the reality is that if we'll take a moment and begin to shift and go internal and begin to reflect on how are we showing up towards ourself and we begin to understand the power of that relationship and how that's manifesting the things that are showing up towards ourself, and we begin to understand the power of that relationship and how that's manifesting the things that are showing up in our life, then we can really begin to get to the source of change. Changing our relationship with ourselves begins to change our environment, begins to change how relationships show up. Because think about it this way If I'm angry at myself, I'm a lot more likely to be angry at other people.
Jerry Henderson:If I'm critical of myself, I'm a lot more likely to be critical of other people. But if I love myself, wouldn't it make sense that I'd also be more likely to be loving towards other people? So how do I get to that space? How do I get to the space where I'm loving myself? How do I get to the space where I'm giving myself permission to love myself? What does that look like? What are the barriers to that? Why do I not feel worthy of love? And we'll get to that a little bit later here in this episode.
Jerry Henderson:So if that relationship with myself is so important and maybe it's broken, maybe that relationship's always been broken for you. Maybe as a child, things showed up in your life like trauma or critical parents or events or whatever it is. Or maybe it showed up later for you through painful relationships or life experiences. But somewhere along the line almost all of us experience the pain of a broken relationship with ourselves and then we try to find ways to heal that outside of ourselves. We try to find ways to heal that through performance, that if we just perform well enough, if we just make enough money or we just get enough approval from other people, that that'll begin to heal that space. Or we get into relationships that can tell us that we're worthy or that we feel loved, that that'll begin to heal that space within us. But the reality is none of that stuff is going to do anything other than temporarily soothe. It's going to do nothing more than just medicate. Now, people can be a healing source in our life, but they're secondary healers. We have to be our primary healer in order for it to last, in order for it to really gain traction and in order for it to stick. So how do we do that? How do we go about healing that relationship with ourself? Well, it's my belief, and I'm very adamant about this, that self-love, or the ability to love ourselves, is absolutely foundational in beginning to heal all of the aspects of our life, beginning to heal all of the aspects of our relationship with ourselves and then how we show up in this world. So that then begins to beg the question how do I love myself? What does that look like Well for me? How do I love myself? What does that look like Well for me?
Jerry Henderson:This journey started after my life basically imploded for all practical purposes, and here's why I'm such an advocate for self-love. I grew up in a home filled with trauma and poverty, grew up on the welfare system, grew up in an abusive home filled with addictions alcoholism, other drug addictions and I experienced a lot of abuse. It's physical, mental, emotional, sexual. All of that abuse was in my life and by the time I was five, I was being given alcohol as a reward mechanism for cleaning up my room and other chores. By the time I was nine, I was beginning to get into other drugs with other family members, and what was happening was I was being hardwired for addiction. I'd experienced all of this trauma, all of this abuse. And so what was happening in my system was I was beginning to get the message that I was unlovable. In my system was I was beginning to get the message that I was unlovable, that I was unworthy of love.
Jerry Henderson:And we talk about how trauma is not what happens to you, but it's what happens in you. And in those moments of trauma, we make certain decisions. We make decisions about ourself. Am I lovable, am I unlovable? I make decisions about other people. Are they good, are they bad? Are people for me or people against me? I make decisions about life. Is life for me, is life not for me? Is life this bad thing? That's always going to work against me? But all of that stuff comes out of these internal decisions. Now, as a child, was I consciously making those decisions? No, subconsciously, in survival mode, trying to figure these things out, not even knowing I was trying to figure them out and I was making these decisions in my system in order to survive.
Jerry Henderson:Those decisions that I made as a child. Those decisions wired me for certain things. One was that I was unworthy of love, that if the people who were assigned in my life to care for me were unable to do that, somehow I made the choice as a child to believe that I was unworthy of love instead of believing that they were incapable of giving love. That felt like, I guess, a safer decision. I don't know, as a kid, you know what are you doing to make those type of decisions. I'm not sure, but that belief system got wired in me. It became a core belief system that I was unworthy of love. So that then led me into deep cycles of shame, feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with me and I was broken. That then led me to a life of trying to cope with that, to try to silence that voice by achieving things, seeking multiple degrees, trying to climb the ladder, becoming successful, and none of that was taking it away Went through a divorce, got remarried. None of that took that away, and one part of what I was trying to do in order to silence that voice was drinking.
Jerry Henderson:Drinking became this space where I felt comfortable with myself. I often say that drinking allowed me to tolerate my own presence. It allowed me to be able to be with myself. Now I understand what it was doing was, providing me a sense of feeling safe and a feeling of connection with myself. But at the moment all I knew was that when I drank, I didn't hate myself as much and I could tolerate my presence. All of those things were beginning to become so much of a weight in my life that I couldn't carry it anymore. I couldn't carry this broken relationship, the burden of shame, the burden of the way I was speaking to myself. And then life imploded. Over an 18 to 24-month period, wound up having a heart attack, open heart surgery, went to rehab, started to go through a divorce, then went back to rehab again for a 30-day stay that time.
Jerry Henderson:And in that last time in rehab, something deeply profound happened. You know I was learning all of the things about addiction, the science behind it. Why was I doing it? What was it that I was trying to manage? One of the things I encourage people with addiction to think about is not how can I manage my addiction? You know, we often think like well, how do I manage my addiction, how do I manage my drinking? It's not about how do you manage your drinking, it's how is your drinking helping you manage something? What does your drinking help you manage? What pain is that drinking trying to help you manage in your life? And when you get to the source of that, then we can begin to address the addictions. So I'm learning all of this stuff. I'm learning the science, I'm learning what I'm trying to manage, I'm trying to figure out the pain.
Jerry Henderson:I'm in rehab and I've gone through the program and I've basically told them at this point hey, I'll do anything, I'll do whatever you ask me to do. Because I was desperate, I really thought that there was no hope for me at this point. I really thought that I was going to self-destruct, I was going to destroy my life and I needed to figure out how to get help. And I told them at one point I said you know, I'll go stand on my head in the corner if that'll get me sober, if that'll keep me from destroying my life. Well, they were so kind and they were so compassionate because they kept driving me back to what's going on inside of you. Stop thinking about the drinking, start thinking about what's going on inside of you and begin to address where that pain came from. So I'm going through rehab, I'm learning all of these lessons and then I'm in my final day, my final day of rehab, graduating the program and learned all these things. Ceremony is a part of your graduation.
Jerry Henderson:So the people you've kind of journeyed through, that you've done life with over those 30 days, are in the room with you and then they take a stone and they take this stone or this crystal and each one of the people, they look at it and they speak something into that stone about you that they like about you, and then they give you well wishes for, about you. And then they give you well wishes for your journey. And as they're doing that, they're saying it and I'm receiving and hearing the things that they're saying and as they're passing that stone around, it's getting closer and closer to me and one of the things that I'm supposed to do is, when I get that stone, I'm supposed to say something positive about myself. I'm supposed to take the stone, look at it, say something loving and kind about myself and give myself my own well wishes. Well, for somebody who's experienced trauma and shame and lived with an inner critic that has abused them to no end.
Jerry Henderson:Trying to think of something to say good about yourself, it's not that easy. So that stone winds up in my hand and out of nowhere these words came up out of my heart. They just kind of burst through all of the layers of me trying to think about what I should say about myself, and it just kind of took over and these words came out. I said I am worthy, I am worthy of my own love. Now, I'd never said that before in my life. Those words had never come out of my mouth, I hadn't even thought that thought before. But somehow in the depths of my being I needed to hear that. And when I said that, something shifted inside of me. I felt something tangibly change and I felt a connection to what I now understand is the source of my healing my own love. At that moment I opened myself. I just cracked it just a little bit to be able to see that I could love myself. And when I did that, I was also able to see that I was a source of my own suffering by continuing the cycle of shame, by continuing to beat myself up, that I could now also be the source of my own healing, and the peace that was going to bring the healing was learning to love myself, that loving myself could transform me.
Jerry Henderson:So I began to go on a journey to figure out how could I love myself. But I had to stop, because I started getting into the how and then how was bouncing off my nervous system right? So I knew I needed to stop. Because I started getting into the how and then how was bouncing off my nervous system right? So I knew I needed to love myself. I knew that that was the answer, and so I started getting into things like positive affirmations, different practices. But I realized that I'm doing all of this stuff but it doesn't seem to be connecting with me. So then I had to sit there and think why is that? I had to do some self-inquiry, really look deeply. I realized that my body and my system wasn't ready for me to start with the how. It needed me to start with the why.
Jerry Henderson:Now, when I coach people and I work with people. I get that question a lot how do I love myself? You're talking about self-love, okay, so how do I do it? Let's get to it. Let's make it happen. Well, I think we have to pause and we do get to the how, and the how is a part of the healing journey, but we first have to start with why. Why do I feel unworthy of love? When did that show up in my life? When did I first receive that message? When did I start to believe that about myself? So it's a why and a when question versus a how question. We start there. So let me ask you this question why do you believe that you're unworthy of love? Who gave you that message? Was it a caregiver? Was it a parent? Was it a broken relationship? Was it yourself that you made some mistakes in life and then, all of a sudden, you decided to say that I am not worthy of love, let alone your own love. When did that happen? And when we get to that, we can start to address the source of the message and the pain behind that message. Before we address the how on this journey together, let's go ahead and start with the why. So today or this week.
Jerry Henderson:I want to encourage you to do something. I want to encourage you to find a place, a quiet place, where you can sit with yourself. Take a moment, close your eyes, begin to reflect, have a journal with you or something to write with, maybe your phone or whatever Maybe not your phone, because you get distracted and go down the rabbit hole. Get something that you can write with. Be reflective and sit and think about when did I believe? When did I start to believe that? When did I start to believe that I wasn't worthy of love? Why did that start to show up in my life, to believe that I wasn't worthy of love. Why did that start to show up in my life? And then, as a part of that, I want you to see that version of you. I want you to see that person. It might've been.
Jerry Henderson:For me it was a five-year-old boy. Anytime I start to think about when I got the message that I wasn't lovable or why I'm not lovable. There's some specific things that happened in my memories that I can remember back to at the age of five. That kind of started really wiring that in. I mean, there were things that happened before, but when I visualize it. It's this five-year-old version of me. So, as I sit with that version of myself and I really begin to become curious, I really try to connect with me at that age and I really try to understand how that message got put into my system. And, once again, if I can become my own healer, if I can become the person who can go to the spaces within me that need healing, then I can sit with that five-year-old version of myself and I begin to love that version of myself.
Jerry Henderson:You see, it's often hard to sit with the 50-year-old version of ourselves or the 30-year-old version of ourselves and look that version in the eyes and go I love you Because that version we judge, that version we condemn. We go I know all the things that you've done, I can see when you screwed up, I know when you did this and when you did that, and so, trying to connect with that version of ourselves, we're actually gonna do some exercises on another podcast about connecting with that version of you, but right now we're gonna start with the version of you that first started to receive that message that you're unlovable. That version of us we can really see and have compassion for. So, as you're doing this exercise? No-transcript. When did that message show up? Begin to visualize them, and then I want you to begin to love that version of yourself.
Jerry Henderson:This is not always easy. There's going to be things that come up and if you need to work with a mental health professional, you need to work with somebody that can provide that safe space. By all means do. I've been meeting with a therapist for years and I plan on doing so for many years to come. But as you sit with that version of yourself in a safe space and you begin to love that version of yourself and you begin to tell that version of yourself that you're so sorry for the things that happened to them and you begin to send love towards them, unconditional love, no additives of yeah, I love, but and well, you deserve this, or maybe nope, just straight love towards that version of yourself. And then I want you to visualize that version of yourself receiving that love from you, visualizing that, and then begin to feel the emotion of love towards them and the emotion of what would it feel like for that version for me, that five-year-old version. What would it feel like to have a safe adult giving me love, sending love? I began to feel what that five-year-old needed to feel at that time but didn't get.
Jerry Henderson:So I'm doing two things in that One. I'm learning to give love to myself. I'm learning to give love to a version of myself that I feel like I can connect with, that I feel like I can give love to whatever version of that is for you. The second thing is I'm learning to figure out how to receive love from myself, and we're involving multiple parts of our system. We're involving our emotion, we're involving our thinking, we're involving our words, we're involving our hearing. So, as we're saying it out loud that I love you, we're involving our thinking, we're involving our words, we're involving our hearing. So, as we're saying it out loud that I love you, we're saying things out loud that I receive this love, and that can become a very healing practice in showing myself that I have the capacity to love myself and I have the capacity to receive love from myself. Be gentle with yourself in that process. Be gentle with yourself in that process. Be kind to yourself in that process. Get the help that you'll potentially need in that process for a safe space.
Jerry Henderson:But if we don't start with the why and the when, we're actually continuing to dismiss a part of us that really needs our attention. We're jumping to the version of us today that feels unworthy of love, while this piece of us, who first got the message, is being ignored. So if we'll start with that part, we'll begin to love that part, begin to send the message to that part that we're lovable, begin to train ourselves so we can give ourselves love and receive love, not ignoring that part of ourselves anymore. Because once again, in our practicing of the how, that how is bouncing off of our nervous system and going back to the place where it first showed up is a part of healing the nervous system to open us up, to start receiving the how, like when I say how it's like, how do I love myself? How do I do positive affirmations that are effective? How do I do self-care without feeling guilty? How do I view myself in a way that's loving? How do I stop the inner critic, the voice inside of me that's relentlessly beating myself up? How do I speak kindly to myself? All of those are great and beautiful questions. They're going to continue to have resistance until we honor the part of ourselves that first got that message, that first started to feel that way, and then go to that part of ourselves and begin to heal that part of ourselves, and you are capable of this.
Jerry Henderson:You have the ability to do this. Just think about how much pain you've caused yourself. Take a moment, how much pain have you caused yourself? That same power that you've had to emotionally cause yourself pain. You have the ability to emotionally cause yourself healing and love. You are your own healer. You have the ability to do this. So take time this week, do that exercise. Connect with yourself, give love to yourself. If you need additional resources, yes, please absolutely reach out to a therapist If you need any help or guidance. I offer coaching services as well. You can go to my website it's jerryhendersonorg. Learn more about that, and there's a fantastic book that you can read. It's called no Bad Parts. It's by Dr Schwartz. Encourage you to pick that up as well. So those are some resources that maybe will help you on your journey. Wow, that episode brings back a lot of memories and a lot of emotions for me personally. I hope you enjoyed it today and finally, as we close out, I want to remind you, as always, that you are worthy of your own love.
