Turns out, a lot of us are hyper-independent.

Many of you also shared with me other habit patterns you have borne from trauma and, honestly, I think we all have them in one way or another, even if they’re not obvious.

When I owned a yoga studio, I facilitated many workshops and trainings filled with women seeking positive change in their lives.

In these groups, when I would share my story, I’d always talk about the mean voice in my head which was the pivotal breaking point that led me to yoga to begin with.

Every time I told this part of my story, as I looked each woman in the eye, someone always had tears glistening. I know this particular trait is a common one.

That voice-bully bossed me around for decades and beat down my happiness with a baseball bat. I was never good enough, didn’t work hard enough, wasn’t pretty enough, didn’t get promoted fast enough and on and on…

It was always all my fault because I was lazy and no matter how early I got up in the morning and how diligently I slaved at all my pursuits, whatever the outcome was, it wasn’t what it could have been because of my lack of effort.

The voice wouldn’t shut up and got worse year after year.

For the longest time, I was proud I had the tyrant-in-my-head around. She made me an achiever! I excelled at school (except geometry), in sports, in corporate America, as a public speaker, as a coach and definitely as a rock star partier.

All of this while I simultaneously exhausted myself into someone I didn’t recognize, hated my life and moved through a world that felt completely absent of joy, fun and fulfillment.

It was a rough few decades and I wish I knew then what I know now.

While having fear-based, self-protective and self-disciplining rules probably made sense and helped me survive when I was a helpless kid, those controls weren’t needed anymore once I became an adult who could make decisions and walk away from unhealthy situations.

By my late teens I was old enough to make conscious choices about my life and relationships based on my own feelings, needs, and interests. Yet, the unwritten internal rules were so deeply ingrained in me that I didn’t even know they were there or something I could change.

Until I finally did! I learned about energy and did easy, daily techniques on myself to repattern the deep grooves and release the stuck knots.

Energy has basic rules and one of them is that it runs in patterns.

Trauma creates compensatory shifts in our thoughts and emotions (such as thought loops) and just as they were created, they can be uncreated too. Through daily energy work, we can re-pattern these unhealthy patterns and create vibrant new ones.

If I told you I never have a mean thought about myself now, I’d be lying. However, I do have 95% less mean thoughts and 100% more love.

And more love for myself means I love everyone else more too.

Less trauma response and more love.

Today, I’ll end with that.