Empowerment Through Healing

How powerful do you feel? Do you feel like you have the power to control your life? Do you feel like you have very little power when it comes to controlling things in your life? Does feeling powerful have appeal in the first place? Although the word power often has a negative connotation, people who are power hungry or who get off on wielding their power over other people are in fact, deeply disempowered inside. And because of it they only feel powerful when they are controlling things or people around them.

Some of the most meaningful inner shifts I’ve experienced revolve around power, and I’m talking about self-empowerment. Within the whole “you need to learn to love yourself” movement, I’d like to share what I learned about one facet of becoming able to love myself.

When I began to work with a soul-directed hypnotherapist after my parents died, the way she brought in aspects of my higher consciousness to help me, worked really well. It helped me change things about my life quickly and permanently, and one day I wanted to address taking back power I’d given away or had been taken away from me over the course of my life.

Starting off the session, once I was relaxed and focused on her voice, my hypnotherapist had me picture a ball of white light full of intelligent and healing energy shining down on me. When she asked for a guide to come forth from the light to support me, one of my guides came forward, but she didn’t look exactly like she’d looked before. She’d taken on the physicality of a woman I’d been in a former lifetime, with a strong, muscular body and a beautiful yet simple teal/aqua dress with a purple sash around it. A woman who had been the leader of her people. As soon as she joined me, I noticed my heart started thumping hard, like I was scared. My guide took my hand and reassured me that it would be ok, and that she was with me, supporting me.

Picturing a timeline, the goal was to float back to when I first either lost or gave away my personal power. I had trouble finding a stopping point for us. Then I saw a hazy picture of me as a little girl and my mother slapped me. I knew that this had happened. Then I got the impression that part of me was shocked and surprised by this because part of me knew I didn’t deserve that sort of treatment. In that moment, I split into 2. The other part of me knew that if I didn’t do what my mother wanted, I’d get it again: either a slap, spank, or being yelled at.

The hypnotherapist had my guide come into the scene and envelope the two parts of me in a hug and love on us. Afterwards, there was no change. The two parts of me were both sitting on the floor. One was still hurt and disappointed by her mother’s treatment, and the other was scared of her and crying. Then I wondered why nothing (no change) was happening. The more I tried, the more nothing happened. Then I thought about how I usually did this process so easily and so well, with amazing results, but now I couldn’t do it. Then it hit me like a ton of rocks.

“I’m a failure. I’m a failure. I’m a failure. A complete and utter failure. I can’t do anything right.” These words rang out in my head over and over. I felt like such a failure in that moment. Then another epiphany hit like a ton of rocks.

“She put that on me! That bitch! My mother put her shit on me! How dare she. That bitch!!” I’m not the failure, she is. (And she probably got it from her mother who had severe control issues).

So there it was, my mother took my power from me, splitting me in two: the part that knew I was an amazing child of God and the part that was just trying to survive in a human body with a mentally ill mother.

Next I saw a basket style backpack on my back, full of rocks. I took it off, turning it upside down and dumping out the rocks. I knew the rocks were the times my mother took my power. I threw one rock after another straight at her. And another and another. Then I started throwing the rocks off a big cliff. When I looked down at the pile of rocks, it grew bigger and bigger. I hit them off the cliff with a golf club, a softball bat, a broom, I threw them off and kicked them off. There were so many, I eventually got a bulldozer to help push them off the cliff. Then I realized some were for my father. I gave him back the crap of his that I had carried for him. And some were for my older brother. I gave him back his rocks. Then a line of people appeared; nameless, faceless people who were really just forms of people. They represented others in my lifetime who gave me their shit to carry. I gave them each back their rocks. They bowed their heads in shame, and then words appeared on the rocks: several said SHAME. Others said FEAR. Others said ANGER, PAIN, and other things I took on for other people. (I had taken on a lot of shame that was not mine). I gave back everyone else’s shit that they either dumped on me, or I took. These were times when I gave up my power.

I kept up the process until the last bit where I swept the last few rocks off the cliff with a broom. Then I was directed to look at my guide. She was clapping and cheering me on, telling me that I’m amazing. It felt great. When I looked down to make sure every last rock or pebble was gone, there was one more. I couldn’t kick it or hit it off the cliff. It just wouldn’t budge. I wondered what was going on and then the answer came to me.

It was all of the crap from society that I took on. Like, the stuff from the mass consciousness. The crap that the collective put on me. Social programming. With that realization, I easily kicked the rock off the cliff. When that was done, my hypnotherapist asked me how I felt. My spirit felt great, in fact it was soaring, literally. Flying around, like in my dreams as a kid. Then I noticed that my chest felt heavy and I wondered what was going on there.

All of a sudden, my spirit flew into my chest and pushed a little rock out of it. Then another and another. Soon little rocks or pebbles started to pop out of my body here and there. A larger one came out of my tailbone. A whole bunch of pebbles popped out of my spine, from the top all the way to the bottom. They popped out of my feet and all of my joints. They kept popping out. Then, knowledge dropped into me.

I knew that each time I didn’t listen to my inner knowing, my intuition, I betrayed myself. I gave my power away. And that listening to (trusting) my inner knowings is the highest form of self- love because, it’s my direct connection to God. Honoring myself in this way is honoring God.

This was the nugget of gold.

After that, my hypnotherapist had me check in with the two young aspects of myself that came up in the beginning of the session and they were happy and self-assured. Upon wrapping up the session I noticed how incredibly different I felt. I felt more powerful, more empowered than I’d ever felt before. In taking my inner child through a process of reclaiming her power it changed me from the inside out.

There would be other sessions several years later that came back to this issue, like when I took steps to separate from my abusive older brother. Healing more aspects of myself who felt disempowered specifically through my relationship with my brother once again was life-changing.

You can work on feeling powerful by having experiences, taking action and hoping the world moves in the way you want it to, or you can work with your inner world. What I love about addressing my inner world is how quickly I’m able to change and how permanent this change is. It doesn’t mean you’ll always feel powerful in every situation for the rest of your life, but it’s a real game-changer.