Heal and Come Home to Inner Safety in Your Heart
By Debra Franklin, LCSW of Light Your Pathway, LLC
All emotional and psychological struggles including depression, anxiety, and patterns of painful life circumstances, stem from losing a connection to love early in one’s family of origin. When we heal, we are inspired by real love that connects us to the beauty of life. This includes a natural flow of giving and receiving from the heart, the very essence of who we are. Realizing our wholeness as part of creation itself, we awaken to fulfill our purpose or “mission” on earth. Then we can relax as we find home in our hearts and meaning in our lives.
When we grow up experiencing emotional abandonment, or love that was expressed inconsistently to us, or hurt or abused in anyway, we lose that connection to the deeper meaning of real love and life or sense of safety. Then, we can lose or diminish the inspiration to explore and create, like a child who loves to explore and create with any simple objects like stones, plants, or feathers, enjoying their natural beauty. School additionally teaches us that learning only occurs through the mind, when real seeing is through the heart and intuition. We are taught that shadows of the night and images and beings and messages we see or feel at times or in dreams are “just our imagination.” Combined with the loss of love and suffering, they are even perceived as frightening. We are taught that we are separate individuals, separate from each other and nature itself so that we carry the illusion that things around us have no relevance to our personal lives, and are “only inanimate objects.”
The wise ones of all the sacred traditions, including Buddhism and native peoples and shamans from around the world, are working to help us heal and wake up to see the truth about life in this new Aquarian Age. Whether you are a truthseeker, who can feel that there is more to life then what we were taught growing up, or seeking healing from a life of struggle, you can receive the gift of truth and the gift of real love, joy, and even bliss. You can find happiness in who you really are and meant to be on this earth plane. Then you can connect to spirit and fulfill your “mission” on earth.
Consider that we are all players with roles in this extraordinary universe, all connected as actors in a huge and beautiful arena. Imagine that the stars, the air we breathe, the trees, the earth, the animals, the water, the plants, —-all that surrounds us are who we are and that we are capable of emitting that same extraordinary beauty. Imagine we are all connected and that every move we make, thought we think, and sound we emit, touches everything and everyone in some way. Imbued with free will and the power to create with the air, fire, water, earth, we can finally awaken to be who we are meant to be and serve with whatever gifts we may carry to touch others hearts.
However, our perception is ever changeable. It allows us, with our free will, to create any perception. We can misperceive beauty or see life as something ugly, uncomfortable, and scary. When we suffer from the loss of love whether through trauma or just not getting enough of it as a young child, our love for life and beauty of curiously exploring, becomes dark and scary. Then, suddenly, we start to fear life. We even start to think we are unloveable. Because of our connection to others that exists, we then unconsciously attract rejection, creating a pattern of reinforcing our belief that we are “unloveable”. We find ourselves surrounded by people that disrespect us, whether at work, socially, or choosing partners that we experience as unkind. The pattern continues to repeat, until we heal the original trauma or loss of love.
Some of you may have heard of Harlow's experiment with monkeys. He found that the monkeys need for love from mother was more important than food. Even with basic physical needs met, those new born monkeys that could not be held by their mothers became seriously emotionally disturbed. So the bottom line is we all need love to thrive, especially in infancy and young childhood. Depending on the extent and degree love is lost or compromised in your life, will be the degree of your struggle with your perception and struggle with connection to the beauty of life itself.
The truth is that most of the world is “disconnected” to the meaning of real love. As a result people are seeking happiness in all the wrong places whether acquiring things, feeling like one “needs” a partner to be happy, or a child, or other such illusory struggles to try meet what really is an inner need for love. Because finding happiness outside of yourself is never permanent or real, suffering will always result with the loss of something you believed you needed to be happy or it not quite fitting with how you imagined it to be. As Buddhism dictates, real enlightenment is moving beyond such illusory attachments. You must get off the merry go around of trying to find happiness outside. Real happiness can only be acquired when we perceive the deeper meaning of love that exists within and around all of us.
That love in our hearts that allows us to really thrive can be activated as we heal with the help, love, and deeper understanding of a gifted healer or therapist; one who has healed too and is swimming in that beautiful connection to life and love. He or she needs to work with you with unconditional love and compassion. It is also beneficial to be part of a conscious loving community that most of us didn't have growing up (There are a few around and growing, also with my Spiritual Empowerment Group).
So how do we heal? As a psychotherapist who has helped many heal through an array of creative approaches, I have found the main point of healing to be understanding and acceptance (also important concepts in Buddhism and other sacred ways) of all aspects of our experiences and personality, including traumas and those that hurt us. Then, its even possible to see the gift in even the worst experiences, which is a very healing perspective. At first we see the suffering in us as if it is a separate part we want to cut off, but attempting to push it away or anesthetize it is what keeps our emotional pain locked in along with destructive life choices (ie. addictions, anger, choice of job/partners that disrespect us).
I have seen many clients with depression, anxiety, addictions, and relationship difficulties who I help face that pain and heal its origin. By avoiding it, we are just repeating the same rejection that caused it to begin with. We are rejecting a part of us that needed the love not received. By trying to push it away, or continuing to resent the people in our lives that hurt us, we continue to keep ourselves in our own illusion of self-hatred, and that can be a great slow killer, not as quick as the monkeys that had no love at all, but in a slow way, can risk illness and eventual premature death. As we now know, emotions do effect our health.
How I guide my clients to face earlier painful or traumatic experiences in a HEALING way is also very important. We do not simply “rehash” the trauma in a way that can be re-traumatizing, but visit it with a special integrated approach I developed. This new technique (soon to be announced) incorporates a supportive guided imagery, inner childwork, Gestalt (including Family Constellations), and energy psychology with the basic concepts of healing to ensure release of the negative emotional patterns toward becoming who we are and connecting to our larger purpose in life. Old emotional patterns can begin to heal quickly.
One example is a client who experienced intense guilt about a minor event in his life. It compromised his ability to complete important tasks in his life. During a guided meditation, I brought him to his childhood where he remembered how his guilt began. After feeling compassion toward himself as his inner child, he suddenly recalled the joy he carried before his trauma. He said, “I remember a time in my life when I observed the beauty of the flowers and felt so much joy. Oh my God, that’s who we are supposed to be!” He woke up to the beauty of life in just a few sessions. He began to develop a beautiful work that touched lives with messages that help people wake up. Just imagine, you can heal to find or develop your gifts to help others heal and awaken to their love and beauty within!
Only with love is there inner safety, only to be felt when the fears that have haunted you are transformed to love and beauty. Heal, awaken, step by step, until you bring your gifts to a level of expression that helps others to heal. With the power of love, you can see and begin to move confidently toward a beautiful life of gratifying service and create your peaceful inner and outer sanctuary.
Debra Franklin, LCSW, has over 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist, now owner of Light Your Pathway, LLC and creator of Heart Path Therapy®. Located in Bloomfield, CT and Pine Bush, NY, her website, progressivepsychotherapy.com has articles, resources, and groups, including Heart Path Therapy® training for Therapists. Her spiritual teacher, Maestro Manuel Rufino and the Golden Drum in Brooklyn, NY that he inspired, has been highly transformative for Debra’s spiritual and emotional development. She now specializes in helping healers heal and empower their gifts through Heart Path Therapy®. She can be reached at 888-406-0770.
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