Feel It. Heal It. Let It Go.: Taking Power Back From Your Pain

By Nicole Musap

Self-defeating behavior is something that many people struggle with, but it’s not always clear where the behavior stems from.   These self-imposed limitations are toxins, preventing us from achieving the love, success and happiness we deserve in our lives. 

Author Nicole Musap knows this first-hand

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicole Musap
• Release date: Oct 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781640857544

Book preview

NICOLE MUSAP

Feel It. Heal It. Let It Go. © 2019 by Nicole Musap.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Published by Author Academy Elite PO Box 43, Powell, OH 43035

www.AuthorAcademyElite.com

All rights reserved. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the author.

Identifiers:

LCCN: 2019908936

ISBN: 978-1-64085-752-0 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64085-753-7 (hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-64085-754-4 (ebook)

Available in paperback, hardback, e-book, and audiobook

Photography by Abby Murphy Photo. Cover design by Cristi Rasteiu.

Author’s Note

First and foremost, thank you for deciding to come along on this journey with me through my words. My mission is to share with you a period of time in my life that has shaped who I am today, and allow it to empower your own personal journey of health and healing. This book contains stories about learning to find my confidence, positivity and health after growing up living with an addict. My mission for writing this book is simple. To help and empower others to let go of what no longer serves them in order to live a happier, healthier life. All of the events in this book are based on actual events. All of the stories you will read, how they affected me and how they made me feel are all true. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to tell my story in this way, so thank you again for showing up and letting me into your world for awhile.

Acknowledgements

To the first man in my life, thank you Dad. Thank you for always doing the best you could with what life threw at you, and for being a role model of strength, wisdom and resilience for your family.

To the man who fills up my soul, my dear husband Nick. Thank you for always loving me exactly the way that I am and for trusting in my wild and crazy dreams.

Thank you to my three beautiful children. This book is for you, too, when you are all old enough to read it. I love all of you with every single beat of my heart.

And thank you to my mom, for giving me life and bringing me into this world. Thank you for the good memories that I will always cherish.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Feel It

Chapter 1: The Sticky Memories

Chapter 2: Pain and Your Brain

Chapter 3: Don’t Hold Your Breath

Chapter 4: Being Inconvenient

Chapter 5: Your Inner Guide

Heal It

Chapter 6: You’re Not Damaged

Chapter 7: Time Is Tricky

Chapter 8: Your Spiritual Resistance

Chapter 9: The Cover-ups

Chapter 10: Cracking Your Chakras

Let It Go

Chapter 11: Healing Means Letting Go

Chapter 12: Creating Your Own Blueprint

Chapter 13: The Facade of Failure

Chapter 14: Toxins, Toxins, Everywhere

Chapter 15: Ditching Unhealthy Habits

Chapter 16: Freedom of Forgiveness

Chapter 17: The Puzzle of Seeking Approval

Chapter 18: Inhale Gratitude, Exhale Fear

Chapter 19: The Final Release

Endnotes

Introduction

We are often made to believe that holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. But when it comes to our past, it takes much more strength to actually let it go. We find ourselves clinging on to those hurtful experiences and continuously making judgments and forming expectations about them.

I was sitting on a park bench one day after a visit to my mother went awry. The few tense moments I was there included yelling, arguing and catching my mom by the arm just in time to stop her from drunkenly stumbling down her concrete front steps. I remember looking right into her eyes that day before I left. They illuminated like fireballs and bright green, brown and hazel specks seemed to burn fiercely through her irises. I never saw her eyes look like that before. I bolted out of the chaos as fast as I could, drove to a nearby park, put my head in my hands and let the tears dump down my cheeks. Through the tears, there was a voice that came through so strongly to me. You are going to help people through this one day the voice said. It confused me, as I felt so helpless in that moment. But as time went on and I got older, that distinct voice I heard that day spoke my truth. My passion. I began to notice that my story wasn’t uncommon. Hundreds of people struggled through difficult experiences, just like I had, and I wanted to show up for them and guide them through the healing process that I worked so hard on. As I began creating healing workshops and working with women, I quickly realized that our stories didn’t have to be an exact match for me to empathize with their pain. Whether the stories involved addiction, physical abuse, domestic abuse, neglect, abandonment, chronic illness or just one isolated traumatic experience...our foundations remained the same. Those experiences often made us feel damaged, unloveable, crazy, emotional and that we just weren’t good enough in one way or another.

My approach is likely not the typical approach of a counselor or a coach. I’m not much of a hugger or an everything will be okay’er. I’m not like Mary Poppins, a magical and loving woman who descends from the clouds to help children and sing beautiful songs with a bird perched upon her finger. I’m a little rougher around the edges, if you will. I’m more like the Grinch, with a prominent hardened look and a very direct personality...but my heart grows three sizes in one day, and I just can’t help but make sure all the Whos in Whoville get their Christmas presents.

My approach is to tell you not what you may want to hear, but what you need to hear...in the most fostering, non-judgmental and supportive way possible. I have realized through my workshops that people don’t always need hugs and fake promises. They just need to release the emotions, and most importantly, they just need to be heard.

My hardened look may be a fossil of my rough past, but my growing heart has the sole purpose to help people who are stuck like I was for many years. Through my work, I have noticed a recurring theme. People really have a difficult time talking about and effectively processing their feelings. Somewhere along the way in this life, we have been programmed to think that crying isn’t okay and that telling people how we feel would cause controversy instead of conversation. So here I will be, creating a safe space for you to get to the root cause of your emotional blocks. I will be asking the tough questions. I will be allowing you to speak from within your soul, and I will never judge you for what might surface. I will be listening to every word that you deeply need to express. This process is enlightening, awakening and beautiful. It’s what I live for.

Most people have avoided the pain of their past for decades. We have avoided it in our minds, but it is actually very present in how we think about ourselves and how we live our lives. It can control us even when we don’t know that it is. And I am here to help you face your pain head-on, and take power back from it.

The first phase: you have to feel the emotions. You won’t truly be able to evolve into the kick-ass, happy person you deserve to be if you keep avoiding the emotions associated with your past. Take it from me, I was a master at avoiding all emotions to the point where I became numb. It doesn’t work.

The second phase: you have to heal from the experiences on a deep level. From within. If there was a magic wand for this, I’d touch it upon your shoulder right now with some sparkly glitter and declare you healed. Unfortunately, there is no magic wand. But there are real, concrete ways to dig deep and finally release those emotions from your body and your brain.

The final phase: you let it all go. Often without realizing it, we grip tightly to those past experiences and allow them to dictate how we think, what we do and who we become. This is the part where we intentionally release the negative thought patterns, the self-limiting beliefs and the trapped emotions so we can finally move on and enjoy a shifted, new perspective on our lives and ourselves.

Envision yourself standing at the beginning of a vast bridge that appears as high as the sky and as long as the ocean. You are holding suitcases filled with those negative experiences. Those bags are so dense and heavy, almost as if they have been filled with concrete bricks. You have countless bags hanging on each arm, placing immense pressure on every fiber of your body. At the end of the bridge, a cargo of rolling carts is waiting. Those carts are the final destination for your baggage. Sweat is dripping off your brow as you are figuring out how you are going to make it from point A to point B, your final destination.

Here’s where you pick up the map and realize that there is no shortcut to the end. You can’t fly over the bridge. You can’t swim through the treacherous waters beneath. You only have one option. You must walk, step by step, across it.

Those heavy, trapped emotions you have been carrying have gotten really comfortable weighing down your subconscious mind. You’ve likely tried the shortcuts to a happier and healthier life, but they all lead you to dead-ends.

I have tried all the short-cuts, too, while trying to recover from a traumatic childhood. I was a small child dealing with big problems at home. When I was younger, I would wonder innocent and naive questions like, Why is Mommy acting weird? As I got older and the naivety wore off, I started to realize that that weirdness was addiction and mental illness.

I carried the emotional burden of keeping my home life a secret from the world. My family members were master secret keepers. It was important to my parents that no one knew about the dysfunction we were dealing with behind those walls of our home. On the outside, we were a happy, beautiful family of four in a middle-class home living an uncomplicated life. However, behind the curtains, my family played out scenes that are still burned into my head: like my mother’s eyes rolling into the back of her head while sitting in the kitchen chair. Her mouth stuffed with food she had binged on after starving herself for days. The corded telephone still hanging over her shoulder and the incessant, loud dial tone of someone who hung up blaring through the speaker.

I wasn’t given any tools to deal with these experiences as a child, so the painful emotions they caused remained trapped inside me. These emotional blocks manifested into physical and mental health issues for me, even at a young age. Physically, I dealt with mystery symptoms like daily chest pains and swollen fingers and hands. Every medical test came up inconclusive. Mentally, I would be a prisoner to depression and anxiety for many, many years.

One Christmas morning, I received a pink pleather Barbie diary with a brass locket in addition to the other 150 presents I was flooded with each year. My parents often used material items to fill the void of our family’s emotional gaps. There was nothing I wanted that I didn’t get. When I opened that diary for the first time, the blank pages mesmerized me. There was so much bright, white space, and those pages were just anxiously waiting for my thoughts to be spilled out all over them. Finally, I found an outlet that wouldn’t judge me: blank paper. I started writing and writing, every single day. I would write stories that my parents would find and ask me which song they were from. They weren’t from any song. They were from my life.

Most days, I scribbled with deep fury when I was mad at my mom. I asked that blank paper the tough questions. I would ask it, why can’t an 11-year-old get a driver’s license? when I was scared to death to drive with my drunk mom one more time. I asked that paper even tougher questions, like why does my mom love smoking and drinking more than she loves me? I vented to that blank paper, I hate my mom! on the nights where she would drunkenly embarrass me in front of my friends. It was such a sweet release for me. I quickly realized the emotional power this practice had, and I continued to fill up page after page with the outpouring of my thoughts and emotions that were otherwise dormant within the confines of my brain.

With all of the technology today, people don’t physically put a pencil to paper much, anymore, and yet this simple now dying practice is at the core of the methods that can create a breakthrough to the healing process. Punching those keys on your keyboard is great for work projects and texting those thoughts out on your phone is great for quick notes. But there is a unique connection between the mind and body that happens when your hands are navigating a pencil over a piece of paper. Let’s call it a connection to the self.

When we begin to establish that connection to the self, we begin a physical rewiring process in our brains. The core of our struggles then surface, and we tend to have that aha moment where we say to ourselves,