I left my job… and it triggered a lot…
It’s been 19 days since I left my job, a job I had become to enjoy and one that in truth, I wasn’t ready to leave…
So why did I leave I hear you ask…?
Stop running, start listening
3 years ago, after 33 years of putting EVERYONE before me, 3 things happened that caused me to stop. This series of events a triggered the existential walk-up call ‘YOU have to change, you can’t keep living like this’.
I had to stop running from myself.
A bit about my story and journey...and the things I’m having to unlearn
Having grown up in abusive household, I became exceptionally good at reading the energy in the room, supressing my own needs so that I would be safe
I didn’t learn boundaries, I learned people pleasing. I learned this might just earn me love, nurturing and protection…
By 17, I was nearly homeless and using hard drugs. I didn’t have a reliable family network.
I developed a belief that I had to work hard to survive.
And I believed the only person I could rely on… was me.
Breaking through my our armour...
It’s been 3 hard years of trying to get beneath my our armour. My body had become so good at disassociation that no matter how hard I tried, I struggled to connect with what was going on with my body, with what was going on for me emotionally.
The tools I used and how they helped me to start to listen...
Through a lot of self-exploration, a lot of exploratory work with planet medicines and a lot of personal therapy – plus a bunch random and sometimes weird holistic stuff – I began to listen. And I’ve finally started to hear what my emotions, my body and my heart are telling me
Once you heard your own truth and understand your own needs... there’s no going back
And once you start to hear your own truth, it becomes very difficult to ignore – you can’t unhear it, no matter how hard you try! So that’s why I left my job. I could see how my patterns were starting to resurface.
· Self-abandonment
· A lack of boundaries
· A suppression of my own needs
· People pleasing
· Putting an organisation and its people about my own wellbeing
· Believing I needed to work hard to be worthy, to feel ‘enough’
· A misaligned life, where I wasn’t living my purpose
Deeply engrained beliefs take time to unlearn...
These were not failings of an organisation, these were my own personal, deeply engrained beliefs – strengthened only by the worlds culture. One that tells us we have to ‘do’ stuff, to be successful to be enough, to survive.
Dysregulated nervous system... our bodies tell us what we need, all we have to do is listen
So I took the risk. I quit the misaligned job.
And I want to be brutally honest…
It’s been a trigging 19 days.
My survival mechanisms kicked back in…
· You don’t have a job, how are you going to survive?
· You must be ‘doing’ something right away (because productivity is how we measure value, right?)
· The voice in my head “you’re not going to be successful at this”
Time to have a few KitKats... so my decisions are from truth, not fear
What I should have done, and what I’m going to do is…
Pause. Breathe. Recalibrate. Self-sooth.
Emotion is meant to be felt, not suppressed
There is strength in softness
✨Pause, Presence, Purpose & Gratitude ✨
This I know for certain, my truth is this: I have a purpose in this life, one that is in helping others rediscover who they really are beneath all the masks we wear, beneath what society has taught us to be.
And I’m bloody good at it! I can’t even begin to tell you how many people have said to me “you are so good at this, seriously” and “you should do this as a job”.
So firstly, I’m talking my own advice. I’m pausing, recalibrating. Then, I will rise again…