You are a masterpiece that you are perfectly created everything about you by your perfect creator. And God is that perfect creator who considers you a beautiful masterpiece with wonderful gifts to go serve Him with. We're going to talk about the story that gets distorted, right? We have this beautiful story that God has written for you. And then in this fallen world, things kind of can smack into us sometimes and they can smack into us with lies about us. They can smack into us with things that hurt emotionally or physically. They can smack into us with doubts and fears or neglect, right? There are all kinds of things that could have happened, and your story gets impacted by those unique things that happened in your life.
When the Nervous System Goes Astray
Ideally, God has designed the nervous system so that you can shake it off and regulate and be okay. You've survived and made it through the pain, and you go on. But our nervous systems need to get the timestamp that says that's done. It's not happening anymore; it's no longer going on and we can relax. Instead of that timestamp, what often happens is that if we don't have enough in the way of supportive resources for what we need to be able to process these things, then our systems still hold on to the memory and the energy of it. And we might interpret messages about ourselves like we're not good enough or we should have done this or what will people think? Or maybe God's mad at us or what's wrong with us, we don't deserve anything better, whatever it is, okay? We get messages that lie to us, and we need to challenge those in light of God's truth. But our systems, because of being smacked into are kind of trying to get our balance back and we're trying to figure it out. And then the way we feel sometimes after we've been smacked into makes us think these messages are truer than they are and then makes us feel defeated and then scares us. And then we end up in a cycle that we don't want to be in, but we repeat cycles of fear or anxiety or patterns of defeat and believe the feelings and the lies that we'll never get out of this. We can't break free. Happiness is for other people. We'll never be good enough to please God. We're always going to be anxious or have panic or worry. There's so much that lies to us because it's like the enemy smacks into us. And then when we're wounded, those wounds get even further, kind of infected and messed with. And we're so exhausted from being messed with that we kind of just do the best we can to lick our wounds and try again. But we never get the chance to really heal unless we really heal. What happens is those wounds keep getting triggered or recycled over and over again, and we lose some things.
Aligning with God's Design for You; I Can Help You
Instead of the wonderful story that God designed for us, we end up getting sidelined and licking our wounds and trying to hope for better the next day and things just repeating again and again because we don't have nervous system healing from what happened to us. And so that's why I have the Empowered Freedom Framework in the Empowerment Oasis program that I'm launching in October. Because I want you to have all of the tools possible the spiritual, the mental, the emotional and the physical. Tools to give you peace, to get you off of that hamster wheel and living the life you really want to live, the life you know you can live, the life you just don't know how to get to yet. I want to help you get there. I've gotten there in my own life on a day-to-day basis. I am living my best life, my freest life, my most just, beautiful life with God, because God has done this for me. But He's not just done it by some one-time miracle. He's done it by giving me a healthy marriage and good people in my life. He's done it by teaching me new principles. He's done it by therapy. He's done it by education. He's done it by practicing tools that regulate my nervous system and help me to be calm and more relaxed, less anxious, less fearful. Ways to think that can soothe my nervous system and tell me the truth so that I'm aligned with God's original story being that Masterpiece award winning, unique peach pie, so to speak, rather than a peach pie that's trampled into pieces on the ground and doesn't know how to get back up. And I've been there, but I'm now back on the picnic table. I'm up on the winner's stand where everybody's like, let's see that pie shine, right? I want you to be back up there, too. There's no reason you can't. I want to see you shine for God in the truth of his story about you not constantly beat around in cycles of licking wounds from what the enemy's done to your story. Those are lies. You can close those chapters, and my Empowered Freedom Framework can help you to close those chapters. And I want to work with you and help you if you've been praying for something that can help you get out of the cycles to get really deep in a short amount of time so that you can get back to living and freedom, ultimately saving time and money over the long haul. Because these skills and tools will stay with you for a lifetime. You just have to practice them and use them. It's no fun to struggle, and we certainly don't want to have the enemy holding anything over us. We're daughters of God. We got work to do. All right, so I'm going to tell you when our stories get skewed by what's happened to us, and we get negative messages about ourselves, about how much power we have, about who God is, about how we feel about God, about our abilities to make change or do something about it. There's a lot of struggle that happens and a lot that's stolen and taken away.
10 Ways to Recognize If Your Story Has Been Tainted
I'm going to give you ten ways that you can see if your story has been tainted with and if you're still struggling with things that can be healed and need to be healed.
- Absence of Peace: Do you feel that you have peace on a daily basis? Like really stable peace in your body? Or has your peace been stolen?
- Nervous Tendencies: Do you feel like you're a bundle of nerves in everything you do? Do you feel like it's hard to go out and meet people or go to things, maybe even going to the grocery store? It just gets you all shaky? Do you feel like speaking up in a group is hard, or defending yourself is hard, or having an honest conversation with somebody is too difficult? Do you lack confidence in your capabilities or confidence that God will come through for you?
- Untrusting: Do you find yourself not able to trust God or yourself or other people very, very easily? Do you find your decision making is kind of something you struggle with and difficult? Maybe even something you avoid out of fear of making the wrong decisions?
- Anger and Frustration: Do you find that you're harsher than you want to be? That your coping skills are either nonexistent or pretty well shot that you're more critical to yourself. You yell more at your kids or your spouse. You kind of have frustration or anger just spilling over onto others. Lose your temper, get passive aggressive, get resentful, feel like just giving up, being hopeless. Those are other ways that indicate that your story has been tampered with.
- Feeling Hijacked: Do you feel like you have been hijacked, like the ability to control the way that your body and your mind work together seems disconnected. Your self-control to be able to go, no, this is what I think, and my feelings can go along with that. Seem to be at odds. You might realize with your mind, I don't want to be acting this way, but then have some emotional or mental stuff going on that you're just observing, sort of like, what is that about? That seems so out of my control. I just don't feel like I've got a handle on this. Why am I acting this way? Or if you've ever had yourself, say something like, why did I say that? I don't really mean that. What is going on here? If you felt hijacked, as if your body or your emotions or your thoughts don't belong to you, that can be another indicator that your story has been intruded upon.
- Unstable Relationship with God: If you feel like your connection to God isn't solid, feel like you'll never be good enough or feel like you can't trust Him again, that's another indication.
- Physical Response: If you feel like you cannot relax your body. Your muscles are so tense you forget to breathe. You breathe really shallow or rapidly. You feel disconnected from your body. Find yourself zoning out, not quite present when you want to be present. Maybe you're playing with your kids and you're thinking about your to-do lists and everything else, but not actually where you are enjoying it. That's not a guilt, that's just these are often indications that our nervous systems are overwhelmed.
- Wasting Time: Do you find yourself wasting so much time that you want to be using for other stuff, but that your mind races? Or you've spent so much time going over conversations in your head that are long over, that your focus is not where you want it to be? Or you've wasted so long hoping that you'd finally get past this, and now it's months or years later and you're still struggling.
- No Sense of Power: Do you feel like your sense of power has been taken from you and that you don't have any power to get over anything, to even take the next steps? That's a lie. But you might feel that way if you've had your story trampled on.
- Riding the Hamster Wheel: And then the other thing is that you want to make an impact. You have a desire, you even have a calling. But this thing that you keep returning to, like you're on the hamster wheel and can't seem to get rid of keeps pulling you back in, and you need to get out is taking time, power and impact as well away from you.
These are the ways the enemy steals from God's story for your life. And the thing is, Jesus defeated the enemy. Jesus has already given you the victory. Now, what's happening is we need to know how to soothe your nervous system, how to equip your mind, how to strategize as a whole being, body, soul, spirit, mind, feelings, relationships, goal setting with the tools that you need to be able to manage it well. And I would be honored to come on that journey with you. I want you to go from surviving to thriving. Because survival is great and a good gift from God. Thriving is joy and where daily power comes in and it is possible.
Why a Mentor, Coach, or Therapist Can Help
Have you ever felt like the way you think of things seems right until other information comes along and gives you more clarity...shedding some light on the situation?
So, I had this experience recently. I was feeling pretty confident when I decided to run out for breakfast at McDonald's. I thought I'd just get a breakfast sandwich for myself and bring one back to be sweet to my husband on a recent Saturday. So, I did that, and I thought, oh, I can also go to the gym. I don't have anything planned. So, I'll get breakfast, drop one off for him, go to the gym and, oh, I didn't have my earbuds. So, I'll swap off the sandwich and then pick up my earbuds.
When I pulled into my car driveway, and we live in a very safe area, so I decided just to leave my drink in the cup holder, my phone on the dash, and leave the car unlocked because I was running quickly in and out and I would be right back.
The problem is, when I did that and started to head off towards the gym, my phone was gone, and my drink was gone, and I'm sitting there in the car going, what just happened? And so there were thoughts like, did someone steal from me? Are one of my kids playing a joke? Did I accidentally take it inside? Am I losing my mind? And I thought, well, I must have been just not paying attention that I took them inside. And so I'll just go inside and get it. And I went inside to look and there was no phone and there was no drink. And I had a distinct memory of leaving the phone on the dashboard and the drink in the cup holder. So at this point, it's like a Twilight zone kind of thing. It's feeling very surreal.
I'm not sure what's going on. Things are kind of topsy turvy within me because my logic is trying to figure something out. My emotional experience is feeling kind of discombobulated, and my husband didn't see my things either. However, even though I was confident that I had time to drive home, that I had time to swap out the sandwich and get the earbuds, that I had time and was turning around quickly so I could get back to the car so that I could have my stuff left in it and not have to carry it in with me, there was this piece of information that I was missing.
I had failed to consider that since my husband and I have the exact same make and model of cars, just different colors, that I had actually gotten into his car instead of mine. And the only way that I knew that is because he was trying to help me problem solve. And instead of being kind of flustered like I was, he was very calm and said my Bluetooth went off, and he said that I think that you tried to get into my car instead. Do you think that's what happened? Oh, actually, that makes a whole lot of sense.
I thought I was seeing everything clearly. I thought I calculated everything, thought I understood everything. And then I didn't understand why things weren't working, what got mixed up, and I couldn't understand not only why and what, but how. Like what happened? And with that one sentence, he was able to make so much sense of everything for me, just shining a light of clarity on my situation that I couldn't see for myself. And once he did, it sped up my progress. It got me into the car with my earbuds, going to the gym, had a nice workout, it was great. I was back on track. Better than ever, right?
That's what having a therapist or a coach or a mentor can do for you. They can see the things you can't because you're in the experience. Somebody who is trained from the outside to be able to hear and notice and ask intuitive questions, then explain things or offer tools that you may not know can speed up your clarity and your progress, saving you a lot of time, frustration, and that Twilight Zone kind of swirling.
