Do you spend a lot of time trying to UNDERSTAND things, hoping to then find the answers?
I love the first session where I explore with a client what patterns, behaviours, and beliefs lie behind their fatigue. This consciousness is so empowering and clients usually always leave feeling slightly surprised, very optimistic and enlightened. However, the next part is to release and transform these old patterns, beliefs and behaviours that create burnout and that isn’t so easy.
To let go of the old patterns there needs to be something in place to provide a sense of safety and to replace the old coping mechanisms. Without the new ‘safety net’ most people find it very difficult to make the necessary lifestyle and mental shifts that support healing from chronic fatigue. They may address the physical body without changing psychological patterns feeding the fatigue – which helps for some time but not fully or not for a lasting period of time.
This is why the whole of phase 1 of the Fatigue to Flow coaching programme focusses on connection to provide safety. Module 2 focussed on connection to body but within this phase module 3 is probably the most crucial and this is connecting to spirituality.
Introducing this focus on spirituality has made a massive difference in the results I see in clients. It is necessary for healing and a by-product of healing.
I am not referring to a mental construct of spirituality but instead to a deeply embodied spirituality. After all, we experience and are connected to life through our bodies. We experience fatigue when we fear living fully for one reason or another.
For me spirituality refers to something greater than the self that provides a sense of support and guidance. It is also an energy or consciousness that connects all of us beings and nature. It could be as simple as seeing it as the consciousness that makes a seed become a tree. Or we could see it as the evolutionary driving force that supports us to self-actualise, as coined by psychologist Abraham Maslow, referring to embodying our greatest potential in life.
A focus on spirituality can include an emphasis on a God and, indeed I have worked with people from various religious backgrounds who have easily integrated their religious views into the general sense of being supported and guided by something greater than the self.
Interestingly, most people I work with who battle with chronic fatigue are very self-reliant or, at the very least, battle to receive support (whether for fear of trusting others/life or burdening others). This can come from a place of needing to prove themselves in some way, or to feel in control and safe, and/or at the core level not being able to trust life and that everything will be OK, no matter how difficult the experience is.
The Holding Personality is deeply embedded in protection and this protection is necessary because usually there is an unconscious feeling of being alone, powerless and unsupported. Most people don’t realise this of course because their carefully crafted default coping mechanisms support a façade of being strong, capable and in control. Yet this is exhausting and when the façade can’t hold up anymore chronic exhaustion and physical imbalance is the result.
To let go of this façade the self-reliance also needs to be balanced with being able to trust life or trust SOMETHING to catch you when you fall or to guide you when you are lost.
It is very difficult to change your lifestyle, to stress less or to release old patterns when there is not a sense of some other supported and safe way of living life. This is the gap that is filled by a connection to the spiritual. In the next few weeks I will explain how I use the archetypes of the feminine and masculine energies for this purpose.
Fatigue is related to fear-based production and a lack of feeling supported and nourished by life. Vitality is related to creating from a deeply supported and connected place.
If you wish to explore this more you are welcome to comment below with your email address and I’ll contact you.
