Cosmic Clearings: Releasing The Comfort Of Our Wounds

With this energy that we are in, we are going deep; diving deeper into the healing that still remains, the small pieces left unforgotten. In healing, I’ve learned we so often have no problem tackling the bigger issues. You know, the ones that stick out like a big red flag that say “HI HEAL HERE”. We have no problem, making the bigger changes, focusing on the bigger aspects of doing the “work” (healing work). We have no problem focusing on the wounds themselves incessantly to no end. We have no problem identifying with our wounds, and making them our home, finding comfort in them, and allowing them to become who we are. We see these bigger pieces as our pride, strength, and our badge of honor of survival. Yet, it’s the small strings that keep us tied to the pain, the hurt, and the suffering. It is the hidden invisible strings that keep us tied to the wounds that we often overlooked. During, this period, we see it all. There is no more hiding what we have yet to truly heal. We can no longer boastfully and pridefully call ourselves a survivor, because in that we see that we are still attached to the identity of the trauma, the wound itself being the fuel. We can no longer ignore the smaller pieces that have called our names for some time, yet we’ve turned our cheek. It’s all exposed, raw, real, surfacing, rising, releasing, and revealing. The thing about healing is it’s more about learning, we are always going to be learn. A lesson turns into a wound when we fail to integrate the FULLNESS of it, when we rush past it, hide it, or ignore it. A lesson turns into a wound when we keep circulating back to it over and over again because it’s easy, familiar, and somehow has become comfortable. It stagnates us, it leaves our energy leaking from the wounds like blood and keeps us fragmented into a smaller version of who we really are. So during this time, we have to look, we have to see the lessons that have turned into wounds, that have been ignored. We are circling back to the fine printed assignments on our homework that were overlooked and missed, to finally pass. This is out of love, to move on, to advance. As this time reveals to us all the layers that have hidden our truth, all the clutter we have clung to…. something that laid dormant within me resurfaced.

My body dysmorphia. She has her own identity and her own name, Dyssy. She is someone who pops into the drivers seat of my being whenever I seem to be upleveling. I’ve pushed her to the side, ignored her, and not acknowledged her in the attempt to heal. It’s gotten me far, not to let her voice become my truth, to let it fade into a muffled scream in the background whenever she comes in. However, this time, she came in, LOUD. Screaming, shouting, demanding to be heard, to be seen.

She took shape after loosing 20+ pounds after being super sick my senior year of high school… and something that’s stood there screaming at me in times where I seem to be moving through big cycles of growth. It wasn’t the being sick, it was the weight. After I lost weight, regardless of how it happened, I felt more seen, heard, and attracted more attention. She clung to that as fuel to stick around. For years, she led me down an incessant path of trying to become smaller in every way possible, to be seen, heard, and noticed. She made me determined and proud of this. She was in the driver’s seat full throttle for years, as I just let her take full control. Then, I began to feel the loss of self that came with this. So I fought her. I kicked her, I punched her, I shoved her to the side. She was no longer the driver, however; she didn’t go far, as she sat there right next to me in the passenger seat. You know that friend, or maybe that one relative that when you drive with them in your passenger seat, it’s like they are the navigation system telling you what to do, how to do it, and correcting you with each roll of the tires? Yeah, that is Dyssy. She disappeared for a while. Meaning, I stuck a bag over her head so she couldn’t see. It reduced her chattiness and let me navigate freely for a while. Yet, then there would be moments, where she’d rip it off in rage and push me aside and fight me for the wheel of my life. She shows up full force when I seem to be doing great, fantastic, and growing into a new space. In these more recent years, she’s made me want to peel my skin off layer by layer and escape this body, change bodies, die, anything to make the feeling of sticky constriction go away.

I’ve learned in undergraduate schooling while studying integral psychology, that body dysmorphia is actually a condition that’s connected to OCD. Studies have shown that those with body

dysmorphia literally view the world through a different lenses and at the spiritual core of me, I know it’s a grasping frantic reach of keeping me small when I’m being asked to expand. Studies have also shown that body dysmorphia is often a trauma response, a side effect that comes with the way that trauma shifts the brain.

When I was studying this, I knew I needed to shut down Dyssy. My number one enemy became Dyssy. Public enemy numero uno. Each time she’d show up, I would forcefully dismiss her, ignore her, fight the inner urge to let her overthrow me. I would not let her have control. The amount of healing (ignoring Dyssy’s voice + traditional therapeutic tactics), neurological work, and spiritual work I have done to try and shed this layer that no longer served me is insane. The way in which I have fought the urge to move back into unconsciously allowing the dysmorphia lead me to skipping meals or restricting my food intake is relentless. I thought for years, I was free. Then she’d appear here and there in little small glimpses. Her notice was short, and her stay became shorter, but she was still there. I thought, “oh this is just how it is, just learning to regulate it, learning to show her the door, learning to not let her have control each time she shows up.” However, when she has appeared over the past few months, it feels exhausting, volatile, and I wondered, “do I really have to keep fighting her off my WHOLE life?”. I began to look closer, at the ways she was still showing up in my life. I saw that, she was still very much apart of it. She was hidden in the smallest pieces of my daily routines and life. She was embedded into the core of who I am, the foundation of it. So, I’ve looked closer… spotting all the ways she has showed up to weave her web into my day-to-day life, trying to control me. I have worked diligently, to find ways to release her control in these areas, and for the first time consistently. I’ve fought her tooth and nail the past few months more than ever, because her sticky fingers were touching everything around me it seemed. It’s been difficult not to surrender, not to give in, and yet I was still fighting.

The cycle I realized was continued over and over throughout time by letting the illusion, Dyssy, lead. In letting her guide me back into trying to box myself up into the smallest version of my being. Months ago I realized, I needed to continue to expand, and that meant letting my soul lead and never stepping out of the drivers seat. That meant enduring the unexpected waves of Dyssy and not surrendering the wheel over to it, it meant staying consistent with my eating habits and movement for the sake of feeling good and enjoying it. I love movement, I love working out, and I love eating super clean foods. It is when I feel best, yet I needed to zoom in a little further to see that when Dyssy was in the drivers seat, my motives ever so slightly changed, my intentions changed, and the energy behind it all changed. It appeared in the smallest of ways, so minute I wasn’t even consciously aware I was doing it. It would shift from loving to workout and feeling joyous from doing so, to small moments of aggression creeping in to restrict and control, to confine myself. After the past few months of riding out the waves of her showing up and enduring beyond what I had before, I realized something…. as I shed the layers of her control, I felt unsafe. She was here protecting me.

This energy made me take a closer look. It made me realize I needed to sit down with Dyssy and hear her story, let her speak, and tell me why she was there. Again, this wasn’t a burden, she was trying to help me in some way. I had never tried to understand her, I never tried to hear her reasons, I never tried to ask her questions. I simply either let her take full control of me or I avoided her like the plague. So I sat down with Dyssy. We talked, like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while. I asked why she was here. She told me she was once a lesson, an assignment, that I never fully learned and she will keep showing up until it is learned. She said, “I show up when you feel unsafe, unseen, unheard, and like you do not belong. I show up to comfort you, because I give you control. I let you have something that you feel you can control, when you feel chaos is ensuing. During chaos, I have been what you have clung to, to try and fix it. When chaos has erupted in your life, you blame yourself. I show up with that blame, and let you have some way of trying to channel it. When you feel unseen, unhealed, unsupported in times of chaos, or uncertainty … you call on me. I come into the driver’s seat, because you rely on me to try and control the situation. You think that if you can look a certain way, be a certain weight, have a certain body, you will be more supported, seen, heard, secure, and loved. Yet, the lesson that was unfinished in my creation was that you cannot do that when you are trying to make yourself smaller.”

We talked for hours, tears leaking from my eyes, and my heart fluttering with that pulsing sensation of expansion (or breaking), that it does whenever you are going through a rough breakup, or a “loss” (there’s no real loss in life). She told me how she was created from the thoughts and feelings I experienced in the final trimester within the womb, how I didn’t want to exit the womb into this life because of it. She went into detail as a young child, memories I could not even remember myself because I was so young. She walked me through the pathway of how she grew, how she developed, how she showed up, why she showed up, and how she’s grown and evolved. Dyssy, wasn’t my enemy, she was my protector who showed herself in this form. She was never trying to hurt me, she was trying to help me. She recounted the years of feeling alone, not belonging, not apart of, not a priority, unseen, and unheard. She replayed the memories of bullies, backstopping, and absent parents. She replayed it all for me as if she was reading to me my very own lifetime movie script. I heard her, loud and clear. I understood her now. I knew why all these years she showed up. I see how she was the illness that caused and shaped her full embodiment within my life.

As I now saw the full picture, leaning into every oozing detail of Dysmorphia, I saw all the pieces laid out like a puzzle. It all made sense. In that, I had some peace. I was able to then thank Dyssy for all she taught me, I was able to give her a final farewell hug and tell her I don’t need you anymore, I am safe, seen, heard, held, and loved (by myself). I honored her, and as strange as it sounds, I mourned her goodbye. I felt remorse creep into me that I would no longer have her by my side. And that’s the thing, we become comfortable, addicted to these embodiments of our wounds. They become the friend in the darkest hours that in some backwards way let us feel safe, heard, loved, comforted, and give us some sense of control. Although the control is an illusion, it feels good in the moment. It makes us feel like we have some power, but in the reversed sense… as it actually drains our divine power. Yet, we keep them around, because they are our friends, our home, our foundation. In order to fully heal, to integrate a lesson, we have to move houses. We have to sift through the things and we have to let them go. We have to expand into a bigger home, and sometimes… sometimes that feels scary. Sometimes, we don’t want to do it even when we know it’s best. That foundation we’ve built with these wounds, like Dyssy, become our “family”…. our roots. Even though, they are what created the instability within our foundation, they are the blanket that got us through the chaos of the past, and we keep them around in our emergency tool kit each time life throws us a curve ball that mirrors that original chaos. Then, in the process of trying to heal… we ignore them, we push them away, they come in stronger, they scream, they push their way back in, and we don’t understand them. We try to make them go away, yet; we fail to see the reason why they were developed, why they are there, and the purpose they’ve served for our survival.

As we move energetically, physically, and emotionally out of survival mode (the way in which the world has worked for ages now), we begin to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest, the divine feminine energy). We slow down, our body become heavy, they urge us to stop, to pause, to listen to the Dyssy’s … to the fears, the anxieties, the voices of the little wounds we tried to push away and say they were healed. We have to rest in order to digest, meaning that we have to slow down in order to break down the energy that is rising completely so that we can fully integrate it. This is about deeply understanding who we are, and forming a new foundation by releasing what has been. However, it cannot be done without the understanding of why Dyssy… or any other wound incarnates within our life. They are assignments, here to guide us, back to our truth, our purpose, our power, and our love.

They require us to share it, give it a purpose, to transform it into the very wisdom we have to offer to others. So in honor of Dyssy… I share with you my story, my healing, my journey, and this wound honoring it. I know you may not know Dyssy, but you might know your own wound. You know, the one that shows up in self-sabotage when you’ve been so trusting, patient, and doing so well? The one that shows up when you feel you’re on the verge of something big, when big positive changes start occurring… the one that pops into the driver’s seat, or tries to grab the steering wheel when you finally start seeing your desire’s reaching fulfillment. It may be anxiety, panic, depression, obsession, or something else … but whatever it is, it’s all a means of trying to gain control out of fear. Where does that fear come from? This is a survival technique you’ve learned to keep you safe at some point in your journey. If the alarm is malfunctioning and sounding with every light that appears, you have to rewire it. The alarm is simply just trying to keep you safe, yet when the wires are crossed, it sounds at everything, and we ignore it. Where are the alarms sound now, as we transition, grow, expand, and positive changes are on the horizon of our life’s? Where can you listen this time, hear it’s story, call it forward and give it space to be seen? It’s time to listen. The story that lives within the wound, is the one that needs correction, it’s the wires that are crossed. The story is important, let it be told.

This month is all about releasing, listening to the layers that are calling to our ears and eyes and screaming at us, so that they can finally be shed. Because, you’ve come too far to wear your old skin, you must shed. We must shed. Often times, when things like Dyssy reappear, we let it have more control but thinking we haven’t done enough. I know every time she’s shown up I’ve thought, “my god, have I not done enough to get this to go the hell away.” It makes me feel more defeated, more small. Because to Dyssy, the smaller I was, the safer I was. Yet, I never ever dared to let her speak her story to me, I never dared to ask her for her purpose. Everything has a purpose. If it’s surfacing or resurfacing, it’s there trying to tell you something. Listen. These old stories, they no longer fit you, however; we have to hear them fully in order to understand why they were there, to understand the lesson. When we understand, we can let go. Letting go can be hard, it can feel uncomfortable, but in the letting go we gain our freedom. In letting go of Dyssy, within the first 3 secs after this deep deep healing conversation, my body let go. My body has been releasing, releasing the balled up materialized toxic tension held within me that was Dyssy. Slowly but surely, she’s exiting, and the heaviness the exhaustion that was weighing on me is lifting dramatically. Again, it feel’s like the moment when you’re waving goodbye to an old friend or a child as they go off to college. There is a deep love and appreciation, yet a knowing within that it’s time they move forward, and that you do as well; the entering of a new chapter. That is the thing about endings, where there is an end to one story there is a beginning of a new story. Although the pages are still be transcribed, the exert from this new book I’m stepping into feels expansive, exciting, and free.

So it’s time, to let this old story come to an end. So that you can begin this next journey, this next phase of your life; freedom is calling you but this time, you need to answer and not ignore the call. I promise, it’s worth it.