I had an impromptu coaching session with my friend and client, Ger, the other day. It wasn’t planned, but the Universe orchestrated a series of events that brought him straight to my door (he’s a friend, so he can do that. Please don’t stalk me). When we were done, he looked at me, exhausted and relieved, and said “I give you full permission to share this on your blog. Other people should know this.” Because I completely agree with him and since the last case study went over so well, I’ve decided to write up a synopsis of our session for you. Case studies are a little different than normal blog posts – they tend to touch on several different topics at once. That’s because when you actually go digging around in your belief system, it’s never black and white. Beliefs don’t sit around in separate little boxes. They’re more like the root system under a forest – all intertwined.

I thought I’d do something a little bit different this time. I’m going to give you the case study not only from my client’s point of view, but from mine, as well. I know that many of you are energy workers, and I thought it might be interesting for you to look over my shoulder and experience my process. You can let me know in the comments if this was helpful and/or interesting to you.

A little background info

Ger was adopted when he was a baby. His parents never hid this fact from him and his mother even has his birth mother’s information. They’ve left the decision of whether or not to ever contact her completely up to him and made it clear they would accept his decision either way. Like most adoptive parents, Ger’s were loving and kind. He had a happy childhood, normal teenage issues and is now a happily married man with two kids of his own.

Perhaps the recent birth of his second child was the catalyst for his revelation. Or perhaps it was simply time. Ger had never wanted to contact his birth mother. She had been an unwed teenage girl in Ireland, in the 70’s. Having a baby out of wedlock wasn’t really acceptable at that time. Ger and I had talked about his birth mother in the past, but he had always expressed that he’d forgiven her long ago. He understood that she had probably made the decision to give him the life she couldn’t. And even if she gave him up due to the unacceptability of her condition at the time, his blame fell to the Catholic Church (for creating the stigma) rather than to her.

Zeroing in on the problem

Ger came into my apartment, sat down, and after a few minutes of small talk, it became clear that there was something deeper at work. When I coach, I work intuitively, and so I’m generally able to “see” or feel the issue. This only works, however, if the issue is currently active (the person is in pain because of it) or if it’s ready to be released. Ger and I had talked about this very subject on several occasions, but the underlying belief and fear hadn’t been anywhere close to the surface, so I hadn’t really picked up on it. This time it was almost literally waving at me.

Ger had figured out that he tended to look outside of himself for approval and validation. He asked me why I thought that might be. I immediately zeroed in on the word “adopted” and asked him if there was a relation between his adoption and what he was feeling. He seemed surprised for a moment and then thought deeply about the question.

The next thing that hit me, almost like a ton of bricks (sometimes impressions come on very strongly) was the pain-ridden voice of a small child, crying out: “Why did she give me up?” I didn’t voice this, though, because Ger wasn’t ready to hear it. When coaching people, you have to allow them to find the clarity. If you just try to tell them before they’re ready, they won’t be able to hear you. It won’t resonate. In that case, all you can do is keep asking questions to help light up the path, and let them find their way.

Grateful to be adopted

We explored how Ger felt about being adopted. He gave me the same speech he’d given me many times before. His parents were loving and kind, he’d had a happy childhood, he had forgiven his birth mother, he was angry at the Catholic Church. But there were a couple of things that stood out that had not been apparent before. 1.) Ger’s anger at the Catholic Church wasn’t just anger. It was much, MUCH deeper than that. There was bitterness and pain in his voice that hadn’t been there before. 2.) When he told me that he’d forgiven his birth mother, it was a lie.

When he’d told me about his birth mother before, his words had rung true. But this time, they didn’t. The problem was that there was a part of Ger that had not forgiven her. And for the first time in his life, he was connecting with that part. Ger HAD forgiven his birthmother. The adult Ger, who’s married and has children of his own, who can see things rationally and reason that an unwed teenage mother in the 1970’s probably wouldn’t have had a choice, had forgiven her.

This adult Ger had also reasoned that there was absolutely no justification for him to be angry, upset or hurt. He’d had good parents. He had been and was loved. He’d had a good life. He was grateful to have been adopted. His parents had always told him that they had chosen him. They had chosen him because of his eyes (they are blue and kind and beautiful). They had made him feel special. Normal parents just had to take whatever they got, he had been handpicked! What more could a boy want?

And Ger was and is grateful to his parents. But that gratitude was also part of the problem. At some point, Ger had decided that because he was and ought to be grateful to his parents for adopting him, and was and ought to be grateful for having been chosen by such loving people, that it was not ok for him to also feel pain about the situation. Feeling pain seemed ungrateful and was therefore inappropriate. It hadn’t occurred to him that the two needn’t be related and didn’t have much to do with each other. They could co-exist independently. It was possible for him to be grateful to his parents and hurt by his birthmother at the same time.

The flip side of adoption

Because, there wasn’t just the adult Ger, the rational, logical, reasonable one with the understanding perspective. There was another part, a hurt little boy who couldn’t figure out why someone hadn’t wanted him, and who didn’t give a crap that an unwed mother in the 70’s didn’t have many choices. This part felt powerless. This part hadn’t chosen to be adopted, hadn’t chosen to be given up. This is the flip side to adoption: There’s the wonderful part, the part where a child gets chosen, gets picked, gets taken home to a loving family. But in order for that to happen, there first has to be the other part: the part where a mother gives up her child.

And although the adult Ger had made peace with that part, had glossed over it with logic and rationality, had understood her possible motives, the little boy he once was, who hadn’t understood anything, who only had questions that no one could answer, had not forgiven his birth mother at all. This little boy was hurt and angry and felt utterly rejected and abandoned.

Adult Ger had channeled this anger to the Catholic Church – a faceless entity who he could rail against, but could ultimately do little about. He could hate the church. After all, they had given him a lot of reasons to do so. With countless scandals in the Irish press, and droves of parishioners leaving the church, they provided him with an easy target. Except, it was also a safe target. The church couldn’t give him any answers, wouldn’t fight back, couldn’t give him any resolution. Being angry at the church is like being angry at the government. You can sit around bitching about it all day, but it ultimately doesn’t change anything. And when the real issue is far too painful to be addressed, too dark and terrifying to even acknowledge, diverting those feelings to a faceless entity makes perfect sense. As long as you’re angry at the church, you don’t have to deal with what’s really going on.

“I don’t feel anything”

I asked Ger how he felt about his birth mother. His answer was “I don’t feel anything”.  This is never true. It’s impossible to feel nothing. Every thought has a frequency and will produce a feeling – our emotions are our vibrational feedback system and they will always tell us where a thought is vibrating in relation to the high frequency of Who We Really Are. The better a thought feels, the closer it is to Who We Are. It is impossible to think a thought and not have a corresponding  emotion. So if it seems like there is no emotion, then this almost always means that the person is too afraid to allow themselves to experience that feeling. They are blocking it out.

I told Ger that what he was avoiding was intense fear. It was hard for him to hear, but he was ready for it. As he connected with that feeling, his body language completely changed, and that’s when the shift began.

Holding a high vibration

When I’m working with a client, I essentially have only one function: to hold a high vibration and stream as much energy as I can. I do not see them as broken in any way, or as depressed, in pain or unhappy. I do not focus on their problems at all. What I do is hold a vision of them at their strongest, at their best. I see them for Who They Really Are and I stream as much energy toward that vision as I can. Before I really turn on that spigot, though, I do my best to get the client to connect with whatever it is they’re trying to release. So, I poke around at the problem a bit. The client must allow themselves to feel the emotion. They don’t even necessarily need to know what it’s about, although in my sessions we do tend to explore the cause (it helps to make peace with the logical mind at the same time). Once they’ve connected with the frequency of what they want to release, I start flowing a high vibration at them with full force. What this does, is turn on the pressure – it’s as though you have a rope tied around your left wrist and it’s pulling up. That’s your inner being pulling you up to its higher frequency. You don’t really have any control over what that frequency is. Your life experience causes you to add to this energy inadvertently. But your right hand is holding on to a rope which is pulling down. This rope is not tied to you, so you can let it go at any time. This second rope represents that lower frequency. When someone connects with the frequency of who you really are and streams it at you, the rope that’s tied to your left hand begins to pull harder, causing the pressure caused by the opposing ropes to increase. Now, one of two things is going to happen:

1.)    You either have to get away from the person who is causing the rope which is pulling upward to pull harder (in a session, the coach has to judge if the person is able to release the belief, or if the pain is too great and they need to back off)

2.)    You have to let go of the rope that’s pulling you down and shift the energy to a higher frequency

Releasing the pain

As Ger connected with the fear, pain and anger of that little boy who’d never been allowed to feel his feelings, because at some point, he’d decided that they were inappropriate, the energy I was streaming at him began to pull him up. Ger had to allow himself to experience all the emotions. He had to move through them in order to move up the emotional scale.

He realized that what he was most afraid of, was trying to contact his birth mother, only to have her refuse to meet him. It would be like being rejected all over again. Because that’s what this was really about: he had been rejected. His pain and anger were justified. He didn’t have to be ashamed of these emotions. He was absolutely allowed to feel them and they had nothing to do with how much he loved his parents or how good they had been to him. It did not mean that he was ungrateful.

His refusal to allow himself to feel these emotions had kept him stuck in an energy of rejection and unworthiness. While Ger has always been mostly confident, there had always been a part of him that had been looking for validation. He wanted acceptance. He wanted to be told that he was good enough. This part hadn’t run his life or his career, but it had affected him in certain ways. While it hadn’t controlled all or even a large part him, it had controlled some of his thoughts about himself and the world. While he hadn’t been constantly suffering, it had caused periodic pain.

Integration

The shift that Ger experienced will take some time to integrate. This isn’t therapy, which can take months or years to produce small changes. What took place was an actual shift of energy, one which will now trickle down through Ger’s energy body into his physical reality. While he physically felt the pressure build and then release during the session, the coming days and weeks will bring more subtle changes. He may begin to feel slightly more confident in certain situations (keeping in mind that Ger has always been quite confident. This belief was not ruining his life or anything). He may relate to his family a little differently, allowing himself to connect with them even more deeply. And he may well find the courage to finally contact his birth mother. I urged Ger to take his time with that, to make sure he was truly ready and not try to “push through the fear” as he might well be inclined to do (he’s also a head through the wall person, just like me, so I recognize the tendency all too well). That fear will subside more and more in the coming weeks as Ger stabilizes at this new vibration, making it easier and less emotionally wrought to take the ultimate step.

I’m grateful and honored to have been allowed to be a part of Ger’s journey. And I’m incredibly thankful that he’s allowed me to share this experience with you. I hope it’s been interesting if not helpful to you. I’d love to hear your impressions in the comments.

[Update: A reply on Twitter made me aware that this post could read as though I’m somehow attacking the birth mother. I’m not. This was about Ger’s experience and unresolved pain, not hers. For the record, I don’t for a second believe that she did anything wrong, and often, giving up a child can be the noblest thing a woman can do. I am in no way diminishing the sacrifice many girls and women make or how hard it must be for them. But again, this post was specifically about the pain that the adopted child feels and how to release that.]