From saving to serving

I wanted to create a space for myself to allow my words to flow freely and here it is. A place where I will write about perspectives and insights, and I trust that whoever finds value in my words will find a way to this space. This first post is a short version of my story.

If you ended up here I want to start by saying thank you. Thank you for sharing this space with me. If you don't know who I am, my name is Emma D'Angeli and I use my story to be of service to myself and others. That's my desire and purpose.

When people ask me what I do I tell them that I work with perspectives. I guide strong people, mostly women, to remember the perspectives and insights they need, to create the freedom they truly desire, without convincing anyone else to change.

My Story

I am very passionate about what I do because that used to be me. I was a strong person with a lot of patterns and limiting beliefs holding me back from the freedom my soul truly desired. Strong because my perspective of strong was to do it all myself and -for- everyone else and to just keep moving. Remember because it was always inside me but I needed help and guidance to be reminded. Freedom because my perspective of freedom was to always have enough time to save and fix people's problems around me, through codependent patterns. Without convincing anyone else to change because my perspective on how to change how I felt, was to help the people around me change.

This worked out well for me for many years. I was on a mission to save the suffering people around me and my research started early in life. As a young teenager I looked everywhere for resources to learn from. I watched a lot of Dr. Phil, talked to the counselor at school, I observed other adults around me that seemed to "have it together" and asked for advice, not for myself, but to learn how to help the people around me. The pattern of looking outside of myself to meet my own needs continued for many years.

Rock Bottom

I had been near my bottom many times before, but I was 29 years old when I actually hit it. At this point I was living in survival mode to keep up with everything and everyone I had declared as my personal responsibility. My health collapsed, I had eczema growing on multiple places of my body and was diagnosed with psoriasis. I wasn't sleeping more than a few hours/night as I was working around the clock and on the phone listening to or fixing other people's problems. I was drinking alcohol every evening to calm my nervous-system enough to sleep and to numb the pain I was running from inside. It's not that I didn't hear my body screaming or that I didn't have enough knowledge to help myself. My desire to save others was simply stronger than my desire to save myself.

Perspectives and Insights

What saved me was another human being giving me the gift of perspectives. Perspectives that created space for the insights I needed in order to get clarity on my life.

It was 2am and my phone rang. This was not unusual. I was the source of support to a lot of people at this point. But after I hung up the phone this particular morning my boyfriend, who is now my fiancé turned on the lights, sat up in our bed and looked at me and said:

I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore and I can’t allow you to do this to our relationship anymore. You care so much about everyone except one person, YOU. I know you love to help and I see the impact you make in other peoples life, but you are forgetting the most important part of what you do and that is taking care of you. The person that you are for all of us is someone you need as well. Where is the Emma in your life?

The wall that you have built to protect yourself is so thick that you can barely breathe. I have never seen you cry, and as strange as this might sound I really want to see you cry, I want you to feel safe to be vulnerable with me. I want to know when you are scared and I want to be allowed to hold you. I want to be allowed to open doors for you, to carry the groceries from the car, make you breakfast in bed and I want you to come to me for help when you need it because I am here for you. Baby please do for yourself what you do for everyone else, take care of yourself.

Hearing his words numbed my entire body but at the same time, a feeling of warmth spread as the spread of light. It was a feeling of love that I had never experienced before. I had never felt so seen, so heard and so understood by another human being as I did that morning. His words created an opening inside of me. He was speaking straight to my soul and all of a sudden I could begin to become aware of all the creative ways I had come up with as a child to manage my life, manage my emotions, manage the circumstances around me, and that is how the Strong Woman without her feminine energy was born inside of me.

In my book that will be published in 2023, The Strong Woman In Her Feminine Energy, I write in depth about what worked and still works for me along with invitations for the reader to do deep inner work for themselves.

The morning that changed everything

My energy, body and mind was so tired at this point and I believe it needed to be in order for my wall to begin to collapse. I could feel his energy, tone of voice and words traveling deep inside me. As strange as it might sound, I could actually feel his voice reaching my soul. I fell into his arms and cried a really long cry while he held me. I could feel the release from my wall loosing its power and then there was a sense of peace. In that moment I knew it was time for me to look within. To hear the perspectives I needed, that would put a light on the insights that would help me remember who I truly am. I was ready to give in, I was ready to surrender.

The universe works in mysterious ways

Not many days after my wall started losing its power, a friend of mine was on leave from rehab. She asked if I wanted to stay with her in an apartment she had rented for the night. I was so happy to hear from her and to spend some time with her. She told me about her experience in rehab and it was wonderful to see how much better she was doing. She was healing and on her way to recovery. Before we turned off the lights that evening she told me that she wanted to share something that she had heard in one of her AA meetings. She asked me to look up the word codependent when I had a chance. I asked her why she wanted me to look it up and this is what she said:

Because knowing you all my life and hearing the people in the meeting describe codependency, all I could think of was you.

Codependent Personality Traits and Characteristics

I have always loved to learn new things and I especially love psychology so I looked it up right away that night. Here are some common Codependent Personality Traits and Characteristics I read and related to:

• Hyper-aware of other people’s problems and needs.

• Perfectionistic.

• My high expectations for myself makes it impossible for me to accept help from others.

• Self-critical; unrealistic expectations for yourself. Self-talk is often harsh about your imperfections and mistakes.

• You feel responsible for everything and everyone, even other people’s happiness, but deny your own happiness and needs.

• “People Pleaser”.

• Dependable and responsible. People can always count on you to be reliable. You feel guilt if you don’t follow through even if you are sick in bed.

• Boundary issues: Sometimes, you allow people to mistreat or take advantage of your kindness because you don’t want to hurt their feelings, let them down, or create a conflict.

• Ignore your own feelings and needs, often suppressing them, denying them, avoiding them, or numbing them. These occur at the conscious level. They look like self-defeating behaviors.

• In addition to denying your feelings and needs, you may have a difficult time seeing how unmanageable or unhappy your life is and has become. This is a form of subconscious defense: repression (e.g. dis-associative amnesia).

• Your happiness is dependent upon what other people are feeling or doing. For example, if your partner is in a good mood, you can relax a little bit. However, if your partner is angry, you likely feel anxious.

• You have a hard time separating yourself from other people’s feelings, needs, and experiences.

• You probably feel there is something wrong with you. Perhaps someone told you this directly or you may have come to this conclusion based on how you’ve been treated. Yet, you minimize the problems or sensitivities.

• Overwork and over schedule yourself as ways to prove your self-worth and/or distract yourself from low-self-esteem or other painful feelings.

• Intimacy, open communication, and trust are difficult because you didn’t have role models for healthy relationships in childhood.

• Afraid of anger, criticism, rejection, and failure. You “play it safe” or “become invisible” with your own needs.

• Minimizing problems, minimizing others behaviors, and minimizing one’s own needs.

These are just a few of the traits I could relate to when I became aware of the word codependency. (The power of awareness will be the focus of a future post). The more I read, the more I understood, and the more I understood the more of my own feelings I started to feel and this was new and uncomfortable for me. Shame, anger, frustration, confusion, relief, sadness, hope and more all hit me at once and after a few weeks of reading I felt dragged to the floor. I spent weeks in bed filled with anxiety, reading more books and watching more youtube clips on codependency and self development while working full time. I was running my own company at this point designing and selling outdoor furniture and I could do that from the dark corner of our bedroom. I was reading and analyzing books and information I had known for years to find relief but I got nowhere. My friend in rehab had told me that there was a 12 step program and meetings to go to for codependency but I didn't want help, I wanted to do it all by myself (another trait from the list above). I continued to pushed myself, in silence and by myself for a few weeks until one day when my boyfriend sat down next to me and said:

I know you want to be strong and fix this all by yourself, but I would love to help you to a meeting. Just to try it, just to see what it feels like. If you don't like it you never have to go again but there is no harm in giving it a chance my love. I will drive you there and I will wait outside for you until it's done. I will be there to hold you every step of the way.

Once again his words penetrated deep into my soul. As much as I didn't want help from anyone except myself, the words he said were the exact same words I had said so many times to the people I had helped: Giving it a chance. Only this time I was the one on the receiving end of these words and I was asked, not to look at someone else, but to look within myself.

Growing up I had been in therapy during periods of time, but never for myself. I went to therapy to understand how to help others. All the books I had read and training I had done had been to serve others, but I had never used it to serve myself. What my boyfriend asked me to do now, by going to that meeting, to give it a chance, turned out to be the introduction to my journey back home, to remember who I truly am.

ACA (adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families)

My intention writing about ACA is not to promote it. I am simply sharing one of the important ways and perspectives that worked for me. It provided me with important insights that I needed to get to where I am today. The 12 steps helped me understand how and why my life had become unmanageable. With the help of fellow travelers I became brave enough to not only become aware of my feelings and emotions, but to also accept them as a part of me. This community surrounded me with people just like me and all of a sudden I didn't feel alone.

Listening to people share about their life and emotions and doing the work of the 12 steps helped me understand and see my own patterns clearly. I could see how they had manifested in different ways, at different ages and the more I read and the more I did the work the lighter I felt.

A power greater than myself

I didn't grow up in a house of spiritual believers but I always knew that there was something more to life than what meets the eye. I have always been a huge animal lover, dogs especially. As a child I was convinced I could speak with animals and I was convinced that they could speak to me. I was 15 years old when I went on my first spiritual course adventure. Animal communication through body language, telepathy and energy. Later that night I was also introduced to communicating with souls who had passed to the other side. I was in paradise. It was such a magical experience for me because I had always had a -knowing- of something more, but I had never experienced being in a room full of people sharing the same belief as me (more about belief and faith in a future post). I am not a religious person, I am a person full of faith in a power larger than myself. Sometimes I call it Energy, sometimes The Universe, other times I call it The Higher Power and sometimes God, as I understand God. During my journey I have come to understand that it is not what I call this power that matters, it is my thoughts and feelings that create my experience with this power (more about the power of thoughts in a future post).

2 years after my first spiritual course I moved away from home. I was 17 years old and over a period of 5 years I disconnected from my faith and moved deeper and deeper into survival mode. With my everyday drama at a distance I worked very hard to create my own. I continued to train my patterns of pleasing people, fixing other people's problems and making excuses for other people's bad behaviors out in the big world. I didn't understand it until I started working the 12 steps but I was addicted to drama. It had manifested as a comfort zone and a safe place for me. Without drama I felt unsafe, insecure, scared and lost. Being involved in or to being part of drama had become an emotional habit.

Habits

I had known about the concept of habits and helped many people and dogs change their habits over the years but I had never been aware of my own -inner- habits. I was very aware of my external habits: my dietary habits, training habits, work habits etc but I had never looked at my own emotional habits.

I was 26 years old when I was first introduced to coaching and a whole new world opened up to me. As one of the top sales people in the company I worked for I was offered coaching hours to up level my performance even more. I loved every minute of it and I started implementing the coaching tools and teachings immediately. I was not surprised that it worked. Much of what my coach was teaching me were things and concepts I had learned from before helping others but a lot of it was new as well. My coach inspired me in many ways, but the most important gift he was there to give me was to awaken my soul and guide me towards my purpose. He introduced me to the teachings of Tony Robbins who quickly became, and still is, one of my biggest role models and I became even more skilled at help people. I'm gonna say that last part one more time: and I became even more skilled at help people. So it was still not about me. Something greater than me needed to collapse my energy, body and mind, in order for me to receive that message.

From saving to serving

I had to become aware of how and why I had such a desire to save people, and I had to become aware of the difference between saving and serving. I had to remember how my mind was actually meant to function in its natural state. I had to learn to put myself first, to embrace the gift of a helping hand, the beauty of my own emotions, to be brave and become aware of where I had been, where I was and where I wanted to go. I had to become familiar with my own thoughts and my own inner language. I had to not just accept, but surrender to these words: To serve other people powerfully, I have to serve myself first.

Since that morning with my now fiancé, a little over 6 years ago, I have been digging and I have discovered so many magical things in the patterns I have had and in the patterns I have created. I couldn't do it on my own, I needed many helping hands to give me the gift of perspectives, and these perspectives gave me insights that brought me to where I am today. I have to pinch myself writing this because 10 years after my first coaching experience, I am humble and proud to be a certified coach by two of the most respected trainers in the field of self development and psychology, Tony Robbins and Cloé Madanes.

I am proud of my story and I am grateful and humble for the guidance I have received and continue to receive. I went from saving to serving and that was always my desire and purpose. Today I get to serve powerfully and authentically in a purified form, free from patterns that don't serve the highest good of all. Does that mean I am done? No, I will always have a therapist, a coach and be part of the 12 step program because It took me from where I was to where I am today, where I want to be. Today I get to guide through perspectives that create insights, and witness people use them to transform their own life's in the most magical ways.

I want to share what worked for me because what if that also works for you. If you feel at home in my words, you can come back to this space to read more perspectives and insights in future posts. You can reach out to me if you have questions or fill out an application if you feel called to see if we could be a match to work together. You can read my book when it's published and do the work on your own or with a friend. Do what feels right for you. I am simply here to do for you what my fiancé did for me. To see you, hear you and do my best to understand you and offer you perspectives that shine a light on the insights you need to create the life you desire, without convincing anyone else to change.

Love,

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