The Pea in the breast

A few months ago I finally got my OB-gyn check-up booked. I had been putting it off.

We had moved to a new country.

I didn’t have any problems.

We needed to get private health insurance.

Taking care of things in a foreign language (with Google translator) takes a lot of energy and effort. Even when you speak the same language the systems are different and you know all that paperwork is complicated and time-consuming, frustrating.

These were my excuses and the reason why I procrastinated with getting the insurance, pushing this, and my other health check-ups last on the list.

Then I got this feeling.

Sensing I would need to take care of the insurance for the whole family, someone could/would get sick.  I’ve learned to listen to my intuition and that it’s better to follow it than berate myself later.

When the doctor scanned my breasts I noticed a painful spot under the pressure. I mentioned it but she didn't hear me or ignored me but kept scanning and said everything was okay.

I felt so GOOD and proud really that I had taken care of myself and forgot about it.

A couple of weeks later on one Sunday evening, I remembered it again.

I found a pea size lump from my right breast.

It was not painful but I was sure it had not been there before.

A wave of emotions and fear went through my body.

My immediate thought; I can’t go through this now. I’d been afraid of something like this happening. I’ve seen close people fighting cancer and their lives.

I’ve been working with clients who are going through cancer or have recovered from cancers like breast cancer, so I was aware of the common emotional patterns related to it; breasts represent nurturing.

When there’s a problem with breasts it often is about over-nurturing others, external, and lacking the self-nurturing, abandoning one’s needs for a reason or another.

The brain influences the body. The stress is in the body, not in the mind.

The environment we live in influences our physical health, our psyche. The energy we are living in is contagious.

Our genes matter but in the end, it’s life and the mind that triggers the issues. Why someone who has the genetic vulnerability for a certain disease doesn’t get sick? Some diseases, like all holisims, are not physically passed on but still they “run in the family.”

The emotions, conditioning, the learned generational patterns –-> when the same that doesn’t do good for us goes on long enough, the mind-body, the nervous system reacts. 

I already knew painfully well that:

• I had not been nurturing myself well enough but put everyone and everything before myself, feeling I don’t get back what I give...

• I had not listened to myself but put myself under the pressure and situations that didn’t do good for me…

• I felt that I owed other people and tried to compensate it... it’s a lot to carry.

• I needed and wanted comfort and should give myself permission to face the reality and make courageous decisions and choose myself more often…

• I had to choose myself a lot more, stop taking responsibility for others that much, and trust everything would be fine without me trying to control what is not under my control…

About 1,5 years ago I started healing the co-dependent habits I suddenly figured I had. 

When I looked back to my past it made all sense to me; people-pleasing, love addiction, allergies, why I had got into this sunken place...

Along my healing journey, I faced lifelong victimhood, deep fear of abandonment and rejection (anger, resentment, smallness, and sadness it came with), and the root causes of why I felt so unsafe.

I wondered how I had lost myself?  I had to go way back and dive deep into healing my soul.

It happens slowly, nibbling us internally, our habits change as we are not aware of them. Or have a tendency to avoid reality. 

As an empath, helper and recovering perfectionist, and kind of a trained people-pleaser I had abandoned my boundaries, my truth, and who I was.

In difficult times I felt others needed me more and I can easily hold space for others, smooth their path, help them when they needed me.

So when I found the pea I first felt depressed... 

The inner work, coaching and healing I had been doing had worked miracles for me, so of course, I asked – why is this happening, what else I could do?

I felt empowered, I had good boundaries and I had a break through the blocks related to self-expression and visibility. 

I was on my quest of helping all the women in the world to heal what I had healed and had worked hard for making big changes, to have my next level of dreams and desires real.

I had all the fears running in my mind. I let myself feel it all, wrote in my journal.

I cried, I felt all that deep sadness and fears: How my daughter had to be living without her mother… How I thought I had a lot life ahead of me and purpose to fulfill…

Behind the feelings I found acceptance, strength, and peace… whatever it was, I’d deal with it. 

If cancer was supposed to be on my journey I’d do what I need and could.

On Monday morning I called a doctor who saw me the next day. 

Nothing to worry about, she said lightly. It was under the skin, seems like healthy tissue. 

She sent me home with the advice to come back in a couple of months if it was not gone.

I did but I took it seriously, as a sign. The body doesn’t lie.

I started nurturing myself more, praising myself more… giving that gentle loving inner care and attention I had craved.

I went back to practicing self-love consciously, soothing the child inside of me, and taught a masterclass to help others do so as well.

I focused on loving my body, my temple, for it’s intelligence, health, support and strength - I visualized it shrinking every day.

I continued deeply connecting with the best version of myself by healing more shadows that revealed the strong successful woman I still was and the absolutely new better version of HER: the one who feels safe to be powerful, successful and happy as herself.

So what was the meaning of this health scare?

Reminding me not to focus too much on others, not to wait for external changes, but to listen to MYSELF and do what I feel.

I sensed it could have been a lot worse without all the work I had done.

Like my body was releasing nearly over four decades of stress, fear, and tension and therefore developed a symptom. Sometimes we get a cold when we give ourselves permission to relax when the holiday starts.

I’ve seen this pattern with others as well.

Cancer is often related to resentment and anger that is eating the body from inside (Louise Hay).

It felt like this episode was a grande finale of this healing journey I have been through. 

It continues, in some ways every day, as it has already been for over a decade now.

A couple of weeks ago I got a feeling, an inner realization again.

It’s over, I am free.

I had risen into my power and revised the new identity, independence — giving the permission to be the one who I am and keep fulfilling my purpose, in a new way.  

I felt free in my body, free energetically and as I checked in again; the pea was gone. 

A moment to celebrate and a moment to remember.

Our obstacles often remind us what is important, and meaningful and what really matters — what we can be grateful for.

Have you been sacrificing or neglecting something that is important to you?

If you have been put off your healthcare, your needs and duties towards yourself, book those appointments, get help, get support and take care of yourself now– on a mental, emotional, physical, professional, and spiritual level. 

Your wellbeing is the foundation of everything else.

You first, then the others. From that place, you can give and receive healthily and be the best version of who you are.

Much love, Jenni

Feeling angry?

If you’re dealing with anger issues you are not alone.

We don't really talk about it because... there's so much shame related to it.

I’ve been personally working with my own anger issues that surfaced up after I suddenly saw the people-pleasing, codependent habits I had.

I was working on myself with confidence and wrote in my journal about what confidence means to me. How does she looks like, behave like, feel like.

From there I got into independence and stopped there. I felt I had lost a part of myself, my identity- the one that I was a few years ago. I wanted her back.

At first it was really hard to accept the patterns and behaviors. I suddenly saw it everywhere. It was like a web that had affected me my whole life.

I researched and studied everything about it. I felt sad as I knew it was huge and challenging to start healing and change it.

I went to my old coping mechanisms of mine, numbing the feelings, bottling up the confusion, and therefore feeling depressed.

After a week of feeling miserable I was ready to accept it and see how these patterns had played a huge role in all areas of my life.

At work, money and all my relationships had repeated the same patterns. 

All that was copied from what happened to me and in my family as a child.

My role was to put on the happy face, avoid conflicts and tuck the uneasy emotions away. 

Rather please others, ignore my own emotions than feel abandoned, rejected. 

I realized how self-harming it was and how angry it made me when I ignored my needs and priorities so I started healing the patterns step by step.

Then underneath the sadness, the anger started rising. I thought I had done with it already but there was more. This was the anger I had hidden for a long time carefully. And it was not all even mine.

I was raised with strictness and had nothing much to say about what I wanted. I learned to hide my emotions and opinions as it was not safe and I felt wrong to have them. As my emotions didn’t matter, I started believing I didn’t matter.  

Eventually, underneath the anger, it was all about sadness like it often it.

I deeply craved to be seen, heard, and able to express herself freely without fear of punishment or emotional abandonment. Without the need to be perfect. Already as I child, I stopped letting it in as I felt it was not available and therefore I rejected myself, the young one in me who deeply needed my attention, my tenderness. It was the self-rejection that actually made me reject the good that was available to me.

This is how the subconscious keeps us safe and protected, thinking it’s the way to avoid the pain. Then it comes out as anger.

The results of this healing work

I feel more empowered and have clearer boundaries and abilities to express my needs and desires than ever before.

There are fewer negative voices, self-criticism, and judgment in my head is gone- people-pleasers are terribly judgmental towards themselves.

I express myself and my emotions easier. I’m more forgiving and so much more accepting and loving towards myself and others. 

It’s not always a straight easy line to reach our desires but this is what I wanted. 

Anger is an emotion as well as other emotions but when it’s explosive, uncontrollable, and constant the patterns and their roots that are often subconscious need healing. 

You are not born angry, one of your characteristics may be frustration like mine, but your critical, judgmental or explosive behaviors can be healed. 

We all have been shamed for expressing our anger and that’s not how we “should be.”

There are inherited cultural and patriarchal patterns (which is not about genders) and of course, the unique family patterns and dynamics add to it. 

The triggers are stored in the body. We can’t avoid letting these things in when we are young, but we can stop passing it forward. 

We don’t even notice how these affect us but wonder why we feel we can’t express ourselves and feel free to be ourselves but rather feel neglected, suffocated, and shut off, betraying ourselves and our truth again and again. 

Hiding, trying to unfeel it, shaming ourselves for feeling anger doesn’t make it go away. It just starts to eat us from the inside and leads to other issues.

It’s safe for you to feel angry, be angry, and learn to let it go healthily and safely with high self-respect. 

It’s safe for you to heal the root causes and stop carrying the anger that only hurts you, no one else really.

We often like to fight for the needs of young selves, trying to desperately get our needs fulfilled, get justice, trying to force or hope people around us or in our past would change or miracles would happen.

Hope that parents would suddenly apologize, or partners or people who have hurt us would suddenly change their behaviors and see us as we all uniquely want to be seen to feel loved, safe and successful.

• Sometimes people change when we change and heal ourselves.

• Sometimes they don’t. It’s not up to you to decide.

We’ll never get the childhood we would have needed and that requires acceptance and letting go of the anger we might feel for our caretakers.

The truth is others can’t fill the hole inside us, but we can do it for ourselves so we can then receive it from others.

Until the old wounds are healed we keep fighting and battling and blaming others for our issues, feelings.

Emotions are supposed to keep us safe and protected.

Anger is often related to rejection and abandonment wounds we have experienced earlier.

Then the subconscious patterns keep us repeating exactly the same in our life later on what we have witnessed or experienced in our childhood.

If you are dealing with a lot of anger or even rage there’s nothing wrong with you but there are wounds to heal.

Healing yourself is your responsibility and also, a possibility.
 

How to start releasing anger:

1. Witnessing and accepting it's there.

2. Sit with it. Journal about it. Voice-record your feelings. Allow insights to come. Who are you angry with?

3. Breathe through it. Keep repeating it until it’s gone.

4. Ask what the child inside you need. Give that to the child, they crave to be seen.

5. What kind of action needs to be taken? What kind of boundaries do you need to set?

Do the work. That is often the hardest part but so worth it.

If you are ready to get more personal support I can help. Book a call here

The sessions help you to release the root causes and then you become free to change your habits, behaviors, and how you feel. When you change the relationships with yourself and then others change naturally.

If you like this blog let me know your thoughts in the comments below! I’d love to hear from you.

Much love,

Jenni

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

I didn't know I suffered from anxiety before I faced postpartum anxiety

I didn't know I suffered from anxiety before I became a mother.

On my first Mother’s day, a few months after my daughter was born, I realized I was going through something more intensive than just the normal levels of overwhelm, and anxiety.

I woke up happy and excited.

I got everything I had silently wished for: a lovely breakfast, time together, a beautiful candle as a gift.

I cried when I heard “you’re such a good mother” as it felt so good to get the recognition I had craved.

Later on that day we went to the park, it was the first warm spring day. I had all the reasons to be happy.

Suddenly anxiety took control of me. I felt so restless, uncomfortable in my own skin, angry, panicky, and trying to control things and push the growing emotions away.

I was sent home and I tried to rest but cried as I couldn’t calm myself down. Me who had over 10 years of meditation practice, and knowing so much about anxiety through my work.

I felt guilty, impostor and helpeless.

I then started realizing I was going through something more than normal emotions and behavior that I couldn’t get through on my own.

I Googled about postpartum anxiety and it all rang the bell.

• In general, I felt out of control, like everything and everyone was controlling me and my life that had changed completely.

• I felt I can't handle and control my emotions by feeling them away like I normally do.

• I was worrying a lot, living in the future or the past.

Before things were getting better they got worse, like they sometimes do.

I started getting panic attacks out of the blue while walking on the street on my own or having lunch by myself.

It was difficult for me to relax and trust the process and fully enjoy my life and time with the baby without thinking of the next thing, my work and my business, our future.

I felt so unsafe, terrified, not able to understand what was going on with me.

I tried to overcontrol things and my overwhelming emotions.

While at the same time I super happy about my baby, she was more than welcomed, a dream come true.

I loved spending time with her.

It was very black and white like it is when we deal with subconscious patterns.

As I got help from my trusted therapists and healer and started focusing on healing myself, taking time for myself and recovering, I realized I had had anxiety since I was a child.

All this led me to a transformational healing journey that helped me improve many areas of life and make my desires real.

why all this triggered:

• We had just moved to a new country, Germany. It was like a whole new planet after New York. 3 days after we moved in I knew I was expecting

• My work had been validating me, and my value externally. I had always been looking for external validation- and of course, when this was “taken away” I missed the fulfilling feeling that my work had given to me

• I still didn’t feel fully worthy, safe, successful, and lovable as I was, right there but I was always trying to achieve and earn it, in many ways

• Motherhood, the schedules, and the sleeplessness and all those emotions and my own and the generational patterns from the past triggered the mother wound

• The daily self-care practice that had been keeping me centered, sane and like my best self for years- was not existing even it would have been possible to squeeze it in: I didn’t do that when I had a chance but rushed to work, write, do the chores when I got a little bit time for myself

I didn’t really prioritize myself but was operating on that super mom mode and model most women learn from society and earlier generations.

I was surprised to see how this over-caring and over-nurturing “I can do everything and take care of everyone” role activated in me automatically, even I consider myself as a modern and independent woman.

Healing

I was able to heal the anxiety completely by doing the work with myself.

• I was getting external help and using the tools and methods I have, working relentlessly with limiting beliefs, energy and tackling the patterns that showed up along the ways.

• Anxiety was one reasons that caused me eczema I had suffered on and off since I was 12 years old.

• I healed the past relationships, subconscious blocks with energy psychology, hypnotherapy, and shadow work. I was consciously and consistently healing the heart, mind, and my energy, the inner child in me that had been rejected and abandoned - all of it.

• I became aware and broke the old patterns related to why I was not feeling safe and needed to control, but also generational patterns that had triggered it, the mother wounds.

Since then…

I am so so happy to share I am not waking up anxious anymore.

I don’t get those sudden anxiety attacks that make me clean or organize things obsessively to get myself organized.

I still feel anxious sometimes, I believe it's one feeling that we all have sometimes, but it doesn’t take control of me anymore.

The emotions pass and they stay topical, as I feel them away and don’t push or deny them.

The foundation, the bottom of the feeling is clear that’s how it feels and it feels safe, it’s lasting.

I'm not afraid to feel anxious or overwhelmed anymore.

All this was needed so I could recover, become the whole and empowered woman, mother, and entrepreneur that I am now, perfect as imperfect.

why am I sharing this

Mothers are afraid to share and communicate how they feel because no one wants anyone to think they are imperfect mothers and parents, or not loving or taking care of their children well.

As a hypnotherapist, I know how easily trauma is born and how easily we get conditioned and that terrified me what I was “doing” for my daughter. There was so much guilt and a lot of acceptance healed this.

The real reason why we don’t talk about these things that are actually quite common is simply that it requires vulnerability.

All that I went through is common.

I continuously work with myself when my daughter triggers patterns or intensive emotions in me, it’s not what she does or is but it’s how I react to things. That’s something I can control- me.

So I want to say that you are a good enough, loving, and caring mother and your children will be okay even you have issues and that you are not helpless or alone with them.

You have the power to help and heal yourself and your children will benefit from as much as you do.

That’s how you change the course of the future for your children- and how they will feel about themselves, as a child, adult, and later possibly as a parent- by breaking the patterns that may come far from previous generations.

first aid to anxiety is counterintuitive

By working and helping myself and my clients to heal anxiety, this is what I've learned:

• The root cause, the emotional root of the anxiety is always about fears, fear of the future, fear of the unknown, fear of happiness.

• Deep down the person doesn't somehow feel safe: Comfortable in their own skin, doesn't believe they are lovable, good enough to receive what they want with ease, hence overcontrolling, obsessing.

• They can't trust the unknown, trust the process, surrender to be in the now but constantly thinking of the future, controlling the outcome, obsessing- they tried to keep control no matter what.

• They try to control the anxiety, push it away, avoid facing the related issues, and as it's not possible it grows. It's a vicious cycle, I know.

• Anxiety is often causing autoimmune disease, sensitivities, skin issues, allergies. For me it was eczema and sensitivities, rash was right on my face.

Be with anxiety, breathe through your anxiety, accept you are anxious, feel the anxiety, feel your fears, write them down- share the fact.

The fears never go away completely but you can change the relationship with them and your future by shifting your focus elsewhere.

This is something you can do when you trust and know you are worthy and enough to have what you want and need.

• Your feelings can't really hurt you, it's a feeling.

• Denying your feelings and issues only makes them grow.

It's safe for you to feel and it's possible for you to heal yourself whole.

Please remember, you are enough and lovable even when you feel anxious and struck by fear- accept yourself as anxious in that moment is the guidance I often give to my clients.

Are you struggling with anxiety or overwhelm, or other emotional patterns that prevent you to enjoy your work or life fully?

If so I can help. You may also check out the rapid transformational healing workshops here.

Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts about this! Did you go through something similar when you became a mother? How have you overcome anxiety or issues with overwhelm?

Much love,

Jenni

P.S. If you need any help with getting unstuck, become free from the emotional and mental patterns so you can enjoy yourself, your life, and work and expand from that place, I have limited spots open for my 1:1 Stuck to Success & Flow program. We go through a unique healing process using the proven methods that help you transform your beliefs thoroughly and wholeheartedly. My next availability for the new clients is in August 2021. Book a Clarity call to get started.