For a very long time, people almost convinced me that I was too much bold. I have almost been caught in a very nasty net. A net of thick guilt and unforgivable shame. I’ll tell you why.
First things first. Hypnosis came to me by very soft whisperings in my ears. I was 18 when I bought a perfume named “Hypnose” de Lancôme. That very same year I discovered a novel that has definitely got me starting my path. I believe now, as I can connect some dots, that it was the path I was destined for.
That book is “the perfume” by Patrick Suskind. It was the kinda of book that molds your brain. So much that at that time of a university choice, I decided I wanted to become a perfume maker. In French we call them “Nez”, which is literally noses. The story fascinated me and still does. I will get back to it later.
My journey begins with this dream of becoming an entrepreneur, opening my own business, in cosmetics. I felt it deep in my heart. It felt it right. To do so, I needed to get first a degree in biochemistry. Which I didn’t get. In fact, I started then a long path of failure. Spectacular, big bold failure during 7 years, almost on a raw. I had to give up the dream meanwhile, biochemistry was deadly boring to me. It was like offering Chinese classes for someone who just needed to dance and write poetry. The failure caught up some addictions on the road: smoking and drinking. The scars always need feeding with a supplement of comfort.
I discovered one of my strengths in that debacle, as I needed to work and earn some money… my father was fed up investing In somebody’s sterile headlong rush…who wouldn’t!
Working gave me this confidence in myself to get out of trouble. I enjoyed working. I discovered that I loved working. Waking up early or working long hours boosted my energy. So it helped me build my confidence in getting the job done when needed.
It was encountering one of my colleagues, a Brazilian student who was working with me in a fast food, who tells me that she has been recruited in an Addecco agency. As a recruiter. BAM! Another. Eureka moment. This is it! I wanna do that. Recruiting people.
From that moment I discovered that, everything started to work out for me. Everything! I knew what I wanted to do, so miraculously, all the departments in my life started to get in order. I got a degree, I got married, I got a job: the dream job!
I failed so much in my studies. And boy that was not easy in a family of super scholars people. The less successful had at least a master in some abstruse scientific field. Not getting a serious degree in my family got me to be a big black sheep. So I lied about it. And I chose another strategy to get my honour back. I needed badly to have a glorious career! What else would bring my self esteem back?
So I joined the ranks of a prestigious mega multinational company. Worked my a**** off to get a promotion. I was fiercely ambitious. And I was determined not to get anything on my way. So I stumbled first with the team. At that time, I worked in Luxembourg. It wasn’t like In france where we value people who stay late at work, do the hours. There in Luxembourg, it was more German style. They are actually a mix between French culture and German culture. So if I stayed late, it meant that I wasn’t well organised or a deep brown noser. In both cases I needed to adapt my attitude.
My stomach aches started there. The ambiance was difficult. The GM wasn’t making it easy on us. There were days I felt they were asking people to climb the mount everest with a pair of ice skates. It’s heavy and completely inappropriate. Yes there was ice, but we needed other kind of ground support. Anyways, add to it that despite, one would say, outstanding sales results. Because sales, you cannot deny my friend. Quality takes some fairness to validate. I was still payed less then my male colleagues, no matter how more experienced or efficient I was. That led me to understand something very important and that shaped my other path: becoming my own boss.
That is the advantage when you are used to sell. You have confidence in yourself to bring money into the nest.
I became a mom at that time too and took that new motherhood status to birth another baby quiet right after: my first company.
Becoming a mum, as any parent, brings you to discover another deep layer of yourself. I thought I was quiet a failure, but then somebody was counting on me. Anxiety made me realise that I was not going to let anyone hurt my baby son. So I became a she-wolf. Back off, anybody who dares touching him. I might bite. And seriously guys, I descend from a long line of Hulks. When I reach angry bird mode, I shoot hard.
The thing is, when you keep shooting, nobody will pay attention to why even you started shooting. They just see the colour green. They don’t see the stab in the back.
It’s extremely rare to meet somebody who will ask this question: what made you feel angry buddy?
There is a reason to that: when we are angry, there is collateral damage sometimes. And that always feed the wolves.
At some point, I was fed up playing it like hulk. First of all, I noticed, it is absolutely counter productive. And in my case, it started with a huge disagreement with my partners in business. My first business that I chose to share as I needed to follow my husband and kids to saudi. So I needed to give some control away.
I didn’t mind sharing the power. Anybody who has launched a business will feel about it as a child of your own. When it comes from the heart, you want your business to thrive. Go ask Steve jobs who did the same apparently.
Of course a business needs to be profitable, but you first want it to stand on its own two feet. This is the goal. Fruits will come, you have faith that is will come because you believe in it. You believe that you are offering something that is going to be an added value for anybody who gets it. So when it comes to that kind of meaning. Personal meaning. It breaks your heart when it slips from the vision you had.
Another scar.
This is it about the scars. Your body starts feeling the weight of the burden. So you don’t have the same amount of energy to fight. I simply was emptied from my fever to get into the fight.
So I asked for serenity.
There you are. I asked also to understand more about spirituality. Because obviously, 7 years in Saudi, the miracle Saudi gets you there. It gets you undoubtedly to question some kind of meaning. I have a theory about it, that I will be happy to share another time.
It seems that I got rewarded. I didn’t know back then that if you put an intention to be patient for example, you will get plenty of occasions to discipline yourself into the practice of patience. Voila! Madame est servie!
If you ask to understand how things work. Or if you ask to be in deep quiet and have peace. Well, prepare for tremendous occasions to pop up with a black belt of stress resilience.
The thing about getting calm, no matter what. Whatever happens. It is incredibly hard. You cannot reach that point if you do not understand what makes you lose it.
I had no choice but understand my mechanics. I had to open the hood of my car. And get to understand how my engine works. It took me 10 years to study the engine.
I didn’t choose a scholar path. Though, being the daughter of a professor in gastroenterology, being around loads of people with fancy degrees and top responsibilities made me realise that : knowing the path has nothing to do with walking the path.
You really understand things when you feel them. Period.
No paediatrician has helped me as much as the one who had kids.
Nobody knows how hard it is to become a parent unless you lived the sleepless nights, the sickness, the worry.
Nobody knows what it is to create a company and to have people, families under your responsibility. Not even a CEO who is only an employee.
Nobody knows how it feels unless they lived the same experience. You can imagine it if you tend to be very smart. You can theorise it. But you will not reach the goal.
Nobody can feel true empathy for a loss till they lose somebody themselves. No one.
Nobody has proved to be able to understand a thing if they didn’t experience it. If they didn’t feel it.
So, my fellow readers, if you ask to understand…you will be served with feelings.
It’s like asking for becoming the reverend mother in DUNE. You receive all the memory of joy, and also the full package of pain.
Still, I guess you just receive what you can handle. Doesn’t feel sweet on the spot, but it gets you stronger. Calmer, wiser.
Definitely, wisdom doesn’t come cheap. Go ask the people involved in the Invictus games. An amazing group of people, disabled, war veterans, survivors of deep traumas fighting, choosing to feel alive, focusing on a goal that helps them make their lives make sense again.
Most of Those people have visible, noticeable, well known wounds. When you lack an arm or your legs, people see it. Most of them will see them with sympathy, empathy or pity. Or possibly indifference.
Still, it is visible. You can see it.
My wounds were invisible. When you keep feeling angry. When you keep putting on a large amount of weight for each pregnancy. When your body keeps getting injured no matter how hard you try to exercise. You end up saying: enough! I want to get my energy back! I want to feel alive! To experience joy. At 43, I was still young. You wanna feel your jam back again.
Remember. You ask, you get to get answered. The very same day I came across a book talking about getting the key to my energy. And that was my first immersive dive into the emotional wounds, transgenerational emotional legacy..etc.
The most important thesis about this book, is that emotional wounds would be like missing an arm. It would feel like it, but I cannot see it, nobody can see the missing arm. I am just feeling the pain. Can you imaging how painful missing an arm can be? Or missing a leg. How painful do you think it is? And the icing on the cake is that, as it is invisible, how would anybody believe you.
Second thing about the pain. As we assume the intensity of it. You have no choice but to deny it, to blame it on others, or to belittle it.
Imagine a person losing a dear friend in a car crash. It is sudden. It is provoking a choc. It needs time to be able to grief that loss. Imagine, that person was so important that the sadness felt is too heavy to handle. Life becomes grey. Everything becomes unbearable. It leads to a sort of depression. That depression transforms into some resentfulness. And the more we go, the more this person has become angry. Full of hate. And she doesn’t know that everything is related to that loss. More importantly. It is more likely that nobody will understand the depth of the grief as it was just a friend. No relative, no child, only a friend.
Get over it! Put yourself together! Don’t let yourself sink into depression! Don’t be weak!
How could they understand.
She feels the pain of a missing arm. A piece of her heart is missing.
Back to that book, from Natasha Calestreme, I try the protocoles of energy reclaiming. I Start feeling differently. Unexpectedly different.
First thing first: my body stops being injured and I am able to go back to the gym to get back in shape after my fourth pregnancy. It is the 5the time I am committing to losing more than 30 kilos.
The 4 first times of overweight, I followed a restrictive diet. But this time, I was no more interested in the results. I ate everything I wanted. No restriction. And naturally I drifted to even trying a plant based diet after watching the documentary “ game changers”. My energy went back to the roof.
Second, I started being clearer about my goals. I started having projects in my mind. I even started taking action on it.
Remember, my first company has been hijacked by my partners. Blackout during covid. Ouf, I will deal with them later.
I was focused on me. Get back in shape first. There, the word hypnosis came back to my attention. I wanted to learn something fast and efficient to offer my experience, to inspire people. I am good at discovering people’s gems. I love discovering people’s talents. It is a true passion to me.
After 2 years of covid. I. Decide to get back to business. Go see what is happening with my partners and there comes the annus horribilis.
In one year, I lost my father suddenly, discovered that not only my partners of both companies I created in France and in Algeria have been taking important decisions, both forging my signature and embezzling large sums of money. I was obviously broke and betrayed by people I gave full trust to.
The coincidence of scenarios made me face the wound I was trying to avoid acknowledging. No more room for denial lady!
The betrayal wound.
At the same moment, the abandonment wound showed up.
What is abandonment? In my case, it looked like me in a place where I needed support from people, anybody could count on, and I didn’t have that support. It’s like hanging up on a very steep hill, I could have killed myself. I called 911, nobody showed up.
That also, there was no more room for denial.
Somebody gave me a clue 2 months previous to that event. “The tour” as I like to name it. The kinesiologist I went to see in Paris. She touches my body and gives me dates: 4 months when your mum was pregnant with you. 2 years old, 5 years old…etc.
She makes sounds with hers fingers. She mentions the wound of abandonment and gives me details about my life that she had no way to know. I ask my mother about the 4 months pregnancy date and she says: “oh yes. Your father and me almost divorced at that time” ….okayyyy then!
The horrible year ends and I jump up on this training of hypnosis. I need to move on. What choice do I have. My heart is pushing me toward it. I know it is going to be interesting. And boy, it kept its promise!
Focusing on a project made me stand up.
Exercising everyday made me breath everyday.
One day at a time.
Dancing and singing everyday in my car
I can choose joy over despair.
Whatever happens I am screwed
so let’s deal with it with panache!
Anything became a reason to smile: a flock of birds. A blue sky. The smile of a stranger. A rose. Anything. I started focusing on every single gramme of hope and beauty I could get.
Miracles started showing up.
Even if it was dark on paper. I had all the reasons to fall into a deep depression…the hypnosis was giving me a big amount of hope.
First reason of that is that I discovered that I looooved it. Are you kidding.
So the prerequisite is to have the imagination of Alice in wonderland. To be chatty, to play it like a detective and to be empathetic and mainly positive. And the reward is 96% efficiency.
Mamamia: I checked all the boxes! It’s like discovering a vocation.
I knew that I need to heal. I still have this anger issue. But most importantly I could not deny anymore that I ended up exactly like my mother. Despite the fact that I did absolutely everything to escape that scenario. Ending up financially dependent, with 4 kids, and little hope to get out of that loop.
Something must have been engrained in my subconscious mind. It’s like all the sacrifices that my mother made were gone in vaine. She accepted all the pain and suffering so we could get a better and easier life.
Nope, didn’t work out mam!
So I start the hypnotherapy with Alexandre Lockert, the Heir founder of my hypnotherapy school.
We started with 3 sessions on a raw first. One every week, then 2 more.
In total, 5 sessions had opened door after door for me, it’s like going through a maze, each session brought me at least one key.
A year later, I made more progress on my personal development than the 9 years before that. When I was in my twenties and experiencing those rough 7 years of emotional wandering, I have tried to find soothing through therapy with a psychoanalysis, a psychiatrist (only professionals covered by the insurance policy back then), a psychologist ….when facing the year where everything went rogue, I tried also a Cognitive Behavioural Approach to find comfort in dealing with the heartbreak…but nothing of those have been comparable to finding a project to focus on, and absolutely nothing as efficient as hypnotherapy.
In another post, I will tell you the story of how precisely hypnosis has saved me tremendous time and an unnecessary amount of pain.
My intention with opening up is to let you know that choosing joy everyday was a decision I made. I had no choice but to make a decision about what I really wanted. I guess when I asked to understand, the answer was that the choice was mine.
The choice is always ours, to live or to die silently. Silently doesn’t mean painlessly.
I wish you then a tremendous amount of peace, love and fun…
I wish you to find this incredible perfume of paradise that Patrick Suskind was actually pointing at in his masterpiece.
I believe that somewhere, over the rainbow there is a heaven….we just need to follow the scent of it: the scent of Joy!
Joy has a smell, now I Know it.
Because anyways, I’ll tell you what: if it’s not fun, I am out of the way my friends.
Thank you for your attention,
Love you all,
Lamia Pabion
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