There is no one type of person who walks through my door. Men and women. Twenty-somethings and the longtime retired. Hedge fund managers and doctors and lawyers and farmers and artists and the not-yet- or currently unemployed. Spiritual seekers and those who don’t know or understand spirituality but who want help and can’t find it anywhere else. Those who have “served time” for hurting others and those who have served a different kind of time after being hurt by them. The religious and the adamantly non.
And people come for countless reasons.
When we begin, you talk and I listen. Together we pinpoint the most challenging emotion in your life right now. Often what we find is the emotion under the emotion. It’s what’s there, sometimes stealthy, under the surface. Maybe you can’t sleep. You can’t commit. You are stuck in your job, your relationships, your habits. Maybe you desperately want to know what you should be doing — as if someone else is the boss of you and you just can’t quite hear your orders. These are just a few examples, but I share them here because they represent common themes that I see so often. Unworthiness and Powerlessness.
During this process, so often, “I can’t find a good partner” becomes “I feel unworthy” of love. “I am stuck” in this relationship or this job or this habit becomes “I feel powerless” to change or be or do different. It is the moment of truth and it is beautiful.
Surprisingly, it is in the realization, and in coming to say the words yourself, that you begin to let go. More often than not, this is not a time of despair but of almost visceral relief. Somehow, the moment you own it, you become ready to change it.
Even though Powerlessness and Worthlessness are emotions that I encounter weekly, if not several times a week, the experience that you have when we go together back to the source of the challenge is never the same as anyone else’s. No two lives are the same. No two past lives are either. And in the history of the Earth (and elsewhere too), think about how many past lives there have been. We are an interconnected beautiful web of consciousness and cause and effect and then and now. We are the current manifestation of history unfolding. We are made up of all that we have been and all that we are, and in so many and far deeper ways than most people ever attempt to imagine.
When we choose to, we carry with us emotions from the past that we wish to learn from in this go round at life. And there is no one type of grievance worthy of re-address.
A deep sense of Powerlessness can stem just as directly from being tortured to death or raped repeatedly to being falsely accused and remanded for a crime you didn’t commit. The same effects may be felt from being abused as a child (in current or past life) or being born blind, deaf, and mute and living an entire lifetime isolated and alone. No matter how one chooses to experience Powerlessness, it can and often does stay with you for a long time. Powerlessness is powerful.
Interestingly, Worthlessness often derives from similar experiences, with a slightly different reaction from the experiencer. Worthlessness is an internalization, a taking on of blame or guilt or responsibility, whether or not you actually were responsible. Sometimes a sense of Worthlessness comes when a perpetrator reviews his or her actions and then finds him or herself unworthy of X, where X can be forgiveness, love, respect, or any number of other things that we as humans need and crave.
To find Power through powerlessness and Worth through unworthiness, no matter the scenario we find at the source, you must first release the energy of the emotion. You do this by reliving it and, in some cases, physically pushing back against it through body therapy. Then you come to understand it. You review your actions and come to understand the motives and actions of others. You review the major lessons of the life you are looking into: What is it that you hoped to learn in that life? How did what happened help you learn what you wanted to learn? Did you plan it? Once you understand, you forgive (others and/or yourself) and let go. Then, in your newly empowered self, you move forward, now free and without the burden.
You are Powerful. You are Worthy.
Then, miraculously, you have the power to break habits and patterns. You have the power to stand up for yourself and speak your truth. You have the power to finish what you begin. Then, suddenly, you are worthy of love and respect and acceptance. You are worthy of success.
You become the driver of your life. You are no longer the passenger. You make things happen, they don’t just happen to you. You are strong and radiant and free.
But know this: many more people don’t come to me or other regression therapists than do. If such a small microcosm of people can show such a remarkable commonality, just think of all the people in all the world that, in all likelihood, are experiencing some version of the same thing. This makes me think. When I’m out in the world — when I’m interacting with people or just watching them around me — I often find myself seeing traces of Powerlessness and Worthlessness, in the way that people act or react, in the way they speak or don’t speak. I recognize it. I see them.
Maybe when we understand this commonality, we can bring ourselves to acknowledge in those around us exactly what we feel or have felt. Maybe this is what will help us choose to be open instead of judgmental, loving instead of cruel. Maybe it’s not in understanding our positive similarities, but our vulnerable ones, that will encourage us to be kinder.
This is what I hope.