Healing With Inner Freedom After a Traumatic Event

Personal and executive coach Jan De Zwarte joins us for this episode of Our Defining Moments. Jan begins by delving into what his childhood was like, and his experience as an “import.” He wasn’t born where he grew up, so he was considered an outsider.

Jan met Peter at school when they were four. Their friendship connection was instant, and they both became part of a group who would go bird watching and enjoy nature together. They became best friends, continuing into adulthood. On May 1st, 2005, Peter was involved in a car accident. He was in the hospital for ten weeks, but he lost consciousness and there was nothing more the doctors could do.

His wife made the difficult decision to stop treatment and let him go. Following this loss, Jan had a lot of guilt and confusion. He wondered what would have happened if he were with Peter that morning. Would he have been driving and avoided the accident? Or would they have been in the accident together? He’ll never know.

A part of Jan’s healing process has been exploring his own inner freedom. All of us have moments where we try to do something but don’t get the results we want. It’s important to zoom in on those results and discover the subconscious connection you have to those results. Uncovering the mind-body connection attached to this is important for inner freedom.

When you go through such a traumatic event, you realize the world doesn’t pause. We can find significance and meaning in these events to help us continue moving on. This is what Jan learned from Peter’s death. All humans will meet their fair share of difficult times. When we start accepting this as a normal part of life, we can more easily let it go.

Inner Freedom is a CoachVille coaching program. Coachville, a transformational coaching school accredited by the ICF, can be found at coachville.com