Mostly just been dealing with ongoing trauma, bad jobs, horrible roommates situations, like legitimate evil. It’s just been one nightmare after the other.
For the past several years, I was dealing with the trauma of my family and the narcissistic abuse because it’s a narcissistic family.
Hi, this is Patrick Rodriguez. And you’re listening to the Patrick Rodriguez Show.
This is the place to learn how to release your past, so that you can experience the fulfillment of your life by living in the present moment.
What I’d like to highlight today is that sometimes life can feel pretty hopeless. For some people it seems like they’ve only experienced on-going hardship their entire life. But their current reality may not be as bad as their perception.
In other words, even though our current life may not be ideal, our perception can have us believing that our life is really much worse than it is.
This was the situation with the client in today’s session. When starting to work with this client, he brought up several very hard and difficult experiences from his past and in his current life. His life was much better than it had been but he was still feeling trapped by his past hurts in his life.
Many people today are going through similar life experiences. They’re having difficult situations in their life that are then amplified and made harder because of past hurts that are still affecting them.
So I’d like to share this podcast episode for anyone that is currently going through a rough time with the hope that life can get better as you begin to unravel feelings of past hurts, trauma, abuse or whatever you may have gone through in your life.
I want to encourage you to keep at it. Each time you work through healing the energy from your past, life will get better, and easier. Just give the process time, patience and a little compassion.
Please note that the following recording is from an actual client session and is being replayed here with permission. This recording deals with some emotionally intense themes and may trigger some listeners. I ask you to please use discretion and self-care while listening. And I invite you to reach out for help in the event that you do find yourself emotionally triggered.
Now let’s listen in to see how healing the underlying emotional energy can have a very pragmatic outcome on the feelings of isolation, and in healing other parts of your life.
Patrick: So what comes up the strongest when I tune in is I just wrote down isolation, isolated, deserted, alone, and abandoned.
Does that feel correct to you? If you were just to take your kind of a baseline reality feeling, is that what stands out for you?
Client: I would say so. But yeah, I’m isolated. I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m 42 years old and I don’t have a girlfriend. There’s always something coming up to just block me from kind of moving forward with life and every time I make a little bit of a progress, something happens and I have to deal with that.
Patrick: So I’m kind of feeling that if we can get down deep enough on lowering the brick wall of the energy of isolation, the energy of desertion, abandonment, if we can lower that enough, that that will allow some other things on the outside to kind of start trickling in as what I’m perceiving.
And this is just my perception. So you have to tell me, does it feel right to you?
Client: I think so because I mean, I’ve been felt like this way my whole life. Even when my mother was around, I mean, obviously she helped me out more than anyone else. I can thank God and thank goodness. But like she died when I was 12. And like I was kind of like left me with a narcissistic father. And I was a scapegoat. And it just that’s how it ended up. And then just end up around narcissistic people just to constantly victimize everywhere I went.
Patrick: So we’re starting with that 12, 13 year old young kid. We’re starting there. We just want to reassure him it’s safe to feel afraid. It’s safe to feel afraid. When he feels safe, he’s not going to be suppressing all this stuff. It’s already changing. That’s my perception. You tell me.
Client: Well, I mean, it’s kind of under the surface. I mean, I think physically there’s some tension stuff like that. But I mean, yeah, it’s like where I was living before. I mean, I spent over five, five and a half years and I was never I never felt safe. And it was terror and isolation and it was just the latest physical manifestation of that.
Patrick: What I’m hoping is even in this one session, we can bring the energy down.
So what we’re going to do is we know that teenagers are just angry, right? Teenagers are angry people.
Client: Hormones going off. Society, people.
Patrick: It is what it is. Teenagers are angry people. So it would not be a far stretch for the 18 to 22 year old Matt to just be pissed off at his dad all the time. That wouldn’t be a far stretch, right?
Client: Yeah, I know, especially since like, I mean, he was abusive and neglectful and just treating me like a slave and backstabbing and I mean, it’s the list is endless.
Patrick: I’m with you. I’m with you. Now, that Matt, 18 to 22 years old, totally hated, resented his father, what I’m perceiving, but couldn’t allow himself to hate or resent his father. Tell me if that matches.
Client: Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, I’m living with him. I’m his prisoner. I mean, he’s a control freak and I mean, I had no one to help me. I had no one to talk to at that time.
Yeah, and I’m not sure if it’s related to some kind of vow of poverty or something like that, because he was he worshiped. So I said, oh, I’m going to not be poor. But I’m still poor, even though it’s not really what I intended or what I was planning.
I mean, but yeah, like, I mean, I probably hated him before. I mean, when my mother was around, I mean, I didn’t have positive feelings for him. But by that time, it must have accumulated and you know, the damage had already been done.
And I mean, I tried to kill myself at like 21 or something.
Patrick: That makes total sense. Okay, let’s try this. Just take it in and see if it fits. That’s all.
Client: Sure.
Patrick: It is not safe to feel the rage against my father that I carry. It is not safe to feel the rage against my father.
Let’s change that that I still carry. It is not safe to feel the rage against my father that I still carry.
Tell me if that fits.
Client: I think so. Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t allowed to, I mean, he was yelling to screaming, you know,I couldn’t say anything without him yelling and screaming.
So certainly expressing rage and whatever negative emotion to him was just out of the question and, you know.
Patrick: So let me tell you what we are doing and what we’re not doing.
Client: Okay.
Patrick: What we’re not doing is, we don’t want to encourage you to go down the street and beat the hell out of dad. Now he’s a senior citizen, maybe in a wheelchair or something.
Client: Yeah, he’s got a health issue.
Patrick: What we are trying to do is we’re trying to unlock that part of you that on some suppressed level is protecting the rage from getting out. Because that’s what you had to do at that age.
Client: Yeah.
Patrick: And it feels like, what I’m perceiving, is this need to suppress the rage. It’s kind of like if you take something, you ever sleep on a pillow with a crease on it, and you wake up with like the lines on your face? Maybe that’s just me.
Client: I think I might have had, I’ve had something like that. I don’t remember what the material was, but yeah.
Patrick: You grab something and you know, it’s like imprinted on your hand or like whatever.
The line from Shakespeare is, the scent of the rose lingers upon the hand that cast it.
So the rage needed to be suppressed and held down to keep it from getting out. It had to. You back talk your dad at 18. It’s all bets are off.
Client: Yeah. And I can’t, I can’t be independent. I mean, like I was on autistic and, you know, living by myself. I mean, even now, I mean, financially it’s hard.
Patrick: And so what ended up happening is, at least from my perception, is it imprinted on you. Tell me if that feels right to you.
Client: It’s, I think so, because it just manifested in different ways. It just seemed to be a constant current, even though it might not be like, I might not cognitively think, okay, it’s, you know, rage towards my father, but it’s kind of the same thing. It was like just raging against hypocrisy and injustice and all this stuff that I just kind of displaced into other things.
Other targets are things and that I can kind of externalize it. So I think so. Plus, like it’s just been constantly there. I mean, it’s been there my whole life. And so it makes sense if it’s just in the background all the time and without me knowing it.
Patrick: So what we’re trying to do here is we’re trying to tap into that part of you that’s been doing its absolute best to hold that in place so it doesn’t get out. We’re saying, hey, listen, you’ve been on duty for way too long, you know, 24/7 for 20 years. It’s time to take a break.
Client: Right.
Patrick: But first we got to acknowledge that it’s, it’s still there guarding it.
Client: Yeah.
Patrick: And so that’s all we want to do to start off with is just acknowledge that there’s a part of you that’s still guarding the rage, the rage, the rage. There’s a part of you that’s still guarding the rage so that the rage doesn’t get out. How freaking dare you? How dare you? How dare you? How dare you?
It is not safe to feel the rage against my father that I still carry. It is not safe to feel the rage against my father that I still carry.
Doing good.
It is not safe to feel the rage against my father that I still carry.
Yeah, I’m feeling like your face is getting warmer.
Client: Yeah, I think so too.
Patrick: Beautiful. Good, good, good. Let’s do it together.
It is not safe.
Client: It is not safe
Patrick: to feel the rage
Client: to feel the rage
Patrick: against my father
Client: against my father
Patrick: that I still carry
Client: that I still carry.
Patrick: There you go. Good, good, good, good, good.
Letting it come up to the best of your ability. This is for the benefit of the 18 year old, the 19 year old, the 20 year old. One more time.
It is not safe.
Client: It is not safe
Patrick: to feel the rage
Client: to feel the rage
Patrick: against my father
Client: against my father
Patrick: that I still carry.
Client: that I still carry.
Patrick: Good. I’m feeling all kinds of things going on in the stomach, solar plex areas that match.
Client: I feel a little bit like some heaviness or something there.
Patrick: Perfect. Letting that come up. You are correct. This was a hand me down. It went from great grandfather to grandfather to dad, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior. To six year old Matt that then really imprinted on 18 year old.
It is okay to understand it, but we don’t need 18 year old Matt to excuse it because it feels too often for many of us when we do forgiveness work. “What do you mean I’m going to forgive him? He gets to get away with all this shit?”
That’s not what we want to do. We honor the self, honor the self, honor the self. Understanding is often key in order to let go, honor the self. Good.
Honoring the self doesn’t mean we need to go down the street and beat the hell out of the old guy. It just means I have rage and now it’s safe to let it go. It wasn’t safe then. Couldn’t. Ridiculous. Perish the thought. It is safe now. It wasn’t safe then.
We don’t have to have that guard on duty 24 seven, 365 days a year. There’s no holidays, no breaks. One last time.
It is not safe.
Client: It is not safe.
Patrick: To feel the rage.
Client: To feel the rage.
Patrick: Against my father.
Client: Against my father.
Patrick: That I still carry.
Client: That I still carry.
Patrick: There you go. I’m feeling that lowering. How does that feel to you?
Client: Low, sorry?
Patrick: The rage, like the internal rage that was held in place. Do you know what those 55-gallon drums of like where they hold gasoline, those big, tall, multi-liter? I don’t know what the conversion is.
Client: I guess an oil drum, like an oil drum?
Patrick: Like an oil drum, right. So when we started, it feels like you had about five of those inside. Now maybe about a half of one is what I’m perceiving. What does that feel right to you?
Client: I have a hard time kind of feeling the more intuitive stuff, but I guess there might be a sense that there’s a bit more calmer. I still have a bit of fluttery stuff in the solar plexus stomach area.
Patrick: I’m still feeling a higher level of heart rate, but it’s not as strong pulsing from what I can perceive. How does that feel to you?
Client: Yeah. There’s a bit of on-edgeness or just like tension, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s not too much. It’s kind of like I can coast with it or something like that.
Patrick: Good. Good. Good. Not bad. Not bad. Okay. Let me go back to the top here.
Isolation, isolated, deserted, and abandoned. Isolated, deserted, and abandoned.
I’m looking for that. We stirred up a lot. So no big deal. It was actually really good. Tell me what comes up for you when you hear me say isolated, deserted, alone, abandoned. You can even say that out loud.
Client: Isolated, alone, deserted, abandoned.
Patrick: What comes up for you? Yeah.
Client: I’m just visualizing myself like alone in my room, in my home growing up, and other places I lived where stuff came up and I guess sentiment towards feel like people and just feeling alienated and not being able to reach out to people and not allowed to have friends, not allowed to have girlfriends, not want to be interested in me.
Yeah, I wasn’t allowed to have friends or girlfriends. Especially girlfriends. I think my father would have been gotten jealous, so that might have been an unconscious thing that kind of explains at least partially why I’ve been isolated with that all my whole life.
Patrick: Let’s try saying that again and just focusing on your own internal feelings.
Client: Okay.
Patrick: They can be emotional or they can be physical. I am not allowed to have friends. I am not allowed to have friends.
Client: I am not allowed to have friends. I am not allowed to have friends.
Patrick: Now, as you feel that, does it feel like in the past or present?
Client: It’s hard to say.
Patrick: We certainly know that it was true in the past.
Client: Yeah.
Patrick: What I’m trying to assess, is it still in place?
Client: Consciously, I don’t think so unless it…
Patrick: Oh, yeah, there’s consciousness and then there is that iceberg.
Client: That’s it. It might just be manifesting in a different way where now I’m just like, oh, I’m tired. I’m fed up and I’ve had all these bad experiences before. I met some good people in my 30s, but I was too tired and exhausted to be able to pursue more solid friendships. That might be just another way of it manifesting.
Patrick: So let’s try this as a way to assess, I was not allowed to have friends. And go and say that out loud and just feel feelings.
Client: I was not allowed to have friends.
Patrick: It feels very solid and that’s true. That’s true.
Now, I am not allowing myself to have friends.
Client: I am not allowing myself to have friends. I did get a little bit of expansion and stuff like that.
Patrick: So we’re going to work on that. I am not allowing myself to have friends.
And the first thing we want to do is give ourselves permission to allow myself to not allow myself to have friends. We want to give ourselves permission to allow yourself to not allow yourself to have friends.
Client: That’s a tongue twister.
Patrick: So there’s rational logic and then there’s emotional logic. Emotional logic very often doesn’t align with rational logic.
Client: Yeah, I figure.
Patrick: I want to give yourself permission to allow yourself to not allow yourself to have friends. Give yourself permission to allow yourself to not allow yourself to have friends. Just take this in.
It is not safe to not allow myself to have friends. It is not safe to not allow myself to have friends.
We’re going to change that just a little bit. It is not safe to allow myself to not allow myself to have friends. Yeah, energetically that one fits.
Client: The double negatives are throwing me off.
Patrick: Crazy stuff, man. That’s the way energy works.
It is not safe to allow myself to not allow myself to have friends. Yeah, there we go. It is not safe to allow myself to not allow myself to have friends. It is not safe to allow myself to not allow myself to have friends. It is not safe to allow myself to not allow myself to have friends.
Let’s do that together.
Client: Okay.
Patrick: It is not safe.
Client: It is not safe.
Patrick: To allow myself.
Client: To allow myself.
Patrick: To not allow myself.
Client: To not allow myself.
Patrick: To have friends.
Client: To have friends.
Patrick: Tell me if there’s anything significant to any memories or visions that come up. If not, we just go on.
Client: Well, at first when you were saying it, I was just remembering all the instances of, like, not getting, like, having friendships or, like, not pursuing them for, or just, you know, stuff coming up or something like that. So I think it did find, hit some dirt. I think it did find something.
Patrick: I’m getting these really interesting imagery that’s coming up. It’s like when we, it felt just so solid. It kind of like, you know, a wall made out of those cinder blocks, not even the little bricks, but cinder blocks. Now it just feels kind of more of a wooden slatted fence that you can see through a little bit.
Client: Okay.
Patrick: All right, let’s do it again.
It is not safe.
Client: It is not safe.
Patrick: To allow myself.
Client: To allow myself.
Patrick: To not allow myself.
Client: To not allow myself.
Patrick: To have friends.
Client: To have friends.
Patrick: It feels like the grip is loosening big time. Does that match?
Client: I feel a bit of dissipation of kind of loosening.
Patrick: And again, it is not safe.
Client: It is not safe.
Patrick: To allow myself.
Client: To allow myself.
Patrick: To not allow myself.
Client: To not allow myself.
Patrick: To have friends.
Client: To have friends.
Patrick: I’m kind of feeling that starting to not match, it’s like.
Client: Yeah, like I had images of, like, people had more positive, I got along with, you know, the past like 10, about 10 years ago.
Patrick: That’s so cool. That’s so cool. Okay, so we’re going to pretend, pretend that in your father’s ancestry line, it wasn’t safe to have friends. There was backstabbing that occurred. You always had to watch your back.
Client: Yeah.
Patrick: So we’re just going to pretend that that was there. And we’re going to pretend that out of love, out of caring, out of concern, each father passed that along, unbeknownst consciously. They just passed along, passed along, passed along.
And all we’re going to say is thank you for the intent. Because we can thank the intent.
Client: Yeah.
Patrick: It was valid then. It’s no longer valid. One of the things that COVID taught us is that we need friends. We need a network.
That feels very different. But let’s test it out.
Client: Okay.
Patrick: Isolated, deserted, alone, abandoned. Can I ask you just to say it?
Client: Isolated, alone, abandoned, deserted.
Patrick: I’m not feeling anything that really strongly stands out. How about you?
Client: Yeah, there’s like maybe a little bit of fluctuation, but it’s kind of weak.
Patrick: Yeah. Speed bumps are okay. Brick walls, not so much.
Client: Yeah, I agree.
I like to work with metaphors and analogies to help people understand their feelings. In this session, I imagined lightly pulling on threads that then begin to unravel the fabric of feelings of Isolation in this man’s life.
His current life wasn’t perfect, but it was made much worse in part because he was also feeling, Isolated, Alone and Abandoned.
But in order to lower his self-imposed isolation, we first had to work through his suppressed feelings of anger towards his father. He began to see that it was his feelings towards his father, when he was a child, that caused him to feel the need to not have friends.
As those feelings began to release, he then began to feel safe to allow himself to be open to the idea of allowing people into his life.
I want to point out that this session was a very good beginning to healing, not an instant cure.
When working through past hurts and fears people may not have complete relief from their entire past history in one-hour, but it is possible to heal your past, and often from your very first session.
And you may be wondering why I asked him to repeat the phrases that I did. The reason for this is because I’m feeling energy. I’m putting what I’m perceiving, in energy, into words.
When he repeats the phrase, with compassion for his younger self that was going through these hardships, that then begins to release the feelings of these past hurts.
I believe that using the energy of compassion and empathy for our younger self is the most effective healing that we can have for ourselves.
So now let me ask you.
Are you ready to move beyond your past hurts that have present day feelings of isolation or abandonment?
Are you ready to begin releasing the blocks that have been keeping you from fully experiencing joy in your life?
I believe that there are times when having another person help to guide you can really be a transformative experience. This is the reason that I encourage everyone to reach out for help when it comes to resolving issues that are difficult or seemingly impossible to work through on your own.
And if you’d like to work with me I’m here to help. I offer both one-on-one private sessions as well as group healing sessions.
You can reach out to me through my website, PatrickRodriguez.com and set up a time for us to work together.
Or sign up for my newsletter so you’ll know when new podcasts are released.
This has been Patrick Rodriguez reminding you,
to Release your past, so that you can experience the fulfillment of your life by living in the Present Moment.
Thanks for listening.