Committed to Wholeness: Soul Venturing Healing

02/17/2022

Blazing at the center of everything in our life is a gentle fire that screams purpose. Healing work is about a commitment to get in touch with the elemental parts of ourselves. It’s meant to aid us in our alignment to our purpose, both for ourselves and our relationships. Yet, there’s a lot that gets in the way of being attentive to and understanding what’s authentically at our core.

⛰What are some of those elemental parts of you?

⛰ What are you passionate about?

⛰What gets in the way of understanding yourself and keeps you from living from that place of passion and authenticity?

to your healing venture,
Francisco

02/17/2022

Have you ever found yourself over giving?
or have you noticed giving for the purpose of getting attention or to be recognized?
What has it cost you?
Do you notice resentment coming up in your impulse to give beyond your means?
How do you notice it impacts your relationships and your ability to get your needs met?
What do you notice about your boundaries in those moments?
Have you seen yourself show up for yourself when you give?
Do you take on the responsibility of others? Do you not give people space to show up for you?
Do you have a good handle or understanding what your limits are?
Ultimately do you give beyond your means because you are seeking to earn love and prove to someone else that you are enough?

If you feel safe and interested, share your thoughts about what it is like for you to work through these dynamics and what’s helped you.

To our healing venture,
- Francisco

02/10/2022

As a psychotherapist in private practice for several years, I noticed a gap in how people went about their healing work. I wanted to create a space for folks to challenge some of the undisturbed cultural and familial norms that often dictate how they view and operate within the world. This is why I created Committed to Wholeness. I'm adamant about this shift:

⛰ We need forums that cultivate hope for people on their healing journey - through connection and relationships.

⛰We need a paradigm that gets us out of the isolated “self-help” to the communal relational healing that our nervous system needs in order to effectively rewire itself.

⛰ We need to practice exposing ourselves the things, situations, and dynamics we fear.

We need clarity around what our values are and the foundation for our belief in them to take ownership and responsibility of how are behavior is dictated by them.

It is about painting new, more sustainable approaches to our healing work that work in concert with each other.

01/05/2022

The reality with grief is that at its most intense moments it feels like we are scraping the bottom of the ocean. The pressure and weight of loss surround us. The sluggish experience is akin to being incredibly sick. However, this experience also allows us to appreciate things as they are.

We are able to experience the whole spectrum of emotion and it reminds us of what it means to be alive. The goal is not to hide, or control our emotions, or our experience of them but to honor them as companions on the journey. They are not us. We just get to be in conversation with them and sometimes we need to bring the focus to the larger whole, not just the one voice that comes from that emotion. This is the ebb and flow of the ocean within us; it can be calm at times and others chaos that's hard to wrangle.

All emotions come with the territory of living a full, exuberant, and imperfect life. If we aren’t interested and open to experiencing the spectrum then we are limited in our capacity to love. This is because we get to love not because things are well but because they just are. Also because we are a part of it as is. Grief is one of the most intimate aspects of relationships. Grief is a natural part of loving. You will always lose what you love because nothing is final or infinite. Loss is inherent to living. It's then worthwhile to try and do grief justice.

To your Soul Venture,

Francisco Bujanda

02/26/2021

Sometimes, if not often, we abandon ourselves. We do it as a means to protect ourselves. Sometimes we abandon others as well because that’s what we know. When this happens aggression gains a foothold. Aggression is present when we let anger develop into something more than its initial signal. Anger isn’t really primarily about setting boundaries; that’s secondary. The primary purpose is to alert the system that something is off that there is an injustice present to the relational dynamics at play with Self or with others. It points to needs that are lacking or ignored. Anger is a signal that seeks to help us get back into relationship with ourselves and those we are closest to. It seeks to heal and repair the rupture from the perceived injustice and misalignment. With this constructive purpose also comes the shadow or possibly destructive aspects of anger. Remember emotions just are. They are not positive or negative they begin just as signals. What is defining is what comes next in how we react to them or don’t recognize them. Do we allow them to sit? in what environment do they ferment? or are they accepted and surrendered to? Are they given a new purpose to renew meaning for us? Or are they left without our witness in solitary attendance to grow in avoidance with things like resentment, vengeance, indignation, and resignation?

First, as we mentioned in an earlier post we must be mindful and ask how did this anger originate. We can start with self abandonment.

Self abandonment is a symptom of a loss of imagination due to an initial loss of community and attunement that would have otherwise allowed us to witness how to tend to our emotions when they were most overwhelming during our most vulnerable years. Additionally, modeled for us through a community of deep belonging and acceptance would have been where our whole self was acknowledged; a place where innocence, worthiness, and our emotional landscape would have been met with concern and care. From this experience comes the possibility of Self love. This is a word that often gets the new-age treatment and falls flat when it comes to important depth filled practices. This is because self-loving comes to be defined at the extreme end of our process of differentiation and defining our autonomous identities beyond our initial experience with our family. Self-love isn’t self-reliant. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-reliance” falsely claims that we are “self-made.” Self love by definition is the practice of an example of love demonstrated to us by our community and family. When we don’t have this example demonstrated repeatedly then we lack the trust in life and in the possibility of such a powerful practice. We doubt our inclination toward such a reality. At one point in time we started out needed others, like our guardians, to show us how to soothe the overwhelming emotions that we had as children. We needed help. As we adult, we still seek this example and often give away our own ability to soothe ourselves with hopes of learning it from others or at times giving the responsibility away to others. Some of us have given up on the possibility completely that we can soothe by experiencing it from others. So we abandon ourselves when we disregard our thoughts, feelings, or needs.

Anger turned aggression is then part of this disregard that accumulates over time. This happens because we are well aware of the constant absence of Self from our needs we’ve just been holding out for an external affirmation of these innate needs we have. In much self help there’s an undercurrent of blame for those who don’t take full responsibility for their lives and adult emotional needs. What is forgotten or goes unnamed in these self help narratives is that self-reliance is only part truth. Of course we must each commit and be determined on our own and claim full responsibility for our lives AND community and environment play a crucial role in our healing as well. Instead, we confuse our family or community not having the learned experience of safety and security and thus not giving it as a personal attack on us or rejection where the love we so desperately still need is being withheld from us.

Self-abandonment keeps us from knowing ourselves because we are too preoccupied with the external affirmation we have come to depend on to feel momentarily whole. We learned at an early age that we wouldn’t get our needs met for validation or emotional understanding. Conversely, we had to earn our love. We then were stunted in our ability to really comprehend our emotional states and to show up for ourselves in ways that brought calm and soothing to our experience of being human. Instead we got locked in a cycle of hyper-vigilance and external seeking of worth that only provided momentary reprieve not lasting understanding on how to be in relationship without symbiotic attachments.

In our history of self-abandonment we often seek consistency that we lacked when we were younger. We seek this at our own expense as we are, ironically, inconsistent in how we show up to ourselves. What often deluded our being present to ourselves and our needs is replaced by prioritizing others needs as we settle into relationships or friendships that we hope to give us purpose, meaning, and ultimately the consistency that we’ve been craving since our early years. Giving this to ourselves is often the folly of the self-help trade.

What we need are examples and lived experience of consistency to reignite our belief and to change our brains ability to recreate such a possibility for ourselves. This experience is also one of repetition to have it ingrained in our way of being and life by way of external example. This is how we create it for ourselves, if not we are set onto a vicious cycle of getting it wrong with Self and with how we engage in relationships.

The initial steps that allow for healing of our constant self-abandonment come from recognizing that many ways that we abandon ourselves and by being honest with ourselves about the use of these diversions that get in the way of being in honest relationship with ourselves.

- Francisco

Original watercolor by Claire Giordano

02/16/2021

Sometimes, if not often, we abandon ourselves…

Anger is at the heart of self-abandonment. Anger turned to aggression and resentment breeds blame as well as it’s silent counter-part avoidance or numbing that manifests over time as self-hate and unworthiness. Regardless of whether it is exhibited through external or internal means, aggression is still aggression. We just more readily applaud self implosion than we do self explosion. We are quick to judge the improper out-of-line presentation of acceptable humanness in public discourse. As long as we don’t feel the effects of others realities and are allowed to singularly drive our own destiny then we are “engaging properly” according to the dominant culture. Yet we play into a culture that makes us prisoners to our own self -ate. In a culture griped by the fallacy of self-reliance and self-determinism we ignore the role of community and of environment within the context of our healing. We are interwoven in an on-going relationship that continuously impacts all things and people around us. Instead, we live in a sea of self abandonment and relational rejection marked by continual anger that separates us even further. We are quick in our fury and aggression to judge other as much as our self-hate judges us. None of us measure up to each other’s ideal and fantasy which would have us not change or face our shortcomings. We silently nod at the good times while perversing the shadow and brokenness we each carry. We instead jump from relationship to relationship or engagement to engagement until we feel satisfied, albeit momentarily. Yet we were never meant to feel satisfied. Our cravings are what keep us steady on the course toward our growth.

It important to reiterate that anger signals needs; often needs that have gone unspoken and unnoticed. Those needs are our lifeline to our authenticity and differentiation. That is what makes us autonomous whole people. Within the process of building identity is the initial call of anger helping us strive toward coherence in naming who we are and what unique purpose we are inspired to address in this life. Anger helps us get the things met that we may have never given ourselves permission for or that others never gave us permission to pursue. There’s something potent about anger which is why we shrink from it. We fear our own truth and needs. We avoid it when we have been taught that it signals something wrong with us. Let this serve as a constant reminder that anger isn’t wrong it’s how we act towards it, react when it’s at play, or repress and seek to forget it or have it forgotten by others. In leading the dynamic with anger in our public life is the reality of shame. Shame can suffocate our anger’s alert about getting our needs met. We diminish the importance of our needs because we believe ourselves so insignificant when present with others. It’s key to not oppress ourselves through the submission of our needs and voice or to feel ashamed about what is important to us. We define the value. Indeed we must define the value so that others can understand the bold gift of our angers calling. In order to do this we first have to notice how we engage in self-sabotaging behavior towards ourselves for the sake of being agreeable. There’s no fate worse than the agreeability of a life that was mean to be exuberant.

The initial call for anger is one for change. It’s calls us out of our stagnation. It asks to be acknowledged much like the needs it’s advocating to be met. Yet the difficulty is that not all people have our sight or insight. They do not have our learned awareness or understanding. They have their own and it is deep just the same. They have it differently than you. Here we witness the journey of differentiation and separation that is necessary to hear our own truth. Celebrate them that they disagree with you! This is where we are called to surrender the need for a particular outcome. If anger seeks to remove the obstruction that keeps one from intimacy and relationship again, then the process of calling attention to it also requires us to let go of our vision for the type of relationship, outcome, or healing that will result. For as we force something we create more obstruction to the renewed relationship we seek. Force creates resistance. Relationship is a two way street and only the person can hold themselves accountable. We can only help them see to not continue to hurt themselves or others if such a dynamic exists. Be gentle with judgement and focus on compassion. Even then, it’s out of our hands. This is where trust and surrender is a must in the processing of anger. In the end, we must choose how we want to wait for them or take our leave while they process their truth. Ultimately, we are just called to let go so as for them to light their way to their truth and inner knowing that will awaken them to their essence, not yours.

Can we make way for our own truth while we allow for others theirs? When was the last time we let go to witness our own intuition, truth, and learned wisdom? When did we last invite ourselves to begin our process anew instead of believing we had all the answers? Thinking we have the answers leads to more aggression. It’s our way of forcing an outcome. What could be its function for us? Where do you feel your anger? Your aggression? Let’s make room for it so we can understand it better. This is the start. Slow and steady, eager and courageous we lead ourselves into more opportunity to learn. Never fearing we will get it wrong but that we have enough room to try it all.

- Francisco

Original watercolor by artist Claire Giordano

07/02/2020

Period

04/22/2020

It’s important to understand how toxic positivity works. Everyone is in a different situation and another’s situation doesn’t determine the value or worthiness of your own struggle. This is something misunderstood around privilege. Just because a person has privilege doesn’t mean that their feelings, emotions, or struggle even within privilege is of less importance to them and their world view. Struggle is relative. It’s imperative we not judge ourselves based on the idea of competition or at unconscious attempts at being seen as pious or “strong”. Positivity exists in hope but as an acceptance of what makes up the current reality. Let’s claim that becoming more empathic and attuned to our emotional states, as well as inner-experience allows us to deepen awareness of self and other. In seeing ourselves without judgement, both in witnessing our privileges and emotional experiences, we can allow ourselves to understand impact on self and on others. Authentic relationship is created by both internal and external knowledge. As we readily accept these learnings we are able to work through much more pervasive divisive issues with ourselves and our communities from a stance of compassion, humility, and wisdom. However, toxic positivity steals this from us because it promotes avoidance and a general numbing of the emotional experiences that make us human. Don’t highlight the disconnect and where we “should be” but name where we are. This requires vulnerability. Knowing where we are allows for a starting point and to bring us in relationship with the communities we are participants in and the ways we can strengthen those commonalities including the work toward collective relational equality and communal justice. We are in this together. No one need be in it alone. (This does not discount the impact of systems of oppression that perpetuate inequality. On the contrary those in power with privilege need to more readily understand themselves to then advocate from a place of understanding and solidarity.)

04/11/2020

Courage versus hope reflection and inner child meditation

03/03/2020

Some much truth and wisdom in these words. Take a moment and reflect. This is what it means to be part of the journey.

And you were never meant to

07/11/2019

We often approach people who are struggling without a recognition of how to sit with them. It’s so important to create a community of a trusted few that go beyond their own fears and vulnerabilities to stand with us in life’s greatest challenges.

At times I haven't know how to help grieving friends. That’s why I’m sharing my insights about what healed, and what hurt, when I lost my husband to cancer.

06/18/2019

Sometimes we get lost in a perspective that allows us to stay stagnant in our growth and for the other we might not approach our loved one with enough care in seeking to create change collaboratively. Relationships are a dance and they are delicate and require consistency and persistence. Not all things make sense but this is why making time for the things that matter joy, fun, play and growth conversations are all equally important. Keep at it, be patient, and don't forget to love yourself along the way. Most of all remember to listen. No one person has the answers and we are no one's savior.

One of our greatest demands in love is that our partner should love us 'for who we really are'. It sounds Romantic enough, but in truth, none of us should ev...

08/29/2018

We have such a hard time allowing others to feel sad without trying to change or fix their sadness.

05/29/2018

Language and how we articulate what’s important to us will drive how we orient toward life and it orients towards us. Our disposition is centered around meaning making and purpose. Giving intention to what we say and how we say it can change us and our relationships. Make a change...

05/11/2018

Even though this picture relates directly to a healthy parenting approach we can also apply it to how we tend to ourselves in moments when we feel triggered or elevated. Giving ourselves this space can retrain some of our old deep-seated patterns. There's definitely more to the process of retraining but understanding what's missing and noticing it is the first step. All you need to do is take the first step.

Helpful.

03/14/2018

Working through unresolved hurt or the realities of depression can be a lonely and at times shameful experience. Yet, when we can receive the unwelcome guest possibilities can flourish.

No one can understand depression unless they've gone through it. Yet it gives us all pause to consider how we can or have found ourselves in similar spaces at various stages in our lives. Depression's reality to those who have not experienced it is uncomfortable at best and suffocating at worst. To

02/28/2018

Finding a way to own our stories and our histories may give way for finding peace within ourselves:

https://brenebrown.com/…/…/own-our-history-change-the-story/

When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending. I know this is true. I may have learned it as a researcher but I live this truth as a daughter, a partner, a leader, a sister, a mother, and a friend. When we …

02/23/2018

So I promised to talk more about what I do in therapy.

I approach therapy in a way that takes into account systemic, cultural, relational, attachment needs, and influences. I align with the couple or client to try to get into the muddy, less glamorous dynamics of life to uncover what is really at the heart things for them. Together with you, I work as an attentive and empathetic process consultant: identifying perceptions and damaging cycles to reorient you and/or your partner in order to create opportunities for vulnerability and understanding.

Which all boils down to - I recognize that you are a human being full of emotions and experiences and variables that effect your life in ways that you, nor I, could begin to imagine. Through that recognition I walk with you and help guide you toward your hearts desires.

If you have questions or know someone that wants to get started - go check out my website or give me a call!

www.franciscobujanda.com