Why the Time is Now to Commit to Your Inner Work

by | Sep 11, 2022 | 9-Month | 8 comments

Highly sensitive people wrestle with deep questions from a very early age.

We think about death, often to the point of anguish (see this week’s Gathering Gold episode on The Fear of Death).

We think about relationships and worry about the people that we love.

We think about our worthiness and belonging and agonize about things like tests and social acceptance.

And we wonder, especially as we enter adolescence, why we’re here.

The world around us offers many answers to this all-encompassing, existential question.

Social media tells us that we’re here to garner the most likes and followers.

Hollywood tells us that we’re here to meet our soulmate and live happily ever after.

Mainstream culture tells us that we’re here to find our calling and work ourselves to the bone.

As far as I see it, this isn’t why we’re here.

Why are we really here?

We’re here for a much deeper purpose and much vaster meaning.

From what I understand, we are here to widen our capacity for love. And the way we do this is to heal the wounds that prevent love from coming in and going out, which often means walking through portals upon portals of fear.

For most of the people who find their way to my work, fear shows up as anxiety, intrusive thoughts, obsessions/ruminations, compulsions, shame, and panic attacks. These manifestations of fear don’t always feel like fear; fear can be tricky in this way when it masquerades in other forms. But the challenge is the same, and underneath fear’s loud and scary voice lives a friend in disguise in the sense that it is only when we learn how to walk through fear’s doorways with courage and tools that we find more expansiveness and love on the other side. Fear, in a convoluted way, teaches us about love.

We’re also here to accept the baton that has been handed to us in the intergenerational trauma relay and say: Yes, I accept the task of healing this particular wound so that both the generations that came before me and those that came after me don’t need to carry it. Quite often, it’s the most sensitive child in a family that is the vessel, the carrier, of these wounds.

But without tools, support, and a roadmap, the task of healing can only be experienced as a burden.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to regard the wounds that you are carrying, both those that are yours and those that did not start with you, with reverence and with the awareness that it is nothing short of a sacred task to engage in healing work.

But we need guides.

We need a roadmap.

We need the information that we did not receive in early life that would help us learn how to effectively and compassionately meet our thoughts and our feelings.

And we need each other.

This is what I offer in Break Free From Anxiety: A 9-month course of the art of living. In the safety and gentleness of a nine-month container, with me as your guide and the group as your support, it is possible to heal several layers of fear and see the stories that you are carrying more clearly and compassionately so that you can step into a life led by more love, gratitude, and joy.

Of course, healing isn’t linear and there isn’t a final destination, but this course offers you the possibility of strengthening your inner witness and wise self so that the lifelong healing journey can be one led more by a sense of discovery than prolonged suffering.

And the time is now.

If you don’t want to pass on your intergenerational patterns, limiting beliefs, shame, and wounds to your children…

If you want to show up with your full heart with your loving partner…

If you want to be a part of the evolutionary and historical shift that is transforming our planet…

…come join us. Your transformation causes a ripple effect to everyone around you, and it’s one of the most powerful ways that you can show up at this pivotal time on our earth. We need all hands on deck, and that means we need the highly sensitives to soften enough of their shame that they can shift the burden of sensitivity into the gift that it is.

As Bryn in Idaho shared: 

It is hard to put into words the effect Sheryl’s work has had on my life.

But to say it is life-changing is as accurate a description as any.

Sheryl’s Break Free From Anxiety course is not the first course I have taken of hers, but I can say it is the course that allowed the work, for me, to go from words, thoughts, and ideas, to action. By the end of the course, I could feel the work become a part of me, and I think I can attribute that to a few things.

I believe it was from learning in community through the connective group calls where Sheryl so graciously and lovingly guided us, to the individualized small group discussions where Sheryl partnered us based on our similar anxieties, to the length of the course that allowed for authentic growth and change to occur.

Personally, I can say that after 9 months, I truly felt like I birthed a new version of myself.

The fourth round of Break Free From Anxiety begins on September 18th, 2022, and spots are filling fast. Each time I receive a new member, I pause and say out loud, “Welcome, ______ (the person’s name).” I love getting to know the members of this course over the span of nine months, and I see it as a profound privilege to be a guide on this leg of their journey. If you feel called to join us, I very much look forward to meeting you there.

The time is now.

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8 Comments

  1. Thanks. Reading this article made me realize that my frequent questioning of why we are here is a rumination that keeps me in my head instead of opening to the goodness of life.

    Reply
  2. Hi Sheryl, I’m so excited to be joining this course and really looking forward to connecting with you and in the small groups with other HSPs!

    One of my concerns is that talking about my anxiety in a group will feed my intrusive thoughts. I also worry that I will be judged for my fears since they center around my sexual orientation. Any insight on either of these?

    Thank you ❤️

    Reply
    • Pearl: I’m so glad you’ll be joining us. These are understandable concerns but I assure you: there will be NO judgement in this group. Also, I do my best to put people in groups who struggling with similar issues, and there are always plenty of folks struggling with sexual orientation intrusive thoughts. You’ll be in good company. I promise. ❤️

      As far as feeding intrusive thoughts, yes that’s always a possibility, but remember that the cardinal rule around intrusive thoughts is NOT to talk about the thought itself but to explore the underlying anxiety, grief, fear, groundlessness that lives encased inside the thoughts. The more we explore at the root, the quieter the thoughts become.

      Reply
  3. I love how we were made to question our existence and to connect to the Source of our life, and it’s really sad to see how mainstream culture was designed to tear us apart from this Source. Thankfully, there’s a road back to Him (I believe in this source being our Creator), and committing to our inner work is certainly vital to connecting even more deeply to God, ourselves, nature, life, family and all that is good!

    ❤️❤️❤️

    Reply
  4. I am looking forward to the course. I’m committed to my healing and to be a light to others.

    Reply
    • Beautiful, Savina. I look forward to meeting you there ❤️.

      Reply

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