Stop Hiding Your 'Too Much-ness'

Many of us were raised by families in which we were repeatedly told that we were “too much”.

‘Too loud’, ‘too happy’, ‘too excitable’, ‘too intense’, 'too sensitive', ‘too emotional’ – some of us were even told that we were ‘too powerful’.

It’s a painful experience when our essential self is not wanted, but what happens energetically when we believe this story? We shrink ourselves down to a version of what others want us to be.

We become energetically small, invisible, and eventually, we take our energy elsewhere. In the meantime, our bodies might get bigger and we may struggle with our weight.

Often we take our energy so far elsewhere that we stop bringing our life force in at all. Stagnant life force energy causes us to become physically unwell. eventually leading to chronic illness. Then we're in a bind: we can't open our nervous system to new experiences because 'life' creates symptoms and causes us to feel overwhelmed. But if we don't find a way to open our nervous system safely, our lives remain contracted and unfulfilled. We may even come close to death.

If we don’t die, the result is often depression because we don’t feel that our authentic self is welcome.

We lose our capacity to be present, which accelerates disease and chronic illness.

Ironically, no-one is happy we aren’t fully in the room, even if they act like they want us to play small. Everyone subconsciously knows we aren't present, and it doesn't feel good to ANYONE, even to the people who fear the power of our presence, for us to not be fully there.

So we create unhealthy relationship dynamics to avoid being present, and settle for unsatisfying exchanges based on a mask which hides everything - including all that is unique and amazing about us.

Once a trauma pattern is part of our physical form - stuck in our cells - we have to work with ALL our energy bodies - i.e., our physical, emotional, mental, and energetic/auric bodies, It's not a question of "energy first", because the whole body-mind-spiritual system has to be treated holistically and not separated out into discrete parts.

The only question is, whether to work 'top-down' (addressing thoughts), or bottom up (addressing physiology)?

It's easier to allow changes to filter bottom up through the layers of consciousness than work from the top down. There is increasingly more resistance as we move top down. So we start from the bottom, transforming the denser layer of consciousness first. Once your physical body is on-board, permanent change happens throughout all the layers of consciousness almost effortlessly, because there is less resistance as you move from the bottom up.

So, if the trauma is stuck in our cells, and is being held in place by the constriction in our nervous system, it makes sense to work with the physical body first.

Compared with the physical body, the mental, emotional, and energy bodies are easy to shift traumatic patterns from. When dis-ease, distress and stagnation is already manifest in the physical body, this is the most difficult - and most important - place to start.

Taking time to understand how your nervous system works, and work with it, not against it, will help you learn how to embody wholesome and pleasurable experiences for long lasting change. Respecting that when your goal is to loosen nervous system constriction, doing less is doing more. Not just doing less in sessions, but doing less in your life. You may need to relinquish some of the practices that support you to function, but also hold the contraction in place. You may wobble when that happens. But if your goal is to loosen constriction, then you have to loosen the structures that bind you. Developing trust in your practitioner, trust in your process, and trust in yourself will help you find a way to meet, process, and integrate experiences held in the body that perpetuate the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and behaviours that have been keeping you stuck, and stopping you from sharing your gifts with the world.

Read more about your nervous system and how to heal a dysregulated nervous system here.

In my trauma-informed group program for healers and neuro-sensitives, I teach methods to eliminate overwhelm and rewire patterns of protection, banish procrastination and self-sabotage and metabolize trauma that's holding back neurodivergent practitioners from thriving. All set within a safe container of shamanic wisdom practices.

Expansion Training for Healers is a 10-week group program for just 12 healers and neuro-sensitives - with plenty of individual support.

Doors are now open for the next round of Expansion Training for Healers, starting Tuesday 9th May, 2023.

If you're curious how healing and expanding your nervous system can help you, book a co-regulation call to explore whether this ttrauma resolution therapy is for you.