What Does Interior Integration FEEL Like?

EPISODE 109 | WHAT DOES INTERIOR INTEGRATION FEEL LIKE?

I think as we become more rooted in who we are, and especially for me, my interior journey is anchored, not just in myself, but in the relationship I have with God, alright?

So, this is the foundation. This is the soil that gives me stability, that helps me grow in security, right? So, over time, I, in general, have more experiences of feeling secure, feeling more sure of myself, feeling that I'm clearer about who I am, who I am not. There's something that's different.

[00:00:42] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me.

[00:01:21] THE HEALING JOURNEY
So, one question I get asked quite often by people that I'm journeying with is what does it feel like to become more integrated? What does it feel like when you're on the healing journey, right? So, they're asking this question because they've realized that they need healing, they desire to make that journey, but you know, it seems so elusive and abstract, this healing journey.

[00:01:48] There isn't a rule book about what is it that you need to do. There isn't a checklist. And I guess it's human nature for us to wish to be able to look ahead and ask, you know, what does it look like? What does it feel like? How will I know that I'm healing? Now, before I go on to share what I'm going to share today, I want to give a caveat, okay?

[00:02:11] I am in no way trying to say that what I'm about to share is the only way that healing can feel like or integration can feel like. I just want to share my lived experience because the nature of this integration journey is so multifaceted, right? There's so many dimensions to it that it's impossible to kind of just try and understand things from reading or learning.

[00:02:41] You have to live it. We all have to embody it. And I think for every person it's going to be a little different, right? It's going to be a little unique, but there are usually some similarities. There are some kind of universal principles.

[00:02:58] EXPERIENCING HEALING
So, what I want to share today is really something that I just experienced really recently. And I thought to myself, you know, most people, myself included, usually think that when I am more healed, when I am more integrated, I won't feel the kind of anxiety and fears and insecurities that I used to or that I currently do, right? The hope we all have is that, it's going to be different.

[00:03:28] And we kind of think or assume that the difference will be that the problems that I have right now, there'll be fewer of them. I'm not going to experience them. So, here's my sharing.

[00:03:43] My experience is that it's both true and not true that as we get more healed and integrated, that we won't be as affected or won't experience so much anxiety and insecurity. Okay, so, first, the part that's true.

[00:04:04] THE ROLE OF GOD IN THE HEALING JOURNEY
I think as we become more rooted in who we are, and especially for me, my interior journey is anchored, not just in myself, but in the relationship I have with God, alright?

[00:04:20] So, this is the foundation. This is the soil that gives me stability, that helps me grow in security, right? So, over time, I, in general, have more experiences of feeling secure, feeling more sure of myself, feeling that I'm clearer about who I am. Who I am not. Right, so, in that sense, it is true. There's something that's different.

[00:04:49] There's a greater feeling of gravitas, right. There's a weight, there's a solidity and I feel it in my body too. It's not just an abstract thing. It's like I feel more whole in my body. I feel like what used to be hollow and scattered is more gathered. You know, it gives me a certain weight, like a paperweight, right?

[00:05:12] It keeps me grounded. So, on one hand, there is that experience, that growing experience of being sure about who I am. But, so, here's where the assumption is, kind of like, not so true, that what bothered us before is not going to bother us again.

[00:05:31] THE STRUGGLE WITH INSECURITIES AND FEARS
We can absolutely still get triggered and feel all those emotions that have plagued us in an earlier part of our journey, alright? Whether it's anxiety, stress, insecurity and immediate sense of being in fight or flight and needing to appease someone or to please someone or being overwhelmed with guilt, with shame.

[00:05:59] In all these things, all these complex emotions that we are trying to become free from, right? We wish, we all wish we wouldn't have to feel them again. We wish that we wouldn't have to deal with them again.

[00:06:11] Well, they're never going to really go away, I think because certainly in my experience up to now, there are things and there are triggers and there are moments where these things can all come flooding back and in the moment when you feel them kind of like back when you feel those anxieties, insecurities in the moment, oh, it can it can be hard to remember that you've come so far in your healing journey, you know?

[00:06:42] Because in that moment when we're triggered, usually it's like we're back to - we are identifying in a sense with those younger parts of ourselves that probably are still not fully healed, right?

[00:06:55] It's like we live from that. Those are the emotions that we experience. Those are the thoughts that are coming through our heads and the programming that we have had all our lives, the scripts that have kept us in safety, right? So, let's say before we become more integrated and healed. 

[00:07:12] For me, my script, the programming that kept me feeling safe when I feel threatened is to please others is to accede to their request. I don't want them to feel that I'm ungrateful. I don't want them to feel that I don't appreciate them. I don't want them to feel that I think that they are not important. And because I'm so concerned about what they feel, what they think, immediately my instinct is to give them what they want, is to say yes to the request.

[00:07:43] But that script is a way that I learned in my younger days to manage my environment because when I please people, when people are happy with me, I feel kind of like a little safer, that I'm not in threat of being rejected. But that's the problem, right? Because when I keep doing that, I don't know who I am anymore.

[00:08:05] I'm just trying to be someone that people want me to be. I lose touch with my own real needs and desires. I lose touch with who God created me to be and what is it that He's actually asking me to do. If I am so concerned with giving people what they want, then I'm not really free to make the discernment. Because sometimes, actually a lot of times, what God is calling me to do includes saying no to a lot of requests and includes me taking stance, saying things, making choices that other people may not like and may disapprove of, right?

[00:08:43] So, this whole interior journey has been about growing in freedom to be able to be the person that God created me to be.

[00:08:53] THE POWER OF SELF-AWARENESS IN HEALING
But like I just mentioned, you know, I just recently had, another experience where a request came in. And I noticed it's like the moment I read the request, my body went to a different state.

[00:09:13] At first it was at rest, you know? It was kind of just cool, chill. And all of a sudden, my heart started racing, my mind started racing. I started thinking, oh no, oh no, this feels like a rather big ask, I don't think I can, you know? I'm not sure I can do it because I really don't feel like I have the capacity to, I don't have the bandwidth to do this. But this is so important to this other person who has helped me a lot in the past, whom I really appreciate. 

[00:09:39] And what are they going to think if I say no? It's like, you get what I'm saying? All these thoughts began to race through my mind just a few seconds after I read the request, right? So, thoughts are racing in my mind. In the meantime, my body was getting clenched. I was feeling a knot in my stomach. I was getting tense in my neck and my shoulders.

[00:10:05] And I felt scared. Funny, right? Interesting. I felt... Because it's like, I don't want to make the wrong choice here. And that's another insecurity I've always had since I was a little girl. I don't want to make the wrong choice. I need to make the right choice. It's very important that I make the right choice, you know?

[00:10:26] And that's part of my programming. So, all that flooded in. All that flooded in and it took me a moment.

[00:10:33] REGAINING FREEDOM THROUGH HEALING
So, here's where the healing that I've been going through and the integration that I've been going through makes a difference, okay? So, the anxieties and the insecurities and the fear and all that, they can still come in. They're the same.

[00:10:50] But one difference is, even as I'm getting activated, you could say I'm getting triggered, right? That request that I just read was like a trigger, put me into that mood. I was not utterly overwhelmed. And two, I was aware that it was happening. Now, before I went through the healing that I've already gone through, before I went through the integration that I've already gone through, I often did not even realize, I was not aware that this was what's going on inside me, right?

[00:11:22] So, if I was not aware of it, there's nothing I can do to actually respond to that situation. Usually, you know, I just react until, and then later on, maybe I regret, right? And so, but now I'm aware, even as it's going on. And because I'm aware that, oh, I'm getting activated, I'm getting triggered, I'm getting a little dysregulated, if you're familiar with that term.

[00:11:44] Like, my emotions are getting dysregulated. I need to take a moment to center myself. Yeah, I need to re anchor myself. I need to ground myself again in the truth. And what's the truth? The truth is, I am free to make a decision, either to say yes or to say no. Plus, actually, there could be many possible responses.

[00:12:13] First, I need to slow down and not try and not react out of this anxiety that I will offend this person or hurt this person. Or out of this anxiety that whatever I say will make this person look at me negatively, you know? I need to assuage my own fear of that that that instinctive dependence I've always had that I need people to think well of me.

[00:12:38] I need people to like me. That's one of the things that tells me I'm not centered. So, I needed to slow down, take a deep breath, put my hands over my heart, my racing heart and over my gut, that's what I usually do. It's part of something I learned in somatic experiencing, you know? How our body needs to come online with the whole processing of our emotions.

[00:13:05] Because that's where I kind of feel scared, my heart and my gut, you know, feeling very vulnerable. So, holding myself actually lets my body feel safer. It's kind of like holding a little girl, you know. Making her feel safe and then it helps my heart to slow down. And then I have some time to remind myself, remind myself that I am who I am, regardless of what I choose.

[00:13:37] I am loved by God and by myself, no matter what I choose. I have worth and dignity and it doesn't matter what people think of me, how they feel about me in the moment, that doesn't change who I am or my worth or my dignity. Thus, I can come back to the center and just ask, well, is this for me right now in this season in my life? I can bring it into prayer.

[00:14:18] THE ROLE OF PRAYER AND DISCERNMENT IN HEALING
I can ask the Lord is this part of what You're asking me to say yes to at this point? In fact, maybe even before I ask that question, I can sit with the Lord. This is how I'm feeling, one, and say, thank you, Lord, for helping me be aware of this now. Right? And then to just put it before Him, lay it before Him.

[00:14:40] Because the Lord knows me and the needs of the world and He's in charge and He's in control. It is not up to me to save anyone. It is not up to me to save the world, much less likely. But it's funny how the way my whole system, when it gets activated, it feels like so much is at stake.

[00:15:05] I need to help or else something terrible will happen, right? So, I have to remind myself nothing real will change because I certainly believe that we live from eternity to eternity, right? So, in eternity, God is in control from eternity. He holds everything. This spaciousness, this awareness of this spaciousness, that my specific decision now to say yes or no, or whatever other response may actually, you know, come to mind once I actually have the room to really contemplative look at this problem.

[00:15:45] It doesn't change the most important things in life. It doesn't change the most important things in the world, even. I have time to listen. I have time to listen to the invitation that God is giving me. 

[00:16:03] And then when I felt this spaciousness - and so, the heart stopped racing. I could breathe again. And then I had an opportunity to talk to someone about it. Someone that I trusted. For me, I process better sometimes when I have someone that I can just speak out loud, can I think out loud, right? And as I talked to my husband, it was my husband that I shared with.

[00:16:30] I realized, oh, the solution is actually pretty clear. The solution is, in the sense of what the next right step for me to take, is actually pretty clear. It's just to contact, to respond to this person's request, right, who made the request, to ask, can we have a conversation for me to understand more about what exactly, this request entails?

[00:16:52] Like, what is it that you need from me? So, that I just have more data, better understanding of what is it that you're asking and then tell that person that I'm going to need to bring this into some prayer and discernment, right, before I get back to them. It's so simple, right? I mean, that's just the next step I need to take.

[00:17:13] Everything else, you know, that happens after that, I don't need to worry about yet. Because I need to take the next step first.

[00:17:22] THE IMPACT OF HEALING AND INTEGRATION
So, this, what I just described, is an example of the difference that healing and integration has made in my life. I find that I am less reactive, the insecurities and anxieties, you know, even panic, the shame, and all that kind of thing, sometimes they can still come. And when they come, it still feels really, ugh. It's really uncomfortable, I mean. You know?

[00:17:46] But I'm aware of it now, and it's like I can have some distance inside me, from what's going on, enough that I can arrest it. And I've slowly learned over all these years, what are the things I can do to help myself regulate and calm down, and then remember what I need to remember. And re-ground myself, re-center myself.

[00:18:07] And once I'm rooted again in my core identity, in who I am, and who God is, and then, you know, then things shift inside me, and I'm no longer acting out of my programming. I regain my freedom. That's how I like to say it, see it. I regain my freedom because when my programming kicks in, when the scripts kick in, I am not free.

[00:18:33] You know, I'm just instinctively just reacting, right? Because it's like my safety system has kicked into gear. Emergency, you know? And that's the system I knew in the past. I need to react. But once I know how to re-center myself, the safety system, the emergency safety system can go offline because I am telling, you know, in a sense reminding myself, including my body and my nervous system, that I have control here.

[00:18:59] Okay, I was like, it's okay. We're not in emergency. I've noticed. Yes, I noticed that I am anxious and scared, but I know what to do. God is in control so, you know, the safety system can be in a sense it can take a break and then I find that I'm in touch again with my higher cognition, my higher, you know, my ability to think critically and creatively and then I see the possibilities. And then I know what to do. So, it's just incredible.

[00:19:30] THE COMPLEXITY AND COURAGE OF THE HEALING JOURNEY
I mean, you know, I just really want to say that the healing journey is... it's complex. It's not easy. It takes courage. It takes a lot of time because there are many things we need to re-learn or learn anew and it takes us step by step and we never know how far we've gone. Or sometimes we wish it could happen faster. But we really don't have control over that.

[00:19:54] That's just the nature of the journey. But healing does happen and when integration has, you know, increased within us, then what I just shared with you is the kind of thing that you can look forward to experiencing. May not be exactly the same way as I described it because this is my journey, right? But it's, I would say, what could be universal, what I would imagine to be universal, would be that greater self-awareness, that finding that you have greater interior freedom, to regain also freedom, you know, the interior freedom, and you know how to shift from trying to just act out of fight, flight or freeze or fawning, you know? These are kind of like defensive mechanisms when people feel that they're not safe.

[00:20:46] We all have them in different versions of them. How to shift from that back into being grounded and in a sense of safety because God is in control and because we're not alone. And then being able to make a free choice and often wisdom comes in and then we see that there are many good options that we couldn't have thought of, that we had no capacity to think of when we were just in an emergency state, you know? When the emergency safety system was on.

[00:21:16] So, anyway I hope this little sharing is helpful to those of you who are wondering what difference would healing integration make? What does it feel like? I hope that it gives you hope, something to look forward to. And you know, again, the healing journey, in some ways it doesn't ever get easier. But, at the same time, because our resources, our internal resources really increase, we find that even though the journey doesn't get easier, we are still able to make the journey and it's not more daunting than it used to be because our capacity increases too, you know?

[00:22:02] As the journey, in a sense, gets more challenging because maybe the healing goes deeper. Well, we are also more equipped for that journey So, there's nothing to be afraid of. And I’m praying for you. If you're someone who is wrestling with your wounds the wounds in your life right now and you really wish to become more free, I know what that feels like. I've so been there. In a way I’m still there, but it's just it's just a different experience now. So, I hope you enjoyed this little Ann Chat and take care. 

[00:22:44] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

If you like what you hear on this podcast, would like to receive a monthly written reflection from me as well as be updated on my latest content and offers, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter Begin Again. You can find the link to do that in the show notes. Until the next episode, happy becoming!