2018-06-04Staff Report 2 Alvine Kapitako WINDHOEK - Seven years after identifying the root causes of her burnout, 43-year-old Tabea Boye is using her experience to assist people to deal with their emotional struggles. Health physicians describe a burn out as a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion, often caused by excessive and prolonged stress. In 2011, Boye’s life came to an abrupt halt, when she was diagnosed with a burn out, which forced her to re-structure her life entirely. With no place to turn to, the survivor of sexual and emotional abuse as well as abandonment developed her own tools and strategies to turn her life around. “I realised that my burnout was just the tip of the iceberg. It was gradually building up. I had to overcome sexual and emotional abuse and abandonments and I never overcame it,” Boye said. Prior to her self-discovery, Boye who practiced as a Public Relations Officer was using coping mechanisms to go through life but that eventually led to the burnout. “Every time that I tried to go back into my old Duracell bunny operation mode, my body would go on strike so I was forced to reinvent my life and that was really the turning point,” she tells New Era. She struggled a lot in the beginning and this is because she refused to accept her new reality. A year later, she finally surrendered and then the tedious task of re-inventing her life started. “That is when I realised that I needed to share my message with people because I didn’t know where to turn to and I had to address all my issues at once so to speak,” explained the mother of two. She then registered for training courses that would help her in her wellness journey. And on November 23, last year, the Lighthouse Wellness Centre opened. Her beach house-feel studio is tucked away in the centre of Windhoek, where she offers tailor-made relaxation therapy and awareness coaching workshops for corporates and private clients. The service also includes team-building workshops. “Lighthouse was a dream come true and the Lighthouse to me symbolises strength because it withers every storm and continues what it is meant to do and it is guiding people to safety,” said Boye. Boye says she has a passion for people and community development and part of what she does includes guiding her clients towards finding sustainable solutions. “I am not your quick fix girl. It is important to establish a relationship with my clients, to discover and get to know them and discover their underlying problems,” she said. A very common struggle that her clients have in common is that they do not listen to their bodies, Boye says. “They do not take themselves seriously enough,” she adds, explaining that the human body has a way of communicating its needs, if only people would listen. “We have been conditioned in such a way that we perceive self-care and self-love as selfish but this is not the case because the Bible says love your neighbour as yourself,” Boye adds. A person cannot love himself or herself if they do not take care of themselves, she noted. She explains it best with her own life story: “What happened with me is, since I have had these abuse issues in my life I got stuck in my story. Love and the security was taken away from me so subconsciously I wanted someone from the outside to give me back what I have lost but that was not possible”. As a result, she was creating her own “little drama” of repetitive incidences where abandonment and emotional abuse repeated itself, Boye added. “I was constantly longing for approval and validation which basically led to my burnout,” she said. Adults have to deal with so many issues, many which they have carried from their childhoods. As a result, they develop protective mechanisms, which may work for a while. “But eventually during the course of our lives they hinder us to lead fulfilled lives and that’s what my passion is, to help everybody so they can really find their purpose and heal their old wounds and rediscover self-love because we carry all the answers within ourselves,” she says. Looking for validation and fulfilment from outside is giving power away “and we are living on their mercy”, Boye says. 2018-06-04Staff Report 2
