Conscious Liberation

By Misty Liebisch

Liberation is the freedom from the limits and thoughts on our behavior and the freedom and autonomy to remove the shackles left on our minds from the past. Conscious Liberation: A Method for Personal Transformation and a Pathway to Healing is a method that explores the concept of how negative life experiences that cause disruptions in our subconscious mind, leave us with a lasting imprint that we are often not aware of. You may feel unfilled, overwhelmed, unworthy, or sad for no apparent reason. You may have trouble with relationships, struggle with self-worth, or difficulty with emotions or self-regulation.  You have tried therapy, but it didn't last long. Now you feel stuck; wondering if you will ever feel whole.

 

This book guides readers on a journey of self-discovery and healing through personal anecdotes, information, restorative exercises, and practical advice. By accessing and addressing the needs of our inner selves and the memories that shape it, we can learn to release the past, feel healthy, whole, and fulfilled and lead a more gratifying life. This book is an essential tool for anyone looking to understand and heal the emotional wounds of their past and uncover the hidden influences of their mind all on their own.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Misty Liebisch
• Release date: Jan 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215333235

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Emotional disruptions happen to a person who has experienced or is experiencing a negative life experience to any degree and who was in a state of dysregulation too soon, too much for too long, or not enough for too long. Disruption occurs when a state of balance is interrupted and replaced with a new state. This is a moment when a threshold is crossed, and an imprint has occurred in our minds and most of us have experienced it on some level or another in our lifetime. However, some of us are not aware, or the negative life experiences were so severe they caused our minds to store them away in our subconscious and we have yet to recover from them. Yet, we are affected by these negative life experiences and disruptions in some way or another.

If you are anything like me, this information seems frightening. But what if I told you that you oversaw your own mind? What if I gave you the knowledge and tools to regulate your emotions and heal all on your own? So that you could learn to create support, safety, and connection for yourself? You would know how to look within your thoughts, experiences, and emotions so that you could interrupt them and change what you have learned to survive up until this point to a version you feel more at peace with. My purpose for this book is to communicate to you that our habitual responses can be interrupted, and new patterns can be created. Teaching yourself to safely listen to your mind and your body’s automatic responses and shifting to safety and connection within yourself is possible. Now I know you are wondering if it is possible why isn’t everyone doing it? Well, my answer is simple. This process is not easy, and a lot of people are not willing to put in the effort because it is hard. However, something I have learned over time, and that I will teach you, is that gradual change leads to transformational change over time. These small moments and victories build the foundation for your physiological, intellectual, spiritual, social, mental, and emotional well-being.

You see, these disruptions we experience create an imprint on our minds and bodies where we shift from connection to protection; we do this automatically, and it can happen unconsciously or intentionally. Since the shift happens at the exact moment of disruption, instinctively, it is easy to change from connection to protection without much effort. However, shifting back to a regulated state is not as easy. In fact, some of us live on the autopilot of protection for years and do not even know it. It becomes the new normal. But inside, something feels off; we are tired, we are in pain, we have trouble connecting, and we are anxious, among other things. These disruptions show up in our relationships, our parenting, our emotions, and even our bodies. Even more shocking is that our ability to respond to and recover from these disruptions is a marker of well-being-and this depends on our actions and ability to recognize our automatic responses.

Liberation

For this book, liberation is the freedom from the limits and thoughts on our behavior and the freedom and autonomy to remove the shackles left on our minds from the past. Our bodies and minds react to situations presently and in the past without our awareness through neuroception, which is an autonomic response. Neuroception is our detection of people, memories, and emotions without our awareness, and it is how our body interfaces with the world (Porges, 2003). When we work below the level of awareness through our subconscious, the autonomic nervous system listens to the body and automatically reacts to our environment. This is how triggers of smells, emotions, people, events, and certain memories can affect us and we are not truly aware of it, or we are aware of it but do not understand why or how. To reshape this automatic response, we first need to make the implicit, or subconscious, experience explicit, by bringing it into our cognizant mind; then move this observation into our conscious awareness and add context to it through sensitivity. Lastly, we need to experience it and make peace with it. This book is to show you how to bring those buried, automatic disruptions and their responses to the forefront of your conscious mind so that you can heal and then move forward to create new, healthier responses. We will not be truly healed until we uproot these unconscious thoughts and behaviors. So, I invite you to allow me to be your thought partner and walk together on this journey through personal transformation. Allow me to demonstrate how to unlock the tools that have always been inside you to facilitate healing.

My Story

I was seven years old, and it was a cold night in the middle of winter in Minnesota. I was always terrified to sleep alone in my room. I'm not sure why or when it started, but I remember waking up in a sweat every night since I was five years old. My fear was always the same, that something or someone under my bed was going to grab me and hurt me.

Typically, I would get up and go to my parent’s room where I would slip into the smallest space on my father’s side of the bed, who I could usually find sleeping peacefully on his side. However, for some reason, on this night, instead of cozying up to my father, I decided I would take the opportunity and watch TV, something I was rarely allowed to do. I remember tiptoeing past my parents’ room not even fifty feet away and sitting in the middle of the living room floor and turning on the TV. I will never forget; it was Oprah Winfrey that came on and my eyes were glued to the television. Digesting every detail and being so excited, to partake in such adult content which my parents never allowed me to do. Most of all, I recall being very mindful not to wake them up.

At some point during this time, a family friend who was in his sixties came into the living room. He commented on me being a big girl up late alone and watching TV. He took a moment to comment on how my pajama dress was seen through and how unfair it was that I was teasing him. I did not know what that meant at the time and responding confused, I apologized as I thought it must have been something I had done wrong. Slowly and without warning, and out of nowhere, he sat behind me on the floor with his legs wrapped around my back. There, he lifted my pajama dress, and as I sat there with my legs crossed, he molested me. I could feel his genitals against my back, feeling nauseous and scared.

I recall so vividly looking over into the area where my parents slept, knowing if I screamed or made any sound, they would come running, but I was frozen, so I just sat there and hoped it would be over soon. Then he got up and went back to where he was sleeping, as though nothing was out of the ordinary, and I just remained in the middle of the floor. I must have stared at my parents’ bedroom door for what seemed like hours, wanting to run in there and share what had just happened, wanting them to help me, but I didn’t because, at that time, I did not want to wake them up and I didn’t want them to know their friend did that, and most of all, I did not want my father to go to jail for killing someone. Those thoughts haunted me for a while, and they prevented me from ever saying anything to anyone until I was well into my twenties. I went to bed that night again, and I created a space in my mind where I left the experience there. This moment in my life was one of many disruptions.

While I would love to say this was the first and last time anyone ever assaulted me in this way, that would not be truthful. I would experience similar life events like this after. Rape when I was in my teens, and domestic violence as an adult. The one thing that stood out to me in my liberation journey was my response. Every time, I would blame myself, then just wake up the next day and go on with my life like everything was fine. I would compartmentalize what happened in my subconscious as a means of survival; my thought process was, if I just pushed it aside, it would not get the best of me. Putting others’ needs before mine was also common practice in these events. It did not matter if I was upset, broken, bruised, and/or scared. I always did what I thought would be beneficial for the next person in the situation with me; even if they were the ones who hurt me.

Why… Why did I take on this enormous responsibility? I discovered the answers to those questions later in my own liberation. What I