Episode #35 – What Does It Take To Heal?

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. As much as I love to share about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I also would like to showcase my passions in life such as food, travel, fashion, beauty, and many more. To truly be free from the shackles of the systems limitation, you must decide once and for all to live unapologetically and live a life that makes you feel alive and rejuvenated every single day. Perhaps I am a hopelessly romantic person, but I truly believe we are meant to enjoy the wonders and the magnificent beauty the world has to offer. If you are ready to embark on your healing journey from traumatic experiences, feel free to check the link below to enroll in this course through Udemy. I will see you there. Thank you.

Hi everyone! Welcome back on this channel. My name is Glennavelle Manarang. To those of you are tuning in for the first time, I will like to welcome you. Well, I cannot really linger here and talk about my life because I only have 30 minutes. I want to make sure that I will be on point and direct to the point when I’m talking on my podcast because I know some people are very busy. I think today’s topic is going to be titled, “What does it take to heal?” As always, my channel is about healing your traumatic experiences, helping you uncover any patterns and cycles. And if you’re ready to embark on your journey of healing, please check out the link below for you to figure it out. if you want to join and enroll on my class that is titled your healing journey from traumatic experiences and all the information is linked below. So today is about what does it take to heal.

They think for some people think that healing has a magic formula. They think there is a shortcut to healing. Apparently it isn’t. So healing is a very complicated subject. It takes a lot of consistency, gut, and honesty. If you are still unwilling to embark on a journey of healing journey and you’re not ready to face your demons, then you’re going to end up getting stuck in a loop. You’re going to always trying to fix yourself by external things which are substance abuse, addiction, overshopping to name a few. Because majority of people instead of dealing with our inner issues because when we talk about our trauma it is about your soul. It is about it is what happened between your intellect and your emotion and no drug or over shopping or overeating can actually fix it. It’s actually the results.

When you over shop, when you overeat, overindulge, it is because the results of the trauma that you have harbored and have accumulated along the way that caused you to do those things. And some people might look at my life and they would say, “How did she get there? And how made her that way? And what were the steps she has taken?” And I could tell you that I have done my work. There were so many sleepless nights. I have written a book in 2019 about the struggles I have faced and the survival uh surviving from sexual abuse and abortion as I always am transparent about my story on my channel. And these are not an easy topic to discuss because it’s very personal. But unless of course you are willing to acknowledge and confess that this thing had happened to you, you’re always going to live in secret.

And I really think that majority of people are afraid of saying because of judgment and guilt and shame. And majority of people that have been victimized by it, they also blame themselves. However, if you’re going to keep it a secret and if you’re going to hide it, this is why many people are living in the dark. They’re unwilling to face their demons. As what Jesus would say, the truth will set you free. And that is the reason why some people just rather want to shut up about it. So then you have to really be brave enough to look at your demons and to deal with your trauma because there’s no such thing as shortcut. There’s no such thing as a magic pill that you can swallow to make you happy and everything is okay.

And it also takes a lot of changing your subconscious mind into conscious mind. The consciousness of your mind is being aware and selfaware and being mindful of the things that you’ve been thinking about. As I said, it takes a lot of work. Healing is no joke. It’s actually lots of sleepless nights. You’re going to feel sadness on and off. You’re going to have highs and lows. You are going to feel atrophy, apathetic in life because after you have gotten out of that traumatic experience, that’s exactly when the ramifications is going to come out and it’s going to make you feel as though your life is ruined. And that’s exactly what people don’t understand. that healing is a time for you to process what just happened, especially when you get out of that relationship that is toxic from that abusive environment that was actually dysfunctional.

So it takes a lot of lots of loneliness in the wilderness is when you are going to be broken and ask those questions in your lonely times of introspection of what happened to you. Sometimes God would allow you to reprocess which is recall rather the memories of your past. He wants you to go back and remind you that the things that happened to you were not your fault. It was actually some people’s doing that had done you wrong. And for you to live in regret or beating yourself up or actually feeling sorry for yourself is not the way to go. And another part of healing, what does it take to heal is that you just have to try and try again. It is easier said than done. As Nike would say, just do it, action. Putting action. Putting one foot of the other.

Just taking it one day at a time. I used to pray this prayer when I was struggling with depression before. And I would just say, “God, just get me throughout this day. Give me the strength to just get out of bed.” That’s all I said. And it’s actually was something that was remarkable that have tremendously helped me to get out of bed. You don’t have to worry about tomorrow. You don’t have to figure out what to do the following day. All you have to do is being present in the moment. And really just getting out of bed is something that is successful for me in those days of my depression because there were days that I just did not want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to take a shower. I didn’t want to go to work.

And of course, you’re always going to try so hard to convince yourself to get out because part of your brain after you have been abused is that might as well give up in your life. There’s going to be two sides of you are constantly going to wrestle and will convince you that might as well don’t get up and just stay in bed and be depressed and and have a self-pity party. And that is the other part of you that’s going to convince you to just be apathetic in life and be atrophy in life. But that is not where you want to be. There are times that you have to really process what happened to you and you allow yourself to grieve which is part of healing. Grieving is where you’re going to cry and cry and there’s going to be sometimes you’re laughing and sometimes you’re crying.

Sometimes you are as feel as though you are moving two steps ahead and there are times that you are digressing and that’s just what healing is all about. It’s never about a straight path. It is never about arriving. You are not going to arrive. Healing is something that you’re constantly have to remind yourself that there are days that are going to be good and there are days that are going to be harder than other times and it’s part of healing. And so if you are just going to keep on telling your brain that I can just do this what I have to do today is brush your teeth perhaps or put on new clothes or take a shower and just slowly take it one day at a time. As I said, today’s problem as Jesus would say is sufficient enough. Tomorrow you don’t have to worry about it.

And another thing of course what does it take to heal is do not dwell on the past so I know it’s counterintuitive. As I said, there are parts of you that you need to recall of the past where I had to go through this process where God had asked me to do lay down on the bed and recall of the bad memories that happened to you and release it to God and just let it go and pray about it. Pray about the people who have done you wrong. And then afterwards, after you have done the grieving and the process of those letting go and just allowing God to heal your soul, then you have to really stop dwelling on your past. It is the subconscious mind to the consciousness where you have to reprogram your mind.

Your subconscious mind is your programming. It is what you have been believing about. It is the pattern and the cycle that you have believed about yourself that you are ruined and you’re ugly and nothing is going to matter anymore or no one’s going to love you or your life is not going to be better because of what happened to you. So that is your subconscious mind telling you that your life is over. However, you can reprogram and replace the negativity into positive thoughts. Your conscious mind is something that you’re self-aware. It is your mental capacity that you’re awakened. It is your enlightenment that you are not going to be dictated by your subconscious thought that were past recorder. So your subconscious mind has an old recorder. It has something that has programmed you to think that you are not capable of achieving things or living a different life after the abuse.

So this is why as I said healing is not something that you can purchase. It’s not something that you can go to school. It is not something that you can attain from other people. It’s not something that your mom can give you or your sister or your best friend can give you. It comes down to your inner healing. It comes down to your soul. It is your willingness to admit, acknowledge and confess that you have been traumatized, that you have been abused, and you need to do the process of healing. It is going to have very it’s an arduous process. It has no shortcuts. As I said, if you’re looking for shortcuts, that’s why people think that they have been free from their trauma when they’re looking for shortcuts.

People that are looking for shortcuts are looking for crutches. They’re looking for band-aid. Something that is shallow, something that is very transient. It’s here today. It’s not going to last forever. If you’re looking for a sustainable, attainable healing, you have to really deal with your own self. You have to journal about it. I am going to constantly advocate on journaling and constantly emphasize on how important it is to process your emotions through writing it down, journaling it, and maybe talking to yourself in the mirror and telling yourself you’ve got this. I love you. I am so proud of you. Maybe if you need to just walk outside, do something that can distract your thoughts instead of dwelling on the past and feeling sorry for yourself because our mind, our subconscious mind that has been programmed, it tends to wallow in self-pity. It tends to just ruminate on the things that had happened to you.

But you also have to remember what happened to you is already done. it has been done to you. And I am not going to say that it’s not awful. But at the same time, there’s going to be a point in time in life that you just have to get up and let go and release it to God in prayer. And you got to start all over again. And you just have to get up and pick up a hobby or go back to school or maybe do something valuable with your life. As Jesus would say, pick up your mat and walk. And if you really think about it, God is always going to use your story for his glory. Nothing is in vain. Nothing is wasted in God’s eyes. No matter how painful your story might be. Everybody has a story to tell. Every one of us has a testimony to tell. But everybody has a different experiences. But it’s up to you how you’re going to move forward and how you are going to deal with that circumstances.

You cannot allow your past to dictate your future because if you’re going to just wallow in self-pity and you’re not going to keep on moving, you’re going to waste your time. Maybe God has a story. Maybe your story God is trying to teach you about inspiring other people, motivating them and changing how they think about life because of your story. Okay. So, you cannot really just make an excuse for saying, “Well, my life is already done and overwway because of what my dad did to me or my mom did to me or my whoever did you wrong in your life.” You cannot use that card as an excuse. And that is also part of healing. What does it take to heal? Do not make excuses. Do not use your pain as the leverage for you to get stuck. You have to be willing enough to use your pain as a leverage for you to get better and to improve and to really use your story as a fuel to start a fresh life again.

Maybe, as I said, you might probably want to start a business or a podcast or a YouTube channel. It is something that is going to make you move forward. It is something that you’re going to aim higher to become better version of yourself. And also what does it take to heal is that it’s a lot of sitting down with your own thoughts and being comfortable being comfortable on your own thoughts and interrogating every thought that is not yours. I know some people have a hard time sitting down for a few minutes and truly listening to their thoughts. It takes a lot of discipline and self-control to listen to the thoughts that are coming in out of your mind.

Some thoughts are not yours. And some thoughts are actually influenced by other people around you. As I said, if the thought is not good, if it’s not positive, reject it. Rebuke it. And if it’s good, you have to fix your thoughts on what is true. That’s why Philippians 4:8 Paul said to the Philippi to fix your thoughts on whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, to think things about excellent and worthy of praise because our default as a human being is negative. We love to ponder on the negative things. We usually see things as a half empty instead of half full glass. We are usually programmed to think things that are negative because look around you. Everything is negative.

Of course, your brain is going to say how how would you what would you think of me? Like it is counterintuitive. You want me to think positively? When you look at the world, when you look at the news, everything is negative. Everything is bad. There’s famine. There are pestilences. There are chaos. There are wars. There are people are starving outside of this country. you want me to think positively. So, of course, there’s going to be resistance of that. Your brain is going to resist you. However, just because the world is chaotic, just because the world is not perfect, it doesn’t mean that you cannot change your thoughts.

You cannot control the world. The world has always been this way. That’s just given. However, the only thing you can control is your choices and the thoughts that coming in, the things that you entertain. Because if your world is chaotic and the world is already chaotic and that’s why people get into depression and they do things that are terrible because they’re actually hopeless and you don’t have hope in this world and that’s why you give up in life and you actually do not try again and that’s what it takes how to heal. As I said there’s no such thing as shortcuts. There is no such thing as a magic formula. If you’re asking for a formula it’s easy. is about talking about it, seeking therapist. Another thing that I have done before be careful however who you ask for help.

Be careful the kind of advice you take from people. And also you have to really understand that you got to be patient with the process. You have to have grace with yourself. You need to have compassion with your pain. And you also have to allow yourself to just mourn of the person that you used to be, the kind of person that was taken from you during the abuse. As I said, you’re going to have three different people who are going to show up in your life. The first one, of course, is the old you before your innocence were robbed. And the second one is the person that was broken, that was shattered, that was violated. This is why she will self-sabotage. She’s going to come out too. She’s going to have the episode. She’s going to have the crying. She’s going to have the drama.

And the third person, which is still in the process of healing, which is she has a boundary that cannot be in penetrated. She is a woman who is now probably hard to get along for some people because now she is not easily manipulated. this person that is trying to come out which is a new version of you. She is actually wiser now that she is very selective when it comes to choosing her friends when it comes to allowing people around her because she has realized that not everyone has a good intention at heart. And yes, she may look like she’s aloof, that she is a loner, but actually it’s her trying to rebuild her life, trying to reassess the people in her life, who of who’s worthy to stay and who isn’t worthy to stay because of the experiences that she had endure.

And perhaps the newer version of you, she’s going to have distrust or lack of trust in people anymore. She’s going to be hypervigilant perhaps because of the pain and trauma that she had endured. And she is going to be able to maybe try to become pessimistic. As I always like to say, she’s probably uh paranoid. Maybe some people might call you paranoid because you’re overly hypervigilant. It’s not paranoia. It’s about protecting your peace. is about being selective because you work so hard to get to the point in your life where you allowed yourself to just be healed and be whole. And then all of a sudden, if you’re going to allow people to come in without reassessing them, they’re just going to sabotage everything that you work so hard for.

And this is why people think that if just because you’re selective and just because you’re not allowing everybody in. It doesn’t mean that you’re antisocial. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love people. is just because of the pain and because of the trauma and because of what happened to you that it rewired your brain completely and now you’re becoming wiser now. You’re not just blindly being gullible and naive about it. Now you are becoming more aware and thinking to yourself, if I’m going to let my guard down, are these people going to hurt me again? And there’s going to be fear because that’s exactly what it takes to heal is there’s going to be fear. You’re going to be fearful about people. You’re gonna ask questions. Do they have the good intention? Are there are they here to get me again and use me and take advantage of me?

Because your brain is going to resist that. Your brain is to protect you and giving you a warning and says, “Hey, remember the last time that you have given too much of yourself. Remember the last time when you have given your full trust on people, they have taken advantage of you. They’ve actually used and abused you. And so yes, fear is part of healing too because your brain is trying to protect you. It’s trying to give you a signal, a warning that says you cannot trust everybody. They have to go through a process as if they are applying for a job because of the things that had happened to you. Especially when the people that have hurt you are inside the family, family members. Because you think to yourself, if my family, one of my family members hurt me and if I just allow people, if my family me family members have hurt me, what made you think that other people is not going to hurt you too?

So this is why you got to be able to have a little bit of grace and discernment, especially when you’re allowing people in your life. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have friends, but be selective because as the Bible says, evil company corrupts good moral. If God has already set you free from any kinds of addiction, if God has already had helped you to be victorious in one areas of your life, and if you’re going to go back to those people who’s going to drag you back down to where you are, the healing is going to be a lot harder. Especially when your environment is toxic, when environment is not healthy for you, when you are not really have peace of mind and heart, you have to be able to remove yourself from the kind of environment. It is a lot easier to get away from the environment where they have broken you. And one of the things that God had helped me to is to remove myself and move out.

And not everybody unfortunately is given this privilege to get out of that environment where they have been broken or they have been abused. Some people are unwilling or maybe they’re not able because of financial needs or maybe they have nowhere else to go. But I think for me it was a lot easier for me to move forward in life because I was able to get out of the environment where I was broken, where I was abused and I was able to really uh live the life that God had truly want for me. Because as I said, if you are going to stay in that environment where the person has abused you, you’re reminded of that constantly. You cannot possibly think differently. You cannot grow in the place of arid. There’s dryness, a place of a desert. You cannot grow there. So that’s why sometimes when God would ask you to move out and get out of your family, you need to be in a different place, a different environment. You have to really interject yourself in a different kinds of people.

This is how you can transform. and your transformation and your healing journey is a lot easier and faster because of what people are doing, excuse me, in your life. So, as what they say, the very five people in your life are either going to break you or make you. People are impactful. The people that you surround yourself with, they’re either going to make you grow or they’re not going to make you grow. If you’re surrounded with people that are just complacent and lazy and they’re not really motivated about anything in life, you are just going to follow that kind of footsteps. However, if you are going to engage yourself with people that are motivated, they have visions, they’re goal oriented, you are just going to follow that.

Now, if you’re going to ask me where do I find these people, where do they hang out? Well, they could hang out at podcast like this one. They could probably hang out on YouTube channel listening to people that are successful of how to make businesses and maybe read a book about it about the people who have done it right and how the steps that they’re willing to take for them to be successful. If you cannot find people in person per se, there are plenty of books that you can read about successful people if that’s exactly what you want to read about. If you want to read about philosophy, if you want to read about history, if you want to read about biography is a wonderful tool that you can also read about people and learn about their lives.

And as I said, you can also have YouTube. I mean, there’s so many things right now. There are plenty of resources that you can attain at the tip of your fingers for you to learn. That’s why you have no excuse if somehow you cannot have the like-minded people. And I do like to emphasize that when you are healing in this life, it takes a lot of reading God’s word and praying and really just having a one-on-one discussion with God as the prayer is the gateway to heaven. You cannot possibly fully healed unless of course you are vertically aligned with the one who created you because he knows your soul. He is the manufacturer of your heart. He knows exactly the things that you need. And as I always say, one of the reasons why I was also healed is because of the word of God that I was meditating. I was memorizing the verses of God.

When every time I would have an attack of the devil or lies from the pit of hell, I would always rebuke it and I would always interject it with the word of God. So I will give you an example again. When I was told that you’re ruined or your life is over, I would remind him in Jeremiah 29:11, for the thoughts and the plans that God has for me is not for evil and harm, but for future and to give me hope. And so the things that are maybe from for people it doesn’t really make any difference if they say those things out loud like I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Those were the thoughts that I would keep repeating on myself. I can do all things. Not just some things but all things.

When there are days that I’m so tired and I don’t want to do anything, I would have to tell myself that and I would have to remind myself in my head, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Not with my own strength, not with any other strength, but through his strength and his power that I can get out of bed, that I can start again, that I can learn to love my life and live my life because I have the power of the spirit of God that dwells within me, who gives me the strength to get on my day. Where does my help comes from? Your help comes from the Lord who is the maker of heaven and earth. And these are the verses and these were the tools that I was able to use them when I was, you know, very sad and depressed and I just want to be gone out of this life. And those were the things that you have to really understand what God says is that his word is truly active. It is alive.

You just have to learn to ponder and meditate. Of course, there are days that your flesh is going to resist it. Your flesh is going to say, “I don’t want to read my Bible because it’s boring.” But it’s actually one of the things that Jesus said, “No man can live by bread alone.” But the word of God that comes out of his mouth, the word of God, as I said, it is truly a bomb. It is a gilllet that you can put in your soul that can change and impact how you see yourself. And that is also one of the reasons why that I was able to heal is because I was meditating and memorizing the verses of God. And I would repeat it constantly and I would ask myself the question, how can I apply this into my life? How can I actually uh put this into action?

And if you think about that and if the more and more you think about God’s word, it’s actually healing. It is powerful. It is not like any other book. And that is why I can always say and advocate that God’s word doesn’t lie. It is not one of those book that is just here today. Okay, that’s why he said to meditate on his word. He has they told us to the book of the law shall not depart from you. You have to meditate in God’s word day in and day out. And I hope you have learned from this podcast. I will see you next time.