Transcript:
Welcome to Soulish Femme. Soulish Femme is a channel solely dedicated for you where I help focus in prospering body, spirit and soul. Life is a journey and I am glad that you can be a part of mine. As you explore my vlogs and my real talk episodes, I hope you will find inspirations and motivation you are looking for. Remember that life is not going to wait around for you. Therefore, live a life with intentionality and curate the life you’ve always dreamed of. Hi everyone, welcome back to another podcast. My name is Glennavelle Manarang. To those of you who are here for the first time, welcome to Soulish Femme Real talk with me. Today’s topic is about the factors or the attributes that you have to enveloped to move forward in life.
#1. Your Choices
I think number one with no further ado is choices. Yes, we are bombarded with many choices in life. whether what food we eat in a day, what to do with our lives, where to go, what clothes to wear, the choices that we make makes an impact for our future. And so when you comes to your healing journey, you got to just choose to heal and choose to not run away from your pain and choose not to shove it under the rug and choose to just courageously look at it with a perspective of being a student and learning about why are you the way that you are.
#2. Decision
Choices comes down to decisions, which is number two. Without a choice, you cannot make a decision. You must not be divisive, but decisive, not indecisive. Because being indecisive is actually wishy-washy, should I? Should I not do it? And many people are debilitated with decision. The analysis paralysis. If you are not going to decide whether or not you want to progress, you’re most likely going to stay where you’re at emotionally. You have to keep on moving. When you’re stagnant, you are not going to move. You’re stationary because our brain when you want to heal and you want to move forward, it’s actually going to resist you.
Unfortunately, that’s how why for many people usually give up and says, “What’s the point?” Because I’ve been trying so hard to heal. I’ve been trying to resist this urgency to get back to my old pattern. I don’t know why I’m not seeing any progress yet. So everybody, most of us, we just throw the towel. We give up and then you wonder why there is no transformation. You give up too soon and you quit too soon. Because what happens with our body when you come out of that defense mechanism when you came from a traumatic experiences it will have the resistance of you trying to make you want to go back to your old pattern. So yes, you will have resistance when it comes to healing.
As I said, you’re going to have three different versions of you that are going to come out. The first version is the old version of you before the incident happened, before the abuse that took place. Whether you were sexually abused, whether you were mentally, physically, verbally abused by people in your life. When you’re in that moment, when you’re in that environment, you’re going to have, of course, the flight or fight. You’re you don’t have a choice, especially when you’re a child, because you are no where to go. Your environment is very constricted. And so eventually later on in life when you do have a choice to get out of that relationship and to get out of that kind of environment then you’re trying to figure out who am I now after the abuse.
So when you are able to get out of that abusive relationship which is the decision-m hopefully you’re able to get out of that and ask for help. As I said, many people become silent because they’re afraid of what people say, whether or not people are going to believe them or label them as you just made it up or your story has no validity because most of people are going to be in denial. Especially you’re a child and you say your story of this is what happened in the family members. Also when the family is toxic and dysfunctional to begin with instead of siding with the victim they will side on the prepator or the predator per se because I cannot use the other word.
So when you make a decisions in life you have to be decisive. You have to make sure that you want to be healed. Therefore, even even though it might take a long time for you to see a completion of your wholeness, maybe sometimes you feel as though you’re starting from zero again and again. It’s just part of a healing journey. As I said, you are not going to arrive instantly. You’re not going to wake up one day and hope that you’re just going to forget about the past or you’re not going to have painful memories or you’re not going to feel depressed or apathetic in life because that’s just what you call transition.
I really think that the analogy that I can give you is from the Bible when the the Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years because it took them a long time to get over it. I think the sooner you address the issue, which in my case I did not address the issue sooner because of fear because of the idea that perhaps I will be exile, the lack of better word, or people are going to just paint me as the villain, which usually some family members do because they still call you as the liar. You just made it up because you’re you’re just, you know, a vindictive person. And so you have a lot of nagging voices inside of you.
That’s why a lot of people who are victimized, they’re usually are afraid of stepping forward and speaking their truth. However, when you become an adult and you do have a choice or the autonomy, you must decide once and for all that there’s no other way around but to go forward. And what does it look like to make a decision to heal? acknowledging that you have been broken, admitting that you have been abused, not in denial, and probably seek help if necessary because that’s actually going to help you navigate of what happened to you. Because most of us that were victimized, we usually blame ourselves. We live in constant guilt.
And you’re going to say to yourself, maybe I brought this upon myself. Maybe it was my fault. And those are lies from the pit of hell. Or the classic is it just doesn’t have nobody should know it. It’s just supposed to be between me and you. That is a manipulative tactic that usually abuser will say to their victims. And this has to be addressed. So now that you do have a choice to get out of that relationship or to get out of that kind of abusive, destructive, toxic relationship, you make a decisions to just move forward. The sooner you deal with your issue, I think the better you’re going to get you feel better about yourself or you are going to recuperate from the distresses that took place in your life.
Many of us like to hide and that’s why many people will not be able to grow and they’re going to have sorts of problem in their bodies, sorts of tension that they will carry throughout the years. It will manifest through anger issues, outbursts of wrath. It could be impatience. It could be addiction. And recently, actually just yesterday, I’ve listened to Dr. Gabor Mate. I think I’m pronouncing his name wrong. If I am, I apologize. But he talks so much about we cannot separate the mind and the body experience because you are not going to heal because the body usually keeps record and I do agree with what he says.
Many people usually they think that it’s just a mental illness. It’s not just a mental illness. is actually something that your body responded because your body knows that it was violated and your body is reacting to the abuse and that’s why many people who got out from the relationship of abusive relationship narcissistic physically, mentally, verbally and sexually abused. They will have episodes and they will have tantrums and they will have the kind of anger that you have no idea why they are that the way they are. Sometimes they’re going to self-sabotage because that’s how they have been trying to defend themselves and survived in that kind of environment.
So you cannot just treat the mind without treating the body or without treating the nervous system. They all are integral parts and they all integrated with each other. They work together as one. As I always like to say, you need to prosper in body, spirit and soul. Your body is not separated from your soul. Your soul is not separated from your spirit either. These three components have to work together in order for you to feel better about yourself. I like to talk about my channel. Your body is the temple of God. It is the vessel. When the body is being violated because you have the temple of God inside of you.
Of course, it’s going to have the righteous indignation. You do have the right to be angry. You do have the right to feel in to feel violated because somebody did violate your body without your volition without your uh volunteer or without your suggestion. It was something that was done to you that you actually did not ask for. It just happened that you were violated in that moment and you couldn’t do anything. you were frozen perhaps when people just start coming in and they did something to you and you have nothing to say or can’t do anything about it and maybe you still are in shock in that moment.
So these are the things that people usually do not understand that you might give medication to a patient and just to give you a thing about my life is that people can medicate you but it can only heal the body. That’s that’s all there is to it. It can make you feel calmed down in the moment but it’s not really taking care of the root causes of your anger. It doesn’t take care of what’s going on between your mind and your heart. That’s why in the Bible it says that you must be able to separate the soul which is the intellect in your heart.
The to guard the heart with all your might because the heart issue will come out of it. The issues of your life will usually come out of your mouth. As I said, if you want to know what the person is been pondering about, if you want to know exactly what you’re thinking about, listen to what you say and listen how you say it. Do you usually speak with too much anxiety? I think that I tend to speak too fast sometimes because it’s my anxiety or I’m being anxious because I’m trying so hard to get it over with. Because I was programmed to always be quick and be fast and you don’t have the time, to just breathe and pause.
Because I was living in the survival mode and if you are really living in a survival mode majority of people like to rush they are they don’t have to pause they don’t have the ability to be quiet because they want to always constantly entertain themselves. And when you are healing, you know, when you’re healing because you allow yourself to pause, you allow yourself to be quiet. I was not always this way. I usually did not like being quiet or sit for long hours without a noise or sit with with my own thoughts because of denial because we don’t want to really sit with our pain or listen to what’s coming out of our mind because you are afraid of what does it say about your past and it’s necessary to usually sit with your pain and nowadays when you have become so comfortable able sitting with your own thoughts and you allow yourself to be okay with no distraction and listen to your thoughts.
You’ll be surprised. It becomes addicting. The moment you embrace silence and solitude, it usually becomes your I think the environment that is now it comes your nerves nervous system usually is hijacked when you are in the moment of being abused. It’s because you are trying to defend yourself being the flight or the fight mode and you wonder why you’re jumpy. You’re easily triggered. It’s because your nervous system has been jacked up. Think of your nervous system as wires that has been tangled like a pretzel. You’re trying to untangle each one of them.
And so the person who has gotten out of that abuse eventually will have suffer so many things about their body. That’s why there’s so many so much tension in your neck, you know, back aches, back pain. These also what Dr. Gabor says about the body. Usually when a person is people pleasing, you will have multi multiple sclerosis, people have cancer because if you’re if you cannot speak your truth, your body is going to say that for you. ailments, chronic illnesses. These are the manifestations of your body screaming for you that there is something’s wrong that you need to speak up about it.
This is why when you remain silent over injustices and you cannot really speak your truth and you’re just going to wallow and keep it to yourself, that’s going to come into a tumor perhaps or maybe it will spread through your body because you are going to just close it in because I need to just be quiet because I’m trying to protect the person. But it’s going to turn inward. It’s going to eat inside of you that probably the cause of cancer is eating a it’s eating the cancer cells inside of your body. Therefore, you’re going to have all the manifestations that your body is trying to tell you that you cannot keep silent.
Because the moment you do you’re going to pay for the price as Jesus classically says the truth will set you free and the only reason for you to be free from the ongoing cycle of this abusive relationship is to you must learn to speak the truth even though. it might hurt other people, offend other people, and people might disagree, especially in the family dynamics who is trying to protect the abuser. Tough I’m sorry for the word. Tough luck. Because you’re not supposed to keep on trying to cover up what people did to you, especially when it has been done wrong to you that you didn’t have a choice or you were still a child in your head.
Consistency
This is why another factor that you have to consider when it comes to healing is to be consistent. So if you think that you’re not really growing yet and you’re not seeing any results like, “Oh my gosh, I’m triggered again. Okay, I was triggered again yesterday and I was pissed off again over this little things.” This is where I said you must learn to show yourself grace and compassion because you are still figuring figuring everything out. You’re still trying to put all the pieces together. Think of yourself as a broken glass and you’re trying to patch those glasses together. It’s going to be messy. It’s going to be look like a mosaic is just doesn’t look as you were before.
You’re never going to be the same person. Let’s just be honest. the person that happened, I mean, before it happened to you and the person during it happened and the person after, you’re not going to be able to go back to the old you because the new you is more aware now and you are more mature and you are now knowledgeable of what was acceptable behavior and what wasn’t acceptable. Why do you think most abuser will pick a child or a child that is still psychologically immature? I was still 16 and my brain was I think 12 years old. Okay.
When I was violated because an abuser usually they’re like a shark. They can smell fresh blood and they will know who is gullible and who is easily being manipulated and who is dumb. Okay, dumb in a sense because you still are innocent. You don’t have a lot of experiences in life and they know exactly who to target. And usually abusers will target the ones who will know are weak and nobody is going to help them and they’re very isolated. And that’s exactly how they target you. Especially when they know you you love to be alone. You don’t have a lot of friends. You don’t have a family members to run to.
And so they usually will corner you. And when you are in that mode of I can’t get out of this and I don’t know why. I feel like I’m not really moving forward. You just have to pick up where you left off. Being consistent is taking care of yourself. You have to watch out for yourself. You have to really take the time to rest. That will help you balance your nervous system. stretching, yoga, walking in the park, anything to do with touching with your inner self. Maybe you like to paint or you like to garden, I usually are able to be calm about it. When I am when I garden, I I touch the soil. It reminds me that the things in this life are truly temporary and whatever happened to you in the past, it doesn’t have to dictate your future.
You’re reminded that although things happened to you unfortunately and people are demonically possessed or influenced by the devil to have hurt you that way, but eventually this too shall pass. As the Bible would say, anything happened to you, it doesn’t have to really make you bitter. You can use that story to influence other people to help them to choose a better life for themselves. You don’t need to be the person who have hurt you. And that’s why you must be consistently watching for yourself, growing, learning, and taking classes perhaps keeping yourself busy.
A body that is not in motion is stagnant and basically you’re going to snap and you’re going to die. And one of the things that I was able to move forward is because I kept myself busy. I went to school. I had a job. I was very active with my lifestyle. I went to the gym. I walk in the morning. I did not allow myself to feel sorry for myself. As I said, there’s a point in your life that you just have to dust off your feet and pick up yourself and keep on walking and reinventing yourself in the person that you would like to become. So, if I was not a fighter, and I’m not trying to chew my own horn here or try to pat my own back, I probably would have been six feet under by now.
If I was not a fighter, I probably would not would not have been married. I probably would not be a mother today because I probably would have been either in the mental institution until to this day or maybe I would be a drug addict or an alcoholic because it’s so easy to turn to those substance abuse when you’re so depressed and you’re so low and you have nowhere else to go. It is. This is why we cannot judge people with the kind of judgment of why did they turn into an alcoholic or why did they have this kind of addiction because we have no clue why why they are the way that they are. But most of them have unhealed wounds.
Majority of people have the addictions is because they have un unsettled issues from the past. Any addictions, any substance abuse that you have been doing, it’s because of your past wounds, mother wounds, either your father wounds, or you’ve been abused sexually, mentally, verbally, it’s all because of your trauma. And your trauma instead of dealing with it healthfully, majority of people do not want to deal with it healthily. And majority of people do not turn to God for answers. They don’t turn to the one who created them for help.
Majority of people, they like to numb their pain. They like to pretend like it’s not there. So, they will do the other route which is taking drugs or alcoholism or gambling or whatever kind of addictions that you are trying to numb your pain. It’s because people are afraid. It’s part of our brain that we don’t want to look at it because it’s too uncomfortable to look at. It’s too painful. And if you’re just going to keep on living in denial, guess what? You’re going to live miserably. And this is why many people are still sad and they don’t know why. I have all this money.
I’m still not really happy. I’m living in this beautiful house. I have a job, but yet I’m never content or I’m never fulfilled with my career. Why is that? It’s because it’s deeper. It has a deeper level of understanding that humans cannot just be fixed merely on materialism or consumerism. You cannot just patch things up without going to the root cause of your problem because if you’re just going to do that, it is a surface level. It is not sustainable. So, might as well deal with the issue right now and be honest. Truly honest.
Be honest with yourself because no one is going to do the work for you. As I always like to say, many people that looks like an adult, but still childless in the head, and they’re easily triggered. They’re like a puppet getting pulled by the string because they’re not willing to do the hard work. Healing is messy, as I always like to say. It’s complicated. It is not easy. It is not for the fainted heart. But if you really want to grow and move forward, and of course, you’re going to have triggers and of course people going to piss you off.
And of course, your buttons are going to be pushed is just part of healing and you just have to embrace that messiness part of you and as what Jesus would say you have to just forgive 70 * 7 even your own self you forgive people that many times the offend the the offenses that they have done to you but not be fooled again of course you need to have healthy boundaries I’m not saying that you forgive people by constantly doing the same thing to you this is exactly where healthy boundaries comes in. This is where you have to sometimes pull away from people who are constantly disrespectful of you. This is why you have to be silent in front of a fool and you limit your energy to people who are keep on doing things in front of you.
Forgiveness, as I always like to say, not necessarily mean reconciliation. You can forgive them from afar. There are people that you cannot have in contact with them, but you can pray for them. You can love them from afar. can you wish the best for them that that sometimes too when you live with someone and they constantly do the same thing. You just have sometimes to remove yourself and have things that you need to do. Have h have a hobby that you must do for yourself, especially as a woman. Because when we are constantly catering to people’s needs and they don’t know how to respect you and they ask something from you and you cannot really help them because they’re not willing to help themselves, there’s nothing you can do but to address the issue one time and second time and third time.
If the person is still not willing to change, then that’s the time that you just have to say to yourself, I cannot help you anymore. I got to do what’s best for me. And that is looking after yourself, eating the right food, drinking the right beverages, going to sleep, picking up a hobby that makes you a better person. Because if you constantly are being somebody else’s therapist, and they’re not willing to lift up their finger at that time, uh there’s really nothing you can do. You’re not somebody else’s crutch. You are not going to be people’s constant counselor because they don’t pay you for it. And if you’re still healing and the person next to you is still are not willing to be healed. It’s not your job to heal people. It’s really just a waste of your time and breath. You can pray about them. You can pray for them and you can ask God to give you grace.
But most likely God will always tell me, you are not your, you know, mother’s therapist. You are not your husband’s therapist. You are not your brother’s therapist. They must come to a point where they will say I need to work in myself and I need to really address the bigger issues that has been dormant in my life that I’ve been trying to avoid. And if only people could do that, this world would be a better place to live, right? But no, not a lot of people do that actually because much m much of us would rather want to hide undercovers and pretend like there is no monster or there’s no skeleton hiding in our closet. But that’s why many people are going to perpetually be stagnant in their growth because growth takes a lot of deliberate choices and decisions and consistency. And those are just the factors that I would like for you to think about that healing is possible if you are willing to be courageously enough to look at it with grace and compassion. [Music]
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