Here are 6 steps to heal your hidden grief and increase your impact as an intuitive woman leader. Grief is hidden because we don’t know it’s a problem. Grief lives in the subconscious. The symptoms of unprocessed grief are overwhelm, workaholism, lack of self-care, broken relationships, depleted bank accounts, giving our power away, and distraction.
Have you hit a roadblock of procrastination, confusion, and being stuck? Are you frustrated because your efforts of building your business/career and having the impact you want aren’t moving the needle?
This blog provides you with a strategy to heal from hidden grief and have a greater impact. Does it ring true that when you feel relaxed, supported, and free you can create the impactful life and career/business your soul longs for? I believe you are destined to leave a legacy that is meaningful to YOU.
Intuitive Women Leaders Need A New Paradigm
A new, healthy paradigm is: Focusing on yourself is NOT selfish. Men get this better than women who have a harder time embracing it. When you take care of yourself holistically and respect your needs and desires, you will be “living in love and truth from moment to moment.” I borrowed this phrase from Alex Loyd, creator of the Healing Codes.
When you live in love and truth in the moment, you ARE thinking of others. You aren’t as focused on protecting your image or keeping yourself safe. Being able to focus on others is a result of doing your own inner healing work.
Why Should You Care About Healing Hidden Grief?
When you heal the grief and trauma of your past, you will have the impact you desire. You’ll overcome overwhelm. You’ll stop over-working and being scattered and distracted by life’s demands. You will learn to parent yourself as you gain more self-compassion and understanding.
Where To Start: 6 Steps To Healing Hidden Grief
1. Shift Your Paradigm
Be ready to get your needs and wants met in a healthy way by asking for them. In other words, don’t be ashamed of your needs and desires. You are human, after all.
Do you always put yourself last, after the kids, after the spouse, after everyone? If so, I have one question for you. Do you ever feel resentful and unappreciated? Resentment is the byproduct of self-sacrifice and people-pleasing.
Maybe you were taught constant giving is saintly and the right thing to do. Giving is great until you resent it. Many of us don’t have the emotional capacity and energy to give all of the time. We just don’t. So please take this to heart and be real with yourself.
If this doesn’t describe you, and you tirelessly give to others without being exhausted and resentful, then keep on giving. I call this “people charming.”
Suggestion: Give until you resent it. Receive your good as well. Give and receive. Receive and give. This is the law of circulation.
2. Look At Workaholic Tendencies
What kind of work ethic did your parents teach you? Mine are both very hard workers, even in their mid-70’s. I rarely saw my mom or dad sit still. I don’t recall watching TV together with my parents. The motto that I have lived by is: “Get my work done first and then I’ll rest.” OR “Achieve my goal and then I’ll reward myself.”
What problem do you see with this way of thinking? Our work never gets done…so we never relax, right? Or if we do, it’s pretty short-lived. Yesterday my client referred to her to-do list as her Monster List. Her Monster List intimidates her and causes her to freeze and do nothing or to do things halfway.
You have to wonder. Why DO you work so hard? For example, at a family gathering, are you the one interacting and connecting with others, or are you the one washing the dishes after everyone is full? Be honest. Have you ever asked yourself why this is? Consider that it’s much easier to handle tasks than to harmonize with people.
Workaholism takes over whether it’s business or personal tasks. As long as you keep overworking, it’s hard to get clarity about what you really want to do with your life. The mind is too busy and stressed out.
Suggestion: Set boundaries around how many hours you’ll work. Plan regular vacation time each year.
3. See Yourself Holistically And Take Self-Care Seriously
You are a whole person. You have physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs. See these aspects of yourself as four legs of a table. If one leg gets out of balance, the table wobbles and falls over.
Respect yourself in this way. You deserve to take good care of yourself because you’re a creation of God or the Universe. When people avoid self-care, there is a part of them that despises themselves and feels a lot of shame. I tend to think of how we treat our body similarly to how we keep an automobile. We put gas in our vehicle, get the oil changed, and take care of maintenance of the tires, engine, etc. We do this because we value it.
Our human body is no different. If we value our self, we’ll take care of all aspects of ourselves, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
Holistic Self-Care Includes, But Isn’t Limited To:
- Eating the right foods, staying hydrated, and getting plenty of rest.
- Replacing harmful beliefs that reduce our impact with healthy ones that cause us to feel safe and supported.
- Feeling our feelings so we no longer feel so out of control but more grounded.
- Connecting spiritually to something greater than ourselves, to a greater purpose.
Do you know what to do to be happy and successful? Most of us do; we are aware. But what we don’t know is WHY we resist taking the actions that would make us happy: eating certain foods, calling on people, doing the videos, asking for the raise, etc. In other words, we don’t know why we keep sabotaging ourselves. Sabotage has been called misguided self-love because our actions are often meant to keep us safe. But is safe REALLY safe?
There is a way to get out of the sabotage cycle when you heal the hidden grief and look within for answers.
Suggestion: Where will you start? Will you pick one item from each of the four legs of the table? For a great start to implementing a solid, 4-legged table of holistic self-care, it’s important to set boundaries. To do this, you need to know what’s really going on for you. I highly recommend a daily “inner” practice; check out my JTM (Journal, Tap, Meditate 15 minute daily routine)
4. Set Healthy Energetic Boundaries–Discern What Is You Versus Them
Where does YOUR energy start and end, and where does someone else’s begin? Can you separate your thoughts, feelings and beliefs from another’s? This merging of energies can be very confusing for intuitive women leaders who can be very empathic. And it drastically reduces their impact.
Are you empathic? Do you sense what others are feeling, thinking, and vibing? If so, your energy can get easily mingled with their energy. It’s important to be able to distinguish the two.
In order to help me know these energetic boundaries, I do Donna Eden’s Daily Energy Routine. It includes an exercise called the Zip UP, that allows me to protect my energies from outside influences. This isn’t keeping people away from our hearts as a form of rigid self-protection. Instead, it’s allowing us to stay true to ourselves and to remember who we are.
In fact, the routine in its entirety helps me to energetically ground and protect my own frequency or vibration. This is super important when it comes to keeping our energy clean so we can help others more and increase our impact as a leader.
Suggestion: I highly recommend Donna Eden’s daily energy routine. It is a holistic practice that honors all aspects of your beingness and allows you to flourish.
5. Review Your Impact Without Harsh Self-Judgment
We can’t deny broken relationships and depleted bank accounts. Our sick, worn-out bodies and down-in-the-dumps self-identity tell it all. We must look at our impact, and this takes courage.
When you decide to look at your results, remember to do this in a way that is not self-berating. Don’t judge yourself. View it as an excellent reporter would–objectively. You don’t control what others DO. You don’t control the events of your past, what people did to you, or what happened.
The only thing you control is how you choose to “digest” or interpret the hidden grief of your past and move forward.
In other words, you control how you view your life and what stories you tell about it. Are you victimized or empowered by your life?
When you heal from the hidden grief, you will begin to see yourself in a whole new light. You will be loyal to yourself even when others seem cruel, unfair and mean.
Suggestion: Be easy on yourself while looking at your results. The past is over. Today is a new day to do something different. Start small and ask for the willingness and ability to see how you might have been deceiving yourself.
6. Find A Healthy Balance Of Taking Responsibility
There is a delicate balance required when you look at your impact. Do you take over-responsibility for what others say or do? Intuitive women leaders are often empathic as discussed in 4 above and have this tendency. Or do you avoid taking personal responsibility for your part in relationships? We need to set healthy boundaries of what we will and won’t tolerate, from ourselves and others.
When You Set Healthy Boundaries For Yourself, Some People Won’t Like It. They Will Leave You
This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done anything wrong. It means you are now taking a standing and advocating for yourself. Note: if you’ve allowed yourself to be mistreated for a long time, anger may initially help you to set boundaries. Over time, you want to let the anger go and rely on your own self-respect to set the boundaries.
How do you know if you’re responsible for a negative impact, or if it’s “their” stuff? How will you know if YOU need to shift something to prevent further harm to others, or if they need to shift? You can do the following exercise to help you get clarity and resolution in a relationship that matters to you but feels estranged.
Is-It-Their-Stuff Exercise
- Did you do anything that you’re aware of to hurt this person?
- If you did or didn’t, have an honest conversation and ask them–“Are we good?”
- If they let you know that you hurt them, you can apologize for your part even if you didn’t intend to hurt them. You don’t have to “own” their accusation if it’s not your truth. But you can acknowledge it and help them to feel seen and understood.
- This may be enough to clear the air and heal the relationship so it can move forward.
- If not, realize that people have their own beliefs. They will make decisions about you that are outside of your control. In this case, you need to give yourself permission to move on without feeling ashamed of your impact.
- You can find the lesson and do your best to not repeat the negative impact in futute relationships.
Key Point Summary
1. You deserve to have your needs and wants met in a healthy way.
2. Stop workaholic tendencies. Allow yourself to slow down, quiet the mind and get present to what is really going on for you.
3. See yourself holistically (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) and begin to take self-care seriously. Begin a daily Journal, Tap, and Meditate practice.
4. Learn to discern your energy from others’ energy by doing Donna Eden’s Daily Energy Routine.
5. Review your impact or results without harsh self-judgment. And then course correct.
6. Begin taking responsibility where needed and clear the air on your important relationships. Where necessary, move forward without self-condemnment.
I am here to support you. I have various events coming in January 2023. Please mark your calendars. Registration pages will be coming soon:
1. January 10th (FREE monthly class): 3 Steps to Grief Relief: Guiding Intuitive Women Leaders to Turn Off Overwhelm and Turn on Impact–5pm to 6:30pm Central Time.
2. January 18th (FREE): Heal Your Heart Healing Circle (offered third Wednesdays at 6pm-7pm Central Time). I will be offering free healing codes to help relieve those suffering on the planet.
3. January 30th-February 4th (Heal Your Heart Online Retreat). 6pm daily M-F, noon on Sat to conclude.
If you need support, schedule a free Finding Your Way Through Grief and Overwhelm call with me.
Much Love,
Angie Monko,
Life Coach for Intuitive Women Leaders
