Emotional Expression Part 1: An Introduction

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a while. I’ve wanted to write some blogs for a long time about some of what I’ve learned about honest emotional expression, self-trust, and facade, based on experiences I’ve had with my family in the last couple years.

I am hoping that my experiences might help others with their seeking truth about their childhood, and learning about how their emotions became shut down from their childhood experiences. I also wanted to share about topics of self-trust and “intuition”, which is something I think many people struggle with in reflecting on what really happened in their childhood. And lastly, also I wanted to touch a bit on facade as well.

I decided to break this post into parts as it ended up being quite long for just one post. So instead it will be a series of posts, with this first post being the introduction.

The Divine Truth teachings, as well as personal feedback to me gifted from Jesus and Mary, have helped me to realize how shut down emotionally I’ve been in my life. At only age 17 I was diagnosed with severe depression and eating disorders, and for many years I struggled with fantasies of suicide. My life is so much better than it used to be, thanks to the emotion that I have felt so far and the truths I’ve learned.

Anyone who has had that level of depression and suicidal feelings knows how incredible it is just to get to a point where you feel well enough to care for yourself financially and perform basic tasks of day-to-day life. However, I have so much more to go in terms of opening up to honest emotional expression, especially in front of others, but even just with myself.

I’ve also always had a lot of self-doubt that comes up in certain areas, and particularly this has been true as I’ve tried to sort out the truth of my childhood and my parent’s emotions towards me. I’ve often dismissed my suspicions about their intentions and downplayed the trauma of my childhood.

Facade is also a big issue for me. I don’t like people to know I’m angry, and I don’t like to cry in front of them. I prefer people to feel I have things “together” and am not messy or out of control. Due to this my anger has often been passive aggressive and underhanded towards others, and I’ve downplayed and hidden my sadness. I often pretend I have different emotions than I actually do. There are many times I’m even just in facade with myself and convince myself that I don’t have emotions that I actually do have.

My current understanding of what honest emotional expression is (and this is just my definition based on my current understanding), is that it is when our real feelings in our soul, and the feelings that we display outwardly, match. This is what it means for it to be honest; there is no discrepancy between them. Also, it seems to me that the emotional expression part is really expressing the emotion like a small child does, where their voice and their body also express the emotion in an unbridled, full way.

For some backstory on my history with emotional expression:

I grew up in a stereotypical American Christian military household, and emotional expression was not allowed, particularly from me. My dad was the only one allowed to feel anger, and he had angry outbursts where he would insult, cut with sarcasm and pull-downs, and threaten punishments. He would get moody and mopey, and slam the occasional door or fist on the table. My mom was passive aggressive and underhanded, and most of her suppressed anger was taken out on me in the form of criticism, punishments and control. Nobody really cried except on the occasion of a tragedy, when a few tears might be allowed from the women.

I was supposed to be a poised, polite, and totally silent and obedient Christian girl, which I mostly succeeded at. I often describe myself in my childhood as having felt like a doll on the shelf in a corner, in a frilly dress with blushed cheeks, smiling but with dead eyes. I felt I was not supposed to have much more of a presence than an actual doll on a shelf. I was meant to look pretty but be silent. My opinions and personality weren’t wanted, and certainly my emotions were absolutely not welcomed. As a very young child I was often called “strong-willed” and “independent”, but not long after, when my parents successfully suppressed me, I began being praised by others outside the family for being “well-behaved” and “mature”, polite and quiet.

Growing up, when I would watch TV shows or movies where a child or teenager openly disagreed with a parent, got in a fight with a parent, or otherwise expressed their emotions, I would marvel. Sometimes the child would yell, run out of the room, slam the door to their bedroom, or cry and sob. I always gawked at these scenes because I absolutely could not imagine ever expressing myself like that, and indeed I never did, not even once.

With my dad, I have never showed anger in front of or at him, and rarely have I cried in front of him. I’ve never really discussed with or displayed fear with him either. I have always interacted with my dad in a way where I’ve been completely frozen and without personality or emotion. I now recognize this as terror.

With my mom, I’d also never showed anger in front of or at her. When I was a child we would have disagreements, but I was always punished for “sassing”. I can now see that what my mom called “talking back” was really just me saying some words of truth about the injustices. I wasn’t yelling, or calling names, or throwing anything, in fact I was relatively calm. But I was punished for speaking up at all, and so didn’t really display emotions with her either. Crying about specific issues external to the family (like a breakup) was ok, but she felt it should be brief and then be done.

A couple years ago, I realized that I hadn’t ever emotionally expressed myself with my parents. By this point I had consistently and quite bluntly told them them that I felt we had many issues in the family. I had told my dad about issues I felt existed via email and letters, and with my mom via emails and some in-person conversations. Because I had *technically* called out issues in our family, I was characterizing that in my mind as having really confronted my parents. But I realized that I had never actually expressed emotions in front of them.

What I mean is, I had said words, but I’d never allowed emotion to come through my body and my voice, and I’d never at all looked like a child expressing emotion. I never wanted to be messy or appear like I wasn’t “together”, and I wanted them to take me seriously, so I was always very controlled, calm, and monotone when I spoke with them. I didn’t want to seem childlike, I wanted to seem like a “respectable” adult who could win the argument of logic.

I was also afraid they would feel I was evil if I expressed anger, weak if I cried, pathetic if I was terrified. I also felt I simply wasn’t allowed to express in these ways. I didn’t even know why or what the consequence really would be, I just always had this sense that I was not allowed.

But I realized that “saying words” was not the same as emotional expression. Don’t get me wrong, just saying the words, even in the controlled, adult-like way that I did was so confronting for my parents that I’d had turbulent and intermittent relationships with them for many years and been attacked and blamed a great deal. But I didn’t have any idea what would happen if I emotionally expressed myself. However, I started feeling curious about why I was so afraid, and why I had never felt allowed. And I sensed this block to emotional expression was preventing me from accessing important deeper emotions, and from understanding the full truth about my childhood.

I thought, what if I did honestly emotionally express myself with my parents, which I’ve never ever done? What would have happened if I did as a kid? Why have I always felt this is simply not allowed?

So, a couple years ago I did some experiments with my parents, and also the Law of Attraction brought me some truth that really helped me as well. These next few blogs will be about what those experiments were and what I learned about emotional expression.

(For clarity, my parents have been divorced since I was 17 and have no relationship with each other, so my processes with each of them have been separate from each other.)

I do want to add a disclaimer and say that these blogs aren’t meant to be taken as instruction on what you should do with your parents. I’m not writing these blogs to tell anyone that they should confront their parents the way I did. I am not sure that I was loving all the time, or if it was the best/only way to arrive at the understandings that I did (maybe it was and I’m just worried, or maybe it wasn’t, I’m still working that out). The reason I’ll share the specific stories is to explain the bigger picture realizations that arose about emotional expression, that I hope might help others. But all the choices I made were my own ideas to experiment with, and shouldn’t be taken as a reflection of what Jesus and Mary recommend. I just do know that I’ve had a bit of growth and understanding from it about certain concepts that I want to share.

I do also have to give Jesus and Mary all the credit for all the growth I’ve had though, because I wouldn’t have even known I had an issue with emotional expression without Jesus and Mary and the Divine Truth teachings. Without them I would be completely lost and wouldn’t be aware that I had issues with facade or with self-doubt. I’d also be in way more delusion about my childhood than I am if it weren’t for them.

On that note, in case you’re new to this blog or haven’t watched much Divine Truth material about emotional expression, I would at this point like to recommend some Divine Truth videos that might help with understanding some of these concepts and phrases. They’re much better at explaining the concepts than I am and so I really recommend watching them:

Divine Truth videos about emotion

Divine Truth videos about facade

What has helped me, and what I’d recommend, is to reflect on what emotions you openly displayed in front of your parents as a child, if any. Not just the words you said (though that’s a part of it), but the full, unedited, unrestrained expression of emotion.

Did you express anger around them?

Cry in front of them?

Were you ever very emotionally messy?

Were you allowed the expression of some emotions but not others?

Was it different with one parent than the other, or with your other caregivers?

Did you ever notice a difference in your freedom to emotionally express compared with your friends’ families or portrayed on TV?

These are some of the questions that helped me realize something happened where I never felt allowed to emotionally express, and that there might be something important for me to explore.

Thanks and until the next post,

Courtney

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Photo 1 – Annie Spratt via Unsplash

Photo 2 – Xinyi Song via Unsplash

Photo 3 – Nsey Benajah via Unsplash

Some Recommended Resources

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to share some resources that have been helping me with recognizing more truth in my life and also feeling emotions.

1. First off, in case any of you aren’t aware of it, Eloisa, a director of the God’s Way Organization, has a fantastic YouTube channel with resources for parents and children as well as videos on other topics too! While I’m not a parent, I do have a much-younger sister and am wanting to learn how to be a good big sister.

And certainly, I was a child of a parent and so I find her parent and children videos really helpful from that angle too. And aside from parenting, I find that Elo’s discussions about principles of living God’s Way, and her own experiences, give me a ton to reflect on for my own life. Thank you Eloisa!

Link to Eloisa’s YouTube channel

2. Also, I wanted to share my friend Rebecca Johnstone’s music and poetry. Rebecca (I call her Bex) loves Divine Truth too and has created some incredibly moving music and poetry. I love her song My Heart Was Never Bulletproof. Few singers and songwriters are willing to really go there with mother-relationship based pain and heartbreak, and so I really appreciate and love this song that Bex has written, as well as her other songs and her poetry.

Link to Bex’ website of music and poetry

I consider Divine Truth to be the ultimate, most-helpful-ever resource out there and the only material in the world that has completely God’s Truth and is fully accurate. I always check everything I hear or read from other resources back with Divine Truth teachings.

That being said, I have found some other resources that have been helpful for getting into emotions and realize more truth about my childhood, my family and why I feel the way I do.

The resources below are not sourced from Divine Truth or God’s Way, and so will not contain full truth and they do have various errors in them. They contain material that is not God’s Truth and may lead to problems if followed. However I have found many of them to also have some really helpful insights, and to contain stories of others which have in turn helped me reflect on my own stuff.

3. A couple months ago I was searching the podcast world for material on emotional and covert incest. I happened across a podcast called The Place We Find Ourselves, hosted by a therapist named Adam Young.

It is categorized under Christianity, but is a therapy podcast that discusses trauma healing and injuries from childhood. Not all the episodes make Christian references, but some do and because it is Christian some of those mentions about Jesus and God are erroneous. So please keep that in mind.

But it is quite fearless in stating truth about what happens in families, and I feel that the host Adam is incredibly compassionate and kind. His guests are really open with their stories, and there are some things said about God that I feel are true and they are very moving and I really love listening to a therapy podcast that talks about God. I have gotten into lot of emotion with this podcast.

You can listen to the podcast below, or you can search “The Place We Find Ourselves” on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify.

Link to The Place We Find Ourselves

4. I first learned of the author Susan Forward from Jesus and Mary’s seminars where they mentioned her book Toxic Parents. Indeed, it is an awesome book and discusses many kinds of toxicity in families. Since then, I’ve also been exploring other books by her, and found them to be really helpful as well. Again, not all the info is true and not all the recommendations advisable, but there are great gems and truths. The three I’ve read/am reading and recommend are:

Toxic Parents

Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them

Mothers Who Can’t Love

5. I love music and find it really helpful for getting into emotions. If I understand correctly, there’s a lot of music that does get us sort of stuck in emotions, or is kind of validating an addiction, and so I’m sure some of the stuff I listen to is that way. Some of the songs though I think are pretty sincere and helpful.

I also find that “breakup” or romantic relationship heartache songs typically feel a lot more accurate to my relationship my parents than any others, so that’s the main way I listen to those!

Here’s a link to my “emotions songs” playlist on Spotify in case you’d like any ideas for songs. It’s a big mix of topics and genres.

xo

Courtney

Photos by Daniel Anthony and Akin Kaniker via Unsplash, and Kristina Paukshtite via Pexels

Facing American Country-Based Injuries: Part 2

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been back in the USA now for several months after nearly a year outside the country. Considering my country-based injuries were some of the biggest issues in love highlighted to me by Jesus and Mary when I was in Australia, I was curious to see how I’d feel coming back.

In the last blog that I wrote on the topic of country-based injuries in Americans (and to some extent also those who live in other rich countries), I shared some feedback and truth from Jesus about these injuries within myself and others in America, and some of my own reflections from that. You can view this post by clicking here if you haven’t seen it.

As a disclaimer, today’s post contains my recent thoughts and reflections on the topic, which I haven’t had the chance to discuss with Jesus and Mary, so they are only my opinions and I can’t say I’m totally accurate about them, or that J&M or God would agree that I am assessing things correctly.

 

Things I Noticed

The first thing I noticed upon being back after a year was, as Jesus has discussed before, the insane amount of choice available here. Even just landing in the Los Angeles airport from Brisbane, the airport snack shops indicated I was indeed back in America.

When I went on my first grocery run, just to a standard store chain store, there was no mistaking I was back. On this first shop in an American store in a year, I walked past an aisle and was struck by the sight of the the tortilla stock. Multiple brands with many different sizes and flavors overflowed the end cap display, and then spilled deep into the aisle as well. I stopped and tried to count the different individual tortilla options–the various flavors and brands. After passing about 25, I stopped. I mean I know Americans love Mexican food, but over 25 kinds of tortillas? The options and variety in terms of shopping–in person and online–for literally anything is truly unlike anywhere else. Prior in my life, that amount of options never would have caused me to even blink, and like most Americans, I’d been irked if my particular favorite was out of stock.

I was reminded of how easy everything is here. Every errand I had to run, every bank-related task, every dealing with any government body, everything single thing I needed to do to get back up and running after a year–it was all easy. Service in all industries is so emphasized in America, and everything is so cheap! As a person with a lot of demand for things to be free and cheap, I noticed how low pricing is on everything, even compared to the UK or Australia, where I had been for the last year.

It’s weird, when you start being aware of addictions that you previously didn’t realize you had. As I settled back into life in America, I could feel myself sinking back into the enjoyment of all the demands being met again. I internally rolled my eyes at myself as I discovered that yes, I do indeed have feelings that the way things are in America is how things should be. I bought my cheap gas for my car and and then went and picked out of those 25+ tortilla options and literally thought to myself, America is badass.

There have been many times I have now caught myself in my entitlement that I should get things, when I want, because I want, fast, cheap, and with little consideration for ethics and morals in any part of those choices. I can feel the demand in me that the USA government should do something about everything, and blaming them for anything going wrong or that is unloving about the country–because of course nothing wrong with this country or how it operates is in any way my personal fault…

I am finding so many examples of our entitlement as a country that I feel like at some point I might try to focus in on particular examples of what I’ve noticed in myself and others. But in this blog, I wanted to focus on a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, which is DENIAL, and how codependent addictions between people support that denial.

 

Denial & Facade

Another thing that struck me upon being back is how happy everyone seems. I know the emotional climate and overall mood can vary widely depending on where you are in the USA, but in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I live–and I imagine in many places throughout the country–people just overall appear pretty “happy”. Enthusiastic, optimistic, energetic, friendly.

I found myself thinking about what Jesus said to me about Americans having a facade of niceness that can cover many dark and evil emotions, including superiority, and how contrasted that truth is from the generally jubilant and contented mood I was observing. It is a pointed example of how well-developed our individual facades, as well as collective facades as Americans, can be, and what a shocking difference that can be to the truth of our emotions and our intentions. I thought, If we as Americans are violating God’s Laws in massive ways, and degrading our condition with our sins all the time, and hurting so many people in the world, what it is that is making us appear happy? Because clearly we are not living according to Divine Truth and Love.

I then remembered an FAQ clip from the DT FAQ channel that I’ll link at the end of the post that explains some principles that I was thinking of when reflecting on this. In this clip they share that if we are “happy” without being truly on the Divine Love Path, it is only because we are getting addictions met. And so, I feel like this disparity between the truths I received from Jesus about the real emotions of most Americans with the appearance of general contentedness, is because us Americans are getting our addictions met so epically, and so therefore we appear, and even believe within ourselves, to be happy. Additionally, we agree with each others’ facades about being nice people, and that makes us feel pretty good, too.

When I was in Australia and receiving personal feedback about my own country-based injuries and how I act them out, after I while I started wondering: Why, if these issues are so severe and so unloving, as well as being present in almost all Americans, hadn’t they really flagged up for me personally before? In other words, how had I never clocked them? There are indeed plenty of other Americans who would rightly call me entitled (I’ve since discovered that I may be even more entitled than many other Americans are), but how had no one ever sat me down and said, “Yo Courtney, these things you do are really, really off.” Why hadn’t the confrontation like that ever happened with anyone in America before?

Why, among my day to day interactions and friends and family, we don’t ever pull each other up on the entitlement? Why had nobody flagged it to me before, and I also hadn’t noticed it in others? Or if we do notice it in ourselves or others, we don’t seem to care that much?

I also wondered, if almost all Americans are demanding, entitled and selfish, why don’t we get pissed off at each other all the time? How is it that we are able to generally go about our lives without huge amounts of hostility towards each other? Well, first off, I know it’s not true we don’t have hostility towards each other, because of course we have a great deal of issues within the country from Americans towards other Americans. But what I mean is, with that level of demand and selfishness, why aren’t we in fights with our family and friends constantly over the issues of love? And as a country, why aren’t we in an outright civil war; a full country-based meltdown? And why can we maintain this somewhat law-abiding society, as well as still mostly believe America is king?

These ponderings made me think about the issues of codependent relationships between people. To share what I mean by that, I’d share an example from my relationship with Perry. For me personally, it’s helping to think of how things can play out between two people, and then see how that also can play out in a whole nation.

 

Example of Codependently Supporting Denial & Facade

In my relationship with Perry, the emotional injuries I am most concerned about are not the ones we have that are different and in conflict with each other, but rather, the ones that we agree on. In areas where our injuries or demands are different, where we do not agree on that demand or about that false belief, we will inevitably clash. This clashing will highlight that one or both of us is out of harmony with God’s Truth and Love on the matter. The conflict will happen quickly for things we don’t share injuries about, and that conflict will expose that there is an issue. This will then mean it will be hard to keep going down that track without realizing something needs to be looked at.

On the other hand, Perry and I have many emotional injuries that are the same as each other, and interestingly, many of them are the same emotional injuries I’m talking about in terms of country-based injuries. Perry and I are both demanding, entitled, selfish and self-focused. These, or any injuries that we both agree on, in my opinion, are far more dangerous. When we agree, we can easily support each other in entitled and selfish choices, never disagreeing with each other, and even not believing we are being entitled or selfish at all. We can reassure ourselves and each other that there is no problem in that area.

I once asked Jesus and Mary why it would be, that Perry and may often seem to get along with each other, if we are both demanding and selfish people, and Jesus and Mary explained to me that instead of projecting our demands at each other (which would eventually create conflict and pain), we may externalize our demands outside the relationship onto other people, and onto systems. In this way, our individual demands are being fulfilled, but maybe not by the other, because they don’t need to be. We are getting them from somewhere else. We can then exist in a space where don’t exhaust each other, and things may appear peaceful and harmonious in the relationship.

It’s like, if I have a demand at the world to get a popsicle every day, and Perry won’t give one to me but I am easily able to find someone else in the world to give me one every day, I have no need to necessarily get angry at Perry for not giving me one, even though I do have the demand for it from someone–anyone. And if Perry also feels he should get a popsicle every day too, and also finds random people to get it from and thinks that’s totally reasonable, we’re going to end up being demanding popsicle fiends who take from everyone else, but don’t fight with each other.

We can then easily live in the delusion that everything is alright and that we are very reasonable and kind people, which is exactly the facade Perry and I have both had.

I have learned that a lot of the time, I tolerate and put up with issues in others because I also want them to put up with that exact same thing in me. It is a barter: you overlook my shit, and I’ll overlook yours.

I also realized in this process that the same thing happened within my family in my childhood. My parents also had the country-based injuries, some of which I outlined in a bit more detail in my previous post. In my childhood, I can see that we were constantly reinforcing within the family that our family, and our country, is awesome, meanwhile there was no consideration about others in the world. In the few experiments I’ve done with bringing up these topics with my family and some friends, I have often discovered immediate resistance and anger that is exactly like the kind I have had myself in receiving feedback about country-based demands: “Who, me? I’m not like that! No way. You’ve got me all wrong. I’m not that bad.”

Sometimes I think of the danger of those agreement injuries in Perry and I, and metaphorically, it feels to me like walking down a road, hand in hand, patting ourselves and each other on the backs, saying, “Aren’t you lovely! Aren’t I great person! Aren’t we nice people!” Meanwhile we are being completely oblivious to the damage we are creating as we bulldoze the world with our entitlement, and end up at our destination only to realize this path we’ve been walking all along has been straight into the hells. But we’ve been too busy getting and eating our popsicles and congratulating ourselves and each other on how nice and awesome we are, that we never looked up from our own navel-gazing long enough to even realize the degradation that was happening.

 

America Collectively

What I shared about Perry and I is also what I feel is at play within America as a collective. We think everything is good, meanwhile we are degrading ourselves collectively into the hells while reassuring ourselves and each other that we are not that bad. We want to believe our own facade, we want to believe each other’s facades, we want to believe the collective American facade.

We can appear to have a somewhat functional and happy society, because it is not other Americans who are suffering from our demands, it is the rest of the world that we are taking from. We are externalizing our demands and entitlement outside the country onto other countries. This then allows us to collectively have a facade that we are nice, and a false sense at times that we are happy. We also then don’t turn on each other within America as readily as we probably would if the rest of the world weren’t being forced by us to continue to give us everything we want.

There are ways I know that I don’t even want to be aware of what I do in my country-based injuries, so this blog is not to suggest that I am out of denial myself. I also cannot yet share about sincerely desiring to change this, or how you actually change it, as I am not at that stage yet either. However, I feel like I’m in a bit less denial about it than I was a year ago, and definitely less than I was when I was growing up in my family. So I thought the topic of denial, and how we as Americans within our families, marriages and with our friends and the collective, can easily support one another in that denial and facade, is an interesting thing to reflect on.

My current experiment is just to challenge myself to be more honest about the ways I am still in denial and facade about these emotions and motivations in myself, my family and in the USA. And, the truth about how much I want the addictions more than love, and where my desires are truly oriented towards. I am a person who loves to try to skip ahead to emotions farther down the line, usually while still being in facade, rather than continue to deconstruct the denial and facade layer. And so I hope that this focus will begin to start moving things in terms of the country-based injuries.

I’ll keep sharing periodically on these experiments, and for any other Americans I’d love to hear what you are going through or looking at in the same areas for yourselves.

 

Resources

In the last blog post I linked several DT videos where Jesus and Mary have talked about American country-based injuries, but I want to link some other videos that I was watching while thinking about these topics and that I really like.

By the way, if any of you are watching DT vids and find material embedded in longer videos that talks specifically about American or “first-world” country injuries, I would love to know about them so I can watch myself and post them in this series–you can email me on the contact page on this site with those if you’d like.

“Why do we feel happy on the ‘Natural Love’ path & sad when following ‘The Way’?” This video was one that I was thinking of regarding why Americans can seem happy and enthusiastic if we are actually sinning so much and not honoring God’s Laws, Love or Truth.

Divine Truth videos about denial

Divine Truth videos about facade

Also, I found a book called The Entitlement Cure by Dr. John Townsend, and both Perry and I are finding it really helpful–I recommend it.

Love,

Courtney

 

photo credits: Matt Howard, Luke Stackpoole, freestocks.org, img.ly, Nick Dunlap

March Update: Volunteer Selection Project, Other Activities, Learning God’s Way

Hi All,

I can’t believe I’ve already been back in Australia for over two weeks!

My time has been mostly involved in the Volunteer Selection Project, other tasks I’m learning and being trained in to help with, and a bit of time maintaining my own business too.

With the Volunteer Selection Project, initially I thought to do regular recaps of what we’ve been doing, but Eloisa has been posting amazing ones on the God’s Way blog already that describe the ins and outs of our activities. So, rather than replicate her already awesome blogs, I’ll link to them periodically when I do an update, and here on my blog, I’m interested in sharing what I’m personally learning about God’s Way of doing things and the necessary attitudes required to be of service to gift, and learning about myself.

So thus far, here are the God’s Way Blogs on this round of the VSP so far:

God’s Way Blog Weeks 1 & 2 VSP Update

God’s Way Blog Week 3 VSP Update

Early morning cleaning supplies set up for a day cleaning a home

That being said…

A Short “What I’ve Been Up To” Summary:

The Volunteer Selection Project runs 1-2 days per week, and I’m both a participant and also observing and learning behind-the-scenes operations in the long-term desire of mine to start a Learning Centre somewhere in the world.

I typically arrive an hour before the program begins each day that we have it to help set up, and stay a couple hours after it finishes to do a bit of clean up (though we do nearly all of that as part of the program itself) and to observe Eloisa and Tristan, the facilitators, debrief, discuss the day, backup data, update their extensive documentation of various kinds and do other kinds of reflection and computer work related to the VSP. I’m learning so much from this and am so grateful to be able to observe!

In the behind the scenes component, I’ve also had the privilege to sit in and listen to some of the backend meetings of various kinds which has been fascinating, inspiring and is giving me such a better idea of what it would be like to do this myself. So again, this opportunity is priceless and I am so grateful.

There is also homework each week in documenting everything we do (so far this has been cleaning indoor and outdoor spaces, and weeding), and we have upcoming assignments which will involve speaking presentations to the group, individual and group research projects, and more.

Additionally, I’m starting to learn and train in a few things to be able to help with projects here. I’m just at the very beginning of that but hope to begin learning “markers” and tagging for studio recordings and Assistance Groups (which you can read about on Lena’s blog here if you’re unfamiliar with what I mean by “markers”), and dealing with FAQ questions that are sent into the office, an expansion on the project I did last year logging  questions (which ended up being 1000+!) that were written by participants during the 3.1 and 3.2 Assistance Groups.

Getting set up before a day of recording in the studio

And partly through the VSP and through other avenues, I’m learning how to help out with cleaning, environmental projects and other endeavors.

With any leftover time, I tend to my business as a nutritionist, catch up with Perry and continue to discuss our stuff (though trying to work through soulmate stuff from afar is pretty different!), and doing a little cross training fitness which I enjoy and makes me feel more capable and safe to do all the physical, manual work that is done here. It’s been busy!

What I’m Learning Emotionally

Emotionally, I’ve been all over the place! I feel so challenged and confronted and uncomfortable a lot of the time, but also invigorated and inspired at other times. In the course of one day I often feel like I experience 20 or 30 different emotions, and when I do feel really challenged and confronted, I feel like it’s about 20 different topics or issues. But it seems it’s best to let myself feel exactly what comes up as soon as it comes up, not delay it if possible, and not analyze things intellectually too much.

I notice that if I am not soft to the fears that are always coming up, then I go about everything with anxiety, start having insomnia, difficulty making decisions, and get rather obsessed with small worries while neglecting the big issues. I get really in my head, tense and pressure builds in me in an unhealthy way and I just get more and more rigid in my body and emotions. So I am trying to focus on my fear in a more gentle way and let myself cry about how overwhelmed I often feel. So far it’s seemed if I can just let myself feel how overwhelmed and disoriented and scared I feel–just process emotionally what’s right in front of me–then I come out of it feeling more capable, and optimistic, and my desire and excitement returns. And it seems I have to go through these cycles every few days.

There is masses to learn to be able to be of help, and I’m realizing how important it is to deal with all my blocks about learning and education, how it feels to not understand, not know, not be good at things yet. I have to remind myself to be patient, that I am not going to be perfect at everything tomorrow or next week, and to just keep trucking along, plodding and learning and processing my emotions along the way, and at some point I will get it and I’ll become more skilled.

In the V.S.P and in general, fear is predictably one of my biggest problems: fear of confrontation and attack, fear of holding to what I feel is the most loving way to do a thing even if it means others disagree, fear of making mistakes and getting things wrong, fear of being totally honest. These issues affect things daily in my life, and probably hourly and by the minute if I were to really see them for what they are. However, I am so grateful for so many opportunities to see when and how I live in and act in my fear, and most of all I am finding it is really important for me to see how it impacts others when I justify, live in and act in fear.

Honest Communication

We are learning in the VSP about what the facilitators are calling “honest communication”. From one of Eloisa’s God’s Way blog posts, she explained it like this:

Participants are encouraged to be themselves and to honestly communicate with each other. This means that when a conflict or feeling comes up in one or more of the participants they are encouraged to truthfully feel what they feel and speak up about it. Participants are encouraged to feel how they feel, say what they thing in a self-responsible manner (not blaming others for how they feel).

Just saying what I really feel is so challenging for me! It has been sad for me to realize that all my life, my communication with everyone has been the exact opposite of this. I’ve always misrepresented my feelings, hidden what I really feel and think, make out to others that I’m ok, lie if it means I can avoid a confrontation, or avoid attack and disapproval, and been happy to put on whatever opinion or face any particular person wanted me to be. And yet, as many of us in the VSP are finding, honest communication rapidly exposes emotions and is a very fast way to resolve issues.

VSP “mother of millions” plant weeding

A Comparison

At the moment, the main topics on my heart are this:

I am realizing that the people here who have and are teaching me, and who love me–Jesus, Mary, the VSP facilitators Tris and Elo, and many other friends I have here–encourage me to act the exact opposite of how my parents and family, and most people previously in my whole life, wanted me to act. This is a really emotional realization for me and I have a ton more to feel about with regards to it.

Let me be more specific in some comparisons below. When I say “here” I’m referencing the most loving of people here, not necessarily everyone in the local area or who are participants of the VSP.

♡ Here, I am encouraged to be honest about what I really feel. Being honest without blaming or pushing my emotions on another is considered very good. I am never attacked or rejected for being honest.

In my childhood, if I was honest about what I really felt, I was always rejected and punished, even if I wasn’t blaming or unloving with it. Honest communication was actively discouraged and punished.

♡ Here, I am encouraged to be myself, and am taught about how being myself and sharing myself is loving to others, and not doing so is unloving. The real me is appreciated and desired.

In my childhood, I was attacked for being myself, and taught that being myself and sharing myself was unloving to others. The real me was considered a bother and a nuisance.

♡ Here I am taught that self-depreciation is an addiction and an issue of love that needs to be resolved.

In my childhood, I was taught that self-depreciation was good and right, and that I was not doing it enough, and should do it more.

♡ Here, enthusiasm and passion are encouraged and a good volunteer would have them. They are seen as positive things.

In my childhood, my enthusiasm and passion was an indicator to others it was time to squash, discourage and oppress me. No one wanted me to feel passionate or enthusiastic.

♡ Here, I am encouraged to stand up (in a loving way) to people who are being unloving to myself or others. When I don’t say something, this is a problem.

In my childhood, saying something to those treating myself or others badly was punished and silence was praised.

♡ Here, upholding a space of love and truth is of primary importance.

In my childhood, there was absolutely no value placed on an environment of love and truth; the opposite was created.

♡ Here, everyone wants to build me up and help me have more worth, to see the real reasons why I have low worth. Nobody pulls me down.

In my childhood, my worth was torn down. Nobody wants me to see why I have low worth or heal this.

♡ Here, developing loving leadership qualities, being bold, brave, and taking initiative is encouraged.

In my childhood, any leadership, boldness, bravery or initiative I displayed was treated as bad and squashed.

♡ Here, fear is never justified. No amount of it is an excuse to be unloving, and it is an urgent issue of love to be resolved.

In my childhood, I was taught that fear is always justified. Fear was a completely valid excuse for unloving choices. Living in fear was never considered an issue of love.

… I could go on! When I say how certain things were in my upbringing (and still are the same in my family), of course I don’t mean I was actually verbally told to self depreciate etc., but essentially I am realizing, these are indeed the things I was taught, even if facades and lies were used to gloss over what was really happening.

I think a big reason I feel most of the time confused and disoriented and upside-down, is because this environment feels like the polar opposite of how I was treated in my childhood, how my family still feels towards me, and how most other people in my life previously have felt was the right way for me to be, and the polar opposite attitude towards various emotions.

I am constantly having soul double takes of how strange it feels that what’s being encouraged of me here could not be more polar opposite of what has been encouraged by others in me before, and of course which I have come to also think is right myself and continue to choose to act in myself.

Essentially, God’s Truth and God’s Way and my way and my family’s way could not be more different.

So my experiment for now is going to be to try to trust that God’s Way of doing things is better, to trust Jesus and Mary and others in what they are encouraging me in, experiment in acting in those ways even though it feels so foreign and wrong. Acting in the more loving way sometimes feels as counterintuitive and strange as it has felt driving on the other side of the road!

So I think I need to just experiment with it all, take the risks and make decisions and speak up, and let emotions come up in the process of that. Action really can yield so much emotion. It also seems if I can deal with how I was treated and what I was directly taught that created such wrong info on how to love and how to live God’s Way, that will be a good way to clear up blocks too. So anyway, that’s my current train of thought/feeling. I’ll let you know how the experiments go and where I’m on track or not in them!

Till next time,

Courtney