Five Ways to Feel More Empowered While Healing

Disempowerment.

That can be major side effect of chronic illness, which strips away our dreams, our goals, our entire life and leaves us feeling powerless.

We give our power away to doctors. We deal with doctors who invalidate us or tell us diagnoses that we know feel wrong, but we listen to them because we are desperate to get answers.

We give our power away to toxic people. We deal with toxic people who tell us our symptoms are in our head and our treatments are crazy, and we question everything we are doing.

We give our power away to others we don’t even know. We compare ourselves to others, especially on social media, and then wonder why we aren’t getting better as quickly and question if we are doing something wrong. Or we feel bad being honest about how we feel because other people “have it worse.”

So how do we take our power back?

1) We follow our intuition and trust what we feel. Only we know if a doctor feels off, if a treatment feels wrong, if we feel worse or better. We don’t let anyone convince us that how we feel is wrong.

2) We don’t let people make us feel a certain way. There will always be people that test us and trigger us, but we have the power to respond rather than react. We have the choice to not take things personally and to remind ourselves that if people are judging our medical decisions, that says more about them than us.

3) We feel our emotions. All of them are valid. By suppressing or resisting them, they become overpowering and we can feel like they are in control of us. But actually sitting with and feeling difficult emotions is extremely powerful and healing.

4) We realize everyone is on a different path, and everyone’s body and medical situation is completely different. Just because one person responds well to a certain treatment doesn’t mean that it will work for us. And that’s ok. We realize we are all doing our best to get better, and that will look different for everyone.

5) We take all the energy that we spend worrying about things we can’t control (symptoms, flare-ups, diagnoses) and instead put it into things we can control, like giving ourselves what we need in the moment ( rest, sleep, a long cry, a bath, going out with friends, texting someone, etc.) and taking care of ourselves like we do others.

No matter what others say or do, and no matter how we feel, we can always make empowering choices during in each moment.

Three Ways to Move Emotional Energy in the Body

For most of my life I suppressed emotions- especially anger, rage, and grief. I didn’t know that during the time- I thought I just never got angry. Anxiety, sadness, frustration- yes. But anger, rage, and grief- nope. It didn’t feel safe to feel those emotions.

Then I got really sick, which cracked me open- and all of the suppressed emotions came out with a vengeance. It was intense, uncomfortable, and overwhelming.

I didn’t know how to feel and process anger, grief, or other emotions in a healthy way. Unfortunately, it’s not something many of us are taught at home or in school. Or at all.

It wasn’t until I got really sick that I learned the relationship between emotions and physical symptoms- trapped emotions can actually manifest as physical symptoms, and over time, trapped emotions can create disturbances in our energy field that prevent us from healing.

Actually starting to feel my feelings was ugly, messy, and painful. I mean, who wants to be laying on the bathroom floor, curled into a ball, hysterically crying because a deep overwhelming sadness knocked you over? Who wants to be laying in bed, shaking with anger with no energy to get up and release it? Who wants to frustrated, anxious, depressed, and overwhelmed, all at the same time?!

And worst of all, who wants to feel all of these emotions when you barely have the energy to stand up, take a walk, or even breathe?! And when you are in excruciating pain?!

But as I started to actually sit with these emotions and let them come up, they always passed after a while, and I would feel better- lighter and freer. The phrase “feeling is healing” is true. It’s not fun, it’s not easy, and it’s not pleasant. But it is healing and liberating. And I definitely noticed improvements in my physical symptoms.

There are three ways to help move emotional energy in the body- movement, breath, and sound.

Movement- this can look like shaking, jumping up and down, dancing, walking, yoga, stretching

Breath- I start each morning with a few minutes of breathwork (using the Pause Breathwork App) and do longer sessions about 1x a week. There are different patterns for different emotions, but something you can always do is take long, deep inhales through the nose and long deep exhales through the mouth.

Sound- I take long sigh breaths (taking a deep breath in through the nose and sigh it all out), scream into a pillow, or make whatever noises feel good to me in the moment.

Incorporating all three of these- individually or at the same time- even just for a few minutes- has been a game changer.

Try these and let me know if you feel a shift!

How Breathwork Helped Me to Heal

I tried all of the treatments.
I went to all of the doctors.
I did all of the mindset work.

I had periods where I would feel better, just to crash again. It sent me on an emotional roller coaster full of frustration, anger, disappointment.

A year ago, I had a major crash. PTSD flared up big time, and I was a physical and emotional wreck. The pain was unbearable. I was too sick to leave my apartment for over 2 months. It was another rock bottom. It was one of the darkest times of my life.

Around the same time, I had a couple of breathwork sessions.

During the session, it was the first time I truly felt connected to my body. The first time I felt at home in my body. The first time I realized that I never felt safe in my body. The first time I felt powerful emotions in my body, waiting for such a long time to be acknowledged. The first time I felt an indescribable sense of peace and stillness.

And I had a powerful epiphany- that I haven’t been able to completely heal because of the major disconnection from my physical body.

Chronic pain and illness. Trauma. Programming that I should ignore my body and it’s needs in order to push through, get stuff done, and be productive. Beliefs that it wasn’t safe to be in my body because the emotions felt too overwhelming and out of control. My nervous system being in constant fight or flight mode.

All I knew was how to escape my body. How to numb myself the second things felt too intense. How to keep distracted and super busy so I wouldn’t have to deal with anything uncomfortable. How to live life on auto-pilot.

And my body responded with anxiety, nonstop fight or flight responses, nervous system activation.

I started doing more individual and group breathwork sessions. Each one brought more connection, more safety, more release. I started trusting my intuition even more. I became less anxious. I felt more calm and peaceful on a daily basis. I felt more aligned, more empowered, more ME.

I ended up becoming a certified breathwork facilitator.

Learning to truly be in my body, get out of my head, and feel all of the emotions coming up has not been easy. It’s been a process. But it’s what my body needed to heal on even deeper levels.

If you would like to book a breathwork session, you can do so here.