Zenlife

These videos are very helpful! Thank you for posting them and sharing links directly to discussions that talk about these issues and how to manage them with awareness.

I also find a lot of value in what she talks about, and agree that her past, much like our own, is irrelevant. It's like anything else, if you take away a helpful tidbit, then it's helpful, period.

Corporate Recruiter- specifically I find and retain the executives for a global manufacturer. Understanding the psychology of a candidate at this level is crucial. At first I sought to understand how the mind worked in the sense of making big employment changes. However I loved it so much I turned into a workaholic and didn't see (or more appropriately ignored) some huge, glaring red flags in my interpersonal relationships. personal mistakes got me digging in deeper and it really opened my eyes to self actualization and self awareness. Moving forward I see those mistakes as not mistakes at all. I had a role in it all, and that reality brought me comfort and closure to a lot of "whys." However, If I did well when I only had a portion of the knowledge, my excitement is from seeing what I can do with this deeper understanding. I would love to spend time working with victims of abuse and educating them on how to find sanity and serenity by understanding what happened, what their own role was, and then how to change what they can control to experience life outside the darkness. Like a retreat of some sort where people come in the front door, drop their past off at coat check and come out the back door emotionally armed to move forward.

This is my first journal/forum entry but I have been watching Leo's videos for over a month now and this forum (and journal) was the perfect place for me to take the next step in my healing journey. I'm a 42 year old professional, single mom, who has been the target of emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, verbal and financial abuse for most of my life. My healing journey began about a year ago when the most recent romantic relationship I was involved in had dropped his mask. After I was able to remove him from my personal space, I took a look around and just starting sobbing. I had no idea how my "perfect" world that once had me living the "american dream" had now metaphorically resembled Ground Zero the day after the attacks. My hierarchy of needs had been brutally attacked, and the perpetrators were people I called my husband, my father, my brothers.....my friends. Little did I know at that time that it wasn't over yet. There was more devastation and betrayal to come but for the first time in my life I had time alone to think and work on myself. It seems strange now that at middle age I really never had my own personal space, but I didn't see the pattern of behavior I was caught up in yet. It would take thousands of hours of research, books, google searches, YouTube videos and self reflection before I found myself on Actualized.org. Eventually though the light bulb moments started coming, and once they began rolling in, I saw it. Like most people who dig deep enough to truly understand how they found themselves at a place in their life where depression had set in, suicidal thoughts seemed reasonable and anger threatened to turn a once attractive, reasonable, intelligent human being into raving lunatic, I got it. Once I identified the game I was in, and the pawn I had become, I had some startling revelations that broke my heart. I started by reverse engineering all of my life's events. I started with the result and worked backwards until I found myself face to face with the fact that I had been an abused child and had been raised by a covert narcissist and a codependent. My bloodline is full of them on both sides. I could build a family tree with not only names in the boxes but with titles like Histrionic Personality Disorder, Anti-Social and Avoidant Dependent written underneath. The way my subconscious programming was set up, I didn't stand a chance until I not only recognized the patterns, but did the work to change them. Once I understood exactly who I was and how I got there, I went full throttle in doing the work to interrupt the patterns and download new beliefs. I didn't know, and still don't, where life will take me from this point forward, but what I do know is that I'm never going back. I've come here to Actualized.org to incorporate self development and personal growth into my program of recovery. I am willing to do and will do whatever it takes to set my soul free and break this sadistic pattern of abuse so that my children grow up connected to "self." I recognize that it takes a village and I welcome the interaction and exchanging of life's trials and triumphs by like minded people on their own journeys. Signing off for now.....and as I like to tell the people in my experience......"keep it real or keep moving past me".......Zenlife.