Stephanie Burton, LMHC

I want a soft heart. A discerning heart. A liberated heart.

One that can love deeply without believing that love requires me to disappear.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it actually means to be a generational cycle breaker.

We love the phrase. We put it on shirts. We make posts about it. We celebrate being the person who decided, “This stops with me.” That IS worth celebrating, AND I don’t think we talk enough about what breaking generational cycles can actually feel like while you’re doing it. Sometimes it doesn’t feel empowering. I’m learning that oftentimes, it feels downright exhausting. Disorienting. Grief-filled. Physically uncomfortable. Sometimes it feels like I’m learning things about myself and my story faster than I can integrate them.

I’m in a season of doing some pretty deep work of my own. I’m naming things as trauma and abuse that I didn’t always have language for before. I’ve noticed that sometimes my body feels scared even when my mind knows I’m safe. That has been WILD to experience. Especially as a therapist. It’s one thing to understand nervous-system responses clinically. It’s another thing entirely to sit in your own body and think: ‘Ohhhh. THIS is what we’re talking about.’

There are moments when my mind is genuinely okay. I know where I am. I know I’m safe. I know I have choices, and yet my body can feel tense, rigid, restless, exhausted, or like there is this palpable energy sitting right underneath the surface.

I’ve been learning more about Polyvagal Theory and nervous-system regulation, and while I think we have to be careful not to assign a trauma explanation to every bodily sensation, one thing has become incredibly meaningful to me: Cognitive safety and felt safety are not always the same thing.

I can know something and still need repeated experiences for my body to begin trusting what my mind understands. 😮‍💨 That realization has given me so much compassion for myself—and even more compassion for the people I sit with as a therapist… because healing can be so damn confusing.

Sometimes finally naming what happened doesn’t immediately make us feel better. Sometimes things actually feel louder for a while because we’re allowing ourself to acknowledge what we previously minimized, normalized, intellectualized, laughed about, or simply survived. Sometimes cycle-breaking means grieving things we didn’t know we needed to grieve. Sometimes it means becoming angry about something we spent years defending. Sometimes it means realizing that something we thought was just a personality trait may also have been an adaptation. Sometimes it means questioning family narratives that once helped us make sense of our life.

…And once we know certain things, we can’t unknow them. There can be this strange middle space where the old explanation of our life doesn’t fit anymore, but the new understanding hasn’t fully settled into us yet.

That space is WEIRD, bro! 😂
I’m exhausted and intrigued at the same time. 😩🫣🤣😮‍💨

Part of me wants to read every book, learn every theory, connect every dot, and understand exactly what is happening inside of me. And another part of me is learning:
Girl, you need to go to sleep. 😂Curiosity can become another form of pressure if I’m not careful. Not every sensation needs to be analyzed. Not every feeling needs to be processed immediately. Not every realization needs another book, podcast, journal entry, or therapy concept attached to it.

Sometimes the next step in healing is actually rest. Sometimes it’s food. Sometimes it’s movement. Sometimes it’s crying. Sometimes it’s connection. Sometimes it’s doing something completely unrelated to “healing” in its conscious, conventional form. And sometimes it’s simply saying: “I’ve processed enough for today.” That might be one of the biggest things I’m learning right now. I don’t have to understand everything that is surfacing while it is surfacing. There will be time to make meaning.

Bodily activation can have many causes—stress, lack of sleep, illness, anxiety, hormones, hunger, medication, caffeine, sensory overload, emotional processing, and more. We don’t need to turn every uncomfortable sensation into evidence that “trauma is leaving the body.” …But we can learn to notice ourselves. We can become curious about ourselves. We can learn the difference between I am in danger and something in me feels afraid. And perhaps, over time, we can give our bodies enough experiences of safety that they begin to trust what our minds have already learned.

So yeah… Being a generational cycle breaker is beautiful…and it’s also messy as hell. We need to talk about that part more, too.

HAPPY NATIONAL BLACK BUSINESS MONTH! Not only do to highlight Black Businesses this month, but it’s my birthday month! To celebrate, I’m offering my V.O.I.C.E. Self-Paced Values Assessment for Black Women at a special discounted price of JUST $5.00! You’ll want to grab it by August 31, because it will go back to its original price of $15!

To purchase, download and save/print your own copy, visit my website! https://www.soulfullbydesign.com/product-page/voice-self-paced-values-exploration-for-black-women

What might you learn about your closest relationships if, instead of only asking whether you love someone, you asked how your social position influences the way you love them?

What did the women before you teach you that a Black woman needed in order to be free?
And as you’ve grown, what have you added to—or changed about—their definition?

Who has seen something beautiful, valuable, or capable in you that you hadn’t yet learned to see in yourself?

And how did being seen by them change the way you began to see yourself?

Have you ever entered a new environment and had to learn how to navigate it without losing yourself in the process?
What helped you know the difference between adapting and erasing yourself?

There is a line between fighting for a relationship and fighting against someone’s right to choose for themselves.