For as long as I can recall I’ve kept myself busy. I’ve pottered and found tasks to complete, anything to distract and stimulate me rather than stop to feel and deal with what was really going on.

Even when matters blew up in my face and I had to face my feelings and emotions head on, I would cry and bemoan my fate to anyone who would listen, feeling sorry for myself and becoming a victim, and I would use this as a distraction rather than deal with the real issue. I felt life was unfair and blamed others around me for my fate. By not dealing with the issue, it would seem, ‘it’ got buried in my body.

As an example, my back gave way one day in boarding school when I was 10 years old and I was prescribed ‘bed rest’ for a few weeks. (My ‘backbone’ no longer supported me.) This weak back continued for many years after.

I can track this pattern of behaviour – distraction and burying – back to when I was placed into boarding school at the age of 10 and was very unhappy. Back in the 1960s counselling was unheard of. Feelings were denied by pupils and teachers alike. Although I felt very sad and expressed this by crying a lot, especially at the beginning of term when saying goodbye to my parents, or when I was allowed out of school for 3 precious days per term to visit them, I was often told I wasn’t feeling what I was feeling. I was told “You’re not really feeling sad” although I knew that I was feeling really sad and miserable, so I used to go off for long walks alone and cry. I would look out of the window in class, day-dreaming, but really hoping that the teacher would ask me what was wrong. I then repressed my expression because when I tried to articulate how I felt to adults, no-one listened or took me seriously. For example, when back in the boarding house I was requested to help out with the younger ones at bath and bed time. I was 10 years old and learned to suppress my feelings so I could present a ‘good face’ to the younger boarders.

The focus was on the system and getting things done by a certain time rather than considering how we pupils were feeling, as if that didn’t matter. I therefore felt I didn’t matter. Life was about “doing your duty”, regardless of how we felt or how our bodies were feeling. We just “got on with it”. Patterns of ‘doing’ became established, without care or regard for my true self. I learned to put everyone else first – ­to do nothing and just be with myself was called laziness.

I now know however, that stopping and resting is important: by stopping and connecting with myself first I know that I am of far more value to myself and then to those around me – I find I then bring all of me to a situation with a good heart, rather than resentfulness or other emotions. I now bring a rested, well-cared and well-nourished woman to a situation or task at hand and I can feel the huge difference this makes.

In my earlier years, politeness and being nice and kind were rewarded: showing who you truly were, warts and all, was ignored and punished. I thus learned to be a good, quiet, helpful young girl, rather than express myself and be the true me. The real me, the beautiful innocent sensitive child, got buried.

This laid a foundation for a lifetime of distracting myself – doing rather than feeling and being myself. As other unpleasant life events occurred, I would read books voraciously and watch TV or films as an escape, to take me away from truly feeling how I was. Later on I went to folk clubs, to listen and get carried away by the music. So the empty feelings of sadness were buried for a while. I didn’t trust or value myself and looked outside of me for acknowledgement and recognition, rather than accept and know who I truly was.

Being myself now means sensing what is right for me in every moment, listening to my body and not overriding it. I now know there is much more honesty in this way of being.

I had spent more than 25 years trying to sort out my issues using various complementary therapies, religions and spiritual modalities, but the issues were never truly healed, they just got buried deeper into my body. Although I gained some temporary relief at times, the issues always reared their heads again eventually. I was always trying to improve myself, not accepting who I was and not feeling good enough…. I was looking outside myself for answers. I knew there had to be more to life. There was always the hope that maybe the next workshop or counsellor would provide the magic answer and I would feel “better”.

Thanks to Universal Medicine I have come to recognise these old patterns of behaviour and have now come a long way to addressing them. I am unlocking those buried emotions, feeling them, then re-connecting to what is actually true – hence they are being truly healed this time. The reason I know this is things have begun to change for the first time in my life… truly change!

I am now taking responsibility for my life events and for how I respond to situations.

Finding Universal Medicine was like coming home.

Thanks to the support of Serge Benhayon and the Esoteric Practitioners in Universal Medicine, I have now healed many of my issues.

• I have obtained answers to many of the questions that I had been asking and now feel more joyful and loving.
• I am content with, and in my body, just being me.
• I am more fun to be with.
• I am learning to honour my feelings and not to ignore, avoid, or distract myself with busy-ness.
• I am learning to stay in the present moment, to accept and to love myself.
• I no longer override the fact that I do feel my feelings and can allow them and accept how important this is.

I now know that the true me was hiding underneath all the emotions and hurts from my past, buried deep inside. As I cleared away these layers of hurts I have become the loving and lovable woman I always was deep down, but had lost sight of.

You could say I am no longer a human do-ing, but have become a human be-ing.

By Sue Q – 64 years, Grandmother, Company Director, Volunteer, Somerset UK