Podcast: Episode 113: It’s Okay – A Message To You If You Are Struggling


This week’s episode came to me while I was on a walk, where I found myself speaking out loud to no one in particular, yet offering words of grace to everybody and anybody who may be struggling with pain or other symptoms.

As I found myself in a groove, I decided to open my recording app and share my thoughts, so if you are struggling today, this is my offering to you. It can sometimes feel like you are taking steps in the darkness, but whatever you are feeling, it’s okay. It really is okay, and I’m showing you why.

In this episode, I’m sharing my stream of consciousness, my steps on the ground, in the hope that it soothes, supports, and opens a door for you to take your next step toward recovery and healing. I’m showing you how to tune into your thoughts and feeling relationship and assess how your thoughts are impacting your recovery journey.

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What You'll Learn from this Episode:

  • Why you need different things at different times of your recovery.
  • How to open your brain and being to the next step in your recovery journey.
  • Why we can’t fake our way to healing. 
  • How to become aware of your thoughts and respond to them accordingly.
  • Why this process might be challenging and difficult for you.

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Male Announcer: You’re listening to From Pain to Possibility with Susi Hately. You will hear Susi’s best ideas on how to reduce or even eradicate your pain and learn how to listen to your body when it whispers so you don’t have to hear it scream. And now here’s your host, Susi Hately.

Welcome and welcome back. This episode came to me while I was on a walk this morning. It was 5:30am, the city quiet except for the birds chirping and I found myself speaking out loud to no one in particular and yet to everybody and anyone, offering words of grace to all those people I know and don’t know who are struggling with pain or other symptoms.

I found myself saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay. It really is okay.” As I found myself in a groove I opened up my recording app and captured the stream of consciousness. If you are struggling today, this is my offering to you. I hope my stream of consciousness, the birds in the background, the steps on the ground, I hope that it soothes, supports, it opens a door for you to take your next breath. To take your next step toward recovery and healing.

It’s okay to realize you’re going to get there. It’s okay that you don’t know your way out of this pain. It’s okay you are really uncertain at times of whether you are going to feel this disabled for the rest of your life. But this will be the limiting factor forever. It’s okay that you feel that way. It’s okay, it’s okay.

There’s a part of our brain, the amygdala, there’s actually two of them. And they sit at the back of the head and the one on the left, it’s coupled with another brain structure called the hippocampus and part of the job of these two is to alert us. However it’s okay that they’re being present and it’s okay that your brain is directing you to them because as challenging as this might be, they’re wanting to get your attention.

Now, the tendency is to push against them or be swallowed by them, or some variation of those two and move into the rabbit hole towards depression. Or put on the helmet and put on the army boots and say, “Fuck it, I’m going to fight against this thing.” I see it all. And all those responses are okay. They’re okay. The key is to recognize what they are.

I find in the process of supporting people when people come to my Zoom room many of them have been through that cycle for a long time. They’ve had the experiences in their head of either fighting against it or being consumed by it or some relationship of both, some oscillation. And there’s a voice inside of them, a feeling let’s call it, a drive, an essence, a determination, a knowing that there can be something different. That’s what you also need to pay attention to because that knowing, that consciousness, it knows.

Think about this in other areas of your life before the pain or the other symptoms came into your world. Think back in the past. Even while your symptoms have started to come on whether it’s been as an illness or an injury, or it’s coming out of nowhere.

Even in the middle of this there have been moments where you have just known and you have done something and it has worked. Now, the frustrating thing is it didn’t keep working. And the reason why is it because it was merely a step in the process of your getting better. It wasn’t the one and only and the final step that you keep doing.

A trainee of mine gave me an analogy, houseplants need different kind of care throughout the year. Gardens need different kind of care throughout the year. We don’t do the same thing to a houseplant or a garden all year round, and the same is for you.

But somehow what can happen when we are in a predicament of pain, or symptoms, or that fight and overwhelm, or all-consuming state we can be in we just want to find the thing, the thing that will make it all better. And I don’t want to stop you or suggest that you are doing that or thinking that is wrong.

What I do want to suggest is that it’s a step. It’s the step and that if you can pay attention to the results that arise out of that step that will then open your brain and your being to what the next step is. And it feels like sometimes that you’re taking steps inside of the darkness.

And even if you have a guide or a professional of sorts that is helping you through it you’re still doing this on your own. Your hand is out and someone is validating and maneuvering and helping you see where some of the potholes are, explaining what else is in the path, why you may or may not go down a certain route. But essentially you’re on your own. I’d say that this is what it is to get better. This is what it is to recover, to dare I say, heal.

There is one event that I know of, maybe there’s more but I know of one event where it is excruciatingly painful and a person’s ability to move and be with that pain is legendary. You know when that is? Childbirth. I was someone who had a scheduled C-section so I am not of that club. But of the colleagues that have, that are in that club, friends that are in that club they will say that birthing a baby cannot be done out of force.

Birthing a baby requires a dropping into a primal energy, of letting go into the force that will ultimately birth that baby. And my colleagues who are OB/GYNs and OB/GYN nurses will tell me that they see the goddess emerge in cases where that process is just one with.

And of those who have been through that process, both the one birthing and the person supporting them, there's a being with, there is excruciating pain to witness, to experience. And it can be with because of what comes out on the other side.

The distinction in this place of healing is that we don't know when the pain will end. We don't know when the symptoms will be gone. There is no bundle of joy at the end that we can even know or even have a sense of. So it's a lot harder to let go into any version of primal energy that could be supporting someone through this.

It's dark, it's uncertain, there are so many unanswered questions. Which is why I come back to the thoughts, why I come back to the objectivity of movement. Why throughout this podcast I talk about whispers and yellow lights.

Man: Good morning.

Susi: Hey there.

Man: Do you happen to know what time it is?

Susi: Yep, it’s almost 6, ten till 6.

Man: Thank you.

Susi: You bet.

It's why I come back to those concepts because they provide another step. They provide a light. They provide an opportunity to assess, to recognize what is working and what's not working to help you reconnect even in a small, vulnerable way. A lot of my clients will say to me how they've known they needed to shift for a long time. Or they probably could have used all of this teaching 20 or 25 years ago.

And while it's seductive to go backward and to look backward and what if and ask the questions of what it. And asking those questions could open up other questions that can move you forward. I acknowledge the desire and the knowing of what they already know needs to change, of what they know is likely impacting. And then utilizing that to take the next step. And being mindful of moving in that swirl, which can sometimes keep you in the thinking that keeps you where you are.

Now, as an aside, sometimes that thinking and keeping ourselves where we are is exactly where we need to be. And that's why it's coming back to what I mentioned earlier, that knowing. That knowing. That knowing. I recognize that where we are at in our world, the loading up of all the variety of stimuli, all the crap that's hit the fan not only over the past two years, but even beyond that and all the various layers of impact. There's a lot of layers for a lot of people.

And even going through the process of looking at thoughts, of paying attention to movement is just too damn hard. And if that's the case, then the time is not right and that's okay. That's okay. And if your next thought from that is like, oh, but then I'm never going to get well, that's okay too.

Which thought has more compelling vibration inside of you? Not which thought you wish would have more compelling vibration, but which thought has more compelling vibration inside of you? And then respond to that thought.

The key is that we're blending cognitive cerebral thought processes with what is being somatically or in your body experienced. We need both. We can't think our way to healing. Thinking is very much part of it, yes. We need to tune into the thought and feeling relationship.

So how are those thoughts vibrating in your body? Can you perceive that? Can you start to name the qualities of what that vibration feels like? Where does that thought sit? Is there an emotional element to it? This can sometimes be really challenging work, particularly if you are someone who is very cognitively dominant.

This sounds sort of silly, but it's like of course you rely on our brains. But if you rely on your brain to make your decisions, you push your body aside, you use your brain to control your body. For the most part you don't actually think your body has a lot of useful information for you. So to now notice where your thinking exists or your emotions exist in your body might sound and seem downright weird.

And if you have even a modicum of thought around, okay, I think she's onto something, then inch your way toward experiencing what's the vibration of that next thought, of that next emotion without trying to control your body.

This process might also be really challenging or difficult if there is a trauma response that you are conscious of and going to your body is like the last place you want to go. And so in that case, then don't. Your body is letting you know that. And by not going there, by honoring that wall that says don't go there you're doing exactly what your body and mind system is asking of you. And as you listen and act and notice what that result is, you'll keep taking a step, you’ll keep seeing progress.

This is a process that is scientific in nature because we are doing things with the idea to watch for an outcome. And then out of what that outcome is, we can take that data and make our next choice. Whether that choice is…

Now some people will say but how is feeling your body scientific? Its scientific because our body gives us data. Our body is a mirror of our thinking process, of our emotional process. Yes, the feelings might be subjective in nature and intangible to others outside of us, and it's still data for ourselves.

We can still measure the truth for ourselves. This is not a double blind study that we are going to be running to bring a whole bunch of people into. No, this is a singular study, uniquely ours. And that is the healing process.

If this episode has resonated with you, if there's a glimmer for you of like, okay, she's onto something, and you want my hand there are two options. One is a group of process, the other is a private one on one process.

The group process is Healing and Revealing Human Potential where we take these concepts and you really experience them and explore them. You can learn more at functionalsynergy.com/synergy.

We can also do this in a one on one level if you want more private contact. And for that email us at [email protected], we’ll see you then.

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