I spoke with Sherry Hearn about her counselling / coaching business and the one day workshop she is offering to adopted people at Relationships Australia on 17 September 2016, in Adelaide.

 

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Sherry, you are an adopted person, born in New Zealand, in the 1970s. You grew up in Christchurch and Hawaii before studying at Victoria University in Wellington NZ and working as a teacher and corporate trainer and HR Manager.

In 2003 you became a Life Coach and more recently, in 2012, started your own international healing / counselling business as a professional Counsellor, Spiritual Facilitator, Soul Coach, Hypnotherapist and Reiki Master Healer. Your business name is ‘The Soulologist’. You are also certified as a Soul Realignment Practitioner and with other interests your are creating an album as a singer/songwriter and producer.

You no doubt have multiple talents and a gift for helping people to heal through mind, body and spiritual work. Has your personal experience of adoption shaped or moulded your career path in any way?

I have no doubt whatsoever that my adversity from being relinquished at birth and then placed into an emotionally abusive adoptive family has propelled me into this career. In fact, without such an experience I probably wouldn’t feel equipped at all to do the work that I do, or let alone be interested in it and stick with a secure full-time salaried 8 – 5 pm job instead.

I have trained professionally across the mainstream fields and many alternate modalities, but much of my work is largely intuitive as well as divinely guided. I think that my spiritual connection was maintained more easily and thus shaped my career, definitely because of my trauma of grief and loss at birth and the anxiety of growing up in a highly dysfunctional family. When you cannot attach to a mother or a father or caregiver, let alone be abandoned at birth, I believe you can develop and maintain a strong spiritual connection with what I describe as another ‘higher dimension’ of life to sustain your ability for survival.

There is a very strong part of me that believes that all abandoned babies are actually enlightened beings. They are old and advanced souls. Why else would we choose such a painful start to life only to live with the repercussions of low self-esteem, fear of ever trusting anyone, inability to bond to anyone, premature ego development, splitting of the self and fear of abandonment? Which inevitably leads to mental health issues, suicidal tendencies, drug and alcohol addictions, inability to hold down a job or a relationship … just to name a few after effects.

I believe that our Soul chooses ever human experience in order to evolve and I have observed that the old souls who are here to ascend the 3D and to lead and shine the light on breaking away from ‘the norm’ – usually have had massive childhood trauma. There are some who are so stuck in the pain of their past that they do not know how to move on – or even know that they are stuck. My loss was my gain in that I chose to find out as much as I could about who I was without ever knowing my true identity, family or origin or birth name until later on in my life. I studied numerology, astrology, eastern and western philosophy, religion and meta-physics amongst others. Anything that I could find to give me insight into my ‘self’. This pathway inevitably lead me into creating the career I have to assist others in their own self-realisation, soul healing and soul realignment.

Many people may be unclear, if not a little uneasy, going to see you to discuss personal issues that are holding them back in life. Can you outline how you could help someone dealing with residual issues of separation, loss, pain and grief which are a legacy of adoption, and most certainly closed adoption?

You know the old saying ‘You can lead a horse to water?’ For me the ‘water’ is the emotional self/energetic field and the trauma from a closed and forced adoption will cut off the life force flow of this part of the self. If the client is reluctant to be accountable for exploring the reasons behind their emotional blocks and negative habits then the situation is never going to change for them. They will always re-create the same circumstances of experiencing separation trauma, loss, pain etc.

Often, a client will come to me to discuss such issues but may not have connected the dots back to the original source of the problem. Adoptees are no exception, as many whom I have counselled have in fact split so far away from their ‘real self’ and have created a strong false identity and actually think that the cause of their issues are based upon a more recent event in their lives.

In 2009, I trained as an Inner Child Therapist so I was able to understand how to better assist in such cases of confusion, where I can map out a client’s original timeline and explore the fractured relationships that are energetically re-creating similar patterns in their lives and to conduct a relaxing meditation and energy clearing.

Adoptees have experienced a very unnatural and abnormal experience of separation that nobody should ever have to cope with. This is a very difficult thing to change in their lives because it is locked into the implicit memory as an ever-occurring event that has become a belief system. To get to the underlying cause one has to work with the etiology behind such primal wounding. Adoptees suffer separation trauma which shows up in their lives as an underlying fear of connecting and bonding to others. To address this, I also use EFT Tapping, Radical Forgiveness and Energetic Healing modalities.

We know that many adopted people often have issues with abandonment, rejection and many neglect themselves in the self-care department.  Overall, what lies behind these aspects of low self-esteem or self-neglect and what guidance can you offer people to gain better balance in their lives?

As mentioned earlier, adoptees present with symptoms that are due to a most unnatural physical experience of separation from their mother which creates feelings of low self-esteem and neglect along with a fear of abandonment and defence mechanisms such as denial and avoidance. This is actually a normal manifestation of trauma but without the right therapy or even the right diagnosis (as some therapists assume that adoptees present with borderline personality disorders) it will show up in adult choices to adversely impact their lives.

Adoptees who are relinquished at birth suffer from a fear of recurrence – a fear that that original trauma will show up again and again as they have no other experience BEFORE that trauma happened to refer to. For example, if a woman is violated, she will be able to rehabilitate through recalling and remembering her life before the violation. She will be able to connect with her previous identity of self before the trauma. Babies who are relinquished at birth have no pre-trauma self to identify with. So, this is the underlying belief system behind low self-esteem – the mother disappeared and that was the end. That end created the new beginning and so it goes on and on into being the only reality until they are correctly diagnosed as suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) of such Primal Wounding. This is what Nancy Newton Verrier has written numerous books about and I highly recommend reading her work and the research and writings of Betty Jean Lifton.

The guidance that I offer is to firstly acknowledge that being a victim of a closed and forced adoption is a massive trauma in the adoptee’s life. Society wants adoptees to be grateful, to be functioning and to move on from the secrets of the past and this attitude is still the mainstream globally. Some of the most highly functioning adoptees are in fact so ‘well adjusted’ on the outside but secretly feel completely lost inside because they have lived up to such impossible standards.

Secondly, I encourage adoptees to talk about their circumstances with a professional who understands the ramifications of separation anxiety, grief and loss within the context of adoption. Finding such a person is the tricky bit as this is still an area of expertise that is largely under-researched and requires a highly specialised therapist. Ideally, I prefer someone who has been adopted. Being a counsellor and soul practitioner who is also an adoptee of the closed adoption system certainly offers upfront the empathy and the resources you need in order to move into healing and self-love.

I most likely would recommend and offer a combination of: Inner Child Healings, sharing of your ‘story’ and forgiveness therapy (Self, other) along with EFT (Tapping), exploring ‘catastrophizing’ as an over–reaction to stress, mapping out strategic goal setting, energetic DNA and Ancestral clearings, hypnosis, guided relaxation and meditation techniques, along with lots of self-pampering and compassionate regard for the self. A good EMDR specialist would also assist greatly.

You have mentioned a variety of techniques to assist people in dealing with emotional unease or to unblock belief or behaviour patterns that are not serving them well. Is there any one technique you believe offers adopted people great healing benefits over the long term?

One of the most effective techniques I use to assist people in dealing with emotional stress and neglectful habits for long term wellness is a full Soul Realignment session with the view to having an ongoing mental/spiritual health care program.

In Soul Realignment, I access what is called the ‘Akashic Records’ to inform my clients about the Divine nature of their own Soul. I do this by accessing information within their energetic ‘database’ that stores all karma and choices based on their Soul’s origination. This is beyond any psychological or behavioural aspects that other therapies focus upon.

I inform my clients about how they, through choice, have shaped their own experience over the course of many lifetimes. This information assists clients in expressing their true authenticity and offers an empowering explanation as to why they are experiencing many of their current emotional blocks and circumstances.

I also energetically ‘clear’ my clients Akashic Record of negative influences created by their choices, in both past and present lifetimes.

This gives the client a unique opportunity to make new choices and substantially shifts their current experiences into abundance, fulfilment, peace and love.

Your work has a strong spiritual undertone to it. How important is spirituality in healing or in finding a life direction that a person can relate to and is comfortable with?

It is everything and all there is. For me, it is the light in the darkness and the calm in the storm. It is also a very sacred and personal journey and one that is ever changing and organically growing as I reveal more and more aspects about what is true and real for me. Without my spirituality, I doubt I would have ever made it through the darkest nights of the soul. I would have been perpetually stuck in blame or being a victim of circumstance and acting out my separation trauma symptoms in my current life like I did before my spiritual search and discovery. I can now understand the Serenity Prayer and use this daily. “God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

What spiritual pathways work best for you?

Overall it is important for me to continue to be curious enough to explore whatever it is that interests me and to see, hear, feel and take a taste to know if it is true for me.

I have explored a complete spectrum of spiritual pathways to find what I am searching for. I have been a Christian, a Philosopher, an Astrologer, a Meta-Physician, and a Numerologist.

I have studied the Rig Veda, Sanskrit and Self Realisation at the Maharishi University Open and have been a Transcendental Meditator for the last 20 years along with being a vegan, a vegetarian and following a fairly strict Ayurvedic Lifestyle.

I have studied Buddhism, The Kabbalah, Pranayama, Kriya and Ashtanga Yoga,Tantric Breathing and various meditational practices.

I have learned all about the Great White Brotherhood, the Ascended Masters, the Archangels and Angels, trained as an initiate high priestess and have attended goddess spiritual retreats in Adelaide, Egypt and Uluru.

My journey has now led me onto the path of being able to assist people from all walks of life with all spiritual beliefs and hang-ups because I have simply been, and remain, … curious!

You do offer one-on-one sessions and group workshops. Can you tell us a bit about your workshops, for example, themes, approaches and your working style with people?

I love to write workshops and facilitate them as I guess you can’t take the teacher out of the classroom or the teacher out of the person.

I offer workshops in Numerology, Advanced Numerology, Spiritual Development, Universal Laws, Change Over Programs for Self Esteem and Self Love. I have also run a 12 week meditation series – teaching students meditation techniques in chakra healing meditation classes.

My focus with each is to teach smaller groups for maximum learning with the objective that all who attend leave feeling better, with a bunch of useful resources, new networks and connections with meeting like-minded, heart-centred people.

My style is very upbeat and inclusive, setting clear objectives and delivering what people are there for through a fun and safe learning environment in a sacred space.

When and where will you be delivering your next set of workshops?

My next Workshop will be run in Adelaide on September 17th at Relationships Australia – ‘Begin Again’ a Breakthrough Program for Adult Adoptees to Make Shift Happen.

This is a free workshop, as I applied to the government to run it so I could be able to assist Adult Adoptees without charging a fee. It is funded by a Small Grants Program of the Australian Government’s Department of Social Services and received through Relationships Australia, South Australia Forced Adoption Support Services.

The workshop will introduce Adult Adoptees to simple, fun and effective techniques for creating and manifesting the most important relationship in their life – the one they have with themselves.

Together we will explore the truth behind what they really want and why. Where and what the ‘Roadblocks’ are to move beyond old conditioned beliefs completely, to embrace their true potential.

The workshop focuses on going beyond grief, pain and suffering to embrace Self-Empowerment through connecting deeply to Self Love and Peace.

I teach a variety of valuable ‘self help’ tools throughout the day which participants can use for the rest of their lives.

No matter what your adoption experience involved, each topic encompasses fun exercises to support deep self-development and introduce participants to the fundamentals of self-empowerment and manifesting the changes they need to release the limitations of the past and to comfortably use new powerful tools and insights to bring more light and love into their life and the world.

Note that I only have four more spaces available so please contact me immediately to book if your are interested in attending. The only requirement is that you were adopted in Australia.

If people would like to contact you what is the best way of doing so?

For all bookings of private consultations, to purchase student modules, my ebook, my CD’s or to book in for my latest workshop ‘Begin Again’ for Adult Adoptees – please email me at: thesoulologistsherryhearn@gmail.com

Other avenues for contacting me include on Facebook ‘Sherry Hearn’ or you can like my page https://www.facebook.com/TheSoulologist/ or send a request to join my private community group on FB at https://www.facebook.com/groups/returntoselflove/

You can also contact me via Skype: Sherry.Hearn or visit my website: www.sherryhearn.com

Thank you Sherry for sharing a bit about your adoption experience and insights into spiritual pathways for healing. I wish you good luck with the Adelaide workshop and future programs.

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