Learning to ask for help is a challenge for many of us. Our ancestors may have been stoic, or they may have been martyrs. They may have HAD TO BE STOIC to survive. We inherit that trait and we act like we’re in survival, but we’re really not.

Like many people, I was taught never to complain when I was growing up. Complaining was for weaklings. Complaining meant you were not a team player. Complaining showed a lack of fortitude and moral character. Life was hard. Buck up and get over it.

Along with these messages were others. Don’t look inside. Don’t slow down. There is work to be done. Do! Do! Do! There is no time to “be.” Busy people are more important and more valuable than dreamers. “Another day, another dollar.”

Asking for help meant being “less than.” Over time, I learned to deny my needs. I became so successful at denying my needs that I made big life choices based on this kind of thinking. Life choices that continued to reinforce my NEED to deny my needs. Mostly this was unconscious on my part.

It has taken me many years to warm up to the idea of asking for help. I started slowly. As recommended by Mark Silver, a Sufi teacher and business coach I studied with, I asked for help in easy, low-stakes, fun ways. I asked someone for directions when I didn’t need them. I asked a salesperson to help me find an item, when I knew where it was.

Because the stakes were low for me, I had fun asking. I could ask in a lighthearted way. I was unattached to the outcome. If they had not been willing to help me, I would not have interpreted that to mean that I was being rejected because I was flawed in some way.

Now I am learning to ask for what I need in bigger ways. I take it slow. I’m gentle with myself, through times of hesitation and resistance. But I move forward. By the time I ask for something big, I am prepared. I am ready to let go of the response I get. I have the courage to ask, and I give the person I’m asking the space to decide whether or not they want to help.

There is less pressure on the people I ask, because they can sense that if they say no, I’ll find a way to get what I need without them. My needs don’t hinge on any one person or situation. It’s OK to have needs, because they don’t define me. Lack and fear of lack do not dominate my decisions.

Learning to ask for what I need is a work in progress. I still have to prepare myself for asking. I plan how to ask. I get support from neutral people for crafting my request, people I can talk to about what happens after I ask. I’m not alone with the response, whether it’s positive or negative.

What do you go through when you need help? Can you identify what you need? Do you give yourself permission to ask for what you need?

Have you ever received a gift so precious, you put it aside for later? Then one day, you went searching and couldn’t find it?

Thirty years ago, while doing energy healing, I discovered I could read auras, see psychic cords and remove them.

One client arrived with a sinus infection. When I pulled a cord from her 3rd eye, her sinuses instantly healed. In another case, an older woman who had endured 3 unsuccessful surgeries on her feet was on my table at the Houstonian health spa. Her feet brought her constant pain.

I was cradling her feet in my hands, when they began to glow a bright, neon-green light. I “saw” her in a past life, a Chinese woman with her feet bound. Her feet seemed to shimmer under my hands. She lay still, seeming to be asleep, but lucid. A healing grace filled the room.

She cleared her throat. I leaned in to hear her speak. In a husky voice, she said, “The bones in my feet moved! They are where they need to be now.” Later, her doctor confirmed that her feet were healed.

I was 28 years old in 1980. I had no words for what was happening. I knew it wasn’t “me” doing these things. I needed to understand who, or what, was working through me.

I had never heard of things like this even being possible. Healing that wasn’t “mainstream” was scorned in the press and by people I respected.

I was afraid I would be ridiculed, or even worse, put on a pedestal. Too much might be expected of me. I would be overwhelmed by needy people. On top of that, I didn’t feel worthy.

I stopped doing what I was doing and went back to using the techniques I’d learned in classes I’d taken. I put my gift on a shelf.

Over the years, I reflected on those past experiences longingly. I knew something special had happened, and I felt bad about not stepping up to the plate. But something was missing for me. I need to feel worthy. And I needed to feel safe, before I would be willing to use this gift in a professional setting.

Energetic Boundaries

That something was boundaries. My boundaries were fractured. I came from a family with non-existent boundaries. My own aura looked like Swiss cheese. I absorbed other peoples’ stuff like a sponge. It left me exhausted. My health suffered.

I worked on my recovery process. I prayed and meditated, asking God, how can I be made ready to receive these gifts? What do I need, to use them safely and skillfully?

In time, the solution appeared. I read the book Highly Sensitive People, and understood unequivocally that the more sensitive we are, the stronger our boundaries need to be.

For psychics, our boundaries need to be even stronger. I began learning to create energetic boundaries that honor my spiritual essence. As my boundaries improved, my skills returned. I am introducing this work to my clients and students, and using my gifts during sessions, as needed. A whole new world is opening up to me. I invite you to join me in a new class Chakras, Auras and Boundaries, coming up this fall.

Is it time for you to learn some new skills, so you can use your special gifts?

When you sink
into the pool of knowing
you are
as full
and round
as the sun

pause at the bottom of your out breath
touch the spark that flares
your very own star

the flame
ignited
dances
in the still blue lake of your heart

ethereal as fire
heavy as water
dense as earth
let your secret gold
flow like a fountain
the war is over

Nancy Kern 2013

Many times I see clients who have had traumatic childhoods. Their stories are heartbreaking. They rarely feel sorry for themselves. They have persevered through so many hardships, for such a long time, that what they feel is dogged determination. They have handled their troubles alone, starting at such a young age, that it doesn’t occur to them to ask for help.

They may think that spiritual healing is for the enlightened or highly evolved soul. They may think they are not pure enough, because they carry shame. Shame is like those blackout spots on police news videos, where you can’t see the person’s eyes because the screen shimmers like a bright light shined on a mirror. Shame stops you from processing your trauma. Shame is like crazy glue in your neural synapses. Where you carry shame, you lose interest in learning. Makes sense, if every time you try something, you bump into a wall of shame.

What I actually find in Akashic readings for people who have been traumatized, is that many, if not most of these folks are old souls.

Why would an old soul incarnate with so many challenges? It seems like an old soul would choose a cushy life: loving parents, easy money, adoring spouse, fulfilling career….and of course, physical beauty & fantastic health.

But what I see repeatedly is old souls who’ve had serious trauma in their lives: emotional, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, illness, loss…. I have personally learned these lessons from my own life experiences; I speak of trauma and karma with authority and compassion.

Many old souls have matured to the point of getting serious about becoming wise and compassionate. Suffering leads you to fully identify with the best and the worst of the human experience. Every human being has the capacity to both suffer and perpetrate horror. Learning such deep and powerful lessons requires you to know that you are both the Victim and the Perpetrator. You find the Self at the center of an impersonal paradox. Suffering ends when you accept this about yourself, and about life as a human being.

Through finally accepting the fullness of your humanity, you learn to experience your divinity in an unconditional way. You learn to fully love yourself, respect yourself, believe in yourself, and trust yourself – unconditionally, the way Spirit does! You can love other people in without judgment when you love yourself without judgment.

That is why trauma is bodhi – a Buddhist term for an instrument of our awakening. Your deepest wounds contain seeds of Light. When my clients experience the truth of this in a reading, Light courses through them. Heaviness departs; years fall away as they sense new possibilities opening for them. It is a great happiness to see a client looking ten years younger at the end of their reading!

A spiritual perspective is your greatest ally, no matter where you are in your recovery, and no matter what pain you’ve carried. Let the Light in.