Have you ever felt helpless?

And did that experience warp your ability to trust yourself and others?

Concerned that you can't tell the difference between self-care and self-sabotage because of what happened to you?

Sometimes bad things happen to good people... I know.

Yet Source wants you to know that all things can - and do - work together to form greater good in our lives.

Watch this week's 11-minute Love Letter to hear my story of overcoming a very dark time in my life and how I healed from cycles of self-sabotage to embracing a lifestyle of self-care and healing.

"I only smoke because it helps me cool off."

We're continuing the series, sourced this time around has asked to continue you and I building a deeper relationship and a deeper understanding about certain concepts that come up in our spiritual lives.

This series is going to be a five week series around the dark side of self-care. Woohoo. I'm so excited.

I am so excited to bring you to the dark side of self-care. What that basically looks like is self-sabotage.

Now this first week in particular the guides have asked me to share more of my story.

I just finished a session with a new client. I'm so excited for her. It's amazing what inspires people to begin their healing journey. She's beginning a new six month healing journey, Sojourner healing journey, which means she's coming in for an hour, a private hour a month for me. She also gets unlimited meditation classes here at the dojo.

It's so interesting to hear people's stories of what inspires them to begin to heal. What motivates you to really begin healing.

It was just fascinating sharing with her some of my story of what caused me to get into all of this in the first place.

Believe it or not, it comes from actually my pain.

Simon Sinek, very beautifully says that your big why comes from your pain more often than not.

For me, it was a series of three breakups that caused me to break open. The first one was someone that I thought I was going to be with. The whole soulmate situation that you think you have and then turns out sleeping with your coworker and calls you on your wedding day to ask how are you? One.

Two, the next one broke me open again because of the color of my skin. He had decided that we couldn't be together because of the color of my skin. That also compounded my perspective.

Then unfortunately the third one that really broke me open was when I got date raped. Yes, I'm sharing that with you.

No, I'm not happy about what happened to me. I honor the fact that these were the events that grabbed my attention that something is not quite right.

Now maybe you grew up with a history of abuse or maybe you grew up with alcoholic parents or that sort of a thing.

Something happened in our lives that forced us to take a stand and say, "Wait a minute. I don't like this. I don't like this." Right?

It's those moments where you put your foot down and say, "No more. I'm not going to be beaten anymore" or, "I'm not going to select people who would do these kinds of things to me anymore."

One of my first spiritual teachers her question to me, that changed my life, was: "what is the pattern in you that's creating this situation?"

This is where we get into our five week deep dive around self-sabotage.

When I look back into those dark times in my life where I would have suicidal thoughts and would be sleeping at around 22 hours a day, only getting up to go to the bathroom and have a sip of water, trying to escape, escape, escape there were things that I was doing to self-soothe that within my compressed mindset I thought were good for me.

When you have a compressed, like as in a really limited mindset, bad stuff you can't really tell that that's bad for you.

Some of the ways that I used to self-soothe but actually turned out being self-sabotage ... Well, one it was the constant sleeping. Also, I used to chain-smoke Clove cigarettes, the black ones. Like talk about breathing death. Emotional stuffing. I used to live on Twix and Chex-Mix and nothing else except for Captain Morgan's spiced rum and Malibu coconut rum. I remember. I'm so happy that I'm sober now.

There's these things that, "I'll just have a drink so that I can soothe" or escape, get rid of this negativity, or, "Let me go have a smoke. Let me cool off." Or, "Let me just check out." There's so many things that we do to soothe ourselves that within a limited and a compressed point of view feel pleasurable and we interpret them as good even though they're working against us.

Now there was also another form of self-sabotage I would do at the time. I would work around 12 hours or so a day at a really, really toxic job. Like screaming bosses that were financial abusers as in dangling your pay check over your head in order to get you to do things that are completely outside of your principles.

Be kind to yourself if as I invoke the darker side of my story that this is resonating for you like, "Ooh, ooh, I still do some of that, Victoria" ... This is not to say like, "I'm good and you're bad." No.

I want you to know that I've been through some things and when I'm going to talk to you over the next few weeks around self-sabotage versus self-care there's some history there. I'm only tapping on the tip of the iceberg here with respect to your energy.

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Know this: Be kind to yourself. What motivates great healing is usually great pain.

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My story is my story and it's made me who I am. Here's the light in the darkness is that when you start self-soothing you can choose to raise the vibration of the forms of self-soothing that you do.

For example, I remember even when I was still chain-smoking I started learning more about crystals and oracle cards. "Well, you know, maybe this will help me feel better." It was something positive about these cards or I feel the energy when I'm holding this crystal. I don't know what the heck it is. I'm going to get into that in the next few weeks.

That was the turning point. It was following things that brought me joy and uplifted me in the self-soothing cycle. It's natural.

I want you to know this and watch this in yourself this week.

Watch the way that you soothe yourself, whether it's positive or negative. Just notice how do you soothe yourself when you're feeling bored, when you're feeling depressed, empty, anxious, angry, unacknowledged, lonely, et cetera. How do you soothe yourself? It is positive things? Or negative?

Most of us have a mixture of both. By the way, at the filming of this video I still have some not so good things, such as eating chocolate and ice cream, that is harmful against my body. As well as doing hours of meditation, grounding out in nature, doing reiki. I have a mixture.

This is called being human. I want us to have a deep dive now for the next five weeks around honoring that self-care versus self-sabotage dance that we're all doing.

I know that you're doing it. If you clicked play on this video chances are you're a natural empath. You're already sensitive to the energy and trying to figure out how to cope with all this energetic overload. We're going to confront this head-on.

We're going to dive deep together. I can't wait to see you next week and hear what you think.

Comment below. Tell me what's coming up for you around this.

Do you have a story that you wanted to share, by the way? Did my story bring up some of yours? I would love to witness you in sharing your story, privately, just to honor you. We don't want to post all that out in social media and all over the place.

Send me an email back and let me know and I'd be happy to set up a share your story call so that we can hold space for you speaking your truth for the first time.

I know it's tough. I feel you but we're going to get through this together.

Are you ready for this? Five weeks. Five weeks. Let's do this. Self-care versus self-sabotage. Going to the dark side. Whoop, whoop. Shining light so that we can all grow together. I'm sending you so much love and I'll see you next week. Bye.

VictoriaWhitfield.com
Facebook.com/SenseiVictoriaWhitfield

Just for Today...

Watch the way that you soothe yourself.

Track what you do to soothe negative feelings, to observe if it’s positive self-care or negative self-sabotage behavior..

Notice how you feel at that moment - you're already healing!

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Hello there. I am Sensei Victoria Whitfield, your business reiki master. And it's my joy to get to support empathic entrepreneurs and business owners like you in getting and staying grounded and clear in mind, body and business.

Welcome back to another installment of your weekly love letter from the dojo at naturalintuition.com and victoriawhitfield.com, my blog. These are your sources for channeled holistic stress management techniques and guidance for developing your natural intuition. Whether you're looking to improve the quality of your personal and professional life, let this love letter be your reminder that you are not alone and that together we can make that happen.

Let's schedule a chat, and see how I can help you...

The post Love Letters | Self Care vs. Self Sabotage – Part 1 of 5 appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.