by Nicole | 04,13 | Blog
How I have used positive affirmations to heal emotionally from losing a child, sexual abuse, rape and alcoholism
I’m excited to share with you one of my secret weapons to healing my emotional pain. You can empower yourself daily by speaking positive affirmations over yourself to counter attack the emotional suffering you may feel after experiencing abuse or loss.
Did You Know?!
Your brain doesn’t know the difference between reality and what you imagine. Think about it the brain only knows what you experience and tell it. That is why regular repetition of affirming statements about yourself can encourage your brain to take these positive affirmations as fact to reprogram your brain and take your life to the next level.
It’s so important to create and implement positive affirmations into your life, especially if you have been wounded from abuse, rape, or loss. But, obviously the benefits of positive affirmations helps everyone.
You can use affirmations to:
- Build belief in yourself
- Increase your confidence
- Increase your self-esteem
- Create habitual positive thoughts
Since emotional trauma can put you on the struggle bus of constantly fighting depression, anxiety and dark thoughts, making an effort to use positive affirmations can help you heal and overcome faster.
Affirmations That Are Repeated Frequently And With Feeling Are Most Effective!
Repeating an affirmation can indeed help boost your motivation and confidence, but please remember you still have to take some action yourself. Affirmations are a step towards change, not the change itself. Say it, and then take action like you truly believe it.
Ok, Ok. Let’s back up here.
In all honesty, I use to laugh in disbelief when I would watch a movie or read a book that talked about positive affirmations. Especially positive affirmations for healing. How in the world could writing positive affirmations on sticky notes and then hanging them around your home heal you?
I mean who really does that in real life anyway? Seriously?!
On top of that how in the heck were positive affirmations going to help me heal from losing a child, rape, sexual abuse and alcoholism?
It all really sounded bogus to me until one day I sucked it up and actually tried it.
My life changed that very day and my healing journey finally begun. I know it sounds like I am exaggerating but I’m not. It’s true, and I am telling you this made a huge difference for me.
The first thing I did (in my head; because I wasn’t ready to speak it out yet since it felt so awkward) was, I started listing off ten reasons why I loved myself right after I woke up each morning. I had made an agreement with myself that I would give it 21 days. But, I knew deep down after that very first day I would be doing it for the rest of my life. The healing and mindset change that I needed so badly in my life was almost immediate, as I began to speak those words I so desperately needed to hear out loud.
Another thing I did after I got out of bed each morning, is I would look into my mirror and say, “I love you, Nicole. You are beautiful, Nicole. You are enough, Nicole”. It was super-duper hard at first. But, after a few days it became easier and easier.
The crazy thing was after about a month, I started to really believe that I was indeed loved, that I actually was beautiful, and that I truly was enough.
I also began writing in my journal. You know the journal someone gave you for your birthday years ago and you said you would never use it?! Yep, that one. And, little does that person know who gave me that gift, that writing out positive affirmations in the journal likely saved my life because of the action steps I took once I truly believed the affirmations I was telling myself and writing out to myself. The positive affirmations, as well as the empowering habits I began doing (once I believed the affirmations I was saying), with out a doubt helped me start to heal.
Repeating Affirmations, Writing in my journal and on my mirror is what helped me realize
- I was not the reason my 9 week old son died.
- The shame I felt from being sexually abused as a child was his to hold not mine
- That it was also not my fault those fraternity brothers my freshman year at Florida State University raped me even if I was intoxicated
- Being a recovering alcoholic does not define me.
I started loving life again.
Feeling empowered.
Forgiving myself and others from my past.
I Learned how to turn that frown upside down
To be get excited about getting out of bed each morning again.
All of this happened by switching my mindset into positive thinking, affirming that I was enough, and taking action with implementing empowering habits so I could heal from the inside out.
So, if you are finally ready to get the help you need to feel like you deserve love, that you are beautiful, you are enough, and you are truly ready to feel empowered then start TODAY with this simple process.
- Stating the affirmation you need to hear to out loud to yourself
- Acknowledge any doubt or limiting belief (even though/in spite of…) to take away it’s power
- Restate “I know I can/am”
Do this each and every morning and at night. You can even write it on a sticky note too or ask others you trust to say your affirmations to you as well. I promise you will not regret it and your healing journey will begin!!!
by Nicole | 04,06 | Blog
By Nicole Gebhardt
Your Guide To Healing, Hope & Happiness
Self Soothing Strategies: Self Soothing Behaviors I Learned To Calm My Anxiety On My Healing Journey
I am the queen of self-soothing.
For the longest time, and I mean decades, I seemed to always search and find someone or something that I thought would help me heal. Unfortunately, I used negative self soothing strategies to numb my pain instead of dealing with the real issues and doing the work to truly get better, and physically and mentally heal from the inside out.
Self soothing behaviors became my go to way to cope with anxiety, stress and heartache. Not all self soothing is bad because you can implement healthy self soothing strategies into your life to give you an instant boost. I not only believe in positive self soothing strategies, I use them daily and it is a topic I teach about in my grief healing cocoon program.
But, before I get more into my own story about self-soothing let me share with you what self-soothing means. Self-soothing is when we use different techniques to help us cope with our struggles, our heartaches, our depressive state, our anxious thoughts and even any physical pain we might be in to help us feel better. The crazy thing is that this is something we learned how to do when we were just babies!! Were you a thumb-sucker? What about a blankie-holder? If so, that was how you self-soothed yourself as a baby and/or child.
The Reason We Self Soothe
The reason why we self-soothe is because it is a quick and immediate way to “feel better” and move past any negativity, fear, mental stressors, or even pain we might be feeling in that very moment. In our minds, we think self-soothing is a way to stabilize and overcome our fears. But, the truth and the sad thing is that self-soothing is really never a productive long-term “fix” to the issue or problem.
My way to self-soothe myself has almost always been with alcohol. I had convinced myself for years that alcohol was taking away my pain and “fixing” me. But, my problem was once I started drinking I couldn’t stop. I would literally wake up thinking about alcohol and then pass out at night excited to wake up the very next day and start drinking all over again.
Then one day, my quick fix method to soothe myself came crashing down. I was at my worst point on Infant Loss and Miscarriage Awareness Day just a short one and a half years ago when I fell down two flights of stairs after getting drunk and highly intoxicated.
I had started the day off just fine, so I thought.
Got up. Got dressed. Got the kids to school and even attended my weekly bible study group with fellow military spouses that I met with every week while we were living in DC and stationed at the Pentagon. But, during my time with the other spouses I felt my walls come tumbling down.
I couldn’t stop thinking of my dead son and even the multiple miscarriages I had endured. So after the bible study ended I went home and cracked open a beer…which in turn turned into 5 beers, a bottle of champagne and half a bottle of wine. I later found out I almost killed myself, not because of just my fall but my BAC (Blood Alcohol) level was out the roof. I shouldn’t have ever made it out of the hospital alive.
Looking back, now that I am about to celebrate eighteen months of sobriety,
the truth was the alcohol was no longer helping me, and as you can see it literally became my downfall. I must add right here, I pray and wish that no one ever has to see or find their husband or wife at the bottom of two flights of stairs to recognize that self soothing with substances is not the answer.
Praise God, I survived to share my story with you today. And I have found much healthier ways to self-soothe.
- I enjoy a fabulous Shirley Temple, or three, with lots of yummy cherries.
- I also go watch the sunset each and every night to soothe my soul and ground myself.
- Another great thing I do is Reiki Energy Healing on myself each and every morning, noon, and night.
I have found these three things TOGETHER help ease my anxiety, my depression, my PTSD, and it even have helped cure my insomnia.
If you are looking for a place to heal and grow your hope and happiness I want to invite you to my Free Facebook Group Click Here For Access.
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I want to leave you with this list of ideas for self soothing techniques you can start using today.
by Nicole | 04,01 | Blog
Find joy by forgiving others who have hurt you. Why forgiveness and healing go hand in hand and how to acknowledge the pain and struggle un-forgiveness is causing in your life.
First and foremost, in order to truly forgive others, you must acknowledge you have un-forgiveness in your heart, mind, body and soul.
I thought for the longest time I had truly forgiven all those who had brought me heartache and pain in and from my past. These people included my ex-husband who had mentally and emotionally abused me for years after the death of our son, the fraternity brothers who gang raped me my freshman year of college at Florida State University, and even the individual who sexually assaulted me when I was just a seven-year-old little girl who became scared to even be alone after that horrific event occurred in my childhood.
But, the truth was I had only blocked out these horrendous episodes and memories, which in turn did not allow me to truly forgive these individuals. Instead I had buried all of it so deep inside of me because the pain and truth of what had happened to me literally brought me to my knees each and every time the thoughts surfaced in my heart and in mind of what happened to me all of those years many, many moons ago.
To get even more real and honest with you, I thought for decades that the rape, abuse, and sexual assault was indeed all my fault as well. Isn’t that awful??
Why do we do this to ourselves???
Oh, and it doesn’t end there. To add even more fuel to the fire, I thought the death of my son, Samuel, was my fault too. I had convinced myself my son died and left this Earth to go be with the Lord in Heaven when he was only 9 weeks of age because of something I did wrong as a young mother and him being my first and only child at the time.
The lack of forgiveness, or what you might call un-forgiveness, became just too much for me to bear because it was causing more problems than the true benefits of utter forgiveness.
I couldn’t keep doing this to myself any longer. It was time for me to truly forgive myself so I could also finally forgive the others, which in hopes would give me the desire to want to be alive and get out of bed again, stop thinking suicidal thoughts, and to feel genuinely happy for the first time in my life.
I did begin to want to get up and get out of bed each morning. I did begin to feel more alive, free, and ready to live life to the fullest. I did want to truly get help for the first time in my life so I could finally heal from my past. And I even did want to implement self-care so I could feel all the joy and happiness life had to offer.
And, yes, life became much more beautiful, exciting, and glorious for the first time for me ever due to simple act of forgiveness.
This is why I have created my program the Healing Cocoon, because you deserve to have a happier and more beautiful life.
I want to close by sharing some of the ways I implemented the act of forgiveness in my life:
Acts Of Forgiveness
I wrote a letter to each of the individuals that hurt me and soon as I wrote it and read it out loud to myself I burned it
I posted bible verses around my house on what God teaches us about forgiveness in the Bible
I started a self-help book called “Mirror Work: 21 Days to Heal Your Life” which taught me ways to implement forgiveness
I began to journal and each day for a month I wrote the person’s name out in my journal and next to it I wrote, “I forgive you”
I began getting Reiki Energy Healing weekly which allowed me to release the pain and forgive all the individuals from my past
.
Some more tips and ideas on how you can forgive to heal are:
- Always forgive yourself first
- Talk about your feelings
- Share your feelings with someone else
- Forgive smaller things in the beginning then work towards larger ones
- Focus more on the good things in your life
- Look for a support group
- Work towards your own happiness and implement self-care
- Find a Reiki Master near you or schedule a distant reiki session with me
Schedule A Reiki Session With Me
If you are looking for a supportive group for daily encouragement and full of people who are seeking the light join us at Nicole’s Angels.
Free Facebook Group To Help You Heal
by Nicole | 03,25 | Blog
Implementing Self Love Activities Is Not A Luxury It Is Vital. Self Love Matters and here is why…
I Didn’t Think I Deserved It
For the longest time, and I mean decades, I never thought I deserved true unconditional love or to even love myself. You see after experiencing so much heartache and pain from the combination of losing my son, being raped in college, and living through spousal abuse in my first marriage, I just figured I deserved all the pain and heartache I was receiving.
Until I woke up one morning and decided enough was enough.
I immediately began the process of healing by simply implementing self-love. I began doing things I enjoyed doing. Whether it was a simple as taking a bubble bath or running to Target and just walking up and down the aisles. My life immediately began to change.
I realized there was no way I could ever truly love others the way they deserved to be loved until I began digging deep and learning to love my true authentic self. I began to realize the importance of putting myself first at times and that there was nothing wrong with doing that.
I stopped being mean to myself.
Talking myself down. Expecting perfection. I mean let’s be real no one or nothing in life is perfect so why did I expect perfection from myself, but not from others? Why was I constantly being my hardest critic? And constantly using harsh words towards myself?
One of the biggest changes I made was I really started to change the way I thought about myself. The nasty words I used in my head became calm and loving words. The negative thoughts about myself that ran rampant in my head before became positive and loving words. My personal growth became unstoppable.
Just by me simply starting the process of self-love, I began to truly love myself, love who I was becoming, and even became excited to wake up each day and want to get out of bed. I also began feeling more free, less depressed and anxious, and more beautiful from the inside out.
So if you are reading this, I strongly encourage you to start implementing self-love immediately.
And guess what?!? I have created a phenomenal program to help you to do this and in turn you will learn to truly fall in love with yourself. I will teach you numerous ways to show you what self-compassion looks like. Whether it is changing your negative thoughts into positive thoughts, changing the course of your day from being hard and self-loathing to being easy and beautiful by simply expressing gratitude, or even realizing you are worth it by placing positive affirmations around your home…everything I teach you will change the way you live and you will fall in love with yourself all over again…and that’s a promise.
My 3 favorite Self-Love Activities you can DO today to start loving yourself the way you deserve to be loved are:
- Take a warm bubble bath after your children go to bed.
- Purchase a blank journal so you can write down every day THREE reasons why you love yourself in it.
- Set your alarm for tomorrow 10 minutes earlier than usual so you can enjoy a hot cup of coffee alone before your children get out of bed.
Want more self love activity ideas check them out here.
“You are worthy. You are capable. You are beautiful. Book the ticket. Create the dream. Celebrate yourself. Rule your queendom.”
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by Nicole | 03,24 | Blog
By Nicole Gebhardt
I Had Hit Rock Bottom.
I had a choice, either stay in the darkness of my grief and pain from losing my child to SIDS or start seeking the light of hope and happiness
On October 15th 2019 my life forever changed. It was Infant Loss and Miscarriage Awareness Day and I could not stop thinking about my son, Samuel, that had passed away when he was merely 9 weeks of age. I drank alone until I got so intoxicated that I fell down two flights of stairs that evening. My husband, Jeff, found me at the bottom. I was barely breathing and not responding to him. What happened the next few hours and days would bring you to your knees.
When we arrived to the hospital, the doctors did not even know if I was going to make it. I ended up spending a week in the ICU and towards the end of that week was indeed released, but was in need of 24/7 care from others. I knew that very moment my life needed to change and I made the biggest decision of my life to finally seek the light and get help.
I made a commitment to change
When making the decision in seeking the light and getting help, I promised myself and my family I would never take another sip of alcohol again. I also realized it was time to get honest and real with myself and others about my addiction, the loss of my son, and so many other heartaches I had endured, which also included a rape in college and abuse I lived through in my first marriage. I knew I needed support and was committed to the discomfort of change this would bring to me as I began rising from the ashes of grief and disparity.
I began really investing in myself and putting myself first for the first time in my life. I hired a life coach, joined an Alcohol Anonymous Support Group, started receiving Reiki Energy Healing to heal my PTSD from losing my child and the sexual abuse I had suffered I even took a trip out to Sedona to work through all of my pain and grief where I completely let go and let God. It was all finally finished. I released my pain and let the world feel the weight of it. I no longer had to carry it alone.
My relationship with the Lord was on fire, my marriage got stronger, and I became a better mother. But, most importantly I fell in love with myself and the woman I was becoming. I truly loved being alive and being in my own skin for the first time ever. The support I began receiving from others around me, near and far, once I committed to seeking the light was unbelievable.
I am writing this part of my journey and my story out for you to see that you too can seek the light. That you too can make the decision to get help, to start being honest with yourself and others, and to be committed to the discomfort of change. I want you to see how easy it is to also build a support system around you if you are truly ready to finally learn to love yourself, learn that you are enough, and to realize that you are not alone.
Please know you do not have to reach rock bottom to indeed get help. I don’t want it to take a near death episode for you to see that there is hope. You can find and feel happiness again.
I am here for you. I am ready to help you. And I would be honored to show you the light.
12 Steps I Took To Heal
On my journey to healing I am able to point to 12 steps I had to take to heal from the devastating loss of my child, surviving sexual abuse and overcoming alcoholism. I want to share these 12 steps with you today taken straight out of my Healing Cocoon program in hopes you will also heal to become a healthier, happier, and more hopeful you.
Step 1: Hit Rock Bottom
Decide it is time to change. Make a commitment to do the hard work of healing. Trust me it’s worth it!
Step 2: Get Support
You don’t have to do it alone. You need support. Start admitting to others that you are willing to accept help to heal. The Healing Cocoon is a safe space to heal and find your hope & happiness again
Step 3: Make Self Love A Priority
If you don’t love yourself you will not have the capacity to have healthy relationships. It’s time to fall in love with you, accept that you are enough and worthy of all good things
Step 4: Control Your Environment
To heal and transform your life you must have the right environment. You can’t control everything; but you have the ability to create an environment to thrive starting today
Step 5: Develop Empowering Habits
What you do minute to minute and day to day is what is shaping your reality it’s time to implement habits that empower your life instead of tear it down
Step 6: Share Your Story
You don’t have to hide your pain, it is time to start sharing your story and let others feel the weight of it. Doing this helps you to reconcile your pain and surrender the past so you can move forward and learn to walk with your pain instead of drowning in it
Step 7: Learn to Control Your Inner Chatter
Your enemy lives inside of you and it is every dark and negative thought that is running rampant in that sweet brain of yours, learn to take your thoughts captive and allow positive thoughts to reign so that you can attract goodness into your life.
Step 8: Do the Work to Become A Better You
Increase your confidence and learn how to shape your new identity as you let go of the past, so that you can become the person you have always longed to be.
Step 9: Take Steps to Being A Happier You
Happiness can be yours! Learn how to live in your moments and make today count. Reframe the past to live in joy and gratitude, and step into a life of abundance filled with things you love and enjoy.
Step 10: Forgive and Let Go
Not only do you need to forgive others, you also need to forgive yourself. You can be set free if you will only choose to forgive and let go, and let God
Step 11: Learn Healthy Coping Methods
Stop surviving through each day by numbing and isolating and learn how to fill your life with love and laughter again by implementing healthy coping methods
Step 12: Release the Pain
Discover methods that help you release the pain you have been holding on to so that you can heal and be free to feel happy again
The Healing Cocoon gives you exactly what you need to successfully take these steps to reveal, feel and heal your wounds so you can have hope for a beautiful and happy future.
The Healing Cocoon is the perfect place to get support because it combines deep self-work with the accountability of a support group where you are surrounded by people who understand what it feels to struggle with grief and also want to seek the light of hope and happiness.
If you are looking for a supportive group for daily encouragement and full of people who are seeking the light join us in my free facebook group.
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