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I think one of my biggest challenges in the last year has been around feeling worthwhile— letting go of guilt? (have been a life long people-pleaser) and figuring out a sense of purpose in my life outside of doing things that make me miserable on the off chance it might slightly improve someone else’s day. Feeling ok about not doing that even would be a great start!
Figuring out a sense even of what I want & what I need in any given moment; I’m so habitualised to putting myself last I don’t even know how to recognize what my body is asking for most of the time.
Coupled with a general sense of existential doom, that there is no way out, no way of things being actually objectively good – life is pain & struggle & if you look deep enough everyone is carrying wounds.
Ongoing struggle/ theme throughout my life has been that I’ve been gifted so much talent, intelligence, “so much potential” and I’m wasting that somehow.
I have so much anxiety about how to ‘live up to my potential’ & use my skills, talent, time etc in positive ways, without feeling totally burned out in the process.
Like, what am I actually meant to be doing with my life??
I have a bachelor of Science in Molecular biology & genetics, a masters degree in Early Childhood Education, 6 years of teaching experience and a very strong sense of imposter syndrome. Everything feels like my fault when it goes wrong & if it goes ‘right’, that’s thanks only to others. I turn any piece of feedback, constructive criticisms or outright criticism into little daggers to torture myself with indefinitely, each adding to all the prior crap my brain stores & making it worse, arming my brain with new ammunition to prove i’m a failure.
I went to a retreat & was introduced to a lot of new ideas around embodiment & had some massive perspective shifts while there & during the 12 weeks of mentoring after but I’m still struggling to integrate all that I learned and sort out what resonates, what’s my edges, and what’s straight up not for me & going to retraumatise me if I try to push into it.. even the stuff that made sense at first is confusing me now.
If I can control my thoughts & my focus, why do I consistently end up in the same twisted & self destructive thought patterns?