Are You Acting With Integrity and in Congruence?

Right now it is 12:15 PM, sleeping late given that all the work that needed to be done was with people who are located on the East and West Coast of the US (and Hawaii) at this time. I had coordinated the meeting of my collaborator cardiologist with the gentleman who offered me to be a resident transformational health provider at his holistic healing hotel just after midnight after updating the hotel owner on the programs that my collaborator and I were working on putting together.

As I was getting ready to shut down my computer I noted that I had received a thumbs up from one of my old clients, somebody who really cared very much about the work that I do because of the work that we did together to help her deal with multiple difficult situations both mental health looking ones that were indeed physical in nature and emotionally trying circumstances that she had a very difficult time dealing. This was because of her very close relationship with her Godson and deeply caring about his well-being who was more like a son to her given all the care that she put into raising him from his infancy. His mother is a functional drug addict (though my client and his mom and dad had 15 years of being 'clean') before my client reached out to me for help her because they had all fallen back into drug addiction and alcoholism a few months before she called me for help to get off the drugs and alcohol again.

For many of the years that we knew and worked together, she needed to leave this couple because of the distress that they kept bringing into her life, and at long last, I got word that she made the break. It was the hardest thing for her to do (after my forcing her to move out of her Godson's home) because if she had not cut off from this family she would have lost her mental health and quite possibly died from a drug overdose.

I am bringing this up because there are times when we ourselves find ourselves in this situation as my client related back to me the need for me to sever relations with my mother and one of my sisters because of the abusive nature of their interactions with me, making it rather difficult for me to be functional working with my own clients. My clients and my career come first and always will - at least they are doing what they need to do to heal themselves and be productive people, where I couldn't say the same for my family members. At the time my client witnessed me taking these actions she couldn't see how I could do that, and yet, finally all these years later (well within the last 4 or 5 years) she has found that she needed to do the same thing for her own health. I have been out of touch with this particular client for 4 or 5 years now as I have been traveling around the US and the world. So, I was delighted to hear that she finally did what she needed to do over a decade ago, but couldn't bring herself to do it.

We are all can find ourselves in situations when it is better for our 'higher calling' to let go of dysfunctional relationships. Sometimes it is with biological family, sometimes adopted family, sometimes friends we have outgrown, and yes, even sometimes clients who just are unable to take the necessary steps to truly heal.

Walking away from a close relationship is never an easy thing to do, however, we can hardly ask our clients to do so, when we keep ourselves in dysfunctional and enmeshed relationships with the people in our own lives. There is much to be said for congruence and integrity in our actions when we ask our clients/patients to do the hardest things for them to do.

One of the reasons that I do have a very high success rate working with very challenged individuals and families is because I always did what had to be done no matter how difficult it was at the time. It was indeed that by acting with integrity in my own life that I was and am able to make the same requests of my clients knowing that most of them are not wanting to do these things, will be very fearful of having the difficult healing conversations that are necessary for them to assess whether or not a person should stay in their life or be excluded.

I never had an issue living my truth and I am very grateful for that ability. It is indeed the most important thing that I have been able to do for myself that has been a direct role modeling for what many of my clients need to do in their own lives - because in the end anyone who is in the role of a healthcare provider or coach, has to rise up in all the most difficult situations in his or her own life before believing they have the right to ask another to do the same. If you are not rising up in your own life, not only do you not have the right to ask another, even if you do tell another what they need to do, they will not follow through because there is no integrity between that which you do in your own life and what you are asking your client/patient to do. Trust me, they all know, especially the most mentally ill of all - see right through their provider's incongruence - I learned that while in my very second job in mental health (we had consummate professionals at my first job where I learned how to best help these folks heal) where my bosses were arrogant assholes to say it truthfully who still had plenty of their own problems even if they had earned a piece of paper stating that they held a Master's in Psychology. It meant nothing for the harm they caused our clients in that program and the next two after that I worked out. This is what led to my needing to leave the conventional work mental health (and later elder care) situations to create my own practice working with hypnotism to give my clients the loving kick in the butts they needed (when needed for not all of them require it, but many do) to help them heal as I am only a facilitator for their healing, they each have the answers inside their own minds and my job is to bring those to consciousness and then help my clients heal.

The best part of doing this work is that if you are acting with integrity and in congruence with the best you can give your clients or patients is to continue to up-level one's self as one continues one's journey in this life always being curious enough to open the new doors of opportunities for growth as they show up.