Soul Curriculum: What Your Life Patterns Are Trying to Teach You

Have you ever felt stuck in the same emotional loop,  repeating patterns in your relationships, career, or inner world, no matter how much healing you do? In this episode, we explore the concept of your Soul Curriculum: the unique spiritual lessons your soul came here to master.   

You'll learn how to recognize the difference between surface-level struggle and soul-level growth, and how to start working with your recurring patterns instead of against them. Whether you're navigating people-pleasing, burnout, emotional triggers, or inner conflict, this episode helps you uncover the deeper invitation behind it all.

🔑 In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

• What your Soul Curriculum is and why it matters
• How to recognize patterns that hold deep spiritual lessons
• Reflection questions to help uncover your personal soul themes
• Why your struggles are not punishments, but invitations

Transcript

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Hi there. Welcome back to Into the Work Therapy for Empaths and Seekers. I'm your host, Michelle Erman. I am starting off by giving you an apology. So typically I release my show every Tuesday at 1:00 AM and I can't tell you how much it makes my heart swell and sing when I tell you that. Every morning when I wake up, it could be 5:00 AM and I have had people already logging in already listening from all over. And it's so exciting and I just, I just appreciate you so much. And throughout the day, I have my, my listeners that come in every Tuesday. I. And yesterday was Tuesday and yesterday I did not release an episode. I was needing to take care of myself. I had gotten really caught up in doing a lot of work for this incredible experience I'm having with this beautiful. Class that I'm doing, this program that I'm running, the Modern Empath Boundary Mastery, and these women, I'm just loving so much and this experience has been so great, but it's also been harrowing at times, just pulling all the pieces together because I just love to do the things that way. I wanna do them. So yesterday I was out of juice, I was completely done, and I thought, you know what? If I do this podcast, it's gonna totally suck. It's gonna suck if it goes out on Tuesday. I just wanted to say thank you and I appreciate you so much. So let's get started. So today's episode is one that I believe like many of these episodes that US seekers, US empaths, and sensitive souls need to hear this at some point because. We have all been there. This place that we're gonna talk about this, this experience that you are having, when you end up asking yourself, why does this keep happening to me? Right. When you think to yourself, I thought I healed this already, or maybe you're asking yourself, what am I missing? Like, oh my God, I've done this already. I did the work, and it keeps showing up. And if you've noticed the same painful patterns showing up in your relationships in your career, how you treat yourself, you are not. Alone, and you're not broken either. You just might be staring your soul curriculum right in the face. So what is a soul curriculum? Okay, so it's the set of themes, challenges, and growth opportunities your soul came here to experience. It's not a punishment. Sometimes we think, what did I do to deserve this? Like, I must have been awful in a past life, right? We think it's all karmic. Um, but as a path to deeper healing, wisdom and awakening, like this is the shit you need to go through. So recognizing your patterns is something that this is serving up for you, right? So let's talk about. Exploring these patterns that just won't let you go. You know, the ones that you swear when you're done with them, then it's like you're never going back to them. You know, another unavailable partner, another job where your needs aren't honored. Another moment where you're completely self abandoning and you're like, I'm not doing this anymore. And then you do again, and these aren't just random set barks or flaws, okay? They are, I'm gonna say this in a really loving and positive manner, but these are invitations. These are invitations for you to re, that are repeating themselves until the deeper lesson is actually really finally received. We can think of them like karmic loops or like these spiraling lessons, right? You're not going in circles though. You're going in cycles. This is not circles, it's cycles and each time returning to the same theme. But when you're done with that cycle, you have a slightly higher vantage point. That's actually soul work, right? We get, I always use this metaphor, but we get down in the mud. And we get dirty and we're in the mud and we've fallen off this beautiful yellow brick road, right? We've fallen off this beautiful soul path and we're in the mud and we're like doing our thing, and we get caught up in this other bad relationship or this other type of friendship or this, you know, type of work environment that I keep getting myself. I keep calling this in, right? Why does this keep happening? And I want to tell you that it's part. Of your journey. It is literally all about you going through it so that on the other side you have an even higher vantage point to see more, to have more clarity, to have more understanding. Every time you go through another cycle of it, you are growing and expanding, even though. It can feel like what's wrong with me? Right? That's just your brain doing its job, trying to protect you by coming up with stories like, I can't ever attract something better than this. Or, you know that this is what my life is, or, you know, I must be doing something wrong. So here's a couple examples that come to mind. I've kind of mentioned this already, but this is a very popular one. Um, especially for us empaths, always attracting emotionally unavailable people. You might be here to learn self-trust. You might be here to learn clearly boundary work, right? I think you're here to learn how to matter because here's the deal. You signed up to be an empath, which means you have a different energetic system that you are wired a little differently, right? You're more porous, you experience more, and you're here to use that gift to really bring. Your spiritual self to the to the world, right? To help raise up the vibration and to help as a little healer, like you are a healer. It doesn't matter where you work or what you do, you sort of tend to be a healer. And so what happens with us and baths is that when we meet people who. Don't meet our needs that, um, hurt us, that are, uh, maybe narcissistic a little bit. Maybe they're selfish, maybe, um, they're just unavailable, right? Where most people have this little alarm inside their head that goes off and they say, whoa. Yikes. I'm out. Right? They're like, I'm out. Us empaths and sensitive folks, we tend to lean in right? When everybody else is leaning out and they're like, I'm outta here. We tend to lean in because that makes us curious because especially as people pleasers, um, we're, we're up for the task, we're ready for the challenge, and we lean in and we get curious. We say, home. What's that? I wonder why they're like that. Oh, we wanna hear their story. We wanna find out what happened that went wrong, you know? What we're curious about this person's story, and we start to get into a, meshed into their world and we wanna fix them, we wanna help them. Surely just, I have enough love, I have enough, um, of who I am and what I can bring to this. I can really help you. And that's the inner healer at work too. But I think that we were meant to, if you're somebody that's attracting emotionally unavailable people, you're meant to actually truly heal, how do you be a really worthy healer, right? How do you be in the world and be this? Beautiful soul that wants to give and to help and, and that's also equally capable of receiving and being worthy of receiving because a lot of times through our wounding being human here on earth, we get very uncomfortable with being receivers. And so we go into these situations and we think. Oh, I can help and you draw worth from that, and it, and you, you just feel like it's this mechanism in your body and your soul that you're here to help. And so we can kind of lean into these people versus leaning out. And your job, your job is to learn that you're worthy of receiving it, at least equal love and attention back and, and receive. Space holding for you that it's, it's actually something that you are, um, here to do because if you keep attracting, unavailable people, there's something that you're comfortable with in that you know, you, um, you receive the love that you also allow that sentence, right, that, that saying. And so you have to look at why did I allow that? Why was that more comfortable for me than saying, that's not good enough for me. Right. And so then we look in maybe like people pleasing to the point of invisibility, like, this happens a lot. This might be something that is part of your schooling here. 'cause this is Earth School. So this is part of your curriculum is visibility, being seen, being known. Especially if you are one of my empaths listening that has a dream of starting a business or doing this certain thing, or maybe it works, excelling in a certain way in leadership, and maybe there's a way that you are really being challenged and you're thinking to yourself. I keep coming back to the same cycle where I get caught up in my people pleasing. I duck down and I don't get. Seen and people don't, you know, if I'm working for an employer, they don't promote me. They don't raise me up. When I'm working on my own, I kind of have a hard time attracting clients or whatever that is. And so you're probably learning how to reclaim your identity, your voice, your power, what it means for you to be, to be visible. Right. And that fifth chakra, if you don't mind me kind of bringing chakras into this, that fifth chakra for the for you is all about being seen and heard and known. And I want you to sit with that and ask yourself, how comfortable am I if I'm somebody that feels like I'm invisible sometimes? And that's part of the cycle that keeps happening where you're like, I just feel like I get in these jobs or these relationships where I am overlooked. Or I feel like the invisible one that you have work to do on being heard on speaking in such a way that you are heard, right? Finding authority, taking up space, and being seen and really reclaiming. Your identity and allowing yourself to identify with being somebody worthy of taking up that space and saying the thing. And you know, there's lots of other things that we can cycle in and out of. Even just constantly overgiving and burning out. It's just like. We can find ourselves constantly in these relationships that just keep getting set up. And I feel the expectation, or you feel like the expectation is, is that you are gonna do all these things until you get burned out. And so you keep kind of allowing yourself to get in these, Relationships and you don't really realize that you're not taking responsibility. You're not taking responsibility for the manual that you're giving everybody to say, Hey, this is how I work, right? Because that's what you're doing. You're people are expecting this of you because you're telling them that you'll do it right just by your behaviors, by showing up, by overgiving and by silently burning out, especially. So the lessons definitely around worthiness and receiving enoughness, but it's definitely also. About taking responsibility for your part in it so that you can be free. But you can't do that until you take responsibility and you recognize, how am I creating this? And so I think in the bottom line, when we look at any of these, we're gonna be asking ourselves that question, how am I creating this? And again, these patterns that are happening in your life where you're like, why does this keep happening? Why do I cycle in and out of this? You are not failing. They are signs that you're just still learning. And that is like, holy work, okay, this learning process is beautiful from the outside, right? For a living in the snow globe, you know, whatever. Whoever you know is out there watching, you know, it's beautiful to them, right? Like, you're doing this beautiful. Thing like having a life and coming down here and being bold enough to try to live it. You know when you came down here, you came down here to to mess up as much as you came down here to enjoy and live fully and to really be alive. But it is holy work, but it is hard work. So let's talk about how to identify your soul lessons. In order for us to kind of figure out what you're here to learn, let me ask you a question. What keeps showing up? No matter how much work you've done, just think of what comes to mind, what keeps showing up, no matter how much work you've done. This is often the core of like your soul curriculum, right? Your soul learning, your soul school. The thing that frustrates you the most might actually be your deepest teacher and literally the thing you signed up to come down here and do because it's like that's the nugget that this, that I need. That's what I need to do. Ask yourself what emotional themes are always present when you're triggered. What emotional themes are always present when you're triggered? Is the, feeling that comes up like fear? Is it fear of rejection? Is that the theme? Is it feeling invisible? Right? Is it being misunderstood? Like, I always feel like I'm misunderstood. Nobody gets me when I'm speaking. I feel like people don't even understand what I'm saying. Or is it feeling. Unsafe, right? Do you feel like you're unsafe in a lot of situations and your nervous system is always tweaked because you just don't feel safe in anywhere? These are all doorways to your work. These are all the really juicy, important things that absolutely have to be happening in your life for it to be meaningful. Do you understand that this has to be happening in your life in order for it to be meaningful? And I'm not saying that love and. High vibration emotions and happiness and joy aren't meaningful. They are, but they are more meaningful in the balance of the struggle of the lessons. The other question that you wanna ask yourself what qualities are you being asked to embody, not just to understand? So you might know in your head what boundaries are, what they should look like. You might even know what you should say and do, right? But your curriculum, right, your lesson could be truly coming here and truly embodying and living 'em. This life might be about you really stepping into your whole self, using this human body, using your energy field. As an energetic human, as an energetic being that you are here and truly stepping into your power, right? It might be really about embodying something in this life you might understand surrender, but your lessons might be practicing it in real time, like vulnerability, really surrendering to trusting that might be something that's really important for you. And how do you embody that? 'cause a lot of us have trust issues. I'll also share that a long time ago I was working with somebody and I had this little, intuitive hit for them some, an exercise that they should do. And I've gone on to share that exercise with a lot of other people and it's something, I had created this kind of what it's like to be an EMPATH mini class and figure out your purpose. And one of the ways that I was. Asking people to figure out their purpose was to do a timeline. And I kind of jokingly called it the trauma timeline because, um, well, we are looking at what difficult, hard stuff did you face and when, and you could put the good stuff in there too. But if you just did like a zero to five, five to 10, 10 to 15, and just go through and write it down, and then next to each number, I want you just to, like I tell people, it's a train ride. Okay, you're getting on the train, you're looking out the windows, and you're not stopping and like hanging out anywhere, right? You're just letting this stuff download and putting it on paper and keep moving, and you just kind of sit there and be like, okay, what happened? Zero to five. And you bring yourself back there. You're like, oh my gosh. Remember when this really traumatic thing happened? That was really hard. Oh my God, I forgot all about that. And then you kind of just keep, going through the years and like, oh, this thing and that thing, and just see what comes up. And at the end, what's really interesting is that you will find likely that there's a theme, that all the lessons are connected and that there is one. Very clear theme in there that you could assign to every single one of the things that has happened. You can look at how did it make you feel? You could look at the topic that it, you know, maybe you have money wounding issues. Maybe you have, um, you know, there are sometimes the theme is the actual. Wounding the, the flavor of it, or it is the way it made you feel was always the same. And that is what you're here to heal. so that can just be really helpful if you're really wanting to step into your purpose. 'cause part of your purpose is healing this stuff. Like we're talking about doing this curriculum, doing this work. So let me talk to you about why it is not a punishment. You are not being punished when people say to me. People say, oh my God, I am being punished here. Why does this keep happening to me? I want to immediately tell them, as I'm telling you, that it is not happening to you. It is happening for you, which is so cliche, been said a thousand times. I know, but it's really true. So let's take a breath here because sometimes we can start co uncovering these patterns and we can start to feel a little discouraged. So I wanna make sure that you understand when you think to yourself. Why am I still dealing with this, Michelle? Like, I don't, I don't care. I want, I, I get you saying it's a lesson. I don't wanna do the lesson anymore. You know? Or you think to yourself, what's wrong with me that I can't get it Right. I. Here's the truth. These are patterns. They're not punishments. They honestly are sole invitations. If we could pull you up, up, up, up above the earth to look down upon yourself, down here, you would have a very different vantage point to understand that, wow, this is rich. Wow. Look at. If you could see the scope of your life, you'd see how very important it is that these things that you feel are happening to you are actually happening, or you wouldn't get to where you're going. You wouldn't get to where you need to get to in order to become who you are here to become. So when we shift outta the mindset of why me? And into what is this here to teach me? We reclaim our power because when you get into why is this happening to me, you're only getting into powerlessness. And I'm telling you, powerlessness is an energy leak. It is a self-esteem leak. It is. It's a terrible place to be. Whenever you notice powerlessness. It is like as soon as you become present with it and you're like, whoa, that's powerlessness. I'm totally feeding this to myself and it's making me feel like crap. I want you to recognize, Ooh, you just were given the beautiful sign that this is happening. You're off autopilot now and you have a choice, and I'm just asking you to choose. Restoring your power, which is simply rephrasing, reframing, recognizing what your thoughts are doing, recognizing they're just trying to help you, they're trying to protect you. All the fear-based stuff, all the stuff that's happening in your head that makes you feel like you should be fearful. Or that you, you know that this is happening to you. I want you to reframe it into how is this helping me? What is it teaching me? Why is this so important that it happens? Think of your life as a classroom, right? Not in a rigid test, you all the time kind of way, but in a soulful, growth centered way. In school, we don't get mad that we're learning algebra, right? We just accept that it's part of the curriculum. We're like, we have to do algebra. I sucked at algebra it. I did get mad that I had to learn algebra actually, because I was terrible at it, and it was like trauma. I have math, trauma, but you know, at the same time, I needed to learn how to get through the humiliation of being asked to go to a board when everybody's cheering you on and trying to, you know, and you have like. Math team, I, I have trauma here, obviously, where my teachers and when I was younger would get us up to the board and we'd have, the class would be in two teams and everybody would be like screaming and yelling and cheering me on to try to get it right so that they could win. And I would never get it right 'cause I just won, just can't handle math. And two, couldn't handle it under the pressure. So now that you needed that little lesson, but there you go. So here we are. You don't. Have to look at it as like, why is this happening? Um, because it's, it's, it's really the soul school that we're talking about here. It doesn't always recognize the subject matter because it's, it's taught in heartbreak, it's taught in family conflict. It's taught in impatience and having to wait. It's, it's taught in surrendering all of those things that are going on in your life when you're, especially if you're in between chapters, oh God, that's so painful, right? Like when all of a sudden one life ends and you don't know where you're going next, right? That is school. That is you getting a subject matter right in front of you right there. That needs to be learned and you have to get through it. In order to be educated, to understand, to grow. So there are ways you can work with this curriculum, right? Or you can be against it. And so how do we start working with our soul curriculum? How do we do that? First, we stop resisting the lesson and start listening for it. I want you to ask yourself, what is this pattern asking me to become? And this is part of the manifesting work I'm actually doing with my, in my boundary class right now. How we can manifest and get really clear on who we want to be. And that is who our boundaries are protecting. So that's kind of what you're learning. My, where I'm teaching is that, you know, when you really get clear on who this future you is, this ver future version that you're just, you really want for yourself, right? When you really get down to everything about her, you recognize and learn. The depth and the value of your why. Why hold boundaries? Because I'm protecting her. That's who I'm protecting. This really important role that I have to get to in this life. And I'm not gonna get to it if I don't have boundaries. And so I say that because. When you ask yourself, what is this pattern asking me to become? You recognize like it's worth protecting. It's worth really diving in and doing the work. It's really important and, and spiritual and magical and, and soulful for you to really look at like, this is asking me to become somebody else a little bit, right? A little bit new version of me. And so what is it asking of you? And if you could look at, if this was healed for you, how would that look? How would you be in your body? Different, how would you, would you smile more often? How would you. Present yourself in groups of people. How would you present yourself meeting new potential relationship people? How would you show up if you knew this was healed? And what new response or way of being is trying to emerge from you here? And how can you become it? How can you embrace it and embody it? So instead of reacting, I want you to try reflecting. Try just reflecting. Be curious. Huh? This is really happening again. Isn't it interesting? So obviously instead of getting upset, hurt, mad, being in some old shame cycle, right? I want you to just thank your brain for that thought and I want you to lean into, huh? If this was actually a beautiful thing happening in my life, if it was a gift, if it was a lesson, if it was part of the curriculum, what am I here? I. To learn what's here for me now that I couldn't see before. 'cause obviously it's happening again, so I missed something. What is here for me now that I couldn't see before? You might also find it helpful to view your life through the lens of soul contracts. The idea that certain people, events and challenges were part of your plan. Chose it at a soul level for your evolution. That doesn't mean that you asked for trauma or abuse. I don't mean that. But it does mean that you get to choose what meaning and growth you extract from it. And sometimes these soulmates that come in our path, like sometimes they're people that we circle lifetimes with and we get to choose. We have free will, so we can choose to just go a different direction in this life, or we can have these things. These people come in and we keep kind of going through these same cycles with these same soulmates because they signed up to help us, right? They signed up to go through this again with us. Um, we're, they're here, here to learn similar lessons. They're here to go through their own stuff, and so you come together, but that doesn't mean that, again, you asked for. This trauma or this abuse, it just means that you knew coming down here that you needed to learn this and it's hard so that it actually has an impact. And here are a couple of mantras to try on. I trust the curriculum of my life. Or just, you know, I trust, you can just say, I really trust that everything that's happening is exactly what needs to happen. So I'm gonna get on board. I'm gonna align myself to that fact, and I'm gonna say, okay, what am I here to learn? Show me, trust myself that I'm gonna, I'm gonna catch up. I'm gonna actually start to see what I missed. And just really saying to yourself, I'm ready to integrate this lesson. I'm ready. I'm willing. I'm open. Those words are so good for your nervous system to hear. They're so good for your energy field. They're good for you to put out into the field, right? For you to just dip, dip into source energy that's all around you, and just put it out there. I. I'm ready to learn it. Okay. I am ready to move forward. I'm ready to be who I wanna be in this and attract what I want. And so I can't do so if I don't learn these lessons. So, in closing, I just wanna recap here that I. Reoccurring patterns in your life are not failures. They're clues. Okay. They're little red flags that are full of beautiful information. I mean, even illness can be like this, right? Even when I had my Lyme disease, it was part of, my really deep healing process. And that wasn't just the only thing. It was packed with all sorts of fun stuff, but it still was. An enormous, painful experience, but enormous, incredible experience that Joel de me into being here. I wouldn't be at this microphone right now. Not doing this, not the way that I'm doing it. It's who I am. Because I went through it and it became a part of who I am at that, that those lessons, they're, they run through my blood. Right and I, and I think we also free up ancestral stuff too. I mean, not to bring in a whole other topic. Like, but I think we bring in all sorts of healing on so many levels we can't possibly understand. So your soul curriculum is your sacred invitation to evolve. That's what we're gonna call it, is a sacred invitation. So when this shit keeps happening and you're like, why is this happening to me again? It's because it's sacred. Because it's an invitation for you to step up and you're just gonna get higher, and you're gonna have such a high review point when you're done with this that you're gonna really click and get it, or you're just gonna learn a whole new aspect of it that you need to. And when we begin to see our challenges as lessons, we reclaim our agency and deepen our growth. Our authority, our agency, our how we really step into our identity, our energy ourselves. And that helps you with your boundaries that we're talking about or that are crucial to your life. So your healing isn't linear and it's layered and it's spiral and it's all over the place, right? As soon as you think it's up, it comes down, right? And it unfolds with more grace when you stop resisting the lesson and begin partnering with it. And that's just what I'm suggesting. Just partner with it. Say, okay, I'm gonna sit down and have a. Coming to Jesus meeting with you issue, and I just wanna sit with you and I'm just gonna open myself up to partnering with you. What do you have to teach me? You could even ask yourself that and get more intuitive guidance when you just sit and say, what are you here to teach me? What is this teaching me? And just open yourself up and sit with that for 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes And if this resonates with you, I would love to hear what lessons you are uncovering because this stuff sets my soul on fire. So feel free anytime. Send me a message. You can catch me on IG at Michelle Verman. You can email me Michelle at Sage and Stone dot. Org I am, um, totally accessible if you wanna ever reach out and just say, this is what I am going through and this is what the podcast sparked in me to help me see, or just remind you of something really. But of course, share a review to let me know if this episode landed with you. I love to see it. You can write reviews in Apple, podcast, or you can rate the podcast in any place where you receive your podcasts. Until next time, I want you to keep honoring yourself. The work and your wisdom, and I will look forward to seeing you again next week. Okay, bye for now