Lita (00:02)
Hello, to the first episode, Finding Freedom from Feeling Trapped to Transform.

Have you ever felt like life was happening to you, not for you? Like you were stuck in a loop of fear, regret or not enough? Well, that was me until I discovered the tools that rewired my life. Welcome to the Empowerment Diaries. I’m Lita and this space is where stories become medicine.

My journey as such, the eldest child raised with a single parent, my mother, one of four in the household, corporal punishment was the norm of the time. Some would say how it was meted out was not so normal. However,

Through those years, especially from early childhood, I escaped into books, fantasies, daydreams as my coping mechanism to get through life. By age 17, I left home.

and some would say ran away from home.

Not long after the age of 17, I entered my first marriage.

and it was followed swiftly by divorce within two years, at which point I returned to education, taking up a degree in business. Very hopeful that my universe, my world will open up.

Actually, things didn’t really change for me until 2009 when I took up training. Initially it was supposed to be training as a counselor stroke psychotherapist. I embarked on the course and ended up being trained and coached as a hypnotherapist with counseling skills.

taken on additional courses to include emotional freedom techniques, hypnoanalysis, EMDR, all alternative therapies. It was EFT or emotional freedom techniques that finally presented the right breakthrough that I needed. You see until then my mind was full of

repetitive thoughts, repetitive stories often stuck and attached to my childhood traumas. I couldn’t see anything else, couldn’t do anything else. I only focused on the why, could never understand it. When I came upon emotional freedom techniques, I was encouraged through the practice to start looking at

the situation as is. I now know we’ll only ever know a version of truth. The whole truth may never be something that comes into our awareness. What’s important is our feeling against any and every given scenario, particularly if it is

something that is blocking us from moving forward with a sense of peace contentment

being present. Emotional freedom techniques gives us the opportunity to exercise emotional intelligence, maturity. We’re able to go within, tap into how we feel without justifying it to anyone, allowing ourselves to tap into our emotions, our feelings, those ones that don’t make us feel so great and take time to acknowledge it.

Give thanks for it, respect it, let it go.

So emotional freedom techniques taught me how to review my story.

at a higher level, a higher perspective.

Emotional freedom techniques has taught me the power of forgiveness, self-love, spiritual awareness, self-acceptance.

Emotional freedom techniques requires gentle tapping, some would say symbolic, some say it mirrors tapping into the meridian points as one would have acupuncture. I still do not know after so many years why it works or how it does what it does so well. What I know

somehow it’s as if the spirit gets involved and areas that we aren’t so aware of become clearer in our consciousness, in our life experience and we’re able to look at a comfortable distance as it’s almost as if life chips the decay away.

I know we’re in an age and a stage of life where everyone now understands what most people do. What we focus on is what we bring into our reality. Each thought and the momentum with it brings on a certain life experience. Emotional freedom techniques is about capturing how we feel in this moment, whether it be good, bad or indifferent.

Usually you’ll only do it when you’re not so comfortable with your emotion, be it anger, be it stress, anxiety, something that’s got you off balance. Because our ultimate state, ultimate, penultimate state is to be in a balanced state. That is the space that we can be creative, tapping into our true selves, connect with others naturally, lovingly.

also tapping into opportunities and that flow of life that we also desperately would want to live on a daily basis. Mind you, we are human. We do have prompts that are innate in us. It’s important that we have that access to contrast, whether it be fear, whether it be cold, whether it be hot.

sadness versus happiness whatever it is we need that contrast so that we have a almost thermometer, barometer to guide us on how to make a decision

That’s most of us. Some of us, and there is a, I don’t know if it’s a minority, but there’s definitely people out there I’m aware of that practice just being in the flow.

There’s no sadness, there’s no anxiety, there’s just being, waking up in the morning and just seeing what the day holds. I’m not there as yet. And that is not my focus. My focus with emotional freedom techniques and the tools that I use is to get to the stage where I’m fully enjoying my day. And like Domino’s, have more moments of

contentment so more days come forward where I just feel gratitude and the gratitude comes first.

Embracing the story is important. I know when we come from certain backgrounds, mine being what it was, single parent upbringing and obviously we say obviously because it’s not obvious actually, people have different stories. There’s single parents out there that’s very wealthy raising their children to go to private school, etc etc. I happen to be born in ⁓

London, Hackney and Yale. Single parent resources were as they were. I would say looking back because stories go where stories go and understanding economics my life financially was so much better then than a lot of the children live today. Resources we had

In those days you would have housing, kind of a benefit system, supplemented work, supplemented nurseries. There were so many more opportunities to support single parents in my day than exist now. So this is where we’re talking about the story. The story that we carry with ourselves that makes us believe

whether we have had a life of abundance or lack, it’s all relative actually. We cannot heal ourselves by ignoring the past, we have to acknowledge the past. With our adult minds we can actually take time to question, did that really happen? What was going on around about that time?

Some of us went to schools where there was many other children that were raised in single parent households. So it might have been seen the norm versus others that went to environments where it was seen as still taboo. So you’re going to have a different energy, a different idea and understanding as to how equipped you were through childhood based on your upbringing.

your cultural difference and the environment that you were in.

Emotional freedom techniques is one tool for us to tap into, to look at our story and the reason we do that is to really identify our belief system because it’s our belief system that encourages us to put on weight, to take on a medication for pain, to decide whether to go for a walk or to lay in bed all day. Belief systems are attached and linked into our

core story, what we believe about ourselves and each other, life generally. So part of healing is being able to understand our story, accept our story, embrace our story, the good, the bad and the indifferent. And there are tools that will eventually help us all understand everything is in perfect order, no matter how

what sadness there might be in any given situation that we may go through. Again, we’ve got the contrast, sadness and happiness needed for our own growth and development. We are to identify our past and that is where the beauty of our healing is. Now I know many have gone to counselling and people talk about

sitting down and spending time going through their story. I will say to you our stories are relative and as we age we come to understand that the things that we thought were true may not necessarily be true. Can you imagine a whole lifetime, I’m 50 now, a whole lifetime making decisions based on what we thought we knew in childhood.

like how we decide to relate with our significant others or even in terms of our friendship networks, the kinds of jobs that we choose. All those decisions based on what we saw in childhood only to find at 40, 50 and so it wasn’t true or what we thought was the situation was so not the situation.

How many times have you had opportunities and chosen not to go forward because of what you thought had happened to someone else? Or even according to what you thought happened to yourself? Only to find out much later that your decision making was based on an untruth.

The time is now to question the story, to tap into the belief. Emotional freedom techniques can help with that. I will say another tool that’s really helped me in my lifetime has been astrology. I read astrology not for divination because I’m definitely not psychic. I read astrology just to guide me on the time and the season. Since I was a child, I used to get as a gift

a, as I would be told, an almanac. A little astrology booklet telling me about transits and so I didn’t understand it at all. I thought it was going to tell me about the future and so and I didn’t quite understand it. Friends and I would get involved in horoscopes and then I no longer believed in horoscopes. It was my, just before my 30s, Saturn Return.

when I started to absorb and take on so much information on astrology because it was the only thing that was explaining what I was going through. I found myself out of work and in a bit of a dump and really not sure as to which way I was going forward. I wanted to purchase a first home of my own.

Having had a lifetime of wanting to find some kind of stability, a place of my own, I found myself in a shared house of men. I rented a room downstairs, an all-inclusive situation which I found easier to manage. And for near two years I spent trying to identify what it is that I needed to do with my life.

Needless to say, by the end of that transit, I had got onto my therapeutic course. And actually, by the time I graduated from that course, I had purchased my home. Yeah, my first apartment. And that is, again, something that I’d like to address in this podcast.

that there are many stories in our life, sometimes many blockages, many hurtful experiences and I know hindsight is a thing, but when you look back you come to realise that all that pain, all that heartache, it was really like a birthing process to push us to our ultimate version of ourself. Had I not gone through that slump, I may not have bothered to push myself forward.

And recently, over the last two and a half years, I have gone through a shadow of change.

many things identified as blockages and stops that has been pushing me to change my focus on career, going towards more heart-centred living.

Astrology has helped me find the sanity when it seems as if there’s insanity around me. Nothing makes sense. It hasn’t failed me yet from the readings I’ve had. And I have definitely tried to fight against what I’ve read will happen and could happen and the influences of, definitely. Because ultimately I do believe we are.

I am the creator of my life. I understand on levels the interconnectedness of my actions and then the reactions from those actions. I also understand the genetics, the ancestry, the spirituality that brings everything forward to this moment in time.

Many times, like in my childhood when I escaped in books or daydreams, many times I will try to block out what it is I see around me. Sometimes it can get too much.

But when I have gone through that birthing process I then become ready to be in this moment and see things in this moment. I doubt I will ever see life as it is fully. I don’t know if I personally have that brain and mindset to fully see the full truth and reality of life as it is. What I understand is that this life is short.

and I do believe I have a contract, a life experience that I’m here to live and in living that experience I am expanding my soul’s connection and knowledge and then I’m gone.

life continues in another realm another dimension this isn’t all there is

There is this path of contrasts and that’s what we’re in, identifying the hot and the cold, our power of creation. And a lot of us have sped up the way that we create so much so that when we’re thinking things, it doesn’t take too long for it to manifest. And there’s no magic behind it. There’s just more centering.

more time spent listening. And I would say that a lot of us are tuned in because we were destined to be tuned in. I don’t personally believe spending time seated, meditating 10 hours a day, however long, is going to make me any more spiritual than I am today. I think there is a natural cycle that each individual has.

And when it comes to astrology, I am very interested in things like perfection charts, which clearly guides us to the fact that we’re all in this world, but in different worlds. I can now fully understand why judging another by my experience or that competition or comparison on a level is kind of nonsense.

Because one person’s path today could be to look at relationships. Another person’s path today, career, another travel, the fact that they’re all sitting down having a coffee, their paths are just overlaying and interacting with each other for the moment. But their path and journey continues, right? And we wouldn’t want to interfere with anyone’s path and journey.

Together we’re here to help each other elevate, right? Saturn return, I think for me was hard until I decided to go into the swing of it.

the latest change, I tried to beat the system because I read what could happen. So I did all manner of things to try and avert it and sat down one day and said, actually all of what I did didn’t do anything to prevent it. But then I reflected and I thought, actually it was my task to continue striving and fighting and trying to be the best that I can be in the situation.

and all of that experience will hold me in good stead. Had I not done all of that, I probably wouldn’t be here doing this podcast today. Because, regardless of what one reads in astrology, not everybody has the inclination to decide, actually, that experience is not what I want to participate in, so I’m going to stay in bed today. Or, I’m going to take a flight and go to a whole different…

part of the world to avert that situation. Not everybody has that ⁓ choice, freedom of choice, right? Some of us we have to stay in the space that we created before birth and go through that birthing process.

So I am here and I’d love to connect with you. I’d love to hear your story. What story is it that you are still carrying with you? Have you done a bit of journaling like I have and spent time rewriting your story or tapping into your story? What one story are you ready to rewrite?

Are your stories empowering you? And we have stories in stories in stories and we can pick up the story pick it up by how we interact with each other but forget the outside look at how we’re treating ourselves. I still have many stories that I’m working on this is a life journey this is ⁓ a focus of growth.

I call myself the goddess of growth and I think about all those mythological stories of goddesses and gods and we understand that nobody is perfect. My focus is on competing with myself, being the best I can be in this moment and I need to learn to rest. I need to learn to surrender.

But I also need to learn how to be committed as well to the cause. It’s about balance, right? And sometimes I can do too much of one thing and then because I’ve done so much, not enough of another. I am learning though, a lot of the things that I’ve done over the last two years, it really has been a result of tapping into my intuition and taking time out to listen.

and that hasn’t failed me. Even in scenarios where one would think, wow, are you really doing that? Is that really happening? I have had to take a step back and just get quiet and listen to myself. See, that’s the learning come age 50. We went through decades of going to others, asking why, why, why.

By 30s we decide, okay, I don’t even care why this is how I want to live from here. I just want to have a better life. By 40, you’re questioning, why did I even bother? And I think by 50, you really understand these stories that we carried around. Whose stories are they? Even the people that told you their stories don’t believe their stories at this point. They’re just stories.

and spiritually we understand it’s our time to embrace our story to empower ourselves with our story and you know even at this point we get to a point of life where the bad stuff the bad stuff so what is what i needed to do to get to this point right had i known better i would have done better

There’s some experiences, in fact all of them, we would not be here today without them, right? What’s your story? Are you looking to rewrite your story? Another practice I enjoy doing is hypnoanalysis. That again is about going into your story. What’s nice about that, there’s a technique called free association used and your story is your story.

whether it’s be real or imagined, it’s about tapping into what you feel and releasing that. There is this idea, we only remember those things which have a feeling attached. And the idea is with free association, you’re tapping into those feelings, releasing how you think, whether it be shame, whatever it is that’s bringing that feeling to you that you find uncomfortable. And mind you, as I said before, know, our emotions are important, whether we…

Whatever we feel, need that emotion to understand where we are in life, how we feel about things. That’s how we grow. This is how we evolve by understanding how it is we feel, acknowledging it, not dismissing it, acknowledging it, tapping in and empowering ourself through it. So hypnoanalysis is a tool that can help us tap into our feeling and release those

things about ourselves, our story, that still have us feeling as if we should be holding ourselves back somewhat.

And what I like about hypnoanalysis is that often you’ll see people go through their cycle through hypnotherapy, go back to childhood, go back and see their behaviors. We start sessions where there’s a total blame on mother, father, sister, whatever. And then at some point there’s an acknowledgement, okay. Maybe, just maybe, I have had a part to do with this too.

Whether it was not being assertive enough, not having the confidence to do something, making up our minds to leave a situation, staying in a relationship too long or not giving enough time to a relationship.

not knowing the balance between restrictions, boundaries, surrender, giving, receiving. We’re all learning this is a journey we’re here to learn and we’re learning from each other. This podcast, I am no guru, I am open to learn from your story. I’d love to hear your story. That’s how I get to know this life. I don’t watch the news often these days.

But when I hear the news and I hear any updates, I do tend to laugh because even when you read astrology, you tend to see the synchronicities and the patterns. We tend to believe that we’re all on our own making these decisions and that’s it. But everything is interconnected. How we think, the conclusions we come to, everything.

They say there’s nothing new under the sun, not even us. So are you carrying a story from childhood, mother, father issues, friend issues? Do share with me. No judgment. This is a judgment free zone. I’d love to be able to receive some stories. I might even look at some charts, might do. I do not predict the future at all. It’s not for divination.

I just like to use it to find out a bit more about the person and help with coaching as well. That’s all. Time and season, that’s all.

If you’d like to share your story, you’d like a bit more clarity on your story, do get in touch with me, send me a message. In the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed this space and time I have spent with you. The next episode I will be looking into emotional freedom techniques a bit more and I will discuss…

and show you how it is it can be used to help with anxiety. Emotional freedom technique is my daily technique. I don’t think…

Well, everybody’s different, I don’t get as anxious as I used to, but there are things that definitely push me off balance. And a lot of that is due to my attachment to things. I tend to find the things that matter the most tend to give me the most anxiety, like being in my home and paying a mortgage and finding I’m not able to pay, so then I’m a bit anxious about that.

even when I’m told don’t worry it’s going to be okay and sure enough it was okay but I still go through that process. So I’m definitely not here saying that emotional freedom techniques will stop you from worrying forever in the future. I think that takes more spiritual work and the spiritual understanding I mean I do look back often and think ⁓ wow I spent so many months and years worrying about XYZ.

And I won’t say that I’m a theorist yet, but I do have an understanding that what will be will be. As I say, for me, it’s easier when there’s no attachment, right? But when you’re attached to something, and that is my personal lesson to release attachment. So I have to keep practicing emotional freedom techniques because that’s what helps release my stomach and makes me feel present. And actually…

be aware and joyful when I see the synchronicities come in place, the opportunities open up and then I’m like wow, if only I had known. Then there’s no regret, it’s just like wow, ⁓ wow, did that really happen, is this really happening? We need to make sure that we’re open and ready to listen.

And when I say listen, listen to ourselves, nobody else. The messages will come eventually. Sometimes the messages will come and you’ll think, huh? What’s that all about? That doesn’t make sense. And then later you’re looking for, ⁓ that’s why. Yeah. So emotional freedom techniques, I think, is quite a spiritual tool as well.

It’s almost like a nod to the universe. I’m ready. I’m ready to do some work. I’m ready. Even though I don’t know why this story is bothering me so much. Jealousy, hatred, anger, helplessness, vulnerability, low self-esteem, whatever it is. Even though I don’t know how to cure it, how to deal with it. Emotional freedom techniques kind of like bring spiritual help and guidance.

So it’s not something that we have to logically try and resolve.

come along and come and tap with me and you will see. I will go into more details in the next episode. Thank you so much for being here and do tap in below. I’d love to have a community of people that tap in. Come along and share your story and I’d love to be able to respond to a story on my upcoming episodes.

At the end of this podcast you will be able to see some links as well. I am raising resources to keep this podcast, well get it up and running and keep it running. So do check in. I’ve got some affiliate links there. It would be lovely to see if anyone’s looking at them as well. So you are with Lita today. Thank you for being here.

Have a lovely one. Stay empowered.