For a long time in my life I have been on a storyline. A storyline that started early. During my birth, the umbilical cord was around my neck, which prevented blood from flowing through the blood vessels, caused me breathing problems and it took a long time before I made my first sound.
As a small baby of two weeks old, I was unable to drink from my mother or take in any other food. I became malnourished and was hospitalized for a few weeks, separating me from my mother and father. They were not allowed to visit me. I have no active memory of this event.
When I was five years old, my brother died when he was twenty months old. His death has scarred my parental family. The only memory I have of this experience is my father crying at the front door of the neighbor's house where I was playing and my little brother in a glass coffin. I was allowed to give him a kiss as farewell in my father's arms.
My parents did not have an easy marriage. They could not find each other in the pain after the death of their child and the sadness that had already arisen in their own lives. Adultery was a common thread through their marriage.
After the death of my brother, my mother fell into a depression and spent a lot of time in bed, banging her head. My mother was overprotective, so I was extremely protected and was not allowed to hurt my own knees. My father lost himself in his work.
When I was twelve years old, our dog, Bubbles, died from being poisoned with strychnine by someone who didn't like dogs. The only memory I have is of Bubbles, very sick, lying on the floor in the garage.
When I was thirteen years old, I developed an eating disorder, bulimia nervosa. An illness that came to determine my life and as a result of which I was removed from home at the age of sixteen on the advice of a psychiatrist where I was being treated. I was not allowed to have contact with my parents and sister for a year. My sister was born a year after my brother's death. The illness caused me to behave in an unruly and bad manner. Behavior that hurt people, that was not understood and for which I was condemned.
Due to the eating disorder and out-of-home placement, I became increasingly isolated and developed a social anxiety disorder. I didn't know and had never learned to really connect with people, exclusion was often the result.
I have few memories of my youth and adolescence.
The eating disorder resulted in me developing a certain appearance that I became dependent on. My posture was always noticed by those around me, in a positive or negative way.
Eventually I outgrew the eating disorder and started numbing myself with alcohol. In this way I could engage socially in the world, I dared to talk and 'show' myself. The result was that I was frequently taken advantage of because they could. I had many angels on my shoulder during this period.
I also outgrew alcohol use and now often lost myself in my emotions. Emotions that I could not place and were not understood by my environment. Antidepressants didn't help.
In my adult life I had four miscarriages and had to say goodbye to the idea of ever becoming a mother in this life. Four times to the hospital to be curetted, staying in the maternity ward….
My father, the man I had always looked up to and who had determined my relationships with men, was diagnosed with a brain tumor at a young age and died after a year and a half of illness. I was able to take care of him at home.
All this resulted in me relying on the subconscious storyline: 'I can't do it', 'I'm not doing it well', 'others are better and smarter than me', 'I have no talent', 'people don't like me', "I'm not beautiful", "I'm always to blame", "I'm still abandoned", "I didn't do it right", "it's always my fault", "I have to adapt", "I'm a object of desire'.
A storyline that dictated and determined my life well into my adult life. I was all about survival and victimhood.
A storyline that ensured that what I was afraid of also manifested itself. I was abandoned by various people, I was deceived by people, I was judged. I couldn't finish my studies, I couldn't hold down jobs, I couldn't maintain friendships, I couldn't be open, I couldn't tell what was going on inside me, I wasn't able to show who I was. What did work was adapting, becoming a chameleon, copying and copying, how to behave, what to say and how to be.
Ultimately, this also resulted in pushing the people I love away to avoid being abandoned and seeing a truly intimate relationship fade away. Life constantly triggered me, driven by my story, to end up in the same 'mental, emotional and physical loop' every time. Why can't I do all this and di I develop an 'I' that I am not? Because I believed in my story. My story had become my story. My story was in my thoughts, feelings and body.
Not so long ago my body also made itself heard and I experienced facial paralysis. Figuratively, my own face had not been visible for a long time in my life and now I literally lost it too.
I didn't recognize this in myself, but life showed it to me.
My desire, which I was not even aware of through my story, was to connect with people, to be seen and heard for who I am and what I stand for. My desire was to give love and receive love, driven by unconditionality, being open and transparent. My desire was to be myself, to remember, recognize and appreciate myself for who I am.
Choose a different storyline
How did I get on the storyline of “being myself”? Call it rock bottom or my darkest night of the soul.
Eventually I was overcome by an intense experience and I developed severe panic attacks and had the experience of completely losing myself, losing myself even more in my story and leaving this life. After I managed not to completely lose control of myself, I knew I had to make a choice: my old self or my new self; the real me. The choice was mine. What choice did I make?
I turned inward, in the silence and deep relaxation I turned inward and started to see and hear where else my old storyline had its origins, how to heal from it and what I wanted in my life. It was all shown to me. To be worthy of a loving relationship, to be worthy of fantastic work, to be worthy of friendships, to be worthy of bringing and receiving cheerfulness, joy and love. Who should I be, what should I think, what should I feel and what should I do to make my wishes come true? Making the decision where to direct my energy and having confidence, unlimited and complete confidence. Be loving, cheerful, focused, clear, open and honest. Honest to my thoughts, honest to my feelings and honest to my body. How may and can everything work together inside of me? I created recognition points within myself to stay on track. Does this require action, yes, does this require alertness, yes, does this require attention, is this possible?, yes.
Then I asked myself: what am I experiencing in my life now? The answer is; I experience joy in my life, a loving relationship, I have beautiful friendships and I have a fantastic job. What you seek, always seeks you. When you listen, you can hear it. When you feel, you can feel it and when you look, you can see it.
I changed my story to being myself. Because the best medicine is being yourself.
What is being yourself?
To be yourself is to be happy. If you are not happy then you are lost. No illness, condition or disorder makes you happy. You are lost in a story, a story that you have come to believe in because of the experiences you have had in your life and which cause stress or tension.
But that's not the only story. Because once again what you seek seeks you, find what you seek and it finds you. When you are not happy or life does not give you what you expect or desire, you are in a story that does not suit you. This causes you to experience tension or stress and perhaps also pain, anxiety or illness. Often we are unaware of the story we are living in or the film we are starring in, watching or directing. Tension can go from bad to worse when you don't hear the signal, the story, or don't see the film. That tension is an important signal to find and maintain your individuality, your authenticity, your path and your specific storyline in your life.
Finding the story of tension leads to the transformative insight about being yourself. This key insight into yourself ultimately resolves the tension and associated symptoms. The tension is no longer necessary. You heard it and saw it and chose a different storyline.
My method
Over the past 15 years I have had the opportunity to work with many people with similar life stories and learned a lot about the growth and recovery process. Based on all these experiences and especially my recent experience of facial paralysis, I have listed the steps of growth and recovery together with The Experience School. I have call it the CODE Journey: the key to self-insight and being yourself.
In short, CODE stands for the key insight that changes everything. With this key insight, you begin to make choices that align with who you want to be. What follows is a Colorful Original Daring Experience: the experience of what it means to be your true self. You changed the story.
What has helped me the most and what have I seen work for others?
The best medicine is being yourself. Being yourself is being who you want to be: by being, feeling, doing, expressing, loving, seeing and knowing what makes you happy. I started investigating who I am and want to be.
I became aware of the sources of tension and the sources of what makes me happy in my life. Not being myself causes tension. Being myself brings joy. I learned to listen to my feelings and trust them: what feels good and what doesn't. I heard and saw the signals. I saw the storyline. I then asked myself the question; who and what creates the experience of tension and the experience of joy in my life? I. I am the experience creator.
I discovered and saw the root of my source of tension: the key insight - the AHA moment - is the transformative power to relax the tension. What did the tension tell me? I started looking at it differently. Where I first saw problems and fears, I started to see meaning and choices. The insight changes everything and paves the way for a different story.
I focused my attention on my sources of joy. I made them bigger and more present by paying more and more attention to them, because what you think about is what you become.
I was experiencing it. I became more of who I wanted to be in the here and now and started to experience what it is to be myself. If my life is a journey then it has destinations and paths to it. The first step to that destination is always from where you stand. If I wanted to change something, I had to change in the here and now by being, feeling, doing, expressing, loving, seeing and knowing what makes me happy. I know, accept and love myself more. By making different choices in the now, I increasingly experienced what it is like to be myself. That experience gave me the confidence to increasingly choose to follow that storyline.
I learned to stay on track. I became the observer of my experiences: was my experience in line with who I wanted to be? This is how I was able to set, steer and maintain my course. I became aware of the relationship between what I want, who I am and what I experience. This feedback triangle (I want, I am, I experience) became a tool that helped me recognize and 'switch' my storyline in every moment. It is my compass and provides guidance in every choice I make. In every moment of tension I think: am I now who I want to be? I can then focus on an 'I am' (I am calm, safe, loving, strong, etc.) in line with who I want to be, so that my experience is also that way. Through that 'I am' intervention in the moment itself, I switch from one storyline to another.
If I didn't know, I would ask my story brain, the part in everyone that makes what is unconscious conscious in the form of a story. Everyone has this intuitive storyteller and you can learn to access it, the rest will follow.
Story brain
An important discovery in my process was exactly that story brain. I didn't know I had this in me. It is a magical quality in all of us. It's difficult to explain, you have to experience it. It's different for everyone. You can compare it to watching television where you get an insight into 'something that is going on' in the form of a story in order to get the answer to your question. To listen to your storytelling brain, you tune in to the relevant television channel, so to speak, and once you find it, the story plays itself out. Sometimes you can tune in while you are daydreaming, riding your bike or meditating. You then get a flash of insight. In a CODE Journey you reflect on your question and tune in to the story.
Application
In a CODE Journey we focus on the knowledge within you and help you access it through your storytelling brain. In addition, an insight is nice, but you have to do something with it. To integrate the insights into your daily life, we bring together tools inspired by The Experience Maker, Ra and The Law of One, Kriya Yoga, Yoga Nidra, Hypnosis and hypnosis cases. In this way we bridge the gap between learning your insights and applying them in practice.
Finally
When I felt my facial paralysis, I, like many others, first turned to the medical channel. Soon after, I underwent alternative treatments such as acupuncture, bioresonance and osteopathy. Hypnosis, meditation, psych-k and soul body fusion also supported me.
Whatever path you choose, I now know that it is ultimately meant to end up with yourself. I can no longer deny that what I experience physically and emotionally always comes back to what is going on within me. The doubt about the relationship between me and my body is due to lack of awareness. That relationship is now crystal clear to me. Of course the cause of stress is 'something that is going on in my life' and of course it affects my body when that tension is long-lasting and intense. The further away you are from yourself, the higher the tension.
The faster you choose to hear and see what your experience is telling you, the faster you get to the root and can relax the tension. Whichever path you choose, choose the fastest route to self-insight. Go see and hear the story you live in. Recognize the sources of tension and joy. Even if you can't do anything about what happened to you, you still make your own story out of that. Don't get stuck in the story, focus on what you want in life and choose to be yourself. The book The Experience Maker discusses this in detail.
And so the untold story, the story you want to tell and live, is expressed within you. To be heard, seen and experienced in your unique original form.
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CODE Journey
A colorful original daring experience
If you are interested in experiencing a CODE Journey, please contact us: (hvtpadbosch@gmail.com of wentinkjoost@gmail.com).
More information: www.theexperienceschool.com