Hello

When the world shut down in 2020, I had just started a private practice as a psychotherapist and very quickly had to adjust to seeing clients virtually. During this time, my personal life, like so many others, felt like it was falling to pieces. I have always known that I can connect with energy the way I do, but I never felt safe in any of my environments to further explore the depths I could reach. I would often be questioned by those who knew me well about how I could tune into them, connect with events that have happened, or make predictions as well as I do. Even then, there was never enough trust, mostly in myself, that I could share with people that I have psychic abilities.

 

A majority of my life has been spent in the dark as I have faced one traumatic event after another since childhood. In 2021, I made a decision that led to more decisions that ultimately helped me find my way out of the dark. I first had to find a way to go further into the darkest places I hadn't yet explored to discover the pieces of me that were abandoned, rejected, and disowned. I often hear people describe feeling like they have been in the darkness of their shadows for so long that the idea of stepping into the light is both a freeing thought and one that feels equally terrifying. It reminds me of seeing a stray dog hiding in a dark corner, shaking with fear, as someone approaches to try and care for it. It's hard to trust when you've been caused pain. It's even harder to trust that to live in the light and have a sense of what the good life can be for you; you must be willing to go further into the dark. How much further? Your shadows will tell us.  

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It took me facing some of my most significant trauma and fully accepting all that has happened to me throughout my life so that I could begin to make sense of who I am and heal the emotional wounds that just kept getting ripped open. Being stuck between wanting to please people and the trauma responses that had me feeling out of control of my own body was beginning to take its toll the older I got. 

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I have spent my entire life observing people and all of my adulthood studying anything I could get my hands on to understand what I saw and would often experience at the hands of other people. I always felt like I could either stop the pain that people would cause, whether intentionally or not, or at the very least be able to trust my intuition on when to walk away. I have spent nearly nine years working with people one-on-one in a therapeutic setting. I have a background that runs deep in psychology and years of meditative practices. I have attended self-development conferences and seminars and consumed one book after another that helped me take deeper dives into understanding the complex humans we are. I have worked with my therapist on and off for close to 14 years and was fortunate enough to work with a life coach who truly helped give me the wind I needed in my sail at a pivotal time in my life. I was introduced to trauma release exercises with a small group of women, and I have found these to be transformative in the way I allow my body to do the talking as it releases energy connected to trauma. 

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I am writing my second book, Dare You to Move - How Embracing My Inner Child's Trauma Saved My Life and Can Save You Too. This book is a culmination of what I have learned as a therapist who specializes in trauma while processing my trauma and becoming more confident in my body. Through this process, I feel like I have gotten to know myself in the ways I believe we all crave. One of the questions I am asked more often than any other is, "What is the purpose of life"? I think we can find our purpose through our pain; we have to understand how to navigate our way through the pain AND know how to make sense of it. 

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I have spent a lifetime both loving people in tremendous ways and being terrified of them, essentially leaving me stuck in a world that felt lonely and isolating. At the same time, that place felt more comforting than being "out there" with everyone else. When you have been misunderstood in the ways I believe most of us feel we have, it makes it hard to fully connect with your purpose or trust that it's safe to be you. As I continued to try and push forward through life with all the masks that I had put on over the years, my body started to fall apart. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that I genuinely believe was related to the trauma my body was holding onto. I'm not healed. I am healing, and my body has been showing me that is true just by how much I have improved, with symptoms barely being noticeable, if present at all.

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I aim to help others learn about themselves in a way that can genuinely lead to healing their inner child. When we go back to get the parts of ourselves that have been waiting for someone to come back, we feel more confident in our bodies and more vibrant in our lives. Overall, we all have a superpower, and it's my job to help others understand what theirs is. Welcome to Energy Shift! I'm so glad you are here!

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Sending Love and Light

Casey McKinnis, MACP, Shadow/Trauma Coach, Medium, Author