Pursuing Emotional Health and Getting Rid of Shame

There can be so much shame tied to pursuing emotional health. Today I want to open up about my journey in hopes of shining some light on the subject. Emotional health and mental illness can often get overlooked because we can’t see it with our eyeballs. Depending on the home you were raised in, you may have never had space to have emotions or needs. That leaves so many of us living disconnected from our heart.

LFA- Growing in Emotional Health

What a journey this year has been! Last January I took the Life Consulting course Living Fully Alive with Justin and Abi Stumvoll. (If you sign up, tell them Jess Beard sent you!) After working on this blog over the last three years or so, it was time for growth and expansion. I couldn’t have known at the time, but that was one of the best decisions of my life. Let me be clear; it was one of the hardest and best decisions of my life!

Set Yourself Up for Success

When you are learning how to help other people find wholeness and live connected, you do so by learning and going through it all yourself first. Boy was I in for a surprise. Over the course of 14 weeks I did weekly classes, met with a life consultant regularly, and participated in small groups. If you have to do hard things, it’s important to set yourself up for success. Adding a mentor who checked my homework ensured that I would actually do it each week. There’s no shame in knowing your weaknesses, and doing homework isn’t one of my strong suits.

From the very first homework assignment, I was forced to face some tough lies I was believing about myself. Having to turn it in to someone definitely helped me to push through the tough feelings to get to the wholeness I was pursuing.

Mastermind

After the course ended, I applied for Abi Stumvoll’s Life Consulting Mastermind. It’s basically a year long internship to grow as a Life Consultant as well as to grow in your own emotional health. Abi only accepts a handful of people into the program, so it was a huge honor for me to get in! I’ve learned more about the state of my mental health in the last month than in all of my 36 years of life.

Denial

One word to describe my emotional state would be denial. Hello, I’m a 7 on the Enneagram scale! You could often find me joking about being a professional pain avoider, but I had no clue how much pain I was actually avoiding. It’s easier to joke about avoiding pain than to actually face it and process it.

Triggers in Mothering

As a homeschooling mom of five, I was triggered like ten times before noon! Want to know how defeating it feels to keep being triggered over and over and not know where it’s coming from? It felt absolutely crushing. I’ve been a mom for over thirteen years (What?!) so this mothering thing isn’t new to me. However, not really having had a mom in my life, I had no gauge for what mothering looks like. Also, not having a mom in my life made my relationships with my kids disconnected, which meant they were much harder than they should have been. No one told me.

Enter Validation

Thankfully, besides writing down all my triggers, another bit of homework was reading COMPLEX PTSD by Pete Walker. After reading the first chapter I basically came weeping to Justin to let him know that for the first time in my life I had words for all of the feelings that were going on inside of me.

When I was conceived I was quite the surprise pregnancy. I talk more in depth here if you want to check it out: Revisiting my Roots. Ultimately, my mom decided to leave, which I go more into depth about here: My Glass Castle. It’s amazing how from the outside someone can look in and see (if I let them of course) all the dysfunction of my life, but living with myself daily, it was my normal. I didn’t have words to call feelings out and give them names.

The Good Parent

In childhood when one parent wrongs us, we tend to view the other as “the good parent.” It gives them a free pass even though they might also be dysfunctional. Learning to look at my past realistically has been very difficult. Its become clear to me over the past year, that although I have a great relationship with my dad now, it was far from healthy growing up.

Your dad is the one who is supposed to make you feel safe and protected. Instead, my dad taught me how to live in fear. Heavy, thick, ugly fear that never allowed me to see the possibility of a good future. It also lead to codependency where I acted on the belief that it was my responsibility to take care of my dad. Let me tell you, when you are already only standing on one leg, it can really knock you back to learn that your good parent wasn’t actually the hero you had set up in your mind!

No Shit, Sherlock

Processing what my childhood actually and realistically looked like was a bit crushing. It is in childhood where our core beliefs and foundations are formed. Childhood is where we learn to disassociate and befriend coping mechanisms to help us get through the pain that we are not able to process so young.

My best friend became escapism. Escapism tells us that, certainly, any other place is better than the place we are in right now. The only way to be happy is to go to the next thing, place, or experience.

The Escape Artist

You could often find me joking that I was a professional escape artist and could plan a trip out of here in five minutes. What I didn’t realize is that it was a constant record playing in the background 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It would show up the most when I was with my kids. A few years ago I said to Justin, “This is so weird, but it feel like kid Jess is jealous of our kids.” Although I didn’t have the exact language or understanding at that time for what I was saying, it was absolutely true. My escapism came out in full force when I was with my kids, because as a kid I was not getting my core needs met.

It’s already so tough to be a mom. All these years what I didn’t realize was that I was trying to parent out of my woundedness. It was causing a serious divide in our relationship. Although it’s not fun to admit it, on the outside I was short and impatient when the kids would ask me for things, but on the inside I was like a rage monster! “Why do you even need that? All your needs are being met! Can’t you see how good you have it?” Kid Jess, whose needs were not met, was not content to be pushed down any longer and would come out raging when I least expected it.

The Right Path To Emotional Health

Thank God for the ability to learn and to grow. It’s going to be a journey to wholeness, but for the first time in my life I’m actually on the right path to emotional health! I’m so thankful that God had His hand on me throughout my life. Although there were many times I could have screwed things up, and Lord knows I tried, God never let me run too far away. He was so patient and kind through the process.

As I was meeting with my Life Consultant recently and processing through so much of this new information, I was crushed. “I hate that I’m not able to be present!” I said. She comforted me with, “Jess, you weren’t ready to be present with your pain. Look at your coping mechanism as a gift from God to bring you to this place where you are now able to process through it. Before, it would have crushed you, but now you are ready to find healing and wholeness.”

Self Compassion and the Road to Healing

The truth is that God never gives us more than we can handle. It’s also true that there are so many different ways of handling what life throws at us, none of which may be immediately apparent. Sometimes that looks like giving kids coping mechanisms when they can’t handle the pain they are going through. I’m choosing to be thankful for my coping mechanism instead of shaming myself for it. I’m choosing to give myself compassion and take all the time I need to pursue emotional health and wholeness. It’s not a race. I may never recover fully, but that doesn’t mean I won’t keep going after it.

I am worth it. I’m not going to hide in shame. That doesn’t help anybody! I want to put my story out there. Many people that know me might never guess that this has been my struggle all these years. I want to be open and honest and share the hope that I’ve found! Whatever you are struggling with, I see you. You don’t have to hide. Come into the light. There is no story that doesn’t deserve redemption and healing.

Thanks for joining me on this journey!

If this article has you reevaluating your feelings and you need someone to talk to about it, definitely get in touch. I am now accepting clients! Click here to add your email address and I’ll be in contact with you soon!