From Pain to Power: The Powerful Connection Between Healing, Therapy, and Coaching

Welcome to The Alchemy Within, the podcast where human wisdom meets the art of growth and personal evolution. Join me, Leilah Mirza, as we explore the profound journey of transformation, diving deep into the practices, stories, and insights that ignite change and awaken your true potential. Okay, so today I'm going to speak about my journey from a healer to a therapist to a coach and the evolution of my work. So I wanted to take a moment and explain why I evolved from being the healer in 2014 into a therapist and now to a coach. So many of you have been on this journey with me, has known me since 2014. And this journey began a decade ago, and it's been a deep unfolding journey, both personally and professionally. And as we change, a lot of things around us change. So let's start with modern psychology. Modern psychology, or counseling, psychotherapy, was built by men for men. It was designed to help them to adapt to the demands of an industrial, an industrial society. So Sigmund Freud labeled women's emotions as hysteria. Carl Jung referred to women as not the, not women, but as a feminine archetype, not as a living, breathing being. So for decades, women were excluded from psychological research altogether, and this is purely based because of our hormones. Our hormones made us too much, made us too unpredictable. So we were considered that we didn't actually fit the mold. And all of this material is material that I've actually studied as I went through the journey. So our biology, our cycles, our emotions, and our innate rhythms were never seen, never understood, never honored. And that's why I see so many women who have been in therapy over and over and over for years but still don't feel seen and still don't feel worthy, because often traditional therapy treats the symptoms and not the roots. And that wasn't designed to treat the roots. So when it comes to me, I don't just look at what's presenting with my clients, what's going on in the surface. I look beneath it at the inheritance, the origin, the emotion, what birthed that pattern. I don't just study the mind as in theory we do. I study the person inside of it, the person going through that experience. Now, traditional psychology was never built to make women feel safe. For decades, it was defined as survival responses, which is our fight or our flight. But then later, research discovered that women's biology is actually, it actually responds through connection, right? So this is research later that women, we need connection, we need family, and that's the missing link. That is where my work evolved. Now today I don't just do therapy, I do healing therapy and coaching. And they all blend. I blend all these models together and they all blend really well because true transformation, true transformation requires integration. And with true transformation, we also need support. So here's how I see it. Therapy heals, coaching activates. Healing restores safety. Coaching activates. Coaching expands the capacity. And healing gives us the peace from the past. Coaching gives you momentum for the future. So if we use coaching to bypass healing, we'll build momentum on broken ground, like the foundation won't be solid. But if we only stay in our healing, we stay looping— what I tell my client— we loop the same story endlessly. We go over that, processing the same pain, which sometimes may keep people in a victim state. And true transformation is the union. It's like a dance between both the healing and the activation, the activation. And then in therapy, in therapy, the question would be like, why did this happen to me, right? And then in coaching, we ask, who am I becoming through this? Can you feel the difference? Why is this happening to me? That's the counseling. And then in therapy, how's this happening for me in coaching? So one goes backwards, the other one moves forward. Now therapy is good. Therapy honors the victim, and sometimes that's sacred, that's necessary to help us, that's really— that helps the process, and it helps us to make peace with the past. So therapy, I am saying, is good, but at some point we need to stop endlessly healing. And we need to start leading. We need to start activating within us the fire, because the moment you start looping in that same old story is the moment you begin by creating a new one, right? So healing turns pain into peace. Coaching turns peace into power. And this is really powerful. Healing is compassion, leadership is courage, and then both are required for, for your evolution. And that's why I think for me it's fundamental that I integrate all of them, and I employ that. And when you integrate both, you don't just heal your past, you alchemize it. You turn your wounds into wisdom. And I heard it's through your pain you'll step into your power. Through your pain you will find your transformation. Your next level isn't about fixing yourself, it's about expanding who you were always meant to be. And that's why I don't like just doing the counseling, because counseling it only focuses on the past, right? But then we have coaching, and coaching is all about integrating into the future. So this evening, I actually went into the pharmacy, and the lady that I was speaking to, or the chemist, the lady that I was speaking to, me, uh, was speaking to, told me that she had a fear of flying, and she is going to see a counselor. And I also just wanted to get curious. I said, why do you feel you need to see a counselor? And not that I'm discounting counseling, because like I said, counseling can be very useful to honor the victim, right? To go in the past, because remember, counseling is why did this happen, detangling and unpicking things, and then we move into healing, which is more about honoring, providing safety, and coaching is all about integrating. And then I just asked her, I said, because— and she explained to me her answer, and what I said was, because Counseling, we're going back, we're exploring the past. Your fear is about flying, right? Then that could be hypnotherapy because that's all about the brain behavior. Then we look at the process of healing, which is honoring the safety, the validation, giving you the peace And then when you look at the coaching aspects, we're looking about expansion, integration, and the version of becoming. So for me, it's truly important to take my clients through the journey with that. And as I've gone, I've expanded, which means my container that I can hold my client has actually been stretched. So I'm not just an ordinary therapist, I'm not just the healer or the coach. I use that as an umbrella and then I can serve my client through that. So I'm not once again discounting each of those modalities, whether you into therapy, um, coaching, healing, or counseling, but what I'm saying I don't necessarily feel that just using one modality is good. It's, it's going to serve my client, and that's why I use a range of modalities. So we always start off with the counseling, but I don't want to stay in the counseling. I choose not to keep my client in the past because that really activates that victim And sometimes that may end up making someone feel more powerless than before, right? I do bring in the healing because when we provide a space of love, that is healing. The coaching is the next stage. Of embodiment. The coaching is also a next stage of integration, and that's why I find that those few modalities blended together are truly transformational and life-changing. It's just good for people to know that therapy is about honoring the victim, and, and sometimes that is sacred. And it is necessary to help us to process and to release and also to make peace with the past, but then at some point we must stop endlessly healing and we need to start leading and taking ownership because the moment you stop looping in your old story is the moment you begin creating a new one. Healing turns pain into peace. Coaching turns peace into power, like I said earlier. But healing is compassion, and leadership is courage. And if we can dance with the two together and both are required for your evolution. And that's when you can integrate both. That's when you can truly take ownership of your purpose, heal your past. That's alchemizing it. So you're turning your wounds into wisdom is the alchemy, is the gold. You turn your pain into power. So your next level isn't about fixing yourself. It's about expanding who you're always meant to be. We don't, we don't always need to, we don't always need more healing, and that keeps us looking back. We need embodiment. We need integration of what's already healed, and we need to rise into that energy, into that leadership. And that's what I call alchemy. That's what I call true alchemy. Alchemy is the bridge between the therapy, the healing, and the coaching, and between healing and leadership. Between who you are and who you came here to be. That is my work. My work isn't about keeping people stuck in their stories. It, it's about moving them through three phases: heal, Integrate alignment. That's why my programs are seen as an investment, not in my time, but in your transformation. So when people come to me and they invest in me, they're not paying me for my time, but it's a transformation. Because healing without expansion keeps people in the past. An expansion without healing builds on shaky ground. So in my world, me and you, we do both. We honor your story, but we alchemize your pain, and then we rise. And that's where I help people with the process. When people come to me They're not coming to me for, you know, just sitting in the past. When people come to me, they're investing in their transformation, in their belief that they can become who they're actually truly meant to be, their alignment, their true self. We're not exchanging money for minutes, but we exchange— what we're clearing beliefs for embodiment. They are ready to do the work. The client that sees me is ready to do the work to integrate and to rise into their greatest capacity, because we don't focus on past or just in therapy or in healing. We focus on the past, the therapy, the integration, and the alchemy. The alchemy is a turning, the transformation, the becoming. So if you're truly ready to be seen and to be heard and to rise into your power, let's look at that. Let's rise. And It's been a journey. It's definitely been a, a journey that I needed to go through, and I'm continuing that journey, not me, but for you, for my clients, to take them to expansion, to stretch that circle that has kept them safe. And earlier I may have mentioned that people have worked with me since 2014. I went into doing counseling, psychodynamic therapy. I pulled back and I thought this wasn't working for me. Then I went into doing healing because I was always looking to miss— to take my clients to another level. But I noticed that with healing, people are just staying there. They're not moving, we're just staying in the peaceful state. And then that's when I said, I'm gonna go into coaching, because when I, when I lead and I facilitate in a coaching session, there's always an invitation for your full higher embodiment. And that's what coaching— that's the beauty of coaching, because coaching is all about the becoming the future self. And that's what, what makes my work so powerful, and it has such a big impact on people. Because it's a beautiful blend that we do together. There's beauty in every modality, but one of them can't bypass the other without doing the work. We need to honor the past, but we need to be accountable for our becoming, and that's where your truest power lies.