Resilience is a muscle that needs to be built with practice.
Just like in sports we have coaches to help us and musicians have teachers, when learning something new, we all need help from someone else.
There’s a great song from U2, “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”, which includes the line “You don’t have to go it alone”.
Fortunately we are starting to see the tide turn as more and more people and organizations are bringing to light a groundbreaking study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente, known as the ACEs study (Adverse Childhood Experiences)*. This short 10 question quiz clearly shows the connection between tough childhood experiences and mental and physical health issues later in life. The questions ask about abuse, addictions in the family, loss of a parent and so on. The higher you score, the greater risk of obesity, addiction, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and stroke as an adult. Take the quiz here.
The good news is, that now that this is coming to light, so is the news that this CAN be turned around. Britain’s Prince Harry has become very public about the trauma he experienced when his mother Lady Diana was tragically killed when he was only 12 years old. After shutting off his emotions for 20 years, he sought help, and through therapy began the healing work and talking about it. Lady Gaga founded the Born This Way Foundation to help youth and says,“In order to heal you have to feel”.
Yet, after years of shutting off feelings, it can be hard and feel scary to start feeling again.
I personally have spent tens of thousand of dollars and countless numbers of hours getting help from various healers and coaches, because I couldn’t do it on my own! (I was shocked when I saw how high my ACEs score was).
The resilient definition in the dictionary:
1. to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.
2. able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed.
I share a lot of skills and techniques to help build resilience, but the cornerstone or foundation has to be doing the healing work and healing those childhood wounds.
Then we can begin to build up resilience so that, no matter what comes your way, you have tools, skills and techniques at the ready to keep your balance. Life will throw us curveballs, and when we’ve done the healing work and built up our resilience, we can respond to what life throws at us instead of reacting and perhaps sliding back into an old addiction you thought you had kicked 20 years ago.
It would be my honor to help you in your healing journey, but most importantly, whether it’s me or someone else, please know you don’t have to go it alone, reach out and find someone to help you.
There are a lot of great healers out there and unfortunately a lot who only claim to be. If someone promises you a miraculous healing in one session, run! While there have been times when I’ve helped someone have an extraordinary healing in one session, the vast majority is through multiple sessions. It’s like peeling an onion, layer by layer, until we get to the core issue. As Gay Hendricks says in his book “The Big Leap”: “…while breakthroughs are important and thrilling, it is the stabilization and integrations of the breakthroughs into daily life that really allow the changes to be permanent.” THAT is resilience!
Get five of the techniques I share in my book “Goodbye Anxiety, Hello Freedom” here.
Originally published at stephaniedalfonzo.com