“I Was Completely Out of Touch With My Own Needs!”

Once I had finished studying sport and leisure at college in 2003, I had absolutely no idea about what I was going to do next. I had only taken this course because I enjoyed working out and I didn’t know what else to do.

So after it was over, I soon had to face what I had been able to avoid by doing a full-time course at college. I experienced an incredible amount of pressure, stress and anxiety, and I would end up feeing upset.

Self-Blame

Most of my friends at this point had either stayed at school, or they had gone to another school to study. These people seemed to have it all worked out, whilst I had no idea what I was going to do.

I ending up blaming myself for this and came to believe that there was something wrong with me. At the same time, I already believed this deep down, so it wasn’t as though anything had changed.

I Was Lost

During this time, I would often sit down with my mother and she would ask me what I wanted to do. It was during these moments that she would show a more human side, but her behaviour would soon change afterwards.

I didn’t matter how many times I was asked this as I simply didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I wanted to find something that I could do, yet there wasn’t really anything that appealed to me.

My Purpose

Almost as soon as I could walk, I was expected to help out with our family run guest house. Along with what I had to do around the house, I was also expected to do what my mother wanted.

These two things might seem separate, but the reason we had a guest house was due to the fact that my mother wanted one. So, in a way, my main purpose growing up was to fulfil my mother’s needs in one way or another.

A Normal Consequence

Therefore, through being brought up in this way, it was to be expected that I would have no idea about what I wanted to do with my life. My needs and feelings were not seen as important.

As a result of this, I wasn’t really aware of my needs and feelings, which made it more or less impossible for me to find out what I wanted to do. It was then not that there was something inherently wrong with me; it was that I hadn’t received the kind of care that I needed in order to connect to my true-self.

Two Parts

I was only in touch with what was going on in my mind – I had awareness of what was going on in my body. This meant that I was only in touch with the part of me that had been conditioned by others.

I was carrying a lot of pain in my body, so the last thing I wanted to do was embrace this part of me. The trouble was that I could only be a whole human being if I embraced this part of me, and this was why I had to work through this pain.

A Slow Process

It was until the beginning of 2013 that I felt strong enough to face what was taking place in my body. The pain within me had been there for a while, but this was when it all came to the surface.

This was an incredibly challenging time in my life - a time when I was pushed to the limit. Nevertheless, through working with different healers and therapists, crying out the pain within me, and learning about childhood abuse and neglect, it was possible for me to gradually move through this pain and to connect to my body.