I had an important realisation recently about my ability to process pain through my body, and how this dictated how much pleasure was safe to allow into my life. I had never realised before the control measures I had in place that were preventing me from experiencing true joy. What I thought was reality, was just the structure I had created surrounding what I believed I was worth, and what I could safely have. Listen to this full podcast for more information on this, how I realised it, and what it means moving forward in my life. At the end, I mention my websites: www.donnajoyusher.com, www.livingthroughheart.com and my handmade jewelry shop www.savagebohostudio.com. (P.S. if you see something there that you like, use the code PODCAST to get a discount. My thank you to you. x)
I had an important realisation recently about my ability to process pain through my body, ย and how this dictated how much pleasure was safe to allow into my life. I had never realised before the control measures I had in place that were preventing me from experiencing true joy. What I thought was reality, was just the structure I had created surrounding what I believed I was worth, and what I could safely have. ย
Listen to this full podcast for more information on this, how I realised it, and what it means moving forward in my life. ย
At the end, I mention my websites: www.donnajoyusher.com, www.livingthroughheart.com and my handmade jewelry shop www.savagebohostudio.com. (P.S. if you see something there that you like, use the code PODCAST to get a discount. My thank you to you. x)
ย
You can connect with me on:
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/livingthroughheart)
Instagram (@livingthroughheart)
Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@livingthroughheart/)
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnajoyusher)
Hello, welcome to this 52nd episode of the Living through Heart Podcast. I'm Donna Joy Usher.
ย
Today, I want to talk about several different things. ย
ย
But they're all going to come back together. ย
ย
Bear with me, I hope, that's my plan anyway. ย
ย
Once again, I have no notes prepared, just what's been going around in my head for the last couple of hours. ย
ย
So I'm over in Bali at the moment. ย
ย
And it's the second time that I've actually traveled purely by myself. ย
ย
Well, that's not true, when I was in my 20s, I did a lot of traveling by myself, but that was kind of when I was still very unconscious, unaware. ย
ย
And I did, I spent a lot of that time that I was traveling in a large amount of pain because my partner who was my ex husband, that we were, we've been together for about 25 years. ย
ย
So back then he was actually in Saudi Arabia working and I was in England working. ย
ย
And it was actually physically impossible for us to see each other more than I think it was like eight weeks a year that we managed to get together between traveling because of the holidays in Saudi Arabia, and the fact that I just wasn't allowed to go in there. ย
ย
So I am looking back on it, now I can see the large amount of discomfort that I was in from my anxious attachment wound and the separation. ย
ย
And I'm gonna think like, dealt with it, okay, I mean, I've definitely could have dealt with, in retrospect. ย
ย
So last time I traveled, I've done a lot of traveling, but normally with my husband, or with girlfriends. ย
ย
And last time I travel purely by myself was about a year ago. ย
ย
I mean, I traveled to Spain or Portugal by myself recently, but it was to meet up with friends. ย
ย
So it was very, very, I wasn't by myself for large amounts of time.
ย
So when I went to Sedona last year, I went to Phoenix to an event. ย
ย
Drove down to Sedona by myself. ย
ย
And the goal was that I was going to spend a lot of time in reflection and meditation and just making the most of this amazing place. ย
ย
And Sedona is, with all that's the energy that's there. ย
ย
And what ended up happening was that I spent a lot of time shopping, drinking wine, eating and working. ย
ย
And I basically got into so much discomfort when I got down there and obviously being triggered out by all the energy stuff that was happening in that area. ย
ย
I mean, I don't know if you know anything about Sedona, it's the place that they used in the old, or the old western movies. ย
ย
It's an amazing landscape, amazing place. ย
ย
And it's got all these ley lines that come together areas and sculpt like the most of these in the world. And it's one area where they all converge. ย
ย
So I had lots of frenetic dreams and lots of energy going on. And I just got into a huge amount of physiological discomfort with heart arrhythmias the whole time I was there and I just distracted from it rather than going into it, which had been my, my plan. ย
ย
So I've come to Bali now. ย
ย
And I'm here for five days by myself before I go to a retreat with the beautiful Rochelle Weir, who is one of Chris Duncan's head coaches, so superconscious recode coach. And I've come to Bali by myself, and I'm staying at a yoga, like a yoga Eco Lodge. ย
ย
And my plan this time was to come and do some yoga and spend some time by myself and work a bit and see some clients, right? ย
ย
And this time the universe has intervened in a different direction, it has made... ย
ย
my Wi Fi in my room is not good enough to actually see clients, I've had to cancel all my clients and all of a sudden it's like, right, shit just got real, actually need to be by myself, with myself, in reflection, in yoga, in meditation and actually make the most of these five days. ย
ย
And I was able to observe within myself that discomfort within that. So that my first day here yesterday I actually ate a lot more than I needed. So I ate meals purely for the sake that it was mealtime as opposed to that I was hungry. ย
ย
And this morning I woke up and it's some breakfast is included. And I was like, my mind was like oh, let's go we can eat now. And it's free. ย
ย
Like come on, let's go and I was lying in bed and I was like I'm not hungry. I'm really not hungry. I don't normally eat breakfast anyway, right? ย
ย
But my mind was like oh, it's free. You don't want to waste this. You know, let's go eat. ย
ย
It was able to look at the disconnect between what my mind wanted and what my body wanted. And what my body wanted was to not eat and just to rest. It had been a bit off, not from Bali, but just from actually, when I come over from Perth yesterday it was it was feeling a bit yucky and bloated and uncomfortable and it didn't want any food today and the money and then I shoved up into it right and didn't want any food today. ย
ย
And so it's bad. I think it's coming under 3pm in the afternoon and I still haven't eaten. And I'm okay with that. I'll have a light dinner and give it a rest. ย
ย
But what this has allowed me to do is to observe within myself, my addiction to food and why it's there and what it brings me. ย
ย
And, you know, I was on a course on the weekend, a practice I was taking coaching and practitioner training, spiritual healing with Keith Hodge, and one of the, one of the trainees that's coming through mentioned her whenever she has someone who's got an addiction, she's always looking for certain things. ย
ย
And I was thinking how interesting that we only consider something an addiction, if it's something that's socially unacceptable. So like gambling, drugs, even alcohol, you know, even though it's illegal to have in most countries, it's socially unacceptable to to get reliant on it dependent on it. And yet, we're all and unless we've all done an incredible amount of work. And we're able to just be with what is without needing any distraction, we all have addictions. And I've said this before, you know, my addictions is working and food. And don't get me wrong, I love a glass of wine, if I have a glass of champagne, I want to, because of how I feel, what I have it, how it makes me feel, and how everything just drops away. And all of a sudden, I feel better, and I feel lighter. And I want another one, I want more and more and more of it. ย
ย
And I guess if I'm being entirely truthful, another addiction of mine has been spending money, like spending money on shit I just didn't need, right. You know, the amount of money that I would spend on online shopping for stuff that would bring me pleasure when it turned up. And I would get this great sense of like, it's coming, and I want to get there. ย
ย
And then you know what a lot of this stuff I never actually even used after it showed up or it didn't fit properly, but I couldn't send it back because it came from China, and then all these money that I wasted. Why? Because of the need ahead inside me that was making me want to do it. ย
ย
So we all have these addictions that are bringing us something. So whether it be, I mean, some people are addicted to just hanging out with other people, or they can't be by themselves, or can't be alone with their mind. And then, if they're not with other people, they have to be on social media, or they have to be binge watching telly, or they have to be doing anything distracting or reading a book or whatever, they can't actually just sit and be with themselves and be what's with inside. ย
ย
And the interesting thing is that all these things that we use to give us like a fragment, they're giving us a fragment of what we really want. ย
ย
So for instance, when I bought something online, I kept that, ah, like I'm treating myself and you know, the anticipation and then it turns up and the opening of it and feeling good about myself right and feeling good within myself. ย
ย
When really that was the ultimate end result of what I wanted. I didn't really want that extra pair of shoes just because I needed an extra pair of shoes, I wanted it because how I felt when I ordered it, when the anticipation of it arriving when I opened it up, I put them on how I felt in that moment. That's really what I was after. ย
ย
And we missed this, we miss that. Everything that we want our life we want for how it makes us feel inside. ย
ย
So we want these external things for the internal feeling. ย
ย
And when we're not filling our own cup internally, when we're not able to be with what is, we have like, it's like we're a bucket with a hole in it. And no matter how much pleasure we get off it or how much how good we feel about ourselves within this moment, how much love someone else gives us, it's never enough. ย
ย
Because we can't be full because we're not actually able to hold it. Because we don't truly believe that we are. ย
ย
And you know, the more and more and more work I've done on myself, I find... ย the less I'm binging on ice cream. In fact, I just don't binge on ice cream anymore. The less I spend, the less money I spend on shit I don't need. ย
ย
And the more I can walk away from stuff when I do want it. And I can reflect. And that's not to say that I won't allow myself to have something but it's the intent behind the allowing and the actually conscious observation within that moment that's important, as opposed to the unconscious choice to have it for the wrong reason, which is really how it's making me feel. ย
ย
And I can consciously choose to allow myself to have something because of how it's going to make me feel. But also, at that same time, allowing myself to feel that anyway. So it's not like I'm saying we can't have pretty things or we can have beautiful things or we can't have an amazing house. But it's the intent behind why we have it. ย
ย
And in fact, and I wasn't planning on talking about this, but one of the things I learned with the superconscious, when I became a magnetic mind coach in superconscious recode. And this is where I'm going to be from Saturday for a week or five days, is that when we're trying to have something to escape something else, then we can never truly escape it. Because those two things are linked, they're intertwined. ย
ย
So if I want something because of how it's going to make me feel, and how it's going to make me escape a different feeling, then I can never truly get away from it. Because that other feeling is always there, it's me just escaping, right?
ย
Whereas when I choose to have something just because I want it, just because it'd be amazing, not because of how it's gonna make me feel, because I already feel friggin amazing anyway, right? That I can just have it. And I can enjoy it. And when I'm finished it, I still feel amazing. ย
ย
And that's really the goal here, is to be able to feel what we want to feel on the inside all the time, without needing other people to give it to us, without needing to fill and keep filling and keep filling that cup because it's got a crack in it. It's a leaky vessel, which is what we are right? ย
ย
And this all links back to our childhood and what we believe about ourselves and all that unconditional programming, our belief system, of how we're not worthy, we're not lovable, and how we need this stuff that need this stuff, to feel good to feel lovable, to feel loved, to feel worthy. ย
ย
When in reality, the trigger that is that we already are. But we can't, we can't allow that. Because our modeling of our mind, our synapses and how we've been created, it's not actually safe, to be outside of the container of what was created more my child, that mind map that's created, it keeps us safe, because we know how to act, we know how to stay alive within that. ย
ย
I used to think that the unconscious beliefs, I'm not worthy, I'm not lovable, were really the driving force. But underneath all of them is that need to be safe. And that's what drives everything. Ultimately, the need to be safe and and how... And within that true. I mean, it's good to be lovable, right. But when we're talking about the base, most primitive desire that we have most primitive neat we have is just to stay alive. And then if we're not safe within that, if we're not safe, staying alive, and all our energy, our focus has to go to just stay alive, like running, hiding, hunting, eating all of that, and there's no room for pleasure in those moments. ย
ย
But when we are safe, then we can start to bring in, you know, enjoying other people's company, enjoying things, things like that, right? But unfortunately, our mind map is always partly caught in that how do we stay safe. And especially if as a child, you had a really traumatic childhood, we weren't really safe. Maybe you weren't physically safe, maybe you weren't emotionally safe. And all of this to some level have at least some soft trauma from our childhood, where we learned to believe things about ourselves. And maybe we were passive aggressively, you know, like treated or things were taken away from us when we misbehaved. And we learn to believe things about ourselves that create this leaky vessel that we're in. ย
ย
I hope you're following me. Because I've done a loop, I'm coming back. ย
ย
So all of this, right, all of this, and I was just having a massage, and I was trying to be really present in my body. And just allowing the pleasure of the massage allowing how amazing it felt. And to just receive, okay. ย
ย
And two things came up. ย
ย
One, how... it's hard to just receive. Because we always feel like we have to do something in return, we have to give something back, we have to do something to earn that. And maybe you're not this type of people person. But I know some people who had this very high level, where as soon as you offer them something, they have to give back, and they can't actually enjoy what they're receiving. Because straightaway, they feel that they have to return the favor or whatever it is. ย
ย
So to be able to know that we are allowed just to receive, just for being, just because of who we are, we don't actually have to earn it. We already are enough, right? That's the one thing that I realized. ย
ย
So lying there, allowing myself just to really, you know, to receive this pleasure, receive what this woman was giving me with this massage, and how beautiful and relaxing and how amazing it was. That was the first thing I was observing within myself. And then within that, that receiving of the pleasure, it brought to me something that I had come to me at the end of a healing journey I did, Intuity Bliss with Keith Hodge, I did a recorded one during the week. And at the end of that, actually, I lie sorry, it was I did a did a session with one of my friends who's a coach Bina, she took me through a journey. And at the end of that I was basically grieving and letting go of pain that I've never been able to go into that I hadn't thought I've been able to handle and therefore I've been distracting from this pain. ย
ย
So when we have pain in our life, and sometimes we are too young and stuff, you know, depending on whether or not you you know, believe in past lives or whatever, if you don't then just disregard that part. But sometimes it can be something that happened in a past life. If you don't believe in past lives, just think of them as metaphors or it can be something that happened when we're a child, and when actually safe to be able to encompass the fullness of the emotion that was there at the time. And it all gets locked away in our body. ย
ย
Sometimes we dissociate, sometimes we fracture parts of ourselves off. And sometimes we're just in total denial that it's there, or we try and like, you know, make it okay. And it's not as childhood, we do this, right? And as adults as well, we're like, no, it's okay. Oh, yeah, whatever. ย
ย
And we laugh things off, and blah, blah, blah, you know, that sort of thing, right?
ย
And we don't allow ourselves to actually be real with how much pain we're in how much something hurt. ย
ย
And when I went into the depths of this pain, and initially, when I weighed in, I didn't think I was gonna be able to hold it. And then at the end, I realized I could, I realized that I could hold the pain and I could experience the pain. ย
ย
And by going into the pain and actually experiencing it, I was able to release it. ย
ย
So when we don't go into the pain, when we don't allow it, we don't release it, then it gets trapped in our body, and then we're distracting from it the whole time. And this is where suffering comes from. Suffering is not the pain itself. Suffering is a resistance of the pain. And we're unable to identify. So we've done this so many times, and lay it all up, right. We don't even know where the pain is coming from. We don't even know. I mean, most people aren't even aware of why they're addicted things, why they're drinking, why they're smoking, why they're binge watching, why their social media, why they have to go out whether can't sit still, and actually be happy and content. ย
ย
And it's all this later on in payments underneath. And as soon as they are quiet. And some people have that in the mind that voice telling them are awful things about themselves, right. And it's all these layers of payments kind of baked into our being because we never went there. ย
ย
And we we think being in it is going to be too much because it's always going to be there. But that's not the truth. The truth is if we allow it, if we sit in it, we've breathed into it, it comes through us, it comes into us or out of us and it comes through us. So if we can do this, when pain arises in our life, new pain, if we can be with the pain, fully present with the pain and breathe our way through it, it will go. And on the other side of that pain, it's there's a particular beauty. And once you realize that this is what's fair, even within the pain is a particular beauty, when it's purely just paying for what is there. And not all the other things, but all the other beliefs that are linked into that pain of like, you know, maybe something's happened. And now we're linking it to we're not worthy. And we're not so much not that. Because of all these other moments that happened to us a pain that we couldn't stand, we couldn't hold my children. ย
ย
And then we're an adult, when shit happens, all those other moments get stirred up, becomes very confusing, and very hard to navigate. And we just avoided and we move away from it. ย
ย
And we distract with food, with whatever, work, you know, people, other people having to make us needing other people in our lives to give us a certain feeling about ourself, because we can't do it ourselves. ย
ย
So we have these moments in childhood, this pain that's kind of created in us, this beliefs that come from it, and then they're driving future pain within us, but then we can't go into it. And we can't be with this future pain because of these other areas of pain in our life. So when we start to do the work and the journey, it's really traveling back to these moments in time where the pain was first created. And when we first were not safe to hold it or have it and allowing ourselves to have a hold and release it from our body. ย
ย
And when we've done that these beliefs start to dissolve, we start to realize we are worthy, we start to realize that we are lovable, and everything comes together. And then when moments in time happen in the present moment when something happens, we can be with it. Because it's not meaning stuff about us, right?
ย
So what I realized at the end of going through this grief and this pain, and realizing that I could hold it, I realized that the amount of pleasure that we can allow in our life is directly proportional to the amount of pain that it's safe for us to feel. ย
ย
That's really important. So I'll say it again, the amount of pleasure we can allow ourselves to have in this life is directly proportional to the amount of pain that we know that we are safe to hold on that we know that we are safe, we then know that we can survive. ย
ย
So when something comes to us, maybe it's an amazing relationship with an amazing person, there's part of us. It's like, ah, we want that. But then if it's too amazing, too good. Yeah, this this is like what would happen if this person then decided that they didn't want us? What would happen if this person then decided that they were going to leave us for somebody else, the pain would be too much for us to bear. Therefore we won't allow it to happen the first time. ย
ย
So and this is comes in... and it's not just I'm talking about relationships now but it happens in many different ways. What we allow ourself to have like for me to allow myself not to work like a crazy woman and to actually take time out and to have have massages and do yoga is actually you know, a big thing because I get a lot of satisfaction from work. So it makes me feel validated and loved in a really weird way.
ย
But when I look back on different things in different situations, you know, and I observed people around me, and, you know, even as an anxious attacher wanting relationship, wanting someone to be in my life to help, you know, keep filling up that vessel that had a hole in it that was cracked, I would not choose somebody that I thought was beyond me and beyond my means, right? Who was too good for me. Because then if they chose not to be with me, the pain would be too great because of what it was triggering for me that ultimately that yeah, I wasn't good enough. ย
ย
And I'm not saying that my ex husband wasn't an amazing man, he is, he's a beautiful man. And he's a very kind and generous and loving man. But I'm able to look at myself within the choices that I made in relationship and realize that I've chosen things that kept me safe. And I chose them to, to conform, and to be what needed to be to be safe within those relationships. So rather than being able to be myself and ask my wants or needs, I would be more observant of what their wants and needs were. ย
ย
And this was brought to me, you know, I actually mentioned this in the last, the last video/episode, podcast episode that I did, where I unearth an old diary, actually wasn't even a diary, it was a beautiful book. And I wanted to write some notes in it on a journey I'm going through at the moment, looking through, I'm doing a lot of shadow work at the moment. ย
ย
And I started to write like, at the end of each session that I did, or would write the new thing that had come up that I was aware of, because at the moment, what I'm going through isn't just one of things. It's like a journey through down into the depths of shadow and back out the other side. ย
ย
And when I finish a session, I've had a big shift, but I'm even just deeper into it. So I'm noting what's going on inside me in this book. And I flipped it to the beginning of and realized that it was a manifestation books that I'd started back in 2016, so seven years ago. ย
ย
And my goals in this right, I was shocked, when I started, my goals even then, was for my father to be proud of me. And for my husband to be blissfully happy. They were my goals. They weren't even goals about me. It was me just like, trying to be whatever was needed to make my father proud of me and my husband happy. ย
ย
And seeing that actually gave me a big sense of relief and a big freedom. Because, you know, since I quit dentistry, I'm aware that my father is not that proud of me, he's not really interested in what I'm doing, you know, he had got got a lot of pride out of me being a dentist, but then I was a dentist seven years ago. ย
ย
So it's really interesting for me to observe that even seven years ago, I was still trying to make him proud of me. ย
ย
So I was choosing things in which I was safe. And I was conforming myself and being the shade that I needed to be to be safe within that. And I wasn't actually opening up my heart and open to pleasure purely for me and to make my soul sing for what I wanted. ย
ย
Now, would I have ended up with my husband if I hadn't been that person when we got together? Probably not. And not because he's not an amazing man. But because he's not at that stage himself. And he's still not. ย
ย
So I probably wouldn't have been attracted to the energy of what he was offering at that time. And that's not as I said, it's not to say there's anything wrong with him. It's not. And kind of look back and see maybe when things were brought to me that were amazing that I turned down. ย
ย
No, I can't I can't actually see it because I think that I probably the energy of who I was probably just wasn't even attracting that in. And if they were there, I didn't see it within them. Because I was just, it wasn't safe to have that. ย
ย
And so now I'm working on opening myself to pleasure and being safe within it. And being able to know that I ca, no matter how amazing something is, if it's gone, I'm still going to be okay, I'm still going to be safe when I come out the other side. ย
ย
And you know when I said before about how you know pain when it is just purely pain that's coming up and we're breathing through it and releasing it from our body, the energy of it, and not constricting around it. It's almost like, I've said before when when a body is trying to get rid of a piercing or something out of it right and it can't so instead it encapsulates it or it gets around. ย
ย
I've seen this even in... I had a client once he came in and we took an OPG, it's a dental client, took an OPG which is a big X ray of his head and he had a bullet lodged in his sinus that he didn't even know is there. ย
ย
And it happened when he was a kid, he'd been playing around with bullets and how many hit it and he knew ricocheted off his glasses and you would edit hitting him in the face right? He didn't realize it actually penetrated his auxillary bone and was lodged in his sinus. ย
ย
That wasn't for the fact that his bone infected with children or would have gone into his brain, right, but that obviously the bone slowed the velocity down, he still had a hole it was like 50 when he went in to have this thing surgically removed, still had a hole through his bone from where this bullet had entered. ย
ย
He never told anyone because he was scared of getting in trouble right? Anyway, his body had healed around it. And but what had happened was the sinus was also blocked and clogged from this thing that he was like a deep diver and he struggle with his sinuses and this has cleared it all up. ย
ย
So when we have pain in our body that we can',t we can't deal with right, we constrict and contract around it and we muffle it and we hide it and we try to make it push down deep inside is still there creating problem. This chronic problem. ย
ย
Whereas when we can feel pain and release it it just comes through us. ย
ย
But we do the same with pleasure, when we need it, when we want it, when we get off it, we constrict around it, especially as an anxious attacher. ย
ย
And then we're like ah, our energy, like we're like one of those venus flytraps, we want it we need it. ย
ย
And then the other person is like, like trying to get away from us and then we're like scrambling after them. Love us, love us, and we create we create exactly what we fear because we couldn't just be with the pleasure and be with the energy and allow it to come and go. ย
ย
Anyway, I think I've covered all the thoughts that I was thinking and I hope it all made sense and came together for you at the end. ย
ย
And that you enjoyed this and that you enjoyed some of my metaphors and some of my stories. And yeah, if you got something out of it, maybe it makes you think about something in your life. And if you want to reach out to me donna@donnajoyusher.com or you can check out my websites livingthroughheart.com, donnajoyusher.com; ย
ย
And you can check out my new business venture with my girlfriend Shanna out, savagebohostudio.com which is our jewelry line that we're creating. So we're making, we're making them ourselves, crystal jewelry, copper, copper plating jewelry, so you can check that out as well. If you want to know more about me and us and what we're doing. ย
ย
Okay, I'm going to leave you to it and I'm going to go off and get something to, go get some to eat.
ย