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I Grew Up Misunderstood… Then Lost Myself Trying to Be What Everyone Needed - The Ly’chel Carmichael story


There are moments in life where you realize…
You’ve been showing up for everybody else,
But you don’t even recognize yourself anymore.

In this episode, I sit down with Ly’chel Carmichael, and this conversation goes way deeper than just “healing.”

We talk about what it actually looks like to grow up feeling misunderstood, learning how to survive early, and carrying that into adulthood without even realizing it.
Ly’chel shares her story of struggling in school, being misjudged, going through a life-changing brain injury, and how one person believing in her completely shifted her future.

But beyond that…

We get into the part a lot of women don’t talk about.

Trying to be chosen.

Staying in relationships that hurt.

Losing yourself in roles, expectations, and what you think you’re supposed to be.
She opens up about abusive relationships, infertility, feeling like she was failing as a woman, and hitting a point where she had to ask herself…
“Who am I outside of all of this?”

And that’s where everything started to change.Through faith, self-reflection, and doing the hard internal work, she began rebuilding her identity from the inside out.

Topics Discussed:
What it feels like to grow up misunderstood with ADHD and learning challenges

How trauma and emotional experiences shape your identity
The connection between people-pleasing and losing yourself
Why trying to be chosen can lead you into unhealthy relationships
What happens when everything you built your identity on falls apart
How faith, prayer, and self-awareness helped her rebuild
Learning to stop shrinking and start showing up as yourself
How healing changes the way you see your life, your struggles, and your purpose

This conversation is honest, emotional, and real.If you’ve ever felt like you’ve been holding everything together for everyone else…but don’t know who you are anymore,this episode is for you.

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How Trauma Hijacks Your Emotions And Makes Healing Harder with DEBORAH FEATHERS

In this episode of A Sista Love Podcast, we’re talking about emotional regulation, trauma, and how trauma affects your emotions during the healing process.

Joining the conversation is Deborah Feathers, a trauma-informed clinician and Marriage and Family Therapy intern who shares both her personal story and professional insight on emotional dysregulation, trauma recovery, and learning how to regulate your emotions after trauma.

Many people want to heal, but they feel stuck in emotional overwhelm, shutdown, anxiety, or constant emotional reactions. When someone has lived in survival mode for a long time, their nervous system can stay on high alert, making it difficult to regulate emotions, manage stress, or feel safe in relationships.

In this conversation, Deborah Feathers shares her journey through anxiety, depression, PTSD, chronic illness, and emotional overwhelm, and how those experiences shaped her understanding of mental health healing and emotional regulation.

Together, we break down:
• what emotional regulation actually is
• how trauma affects the nervous system and emotional responses
• what emotional dysregulation looks like in everyday life
• the difference between a trauma response and a genuine emotional reaction
• how trauma can interfere with the healing process
• practical ways to start regulating your emotions during trauma recovery

Deborah also explains how Marriage and Family Therapy, relational patterns, and nervous system awareness help people understand their emotional reactions and begin creating healthier emotional responses.
If you’ve ever felt like your emotions are controlling your reactions, or like healing feels harder because your emotions feel overwhelming, this episode will help you understand why trauma affects emotions and how to begin regulating them in a healthier way.

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Pain doesn’t just hurt — it shapes identity.

In this episode, we explore how long-term pain and survival create versions of ourselves that were necessary at the time, but may no longer fit. If healing feels scary because you don’t know who you’ll be without the pain, this episode gently opens that question without pushing answers.


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Once you stop avoiding healing, emotions tend to show up — and that can feel overwhelming fast.

In this episode, we talk about what happens when feelings come up and you don’t know how to hold them, process them, or even name them. If emotions feel messy, confusing, or too much once you slow down, this conversation helps you understand why — without telling you to “fix” anything.


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If you’ve started healing more than once, only to stop when things got uncomfortable, this episode is for you.

We talk about why the stop–start cycle is so common, why pulling back doesn’t mean you failed, and what’s really happening when discomfort makes you retreat. This conversation removes shame and helps you understand your patterns without judging yourself for them.


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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
— Maya Angelou

When you’re healing, that quote hits different.
Because most of the time, you don’t feel powerful.
You feel tired.
You feel worn down.

You feel like whatever strength you had got used up just trying to survive.
A lot of us don’t think we’re powerful at all.

We think we’re broken.
We think something is wrong with us.
We think the pain took something from us that we’ll never get back.
And maybe that’s why healing feels scary.

You already learned how to live with the pain.
You adapted to it.
You figured out how to function while carrying it.

That became normal.

And in that process, you learned how to sacrifice yourself.

You learned how to stay quiet.

How to give more than you had.
How to keep the peace.
How to love in a way that costs you.
So when healing shows up, it doesn’t feel gentle.
It feels disruptive.

Because you know — deep down — that if you really start healing, things will change.

You won’t keep tolerating what hurts.
You won’t keep abandoning yourself to keep people around.
The version of you that survives by self-sacrificing won’t fit anymore.
And that’s the real fear.
Not the pain.
The change.

Some of us aren’t afraid to heal —
We’re afraid of who we’ll become if we stop shrinking.
Here’s another way to look at it.
You’re not losing anything.
You’re releasing.
You’re giving people patterns and situations back to the world they belong to.

They served a purpose in your life for a season.
Holding onto them past that season doesn’t mean loyalty — it means stagnation.

Letting go doesn’t mean you failed.
Sometimes it means you finished.
And maybe the reason healing feels so threatening is that once you feel what it’s like to be fully you —
once you stop sacrificing yourself —
You won’t ever be willing to go back.



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Guilt shows up in a lot of ways when you’re trying to heal.
Sometimes it turns inward.
You start blaming yourself.
You feel guilty for staying.
Guilty for not knowing better.
Guilty for allowing it to happen in the first place.
So to live with that, you convince yourself it wasn’t as bad as it felt.

Because if it wasn’t that bad, then maybe you didn’t betray yourself.
Maybe you didn’t miss something you should’ve seen.
Other times, the guilt comes from the people around you.
The ones who didn’t protect you.
The ones who downplayed what happened.
The ones who made you feel like you were doing too much, feeling too much, holding on for too long.
So you start questioning yourself.
Maybe I’m exaggerating.
Maybe I’m being dramatic.
Maybe I should be over this by now.
And then there’s the guilt that comes with time.

You look at how many years it’s been.
You look at how other people seem to move on.
And you start asking yourself what’s wrong with you.
Why am I still affected?
Why does this still hurt?
Why haven’t I figured this out yet?
That guilt starts to turn into shame.
Shame that you’re not healing fast enough.
Shame that something must be wrong with you because you can’t just let it go.

But guilt isn’t always about truth.
A lot of times, guilt is how the mind tries to make sense of pain that never got acknowledged. It’s how you stay connected to people who couldn’t show up for you. It’s how you avoid the heavier reality that what happened actually mattered.

So guilt keeps rewriting the story.
It tells you to shrink it.
To doubt it.
To carry it quietly.
And that’s how you get stuck.

This episode is about recognizing how guilt has been shaping the way you see yourself, your pain, and how you heal
Because healing doesn’t begin with proving your pain was bad enough.
It begins when you stop turning it against yourself.


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You Want to Heal — So Why Won’t You Let Your Guard Down?

You want to heal.

But your guard stays up.

Not because you’re closed off.

Not because you don’t want better.

But because staying guarded has been how you’ve kept yourself safe.

Your guard shows up in everyday life.

It’s in the way you’re always watching what’s going on around you.

The way you stay prepared for something to go wrong, even when things are okay.

The way you don’t fully relax, even in your own space.

The way your body stays tense, like it’s waiting for the next hit.

You’ve learned that nobody is coming to protect you.

So you do it yourself.

You stay alert.

You stay ready.

You don’t let yourself get caught slipping — not for a second.

That guard has protected you.

It’s helped you survive situations where being open would’ve cost you.

It’s helped you stay in control when things felt unpredictable.

But it’s also exhausting.

Because when your guard is always up, you’re never fully here.

You’re always scanning.

Always preparing.

Always bracing for something, even when there’s nothing happening.

So healing feels complicated.

Not because you don’t want it — but because letting your guard down feels like losing the one thing that’s kept you safe. And without that guard, you don’t know how to trust yourself, your environment, or the people around you.

This episode is about understanding what your guard has been doing for you — and how it can protect you and hold you back at the same time.

Because healing doesn’t ask you to get rid of your guard overnight.

It starts by helping you feel safe enough with yourself that you don’t have to live in protection mode every moment of the day.

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