How To Heal from Trauma and Embrace Healthy Connections | Sheleana Aiyana

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:11initially when i was really young the father wound was quite deep so i always carried this feeling of not being good enough so i created a lot of separateness between me and other people you know we grew up very poor had no money i'm a very small i'm always the smallest person in every room and i didn't have a father there was so many things that were different about me And so I didn't feel like I fit in. And so I felt quite insecure about whether or not I belonged anywhere. And over time, that turned into the defensive survivor mask, that ultra-independent mask, you know, that many of us end up putting on.

0:49And my learning happened through really painful, unsafe relationships. Really? Yeah. Well, I was really looking for someone to affirm me from a very young age. And so all of my relationships up until my early 20s were very abusive, were really unsafe. And there's one particular relationship that I was lucky to have survived. But it was in that relationship where I actually remember looking in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself. And all of a sudden I had this opening and I just saw myself on stage speaking to women about abuse and healing and recovering. And this was like almost 10 years before I ever began Rising Woman or started anything like that.

1:33But I had this feeling and I remember telling the guy who was, you know, he was my abuser. And I said, I'm actually going to be speaking on stage one day about these experiences and I'm going to be helping women. Why do you think people attract someone that can be abusive and then stay in that type of relationship once they've been abused? Yeah. Where does that wound come from? It's almost harder to leave once there's been abuse because when we look at the brain, and this is just the science aspect of it, is the brain changes when there's abuse. And it's sort of like these highs and lows that create deeper bonding.

2:07So the more ups and downs we have with somebody, the deeper we bond, which is like the trauma bond that we all hear about. And this toxic relationship, which is why so many people are like, oh, well, we're just so passionate together, but everything is chaos. and the deeper we go, the harder it is to get out of that. And on top of it, a lot of us who have experienced abuse have sort of normalized chaos and dysfunction. I grew up witnessing abuse. I grew up witnessing domestic violence, you know, in homes that I was in, you know, or around me because I didn't grow up in safe areas. For me, I knew that it wasn't a good thing, but it also wasn't that different from what I had known.

2:50It was familiar. It was, and that was a nervous system pattern that I was working with. Wow. And so a lot of the work that I've done has been to reclaim my own inner mother and father and to heal my nervous system, to actually be able to feel happy and comfortable in safe, secure situations, rather than actually unconsciously craving the chaos and dysfunction that I was so used to. When did you finally wake up and say, okay, I've been attracting these types of men that are chaotic or maybe some are abusive or they have abusive tendencies or are explosive. And when did you finally wake up and say, okay, I need to do things differently?

3:31I was in my mid-20s and I ended up actually marrying somebody from another country who was American. We didn't want to get married. It's just that we were together for many years. And in order to try to make the relationship work, we needed to both be in the same country. And so we got married and quickly, right after that, things just turned for the worse. It wasn't good already. I don't know if we knew each other at all. Truthfully, in that relationship, I was deeply betrayed. There was a lot of betrayal and it was as if the rug was ripped from underneath me. At the time, I lost all of my money.

4:06My soul cat ran away. He left with another woman and I gained like 20 pounds in a month. My hormones stopped producing because I had experienced so much stress from my abandonment when being triggered. I went and tested my hormones and all I had was cortisol. I was physically sick. My body physically just stopped. Everything stopped. I remember a moment where he had come. He had been back and forth very sporadically, not in communication. We had shared a home, obviously. We were married. And he came to get some things. And instead of being vulnerable because, of course, I didn't know how to do that.

4:42I just yelled at him and chased him out into the road without my shoes on and said, no, don't ever come back. I never want to see you again, which was not true at the time. As he drove away with his new girlfriend, I remember feeling like I was three years old. And all of a sudden, I had this flash of when I had been dropped off the first time at a foster home when I was three. And I saw my mom's headlights pulling away. And I I remember screaming and crying. And all of a sudden, this relief washed over me. And it was just like, this is not about him. This is not about them. This is about you and your mother wound.

5:17And this is what you need to heal. This is about your own inner stuff. And even though it was so painful, in that moment, I was so grateful because I knew that I could get through it. Because the pain was so deep that if it had been about him, I might not have survived it in my mind. But because it was about me and my inner work, I felt empowered. And so I just dove in. And that's kind of what kick-started my healing journey. What was the next step after that so that you could get to a place of conscious, healthy relationship? Most of us hit that wall in crisis. And that's the opportunity. We can go down the path of bitterness or we can be like, okay, you know, this sucks and I never want to experience this again.

5:59So let's feel all of the feelings that I've never felt before. All of a sudden, this hardened, ultra-independent survivor mask was just ripped off. And all of a sudden, I had feelings that I had to feel and vulnerability that needed to be expressed. And I had no idea how overwhelming that was going to be. And at one point, I just laid face down on my bed and closed my eyes, and I felt like I was on a psychedelic journey, just from the pain. Now, I would go to bed at night and think, I might die in my sleep tonight because this hurts too much. That's how deep the abandonment wound had been ripped open.

6:30So I started doing deep mother work. I started doing a lot of transpersonal therapy, you know, kind of Jungian style. I did a lot of medicine work, a lot of medicine ceremonies over and over and over again. I spent all day in nature. I did breath work every week and I just worked through it and it was hard and so painful, but that was my only option. It was like the thing that I had to hold on to was this belief that eventually the pain would go away. Wow. And I remember writing a date on my calendar and telling my friend, like, I'm going to be done grieving by this date. Good luck. Good luck.

7:07And I kept having to move the date, and eventually I stopped setting a date, you know. Healing's a journey. Yeah. It's not like this destination, like, it's going to happen by now. I've said the same thing to myself in the past. I'm like, I'm going to make a decision by this. I'm going to be fine by this time. It just keeps getting pushed, right? And I think it comes to you when you're ready for it. When you're ready and willing to fully receive all the lessons, and you're willing to surrender, you're willing to drop your ego and feel all the emotions, and keep making consistent daily good decisions that are based on a conscious vision of what you want as opposed to a past pain.

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8:50Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.