"Strength does not come from the body. It comes from the will." - Mahatma Gandhi
All my life I wondered what I was here for. The question of “what is the purpose of life?” was on my mind from a young age and, at every turn, the answer eluded me. As a young teen training and competing in swimming events regularly, I thought the road to the Olympics was perhaps the path I was destined to pursue. But when I was told I had narrowly missed being chosen for the national squad one year, and if I could improve my time for the 100m breaststroke I’d be in with a chance, I seriously considered whether this was indeed my path. After a few months I decided it wasn’t. I'm definitely more motivated around others, there’s a kind of effervescence I feel when there is that synergy between like-minded and like-hearted people. Younger me loved swimming because I was part of a great team with a great coach. And when certain people left and the team dynamic changed, my heart was no longer in it. Then as I was approaching the end of my schooling and had to decide what to do next, I took the path of least resistance and went to university because – still unsure of my next move - it was the pragmatic choice. Some subjects I didn’t enjoy (advanced maths and statistics being good examples) and was really bad at, and others were a breeze and I liked them (like psychology and business studies). Still not really knowing what I wanted to do, I went for one last study option and pursued a postgraduate diploma in human resource management. From there I fell into jobs in recruitment and then finally customer services – well, customer complaints. There I found a niche championing improvements based on customer feedback, which was what led me to the field of customer service transformation, specializing in the intricacies of people and culture. Although the puzzle pieces of my professional journey were beginning to make more sense, I knew it wasn’t quite the right fit. Wherever my road was leading was still very unclear to me, it sat like a shadowy enigma in the background of my mind. And, as much as I couldn’t see my career path, I couldn’t see myself either. Decades spent attempting to meet others’ expectations and striving for perfection left me frustrated, I was yearning for more clarity about my true identity. But most importantly, at that point in my life there was one thing I was very clear on - and one purpose I had always known I wanted to fulfill – to be a mum. Younger me had envisaged that very clearly, I would meet someone, fall in love and we would have kids, happily ever after… well, not quite. To make a long story short, heartbreak, feelings of unworthiness, and a series of tumultuous relationships dulled that once vivid dreams. Multiple miscarriages became poignant chapters in my journey, leading to the birth of my children at the age of forty. Motherhood was a cracking open of the soul. My children are as different from each other as their parents are, yet a mix of us both; and both were demanding in their own ways. No longer was it possible to be superwoman and please everyone all of the time. Life put me under immense pressure at home and at work. As being a parent was the one thing I was clear about, it took center stage and the complexities of nurturing two individual beings in their growth became the focal point. While my commitment to allowing my children to be true to themselves was unwavering, the journey also drove me to some dark places. Coming face to face with those moments when you realise you sound or act just like your parents, in ways that you do not want to, reverberated in unexpected ways. It challenged me to confront unhelpful patterns and undergo a pretty intense motherhood boot camp Over the last decade I’ve learned extensively about trauma patterns, secure attachment and attunement, child development stages, toxic relationships, conflict management and wrangled with parts of myself until I came out of the wash clear enough to see. I emerged stronger, wiser and with something entirely new: boundaries. All that and I was still unclear about my purpose in terms of what service I might be to the wider world in this life. I started to take on some life coaching clients, which felt good but not entirely on point. Than one day, as if orchestrated by the universe, a moment of clarity dawned. Reading a description of a card depicting a compass, the words resonated deep within: "You are a Pathfinder guiding others on their journeys... Having followed your own path, you have evolved to embrace your gifts, establish your passions and desire to use them for the collective good..." Fifty-two years into my journey, the realisation struck – the struggle to see my path was, in fact, the path. The very challenges and uncertainties that seemed like detours were the transformative forces shaping me into a Pathfinder. Helping myself had became the cornerstone of being able to help others. As I embraced this idea of being a Pathfinder, I totally resonated with a commitment to leading others on a quest for their truth and authenticity, illuminating obscured aspects of their situations or relationships. It was a revelation that spoke to the very core of my being, a purpose that had been veiled until that moment of clarity. Yet, while I appreciate the independence of managing my workload and working one-on-one with clients, the synergy that arises from a great team is truly majestic. I find it puzzling when healthcare practitioners avoid discussing clients with each other for confidentiality reasons; I believe collaboration (with consent) could lead to a more holistic understanding and faster resolution of issues. Moving forward, I hold a vision of collaborating with like-minded and like-hearted individuals to achieve this kind of holistic approach through teamwork. As I reflect on the myriad struggles life presented, I am reminded of a recent experience at a group Family Constellations session I attended. I witnessed an older lady - who had been abused by her father from the time she was a baby – take back her power and see herself clearly for the first time. Despite the harrowing experiences, she recognised her survival and the strength that had blossomed in the aftermath of her struggles. While no one wishes such traumatic struggles upon anyone, it is a testament to human resilience. We have a remarkable capacity not only to endure but to transcend, rising above the challenges that life throws our way. This journey of self-discovery has illuminated for me the strength that arises from navigating life's struggles. Reflecting on our individual paths, let us recognize that our ability to transform challenges into strengths is a testament to our resilience. Together, we can navigate the intricate paths of life, supporting one another on our quests for truth, authenticity, and personal growth. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy From the Roots of Anger to the Blossoming of Healthy Boundaries, Embrace Your Real Self, Weave Words Like Wands - Confessions of a Sarcastic Perfectionist, An Open Letter to an Old Friend, Looking Back to See the Clues to Your Destiny and The Quiet Whisperings of Truth That Inspire Our Life. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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I was listening to a class this week with Evette Rose about navigating anger on the path of life. She was talking about the physical processes that happen within our bodies when we become angry, and how our body has learned that feeling as a way of keeping us “safe” when it perceives danger.
Sometimes – maybe often, depending on the level of trauma in our past - the perceived danger is triggered not by our actual circumstances, but rather by an ingrained neurobiology from a time in our young lives when our best course of action was to get angry and lash out or to suppress the anger inwards on ourselves. In essence we get stuck in immature and unhealthy ways of dealing with things. Then, listening to a Teal Swan meditation on Healthy Boundaries, I was asked to look back over my life, to reflect on the times that I didn’t feel good about myself: the times I felt stupid or wrong, guilty or angry with myself, the times I judged myself harshly, criticised myself, felt unacceptable, unsuccessful, not good enough or otherwise beat myself up thinking there was something wrong with me. Reflecting back on the times I blamed myself for making mistakes, felt ashamed of myself, took too much responsibility for others, lost confidence in myself, sabotaged myself to placate others, put myself down in front of others, or allowed them to use, control or manipulate me or put me down, I recognised the truth in Lisa Romano’s words when she says “It takes courage to love the self others abandoned”. Because that is, in essence, what happens. Growing up, the parts of us that don’t “fit in” are the parts we deny, suppress and disown. I know I worked hard as a youngster to be physically fit and develop physical and mental resilience in the world, perhaps because that kind of strength was valued in the people and culture around me. Opening up emotionally wasn’t something anyone I knew really did, that kind of vulnerability was kept for within close and trusted relationships. As a result I didn’t necessarily see a lot of conscious, healthy role modeling around handling conflict, or – perhaps more crucially - repairing after a conflict. And yet, my intuitive and emotional self is highly adept at reading others’ emotional landscape. That part of me that is more intuitive and sensitive was definitely kept far more hidden, and in my blind faith about safety within certain types of relationships (for example, I believed a romantic partnership or marriage was the safe place to share my true feelings and let people see my true self, because that is what I had seen role modeled, and I believed that grownups in workplaces would act professionally) I have experienced many things coming from left field to teach me that life isn’t quite like that. Through strong imagery of sitting chest-high in the edge of the ocean, Teal’s meditation asks us to experience those feelings of having abandoned ourselves like waves coming in, crashing into our chest and washing over. Crucially, she asks that we practice sitting with those feelings until they pass. It’s a practice of not moving into the hard wired responses of lashing out, fleeing, freezing or acquiescing when feeling strong emotions. Whether it’s me abandoning myself in the ways I described above (like blaming myself for mistakes), or someone else attacking me or manipulating me, or in some other way reflecting back to me the anger I often perpetrate upon myself, it takes practice to achieve emotional regulation. I think perhaps the most shocking of experiences for me has always been those reflections of anger or subjugation from others, because as a kid I perpetrated that upon myself, taking it upon my shoulders to be perfect and avoid those kinds of responses. However, I find life has a way of needling us in just the right way in order to try and evoke a growth response to develop beyond the unhealthy patterns and unprocessed emotions of those earlier times. Evette asked the class to define what anger means to us, to consider what anger does (that we feel we can’t) in everyday life, and what does it allows us to feel – other than anger? These were thought provoking and provided valuable insights, as I could see that anger has been the way I’ve felt and expressed my boundaries in the past, and it gave me the outlet and bravery (with its surge of adrenaline) to express opinions I’d otherwise kept suppressed. Boundaries are those things we will and won’t accept, how we assert them is a whole other communication skill to learn. Briana MacWilliam covers this really well in her attachment courses, and some people quite like the Non Violent Communication courses, but there is plenty of ways out these days to learn the skills. What I’ve come to really appreciate is the ability to observe my feelings rather than be completely identified with them. This has taken time and practice, and was only possible after practicing meditation regularly. It gives me room to pause and the choice to react differently, in ways that are more healthy and productive. That said, dealing with my own emotional reactions to insults, aggression, manipulative statements or other attacks, then asserting myself in a calm, rational manner, continues to be a challenge. All I can say is that, over time, I’m getting better. Things that would have thrown me off kilter for days or weeks now disperse in hours or minutes. And part of that is also about owning who I am, completely. So what if I live in a world (by this I mean the people and places who surround me) that tends to devalue the role of a stay-at-home parent and, instead, constantly promotes and cajoles you back into a workplace? I used to play that game; it led to burn out, illness. I value my health and my role as a parent above what others think I should or shouldn’t be focused on. For me, the role is more than feeding, ferrying and clothing my kids. It’s a role that involved completely managing their lives when they are little, to gradually training them for more independence and then moving into a coaching role through their teens. It’s a role that involves making the best healthcare and educational choices that match my values, and navigating a terrain no other generation of parents has had to navigate – technology (and it’s deliberately designed dopamine driving addiction). It’s a role that involves helping my children to emotionally regulate themselves and to be able to apply critical thinking to situations and relationships. It’s big, and it’s the fostering of the next generation. So in the past where I would have defended my lack of engagement in the expected route back to the workplace, there is a subtle but healthy change, instead I advocate for my role. I value my role, and I’m immensely proud of the time, focus and energy I’ve put in and continue to put in. That said, it’s been far from perfect. My time as a parent has been a collection of the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s been a massive learning curve and growth journey, with much healing taking place. In short though, it is a step in the right direction. The direction I wanted to head was to cultivate kids who are closer than I was in knowing themselves at a younger age, and better able to identify things and people who are compatible with their beliefs and values. If they are able to distinguish toxic from healthy growth, and have confidence to navigate these scenarios even a little better than I was able to in my younger years, then we will have moved forward. Imagine nurturing a generation unafraid to know themselves, confident in their beliefs, and capable of navigating life's intricate dance? Whether we raise children directly, we are all raising them indirectly through our example. As you stand on the shore of your own emotional ocean, take a moment to reflect on the waves that have shaped your journey. Consider the insights gained from defining anger's role in your life. Challenge yourself to observe, not just react. Uncover the power to express boundaries with calm assertiveness, acknowledging the growth it brings, and choose the path of self-affirmation. Your journey, like the ebb and flow of the tides, has its own rhythm. In embracing your journey, you not only rewrite the narrative for yourself but contribute to a narrative of empowerment and authenticity for generations to come. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Mastering the Art of Inner Harmony: A Journey from Turmoil to Tranquility, Empower Yourself - When a Difficult Reaction Sends You Into a Tailspin, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Your Mind Will Try to Protect You By Resisting Your Healthy Boundaries and Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary to Get Your Real Needs Met. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I read a quote by Nicola Jane Hobbs this week who said:
“Growing up I never knew a relaxed woman, Successful women? Yes, Productive women? Plenty. Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them. But relaxed women? At ease women? Women who aren’t afraid to take up space in the world? Women who prioritise rest and pleasure and joy? Women who give themselves unconditional permission to relax – without guilt, without apology, without feeling like they need to earn it? I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman like that. But I would like to become one. I would like us all to become one.” I’m sure many men would also resonate with aspects of that, and some women may not, but for me it was a take note moment that has led to a deeper reflection on navigating societal norms and parenting realities. As my eldest born is crossing a Rubicon right now, traversing the road to her last years of required schooling, and we have been asked to write something for them. As I was doing that, I reflected on the archetype that is considered “normal” in our society. I would describe it as the person who is physically very capable, who attends school and finds learning in the school system both enjoyable and fairly easy; someone who has their own opinions and can think for themselves once leaving the school system, yet doesn’t create waves within the system, in fact they shine as a beacon of the system’s success, passing exams and getting good comments from teachers because they are helpful and do not cause any issues or stress. They are: compliant; have good manners, good attendance and good grades; are fully vaccinated; help when required; and grow up to make money for the systems. If they are female, they don’t show any aggression and, if they are male, they don’t show any emotions. Either way, show no weakness – with weakness defined as anything that doesn’t fall within the desirable archetype’s behaviours. This norm is an aggregate of different aspects and, while there are no doubt people who can tick all those boxes, many fall outside of the norm in a least one or two aspects, and many can’t relate to any those things as being true and easy for them at all. Most definitely “relaxed” is not a word I associate with any of it, and I suspect that is because many people are not being fully themselves in order to fit inside the norm. So what I reflected for my eldest child is that it is my highest hope that they deeply discover what is true and authentic for them and live in accordance with that. Then I was talking to a friend of a friend this week about the role of being a mother. Although I had become disenfranchised with the healthcare system in my early twenties, when it let me down in every way, it wasn’t until I became a mother that I well and truly butted up against the norms and systems, and it forced me into a choice to “come out” as me or continue to be so stressed and ill that I suffered a painful decline. Again, I’m sure many men who have chosen to become full time parents may resonate with aspects of what I am about to say, but I can only speak from my own experience as a woman. My first born was pregnancy number five, becoming a mum was not an easy road for me, but it was something innately felt I wanted and yearned for. What I had also envisaged was providing a stable home for my kids and bringing them up as a joint team. That did not happen. Instead I birthed children and then realised that – while I am responsible for them – I do not have free rein to bring them up as I would like. In fact, I don’t even have the right to be a full time parent. I think of it as miraculous that women can grow actual human beings inside us. After years of trying, I literally gave my body and heart over to incubating and growing two new physical lives. Then, for the first six months, I watched in wonder and awe as their physical growth was entirely down to the milk my body produced. As wondrous as it was, it was also grueling – especially being in my forties by then - and it literally sucked the life out of my physical and emotional reserves. There’s no recovery time, no spa break from being mum, and no community around to easily support each other in the way our species was designed to live. I continued to feed my kids as they started eating solid food, and was fully responsible for their care and wellbeing for a decade. It wasn’t the team effort I had envisaged, instead it was a baptism of fire, coming up against every part of myself I’d denied and disowned and every mask I’d ever worn was ripped from my grasp. When they started living part of the week with their father and part with me, it was both a welcome relief from the intensity and relentless nature of conscious hands on parenting, and an unequivocal stab to my heart. I fully support my children in having a relationship with their father, I always have, but I did not choose to – and never would have – given up half my time with my children as they are growing. Of course that is only the physical hands-on time, it’s not that my parenting brain (which is concerned with their psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing, as well as all the events and commitments coming up) switches off. There are always things to organize and pitfalls to navigate. My friend’s friend, who I have known for some time, has found herself working with women who are finding themselves navigating the legal system as they separate from partnerships that – if they weren’t toxic before - become toxic in the system. Having firsthand experience of this ourselves, it was an interesting and meaningful conversation. She tells a story of the lawyer who was minimizing the role of a parenting in a mediation meeting. Being proud of her role as a parent, she pointedly asked the lawyer why she was trying to devalue the role. Then, as the ex spouse had a tantrum and left the room, she said to the lawyer words to the effect “Had he been parented with the kind of conscious care required to grow a mature adult, perhaps he wouldn’t be having a toddler tantrum right now”. In this country, people who give up careers to look after children are supported in principle through a section of relationship law that recognises the economic inequity that causes (in terms of lost opportunity for career progression, building of retirement funds etc). However, in most cases it fails miserably to address the inequity and the stay-at-home parent is left floundering financially in comparison to their ex partner. The government does not recognise parenting as a job in itself and only provide support for sole parents who are in other work or seeking other work. Then I was trialing a questionnaire for a friend who is learning a new coaching technique, and it was all about motivation in your job. I considered doing this in relation to my coaching and consulting career, but decided instead I would do it with my role as a parent in mind. I was asked about my top five positive emotions in regard to my job, and my top five negative emotions. The positive emotions all related to the honour and privilege it is to pave the way for little humans to grow in their journey of life. The negative emotions all relate to the sheer isolation and exhaustion of parenting in today’s society, and the requirements and expectations put on us by norms in government and healthcare systems especially. I do not like “the nanny state” approach, I believe in the personal power and potential within all humans to be connected, conscious and responsible citizens. I particularly believe that it’s our entry into this world that can either cultivate a sense of this innate power or quash it altogether, leading to a win-lose mentality which is really a zero sum game. We are all having fluoride added to our water here locally because the government “can’t trust” a portion of our society to use fluoride toothpaste regularly. Where does the intervention stop? I feel we are people being micromanaged on a vast scale using fear as the main tactic. So in my reflections to my daughter I urged her – as I always do with my children - to be who they feel themselves to be. I’m not a renegade encouraging them to butt up against the systems, I want to be a relaxed woman remember, I can’t go to war and be relaxed. I saw the Eight of Swords tarot card this week that depicts precisely what I’m pointing to. It depicts a woman who is bound and blindfolded, encircled by eight swords planted in the ground, that look like bars surrounding her. There are certainly methods for her to flee, but due to her blindness and tied arms, there is no way for her to do so securely. Here was the advice given, wise words: “Always remember that you have alternatives and that even being tied does not take away your power - the female has options, they're just not simple ones. Stop thinking or at least slow your thought process. The swords surrounding the woman represent the thoughts that are keeping her trapped and blinded to the truth of her circumstances. If you feel like your mind is racing and you can't slow down, take ten to fifteen minutes today to sit with your eyes closed and focus on just one thing. Whether it is your breathing or the sound of a fan in the room, focusing on something that is happening in the present moment will help you get out of your head so you can see things a little more clearly.” I can see – clearly – what I don’t want, and I can orientate in a completely different direction. Some aspects of life are beyond my control and if I dwell on those too much I become frustrated and anxious. The best course of action is to focus on the one thing I do have control over, me. That is precisely where I encourage my children to focus, on themselves, their reactions and their inner world. And if they are casting their eyes and hearts to the future, envisage it as one where there are obvious and healthier alternatives to those that exist today. That is where my energy belongs, in the creation of the new, not fighting the old, outdated things I cannot change. While reflecting on societal norms and systems that confine individuals, particularly women, and the struggle faced in parenting and navigating these norms within predetermined archetypes and expectations, I advocate for authenticity. What about you? Are you focusing on what you can control and envisioning a future with better alternatives, rather than being trapped by the limitations of existing systems? As author Scott Stabile says “Unlearn what you are not, and remember who you are... unlearn and remember… this is one path to freedom”. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances, Do We Need to Better Understand the Pivotal Role of Parenting to Evolve?, Why Did I Not Know This About Parenthood?, You Have Amazing Options When it comes to Healthcare, Evolving Education, and Womanhood: A Story of Our Time. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. One of the things I’ve really been struggling lately is shifting gears between the different areas of my life, and being able to be fully present in each one. I had heard once that men find it easier to compartmentalize than women but, whether it’s true or not, I don’t think compartmentalizing is the answer.
I think of it like stuffing all the toys back into the toy box and forgetting they’re there. In fact one definition of compartmentalizing is it’s a form of psychological defence mechanism in which thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict are kept separate or isolated from each other in the mind. Those with post traumatic stress disorder may use compartmentalizing as a way to separate positive and negative aspects of themselves – though in truth we all tend to be a conglomeration of parts with different (and often conflicting) beliefs about ourselves and the world. Our stress levels and psychological state often determine which part of us in the driving seat and which narratives we have playing in our head. For me it’s all about the different roles I play in life, and how I shift between them with ease and grace. With my kids living between two residences, there are days when I’m fully in school mum mode, and other days when the practicalities of drop offs, pick-ups, pack lunches and homework are not my responsibility. For any parent, though, they will understand that doesn’t mean I can fully shift out of parenting mode. In my kids absence this last couple of days I’ve still been contending with applications for secondary education, juggling dental appointments, planning and organizing for upcoming birthdays, holidays and so forth, as well as hearing downloads of their day and giving advice and cheering on where necessary. Then there’s me in my role as partner, sometimes it’s just us, other times it’s us and the kids, and those can be quite different modes energetically. That’s aside of socializing with friends which again can be alone, with my partner of the kids or both, and then there’s me-time. Me time can be the things I do that are about self care, health and wellbeing, or it can be about focusing on sculpting what comes next in my career, whether it’s study, contemplation, or exploration and trying out different things. It’s in my nature to get fully engrossed in what I’m doing, particularly in that last part where I’m sculpting and in the process of creation; I suspect I could get endlessly lost in there. Yet it’s inevitable that none of the toys from each of these boxes are ever fully locked away in my heart or mind. But crossing from one to the other and back again can take a tremendous amount of energy, particularly if it involves some of my least favoured tasks and commitments. And in the very serendipitous way it does, life has presented me with reminders of antidotes – from two different sources this week – that have the potential to help me manage these gears changes with more grace and ease. The first was in a podcast about reverse meditation with Andrew Holecek. It reminded me that the key to ease is to sit with the pain. I think of it as symbolically sitting down at the kitchen table with those uncomfortable feelings embodied as a part of me sitting across from me with a cup of tea, while I look them right in the eye and listen good to what they have to say. Andrew says that “When we are being invited – and sometimes even pushed – out of our comfort zones, this is where the rubber meets the road, it’s where growth really takes place”. He points out that meditation, much like sport, can mean many things to many different people. There is a level of calming the mind, which is often referred to as mindfulness, but it offers so much more and “we are invited to go much further, so much deeper, where we can say yes to whatever arises”. He cites Krishnamurti who – when he was allegedly asked in the latter stages of his life after 70 something years of teaching – “What is the secret to your unflappable contentment?” he responded “I don’t mind what happens”. I think this is a beautiful reminder to lean into what is unwanted and see what it has to offer as a lesson for growth. Andrew’s approach has developed over the years after first being introduced to the principles of it over a quarter century ago in a three-year retreat which was a traditional training in the Tiebetan Buddist curriculum. He says his confidence and conviction really comes from his direct personal experience because, although he has done exhaustive literature analysis and study in other traditions also, his real confidence comes from intensive exposure and practice. I think this is true of all of us, if I put into practice the things that resonate with me then I become an advocate of them. Isn't it bliss the way our essence just pulls in what's in alignment with our unique vibration? The second great antidote to my discomfort came from finally reading through some material from Claire Zammit that I’ve had for a few years now, about learning the meta skills that catalyze the functional skills of writing, coaching, facilitation, leading etc - learning what really makes the difference between someone solid in these skills versus those people who really seem to crack others open and light them up with (what appears from the outside to be) a magical ability to generate ideas, connections and catalyze breakthroughs that inspire awe. I find Claire interesting because she came into her present work having been a solid coach and then doing a PhD to understand what makes that difference between someone good and someone phenomenal. In her research she interviewed and got to know many successful people. I think that may have been how she met Dr Jean Houston whose Quantum Powers course I did through Claire’s company Feminine Power a few years ago. Jean is in her late 80s now, she did her apprenticeship with the iconic anthropologist Margaret Mead, and she met all sorts of interesting people like Einstein. She's been working in the field of human potential for half a century and really gets the science behind quantum transformation. All of this lends to the depth and resonance I feel in Claire’s work, where she talks about the fundamental underpinning of all meta skills, the skill to be present and to create space to allow for meaningful interaction. She says "There is really no such thing as a resistant client or resistant group, what there is, is the absence of a space of depth for transformation to happen". Hers is a three-part process to cultivate presence, and one of those is also a three-part process on where your attention lies. She recommends that firstly you bring your attention into you, bringing awareness into yourself, breathing down into your belly. Then you take your attention out to the edges of the room, becoming aware of the space in and around you and, only then, your attention goes onto the other person (or people). She also recommends imagining you are communicating deeply, belly breath to belly breath. Well that is my one paragraph take on what obviously has more nuances when learned and practiced. When I reflect on these antidotes to the stress I’ve found in changing gears, I have heard similar things presented in different ways from different sources at different points in my life, but these two just clicked into place nicely this week and were good reminders to lean into what I was feeling and how to create space within and around me to connect with others. What about you, do you struggle in shifting gears between the different people and areas of your life? If so, what practices could you start or revisit in order to cultivate more of a sense of spaciousness and ease around those gear changes? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Shift Focus and Make Time for You, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success, How to Make Me-Time a Top Priority and Meditation 2.0 – The Road to Enlightenment? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Here in New Zealand, as in many places throughout the world, it’s Mother’s Day. As I receive good wishes and gifts from my own children, and see and hear the delights of such from other friends who are also mothers, along with a beautiful appreciation of my role as a mother from a burgeoning relationship, I have felt called to also contemplate the deeper meaning of the term mother.
The mother that resides within and for all of us. The mother consciousness, as defined by author Sarah Durham Wilson, says “you are perfect exactly the way you are. Every breath you take is a gift to the world. There is nothing you could do to make me stop loving you. I will always be here. I will pick you up when you fall down. Go after every dream. I’m right here, I love you.” She talks about the archetypal journey from maiden to mother, which I think men can also relate to through their own childhood and inner child. Her journey work starts with meditating with that young child, the little girl (or boy) inside who has been waiting to be mothered for a very long time. Sarah makes the point that patriarchalised mothers don’t have the energy and the fortitude to be the primordial femme. The patriarchy just bleeds into everything and becomes programming “this life is hard… don’t even try…stay small, you’ll be protected…” and then there is that look “that makes you feel you’ll never be good enough, she will never approve of me”. Therefore, in seeking to connect with the primordial mother energy, my first job was to sit in meditation with the maiden, the little girl inside who had been waiting to be mothered. And I started the practice of hearing her, heading into the underworld and making reparations. And then, as Sarah says so sublimely, “you start to forgive and release, to alchemise maiden pain into mother wisdom. The pain becomes the medicine”. It truly does. My childhood may not have been perfect, but my relationship with my mother was everything I needed in order to grow into the person I’ve become today, I wouldn’t change a thing. As I reflect back on my female lineage, mum may often have led with the sharp side of her sword, but it ultimately helped define my edges as I journeyed through life. She also taught me the value of being present in sickness, of drawing on my own reserves, of trusting my own judgment and of allowing others to be who they are. Her mother, my gran, taught me the value in being alone, of not needing to furnish anyone with an explanation for what my own needs and desires are, to simply live them. And my dad’s mum – though long gone – is with me always and immortalized in her gentle energy that remains with me and her wise saying “what’s for you won’t go by you”. Mothering my inner child has helped integrate a great deal of unhelpful patterns and behaviours, which had been helpful as a child but had become outdated and no longer served me, with the parts of myself that I had suppressed, denied and disowned over the years. I can’t say the journey is at an end, for that will come with my last breath, but I’m in a much healthier place than I have ever been. In terms of the journey from Sarah Durham Wilson’s perspective, she says that once we have mastered alchemizing our pain into medicine, then we meet the cherishing mother – the opposite of the patriarchal consciousness: “We have to practice going inward and meeting the cherishing mother until it becomes closer and closer to how we talk to ourselves and how we talk to others. The work is to see ourselves through the great mother’s eyes, which is to see ourselves with an incredible amount of love”. Being a mother who vowed when my children were born that they would be allowed to become simply who they are – while respecting others for who they are – I’ve had a lot of practice at feeling into the cherishing mother when I am interacting with them. However, intention and reality are not always the same and so sometimes I fail at this, but I never lose sight of the aim. And in many respects that is becoming much easier now that I am easier on myself, now that I am connecting to myself more and more through the cherishing mother. From Sarah’s perspective, this is when we move into mother work. “We learn to build an inner model of the mother we needed when we were little, and the woman our world needs us to be now”. The last step is then to bring that energy to the surface, to the world. As I sat down to write this today, I thought about where I am in life right now. I am an active mother of beautiful children, and of my inner child. The act of mothering the three of us is time consuming and important, especially for them as they move through their adolescent years and into their teens. It is the most important focus in my life at this point. But I am also moving closer to bringing that energy out into the world. Contemplating what to write this morning, I felt called to another mother, Mother Nature, in order to feel into the thread that wanted unraveled in this contemplation. And in seeking direction from that calm, gentle lapping of the waves on the shore as I walked along the beach, I found what I wanted on this special mothering Sunday. “Mothering” says Sarah, “in the way of the great mother caring for us as her children. Like a deep nurturing, a deep protection, a deep unconditional love”. I hope that you will take the time to mother yourself, to sit down with your wounds and to love them through this mothering energy. It is time for us to bring kindness, compassion and love right back to the heart of where it is needed, beating inside our chests and radiating out into the world. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Should We Abandon Happiness as the Impossible Dream?, How Does Who You Say I Love You to Heal the World?, The Quiet Whisperings of Truth That Inspire Our Life, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth and Be the Change You Want to See. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. This week the theme seems to have been “you can’t please everyone”, which is pretty apt for someone like me who has been learning about and practicing more healthy boundaries and communication in recent years.
It is school summer holidays here and, for the first time in a few years, we have overseas visitors back again in New Zealand. For my children and I, that heralds the start of long anticipated catch ups with loved ones. My kids have grown a lot since we last had anyone here for an extended period but, as they have gotten older, it hasn’t really gotten any easier to figure out what to do with our days. Each child is as different from the other as they are from me, and - add other loved ones into that equation - it feels like I’m sitting a practical exam after completing a people pleasers anonymous course. Both my kids are highly sensitive as well as strong willed but in entirely different ways. So one gets highly anxious in crowded indoor spaces like climbing centres, bowling, shopping malls and so forth, whereas the other has those things as top activities on their list. The other gets thrown into a tailspin around loud or startling noises, so the movie theatre is a no-go which – predictably – is the other’s preferred indoor activity. Outdoors seems like an alien planet to them most of the time. I love the beach, my kids prefer trees, but even those are of little interest these days. When they were small kids we could be lost for hours in the woodland while they created fantastical worlds seen only in the imagination. Near any body of water they’d inevitably end up in it and needing the change of clothes always kept in the car for that reason. These days it seems that the only things of interest are screen time and friends. Going for a walk is like suggesting an hour of torture. What New Zealand has to offer is the great outdoors. Lacking the thousands of years of human history of the UK where I grew up, there are not swathes of places of interest like grand houses, castles, museums and theme parks to tempt. Yet, with visitors who have come to spend quality time with us and enjoy our summer, it’s hardly an attractive proposition to sit in the house while the children are zoned out doing their own thing. Now do not take this as me saying that the kids get to dictate what we all do, that is not the case but it is a factor. The reactions to doing things other than their default are as varied as everything else, one gets quiet and withdrawn, the others gets loud, vocal and sometimes downright rude. I’ve noticed adults aren’t much better and, in many cases, just expect the children to do whatever they are told. This isn’t how I have brought up my children. I want them to know and be who they are, to know their own needs, wants and desires, yet also to have some respect and consideration for the same in others. A friend of mine said they can envisage my kids at age 25 all wild and free, but in a deeply understanding “knowing themselves and what lights them up” way, and reckons what I’m doing in the meantime is trying to give them a safe space in which to grow into that. It is certainly the aim, but that requires continually shifting strong but negotiable boundaries as their development occurs. As I try to navigate this, and the interaction and reactions from others whose needs, wants and desires are often entirely different again, the basic question I have to ask myself in all this is “what do I need and want right now?” It’s in taking care of that I start to break old habits. Making sure that amid the navigation of my children’s needs and that of others, I am taking the time for some basic self care. When I do not have visitors, I meditate daily, read, sometimes take a nap, walk at the beach often, do yoga and swim regularly. Now I may not be able to achieve all of that while I have visitors, but I have to retain some of it in order to strike a balance. First recharge me, and then I have the resources for others. The best way I have found of making nice memories with such a diverse and often conflicting range of needs and wants is to let each person (including the children) have their own preference in rotation, within reason (clearly an adrenaline sport might not be the best idea for an elderly relative, for example). There are likely many more ways of solving the same problems and I would love to hear what works for you when dealing with conflicting desires among people. Do you attempt to please everyone and lose yourself? Do you still gravitate towards pleasing certain people in certain situations in order to avoid anxiety, unpleasantness or even conflict? Or have you developed a secure enough sense of who you are and what you need to be able to cater to that as well as holding the needs and desires of others that you care about in high regard? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Fulfil Your Long Desired Yearning for Belonging, Start With the Self and the Rest Will Take Care of Its-Self, Embrace Your Sensitivity Rather than Have to Protect Yourself from the World and Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Sovereignty, our inherent freedom, and yet because of the way many of us are indoctrinated into the world it has become something we think has to be given or taken.
My friend and I were having a philosophical debate about a famous quote from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, “Sovereignty is not given it is taken”. My friend said, would it be truer to say “Sovereignty cannot be named because it just is”? I think both are true, but the reason Atatürk’s quote had resonated with me at this moment is because of the challenges – and therefore the lessons – that have been showing up in my life of late. It brings up for me two very contrasting things:
Both of these concepts deal in power and control, something James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy describes well. He depicts control strategies that we each develop in order to stop others draining our energy. These sit on a scale of aggressive to passive and he describes four archetypes; it’s often easiest if you start by taking a look at which strategies your parents employed:
Each of these are linked with the corresponding strategies that created them, and that they create. For example, Intimidators create Poor Me’s appealing for mercy, or, the child will endure until they are old enough and big enough to fight back, creating another Intimidator, and so the cycle continues. Becoming aware of the strategies I and others employ, is how I would start to break the cycle. Each of us arrives in the world completely dependent on adults for our survival. The predominant tenet of parenting for generations has focused on “controlling behaviours” and it’s little wonder therefore that each one of us adopts patterns that fool us into thinking we have to take or be given sovereignty. When I attended a course last year, run by the Family Court here in New Zealand, there was an enlightening poster pinned on the wall. It showed two wheels side by side; one showed what equality looks like, the other showed what power and control looks like. And while the wheel showing control clearly depicts physical and sexual abuse on the outside, it very adequately describes the more covert and “ordinary” kinds of psychological, emotional and financial control that happens between people. In essence this gives some more clarity around quite a simple concept, equality. This being where a person’s rights, needs, desires etc are held in equal regard to another’s. Power and control is where those rights, opinions, needs etc are not held in the same regard. This is very apparent to me across many areas of society: from familial structures and dynamics to corporate structures and dynamics; from education to health systems; the relationship governments’ hold with their people; the use of media to manipulate popular opinion; and pretty much everywhere there is any kind of human interaction. I have spent much of this last year, for example, in correspondence between lawyers. Over this entire process, it very much appears that the person I have been negotiating with cannot seem to hold my rights in equal regard to their own. They are represented by a lawyer who – again and again –expresses the same disregard, with correspondence full of backtracking, contradictions, barbs, personal attacks, deflections, threats and a continually emotive and provocative tone. The whole strategy appears to be about taking power and control, which seems short sighted. There is a requirement in this case for ongoing interaction and cooperation. I cannot fathom why anyone would believe goodwill or cooperation could exist after continued unhelpful and aggressive communication. However, apparently this is quite normal. Kate Davenport QC, when elected as President of the New Zealand Bar Association in 2018, said she “had set a goal to stamp out rude and aggressive behaviours between barristers (lawyers who can advocate in courts)”. The article at the time said that “much of that aggressive behaviour involved personal attacks on clients and that lawyers were obliged to show that correspondence to their clients”. She had previously written back to barristers asking them to redraft letters with a reminder of the rules for courtesy. My lawyer set aside most of these nocuous comments and focused on the actual issues at hand which required negotiating. While practical, it often had the same effect of leaving my good character feeling sucker punched without being able to defend myself. Like many countries there is a regulator for lawyers in New Zealand, which operates a complaints service and it deals with complaints about a lawyer’s conduct, such as “treating you with discourtesy or behaving in an intimidatory manner” among other things. However there was also an article a few years ago reporting that there is no action taken in the majority of cases against lawyers. As I have traversed these negotiations, many people (who are not directly involved) sit in shock listening to the details and wonder “how do they even get away with that?” and believe a magic “someone” should hold people accountable. I once believed this too, that the human constructed systems of power and control would themselves protect the sovereignty of the individuals within it, how ridiculous that seems to me now. As my friend said, sovereignty is inherent. But growing up – like many others – I was taught to be good, to tell the truth and often to put others opinions and needs before my own – particularly if they held positions of authority. It has been a long road to learning to have and hold healthy boundaries even in the face of being manipulated, threatened and my rights tossed to one side. Of course there are various forms of control, and learning what we can and cannot control is part of the lesson. Clearly there are many cases where one human/groups of humans exerts control and power over others, and just as many cases that highlight that even in those extremes there is still a degree of self sovereignty that determines how well those being victimised fare. But society would have me believe I control far less than I actually do, which is why most of my lessons are learning and writing about personal power and how to reclaim it. In my experience there is no magic someone, no one who will come along and give me my sovereignty, not even someone I employ to represent me legally. It is down to me to hold my centre and stand firm on what I believe to be fair and reasonable – in spite of the pressure coming from every angle of those directly involved. Recently when extremely aggressive attempts were made to railroad me into waiving my legal right to independent representation in the transfer of a property, I remained determined, probably moreso after being threatened. In situations like this it is tempting, when taking my sovereignty, to want to get into the power control game also. But my mantra is I stand up for my rights and allow you yours. “Therein lays the gold in all of this” my friend said “the courage to speak your truth regardless, where once that had all but been eliminated from you”. That is true, my voice has been long in its reclaiming, and it is a journey – an art and a science - to developing one that can be heard while standing in my centre calmly, solidly, rather than spinning out. I was reminded of the words Claire Zammit uses in situations where people have an underlying unhelpful belief pattern about not being seen/heard. She has a number of deeper truth statements that I think are worth pondering:
Our sovereignty is inherent; we can take it or relinquish it at any time. To take it we must presence ourselves and be willing to let go where we can of those around us that disregard our rights, opinions, needs and desires. That is our inherent sovereignty though, the right to choose. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Reclaim the Sovereignty of Your Soul, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, Do We Need to Better Understand the Pivotal Role of Parenting to Evolve?, Looking Back to See the Clues to Your Destiny and Build a Healthy Self Concept. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. As someone who writes frequently, it gave me pause to consider whether I currently use a limited emotional vocabulary.
Let me give you an example I heard this week from Briana MacWilliam as she was doing a class for people who are choosing to recover from relationships in which they felt neglected, abandoned or dismissed. She talked about a client who had felt a big jolt around a change in their life, in this case a new partner, which caused a sense of overwhelm and spiralled into anxiety and panic and she was thinking of ending the relationship. Her vocabulary was vague and it was difficult to pinpoint the issue, but with some work, she could articulate that she was a little bit excited, a little bit nervous, a little anticipatory (all quite positive feelings), but maybe there were also some doubts creeping in, she felt a little challenged, exhilarated but also worried, and all of this was going on at the same time. This is normal. However she had not been taught growing up how to sift and sort through all those energetic states, emotions and inner experiences with any amount of sophistication. As a result she had become overwhelmed by the emotional charge of all those different, conflicting, ambiguous feelings in her mind and body, which is what had caused her to spiral. I can relate to this. In this state she became scared and confused and lumped all those (similar but nuanced) feelings into one big category – “bad”. I experience this quite regularly, particularly around those who appear to chronically ignore what I have said or fail to take into account how I feel. As Briana said “It’s important to recognise the energetic states moving through our bodies. By focusing firstly on the physical sensations (we are having in relation to those emotional charges) it helps mentally organise them, initially through symbols rather than words”. This is some of the most critical work Briana says she does with her clients and it requires practice over time. This then leads to being able to describe the feelings more accurately which in turn gives more clarity around what is wanted and needed – and in turn this informs clear communication in terms of personal boundaries. And certainly I would agree that defining and communicating boundaries is critical to ensure I do not attract relationships in which I am neglected, abandoned or dismissed. The other point Briana was making in the pursuit of more healthy relationships, is that by confronting past relationships defined by this, I am also confronting my attachment anxieties. Attachment theory and styles are well known in the world of developmental psychology, Briana describes them as an instinctual blueprint in the survival part of our brain and nervous system that determines how much closeness or distance we need to feel comfortable that our survival needs are met. However, depending on the extent to which the parenting we received was supportive and loving versus critical and demeaning, many of us grow up with insecure attachment and here is an example of why. She describes a young child pretending to be superman. On one hand supportive parents might say “Hey check you out, go you!”, and the child might think “Yeah I am capable of great things”. On the other hand, a harsher parent might bristle and yell “Stop that noise! Sit down! Look at how your stupidity is ruining my rug and my furniture. I don’t want to hear from you unless spoken to. Idiot!” That child hears that they are worth less than the rug and furniture, and that the natural self exploratory process they were innocently playing with in that moment was offensive, damaging and it inspired punitive repercussions. If that pattern is repeated, in time the child learns not only to distrust their own intuition and creative impulses but to feel distaste, shame, anger and guilt for even having an inner life. Again I can relate. They may also doubt that they are capable of great things. So as the child grows and the parent reinforces the idea that the child is bad, a burden, not good enough, not measuring up to some standard of behaviour or condition of love, that thought process gets internalised and psychologists call it our wounded inner child. It is these subconscious patterns that create and trigger the instinctual blueprint in the survival part of the brain and nervous system and cause people to react in flight, flight, freeze or hide. Fast forward to adulthood and an angry spouse may translate to the person who has grown up with this type of narrative as “I must have done something to upset them, this must really be about me, therefore it’s my fault, I have to fix it to earn their love back and feel worthy of love”. When really, it’s an insecure attachment blueprint in the brain and nervous system that is sending this message as it has flared up in survival mode. Briana says quite pointedly “Until we can become aware that our attachment impulses are survival impulses (rather than authentic needs of our true self) they are always going to trump our good sense until we can raise our consciousnesses around this issue and mitigate it”. That might seem obvious but I know from my own experience it’s not easy to do when being flooded with emotions. This week I received a draft agreement that I had been awaiting for some time, and had requested on several occasions should include a paragraph reconciling this particular agreement with the previous agreement (which was settled on vastly different terms). When I finally received the draft from the office of the person I had sent two texts and an email to about this very paragraph in the previous 24 hours, in addition to the prior comments, and saw that – again - no such paragraph was included, I was flooded with emotions. This was a deal breaker for me and I will admit I fired off an email in response “Please do not contact me again until this is sorted. I do not appreciate being ignored. What a waste of time and money”. It is quite unusual for me to be so abrupt but, as I said previously, I get triggered when I feel chronically ignored. Not long after, I then received a phonecall from their office so, pulling over to take the call, was caught off guard when it was the person’s personal assistant on the line rather than the person I needed to make the change. They were equally as triggered, challenging me to explain my accusation of “being ignored”. I was at that moment at a loss for words because I had literally attached a screen short of the two texts to that email and felt I was living in an alternate reality. Gaslighting is another form of deliberately being ignored and triggers me even more. I ended the call at that point as my brain and mouth were not going to say anything calmly and confidently anytime soon. Once I got home I followed this up with an email attachment with screenshots showing the many times I had requested this paragraph in various communications in the weeks prior, both to my representative and the other party’s. Thankfully the process of writing, a much more focused form of using words than talking, made it a lot easier to convey what I needed to – the facts – rather than simply feeling that I was drowning in floods of emotions and unable to take a breath never mind speak. And it was with that in mind that when I heard Briana’s sage advice on developing a rich emotional vocabulary I realised the missing link in my recovery. There are four steps not three:
For all the words I have in my vocabulary, assigning them in to emotions that are flooding my body was not something I learned to any sophisticated degree as a child. However, I am learning now as an adult how to do this and how important it is in order to be truly heard and create and communicate healthy boundaries. How often do you feel overwhelmed and unable to express what you are feeling with any clarity? Can you imagine how your sense of health and wellbeing and relationships can improve if you could? Is it time to take a closer look at you inner world and learn how to name the surge of emotions that course through it simultaneously? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Yearn for Better Outcomes? First Commit to Observing Your Reactions, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, How to Take Things as They Come When You Have Learned Not to Trust and Taking Your Own Space. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I was watching a movie called Freedom Writers based on the real life story of Erin Gruwell who in 1994, as a naive straight-out-of-college teacher, worked with class of juvenile delinquents, gang members, drug pushers and underprivileged students. The school deemed these kids incapable of learning and felt it was more a matter of them being warehoused until they were old enough to drop out on their own – if they lived to see that day.
Instead of giving up, she inspires the kids to take an interest in their education and planning their future. She encourages them to keep journals, recording the stories of their lives to get them engaged, and assigns reading material that relates to their experiences before taking them on trips to places beyond the streets of their childhood lives, to museums and so forth, and teaching them about the wider world and other people’s struggles. Specifically Erin uses The Diary of Anne Frank to show them, like them, a 13 year old girl who faced baseless hatred, bigotry, persecution and a system out to destroy her. Eventually, the class’ study of Anne Frank and their continual journal writing leads them to extend an invitation to one of Frank’s protectors, Miep Gies, and to raise enough money to bring her to their school. When the old woman arrives, she tells the group, “I did what I had to do because it is the right thing to do—that is all.… Anyone, even a teenager, can turn on a small light in a dark room.” After a student calls her his hero, Gies quickly deflects the title: “I have read your letters, you are the heroes, you are the heroes every day. … Now your faces are engraved in my heart.” The kids went on to graduate from high school, half went to college and some even went on to university and higher studies. The stories of Erin Gruwel and her students, as they move from their freshman year to senior years from 1994-1998 were collated and published in The Freedom Writers Diary, which is what the movie was based on. It was a timely reminder for me of how – specifically in those years of adolescence – the difference it made to me have someone who believed in me. I was lucky in fact to have several people, two fantastic swimming coaches and others who just said the odd thing along the way that made me dig a little deeper and do that little bit extra that made all the difference to the outcomes. There are so many ways in which kids’ self esteem can take knocks. Just recently my daughter related a story from her own classroom, where a teacher told her that her writing wasn’t good enough and, after flipping through her whole book told her she needed to “try harder”. Apparently he then went on to tell the class that their writing can be a reflection on who they are. Ergo my daughter, who has struggled will dyslexic tendencies and made huge strides in her reading these last couple of years, received a message that isn’t good enough, and that she isn’t good enough. From all the study I’ve done on the human psyche and trauma I know this is one of the most common subconscious messages that people play in their heads. But it’s not just kids who need to feel that belief. I saw an open post dedicated from husband to wife (a lady I know) that was inspiring. It was a page from N.R. Hart’s Poetry and Pearl’s 2 called Unexpected. It starts “She’s the girl you never saw coming. The unexpected one who calms you, centres you…she gets you, really gets you, like no one else ever has. She is your best friend, lover and soul mate wrapped up in the prettiest package” and so it goes on. It’s a beautiful prose that reminds me of just how powerful having another see you and believe in you can be. But of course, it comes with a warning in my head. I know it’s normal and healthy to want others to see us and believe in us, but it’s not healthy when I need others to validate who I am. That is the sign of codependency, when my very sense of self is shaped by that approval and disapproval, which is not a fun place to be. I was also reminded of another aspect of believing in people this week when a friend of mine pointed out that there were times they felt I was trying to change them by empowering them, which can also be seen as a criticism. Again true, I am guilty of seeing people’s potential and forgetting that unless they can see that and want to reach for it, I’m a better friend that can accept them as they are. My daughter’s teacher may have been trying to convey that he believed she can do better, for example, meanwhile it also implies that who she is isn’t good enough. It would be a different matter entirely if she had heard “I can read this, but I believe there’s a beautiful hand writer locked inside you waiting to be seen, if you want to explore that let me help”. I think the key is really about allowing people to determine what is it is they want and helping them believe they can be it, do it or have it. I will admit I find it so much easier to believe in others than myself. Human potential is something I’ve always been interested in and I do believe – objectively – we can each be, do, have whatever we believe we can. Sometimes the circumstances of my life provide overwhelming evidence that maybe I can’t be, do or have the things I often don’t even allow myself to dream of. I get caught in a loop of inner voices and evidence of my not worthiness. Then I get so distracted with other things it just falls off the radar. Until I watch something like Freedom Writers and that voice inside me says “remember” and I start to feel inspired again. Lately I’ve chosen to set aside the inner voices that have distracted me constantly in a bid for justice. Fighting for what I want and deserve is something I became well practiced as growing up. But it’s also an illusion when it creates inner turmoil and not inner peace; the calm, clear knowing of inner peace. Where I’m not concerned with what others think, only how I feel. And from that place I know I’ll make good choices. Bringing myself back there I’ve started to see again the many reminders of who I am, what inspires me, what I’d love to offer and do in life. The job at hand now is to stay in that centre of inner peace and believe in myself enough to reach out and take the opportunities that are sure to come my way if only I am open to seeing them. Because there are many people out there, kids growing up every day, and the many adults who try their best to raise these kids. Adults, while trying their best, who still have the inner doubts they had that were seeded there when they were kids, which have inevitably attracted many experiences to really enrich the idea that they are not worthy, or are not enough or are different and so on and so forth. Breaking this chain is what calls me. It’s why I write to create awareness in myself and others, and why I feel called to be and do more to help kids as they are starting to grow, before life gathers too much momentum and shows them time and time again they are not worth it and stop believing it is even worth trying. So what inspires you? Where have you felt called to be, do or have more than you are/have/do now? When there aren’t those around us who believe we can reach for what inspires us, we live in an age where it’s easier than ever to reach out and read, hear or watch the stories of those who have overcome the odds and made a difference anyway. Will you? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Magic Happens When You Believe in People, Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down, Start From Where You Are, Now Go and Be Great, Mankind’s Great Summons: Turn Your Pain Into Medicine and Heal the World and Finding Your Purpose – the Magic of Those Who Believe in You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. My daughter got me thinking this week when she exclaimed she doesn’t really know “what I do”. I realised it was time to get loud and proud about the aspects of introversion that are often hard to explain to the outer world and how this shows up in my life in terms of how I choose to spend my time.
In short, introversion is used to describe those of us who feel more comfortable and become more energised by focusing on our inner thoughts, feelings and ideas rather than what is happening externally. In typical fashion, as I pondered how to explain this, a friend then asked me this weekend how I’d spent my day. I responded “Doing typical introvert type things: thinking, reading, writing and going for a beach walk”. It has been a big week, which in my terms translates to “lots of my energy has been focused outward”. I figured if anyone is really interested they’d ask what I like to read, write and think about, though of course my friends know me well enough to get the general idea as (being friends) we share lots of common interests. For my daughter though, the things I’m interested in aren’t particularly on her radar at her age. She sees all the visible things I do like grocery shopping, washing clothes, housekeeping, taking her and her sister to school, extracurricular activities, play dates and appointments and ensuring they are equipped for all those things. What she won’t notice so much is the thought, planning and organising that goes into a lot of the parenting I do. Like trying to figure out what is good and healthy for the kids in this world of 24/7 online streaming, a smorgasbord of processed food and consumerist choices, and established systems of “norms” (in terms of healthcare, education etc) that get seeded in our psyche one way or another through media, advertising and social conditioning. Then once those decisions are made it’s about holding those boundaries with persistence and patience and helping the kids regulate their emotional responses which requires a lot of “outward attention juice”, and can be pretty draining if I’m honest. Then constantly reassessing boundaries as the kids grow. That is aside of the specific personal growth and challenges the kids face at each stage, like learning to develop their will, or dealing with conflict healthily. On one hand, it’s amazing to be able to apply all that I’m interested in (in terms of psychology, human potential, trauma and evolution and so on), but it can be exhausting. Then of course there are things like: paying bills, taking care of finances and other paperwork such as insurances, taxes and so on; looking after the car, the cat, taking back library books, taking the kids for haircuts and dental appointments and many other details. Sickness, are they sick or just tired or avoidant? How sick are they? What treatment do they need? This is all completely aside of the business coaching work I’ve started doing or the hours of preparation involved over the last year in responding to a constant stream of lawyer’s letters. Last week I attended a mediation that probably took around 25 hours of my time to prepare for. This was mixed among a week where my kids were attending their first session of an 8-week course about managing big changes in their life (and one was very apprehensive and therefore required a lot of attention and focus to get there in a positive frame of mind) and two higher education open evenings that each lasted over two and half hours at a time. So at times we would normally be at home relaxing instead we were out among hundreds of people with our attention focused outward. According to psychologist Jonathan Cheek introverts come in many types and have a blend of qualities from among the others:
Of course people don’t always fit in neat boxes but, in general, I would agree that like most introverts: being around lots of people drains my energy, I enjoy solitude, I have a small circle of close friends, people might find it difficult to get to know me, too much stimulation leaves me feeling distracted and dissociated, I am very self aware, I like to learn by watching before doing and I have always been drawn to jobs that involve independence. Parenting, though, takes things to a whole new level as I am no longer thinking and doing just for myself, I am thinking and doing for three – to greater or lesser extents – throughout years of dependence to independence. And I have to admit in recent conversations with male friends of mine it came to my attention how much of this really is “unseen” to them. All are what I would call hands-on dads, who actively look after their children and take them to various activities as well as actively helping in the household, one described it well when he told me his wife would say it’s a 70/30 split whereas he’d say more like 60/40. I asked whether he had considered all these “unseen” components of planning and organizing and he admitted that his wife probably does the lion’s share of those. Given that a lot of this thought and then putting it into action is a real mix of introverted and extravert activity, I imagine it’s all draining in some way to most people. In most families (from what I’ve observed mixing with other parents through school and socially) it does seem like it’s women who still take on this less acknowledged role with their children, despite some also holding down other jobs when, in fact, it is a job in itself. Some time ago I read that western society, in particular, not only encourages but assumes extraversion. Being productive is highly valued and that means visible effort and results – and those results generally need to be linked directly to money to hold any validity. There are different estimates and, according to some, extroverts outnumber introverts by about three to one. Author Jonathan Rauch says “While introverts are often labelled as shy, aloof and arrogant, these perceptions often result from the failure of extroverts to understand how introverts function”. He suggests that extroverts assume that company - especially their own – is always welcome. “They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood." This is true. And I can assure you that never has it been so important to me as through the parenting years to ensure I focus on self care also. Writing these articles gives me focus, Annette Noontil says “If we have to do for others at least make sure we are learning from it”, that is great advice and taking the time each week to focus on and share what I’ve learned is healthy for me. As are regular beach walks, doing my meditation, going for a swim and doing some yoga as well as making time for my close friends and deeper connection with others who share my interests. All in all, given that every single thing we do starts with a thought and our state of being, I get the sense thought the power of taking this inward time is unseen and undervalued next to doing in our society, certainly that has been my experience – and yet it is key to our growth and evolution. Where do you sit on the scale of introversion to extraversion? Do you have friends and family you could relate to in reading this? If you can relate to it yourself how did it help you? Are there any tips or insights you’d like to share on introversion? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Who You Are, Who Are You? Introduce the Remarkable Human Behind the Roles You Play, How My Kids Helped Me Find My Purpose and Say Yes to You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I’m no stranger to being responsible and taking responsibility, perhaps because I’m the eldest in my family, or perhaps it’s just my nature or the way I was brought up. Regardless, if anything, I have an over developed sense of responsibility and often don’t even see the ways in which I am taking on responsibilities that might be better taken by others.
I did a brainstorming exercise with a stay-at-home parent who was feeling quite stuck, asking:
It was an interesting exercise, particularly because that first list was huge compared to the others and I recognised a lot of the things I do in there too. After listing all the stuff they had done just in the last day or so, then looking at which of those things they actually enjoy doing (which was a small proportion), it was evident as to why there was an overriding sense of feeling stuck. It was also useful to start questioning whether:
One of the more challenging things I’ve found as a parent is the constant shifting capabilities and developmental needs of my kids. Frankly I’d be happier to just set boundaries as a one-time deal “This is the way we operate and this is what is expected of you” and never think about it again. Of course that just doesn’t work because the ability of each child is always shifting through the ages and stages, just when I start to feel we have reached some solid ground there it goes shifting again. I like to understand the broad principles of the way things work and, of all the useful resources I have ever read or heard on parenting, it was a talk on the ages and stages by a lady Mary Willow (who runs Plum Parenting) that has stuck with me. Mary talked about the broad development categories of our kids:
And she goes into the detail of what this looks like at each stage: the kinds of reasonable expectations we could have and the useful and healthy ways to parent our kids through all of it. Obviously none of these stages are exclusive, there are crossovers, but it’s broadly the age ranges where those capabilities take big growth spurts. My own kids are in that middle band, still at an age where they need hands on managing and organising throughout their primary and intermediate years. Standing yelling at them from one end of the house to “tidy their room” or similar is as ineffectual as it is energy draining. It usually requires some hands on working alongside to begin, and calm, mindful face-to-face reminders as they get older. Kids do gradually take more responsibility for planning, organising and logistics, but it requires active management by a parent until they are at least 14 or 15, and probably beyond for most teens today. This has become more noticeable to me as my kids are adjusting to a split living situation and they have to pack and plan ahead a lot more than they or I are used to. It’s a constant juggle of assessing:
That middle one is the challenge. With my tendencies towards over responsibility, perfectionism and efficacy, it can often seem easier just to “do it myself”. It certainly requires a lot of patience and persistence to help others in their independence. This isn’t exclusive to parenting though. I am reading Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, it examines – in a world where people are living a lot longer – what the quality of that life is like for those in their twilight years and whether the medical approach is working. He also examines other circumstances, such as serious or terminal illness, where people become dependent on others. These conclusions, I feel, also apply to children:
And while I might consider myself very independent, able bodied and sound of mind at this point in my life – and thus author of my own story to a greater degree – there is no denying my interdependence on others. I was talking to the kids about respectful communication this week, and asking the reasons why they would want to communicate respectfully. Of course, as children who attend school and have been brought up in a society that uses contrived punishments as commonplace, their first thoughts were about the people and ways in which they would get punished. It took a while, and a lot of prompting, to get them to think through the natural consequences of being disrespectful. Our inherent interconnection and interdependence can be ruptured so easily without this basic respect. What I have come to a deeper appreciation of is, while it might be easier to get a young child or a frail elderly person dressed by doing it for them (rather than helping them to do it themselves), or to make my children’s beds (rather than patiently helping and reminding them and managing the process until it is routine), my energy is better invested towards helping others be as autonomous as they are able. Otherwise, as Annette Noontil says, “When you do for others what they can learn to do for themselves you are taking away their opportunity to learn and grow and it makes them weak. They become dependent on you or others and will resent it.” Not only that, I realised, it’s all energy that I could be redirecting into my own growth and learning and doing the things I love doing. So in which ways do you do things for others that you could better serve them by helping do things for themselves? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Ways to Reach for Growth Rather Than Reacting With Old Conditioned Constriction, Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go? Make the Invisible Visible - Celebrate the Gold in Your Emotional Reactions and Are You Overly Responsible? Actually Seeing Yourself Through Fresh Eyes. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Many decades after the war had ended, holocaust survivor Dr Edith Eger finally began to do the inner work necessary to thrive in her life. She said “At Auschwitz, at Mauthausen, and on The Death March, I survived by drawing on my inner world. I found hope and faith in my life within me, even when I was surrounded by starvation and torture and death.”
However, of her life after the war, she said “My inner world was no longer sustaining, it became the source of my pain, unstoppable memories, loss and fear… I tried to banish the memories of the past, I thought it was a matter of survival.” Then she reflects “Only after many years did I come to understand that running away doesn’t heal pain… (In America) I was further geographically than I had ever been from my former prison, but here I became psychologically imprisoned… running from my past, from my fear.” Dr Egar, now a renowned psychologist, also observes “There is no hierarchy of suffering. Nothing makes my pain worse of better than yours”. She has worked with many patients, both those with overt trauma like her own, and those suffering from more covert chronic trauma of childhood development in a world where parenting has centered on controlling behaviour and ignoring feelings for far too long. Dr Gabor Mate, another child of the holocaust, agrees and says “Trauma creates coping mechanisms. One way is soothing that leads to addictions, but another way is, if you get the message that you’re not good enough, then you might spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are, compensating by taking on too much”. I recognise all these dynamics at play in my own life. I realise I was compensating my whole childhood for my mother’s poor relationship with her father: an abusive, alcoholic liar who died of lung cancer when she was only seven years old. It understandably shaped her whole way of being in the world, as does everyone’s childhood. My mother was always afraid of anyone getting the better of her, or of us, of being duped, and – as such – had strong unshakeable opinions about the way things should be and a very controlling nature. As children, her reaction to our behaviour (my brother and I) dictated the landscape, and I was never sure whether she would be angry or calm, but she was angry a lot. To compensate I became hyper attuned to everyone else’s feelings in order to anticipate danger, a perfectionist to ward it off and highly anxious in my relational attachment style. Like Dr Egar, mum banished the memories of the past and talked about them very rarely, and she certainly made no concession that she had been shaped by her own childhood experience in a way that did not allow her to be the fullest expression of herself. Now a mother myself, I have been forced to confront the unhealthy behaviour patterns I myself adopted as a child many times over. When I read Dr Egar’s words about her return to Auschwitz decades later, I recognised the truth of them straight away: “Arbeit Macht Frei, seeing those words made me realise they do spark with a certain truth. Work has set me free I realise. Not the work the Nazis meant – the hard labour of sacrifice and hunger, of exhaustion and enslavement. It was the inner work. Of learning to survive and thrive, of learning to forgive myself, of helping others do the same. And when I do this work I am no longer the hostage or prisoner of anything.” When I was listening to an interview with Sarah Durham Wilson this week, author of Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine, she really spoke to this sense of many of us being stuck in our child selves. She talks about the journey of meeting with the maiden (or master) the little girl or boy inside who has been waiting to be mothered for a very long time, about journeying to the underworld (the hurts experienced and the compensations we made) where you start to forgive and release, to alchemise the pain into mothering wisdom. The pain becomes medicine. This is what makes Dr Edith Egar and Dr Gabor Mate so good at their jobs and able now to speak on world stages about their experiences and lessons, not just from their own lives, but that of the many thousands of people they have helped. They have taken their pain and alchemised it to medicine. And so this is the task that Sarah Durham Wilson points to. The journey from the patriarchialised mother, where it’s all about keeping you small as a (so called) act of protection, to the great Mother consciousness, which is the opposite and says “you are perfect as you are and cherished always”. My own healing journey has attracted many more opportunities through other relationships over the years to see all the unhealthy patterns and behaviours I adopted. My work right now is to break the pattern of fighting to have my opinion heard, of my chemical addition to chasing closeness from those unable to give it (the emotionally unavailable), and to ease the pervading sense of anxiety over constant rejection and abandonment. To break the patterns of codependency, enmeshment trauma, and an anxious attachment style, I’m learning to have and hold healthy boundaries, to have reasonable expectations within relationships and communicate my needs directly without blame or criticism, to take responsibility for feeling my pain and discomfort rather than trying to avoid it by jumping into my head, or trying to fix others’ problems, and to take responsibility for regulating my nervous system. I vowed to my closest friends that I will keep heading into the underworld to alchemise my pain until it becomes medicine, to keep going in and meeting the cherishing mother until it becomes how I talk to myself and others, and to bring that energy out into the world just as those before me have done. What unacknowledged pain is there within you? What hurts did you compensate for as a child, what coping mechanisms did you develop, that may now be creating limitations in your life? Are you ready to head into the underworld and do your personal work? Is it time to heal ourselves and to bring back the cherishing mother energy that has been absent for a long time? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People, Get Emotionally Healthy - Is It Time to Break the Chain of Pain? and Risk Losing People to Make Room for Those Who Can Honour and Cherish You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Image by Julia Schwab from Pixabay I was listening to Tami Simon interview Shannon Kaiser this week, and she was talking about how the contrast of life points to our growth. This lady was talking my language because I truly believe our challenges are there to assist our expansion.
When I was quite young, I remember having this thought that, logically, how could I appreciate something good if I had never experienced something bad? So I really felt there was a purpose to this life of duality we live on Earth. Good and bad, male and female, chaos and order, turmoil and peace, black and white and so on, all of it and a lot more are a spectrum of our dynamic and ever changing experiences in life. I was talking to a dear friend this morning about balance. She has been sculpting on the topic recently and it’s deeply resonated with her because it’s a topic she feels really challenged by. As a busy mum and someone who runs twice-weekly art workshops for kids in her local area, trying to fit seventeen hours and more of study into her already hectic week has been a real challenge. Getting an opportunity to outwardly express how she inwardly feels contending with the day-to-day struggles has been a glorious process of unwinding. It is part of a structured study programme exploring a wide range of creative processes, and she was saying at the outset some of her work felt manic, fractured and incoherent, “not very good”. I suspect it is all truly reflective of the layers within, it’s taken a while to really tune into and land in her creative space. This was resonant with other conversations I’d had this week with busy mums. For me, being creative is something I have to make space for. Like my friend, if I try to tap into something out the blue I just get all the static and noise that bubbles beneath the surface of my day-to-day existence of school runs, organising play dates, sports and activities, grocery shopping, making dinner, washing and the ever-present need for attention to name a few. It’s that there is a feeling of constantly being “on standby” and the need to create a large bubble of space in which to safely land in the middle and tune into what is really wanting to be seen or felt. It’s all very well to take an hour to go for a walk, or to take a yoga class or meditate, but real landing spaces where I can power down my vigilance to what’s going on “out there” and tune into “in here” for any length of time are like solid gold. And yet, as I just said to another friend, a busy dad, the days are long and the years are short. My children will grow up and then I’ll be left hopefully cherishing the memories of the activities and things we did together, and the noise of all the more intense and monotonous things will fade as I feel into and appreciate the contrasting expansiveness of having more and more time to myself. Of course in the meantime I meditate, walk, swim and write as regular practices, as a way of acknowledging the world within me and giving permission to myself to explore. Sometimes I get that same chaotic static as my friend initially experienced, but by making these practices a regular feature in my life, I can usually get past this quite quickly. But listening to Tammi talk to Shannon Kaiser about her new book Return to You, I did reflect on some of the other challenges in my life. As my dear friend said to me this morning (when I was relaying the details of life in my new home, and just how much joy I had gotten from buying my new “contemporary light green metallic” electric kettle and toaster) “I can imagine just how liberating that felt after feeling trapped for so long. There was no one else you had to consult about it, or justify it to, you could just do it and not worry about the repercussions”. While not the topic of this article, it is certainly true that many things have conspired to keep me feeling trapped for a long time, and I am most definitely still getting used to the idea of freedom and enjoying these little moments of getting to really feel into it, the contrast makes it all the more delicious. Another thing that can challenge me is loneliness. Over the years I have often felt lonely; not feeling seen, understood or valued. On the flip side this makes it all the sweeter when I have good company and I really appreciate the wonderful friends I have all the more for the many positive things they bring to my life. All of this is not to bypass the feelings I have, but to simply observe them and appreciate what life is teaching me about those aspects of myself. Neither do I need to hold myself in bondage to what I’m feeling, which I have often had a tendency to do, staying in unhealthy situations and relationships for too long out of a misguided sense of loyalty, duty or obligation. But these are all points for growth and expansion, and all my experiences are a perfect match – if I choose to see them this way - to calling me forwards towards my best life, and basking in appreciation at the other end of the spectrum. So what about you, what challenges do you face in life? Are you able to feel into what life would be like if the opposite were true? Remember it’s in experiencing the contrasts of life we move towards our growth and expansion. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Purposeful in Your Focus - Your Glass Is Actually Still Half Full, Your Soul Wants You to Soar, When to Act on Possibility, Want to Be Delighted and Amazed With a 'Lived Life to the Full' Epitaph? and Be Compassionate and Curious to Live Your Best Life. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I was talking to someone this week who was feeling the way I think many people feel from time to time: overworked and under recognised. I certainly knew the feeling, and I also know the trap I often used to fall in – and still do at times – when I’d look at those closest to me and start wondering why they aren’t:
a) helping, and b) making me feel more appreciated. Instead of looking at another and getting disgruntled, resentful even, that they are not doing enough or appreciating me enough, I started to consider whether I was doing enough for myself. And so that was the question I posed to this person too “Are you mad at them or are you really just mad at yourself because you’re not talking the time to honour your own needs?” It brought to mind an ex partner who used to often feel resentful that, when he was out working, I would be doing a yoga class, or going for a swim. What he failed to see in that moment was not only the myriad of things I did do to contribute to our life together but, perhaps more importantly, that he needed to take better care of his own needs rather than focusing on what I was doing or not doing for myself. The discussion also triggered some old wounds for me around the parenting role. Early on in my children’s lives, when I was still working in my corporate career, I remember reading an agony aunt type response in a magazine to a woman who was complaining that she had been ditched by a friend of hers the minute her children had come along. In essence, she was complaining about the lack of attention and time her old friend had to give and was feeling very put out. The response did not pull any punches, it was centred around enlightening this childless woman about the rigours of family life and just how little time and energy her old friend would be having for herself right at this point, never mind for anything else. I could see quite plainly how someone would feel left out in that situation and, while the response was centred on what this woman could be offering her old friend rather than complaining, I did think it was time for her to move on and find other people who were more aligned and able to prioritise socialising with friends without children involved. In my life it wasn’t that I had friends who couldn’t understand nor value the parenting role, instead I had a partner who simply couldn’t see – or perhaps acknowledge – just how all-consuming parenting is when there are dependent children at home. I was still a bit blinkered at the time to the level of unhealthy and dysfunctional patterns between us and, in an attempt to prove my worth, kept a diary of my time for a week both out of curiosity and defence. Most hands-on parents won’t be surprised to know that there are somewhere in-between 70 and 90 hours of my week regularly focused on childcare or domestic responsibilities. Even if you share those responsibilities with someone else, that is still a lot on top of other responsibilities outside of the home. In fact, for me it was a major triumph to fit in a yoga session each week, and go for a swim or a walk, but it was also essential for my sanity and wellbeing. As was taking the time to learn about dysfunctional patterns and healthy boundaries. I think if most people count up how much time they spend in front of a screen (not working) each week, they would be surprised. I gave up TV years ago to free up some of my attention to direct inward and get to know who I am, what I am thinking and feeling amid the constant and often torrid seas of parenting. It was so all-consuming something needed to give. And now that I am at a point in my life where I am having little doses of time without having responsibility for my kids 24/7, I can attest even more fervently to the all-consuming nature of parenting. This Easter weekend my kids are away with their dad and I’ve had three whole days to myself. In that time I’ve achieved more in terms of settling into our new home than I have in the two weeks prior that we have been here. Last night I put a garage-full of boxes up in the attic and finished the job late. The night before I tried on boxes full of clothes that have sat in my wardrobe untouched for a long time, it’s been years since I got to play dress-up. I finally got the chance to Marie Kondo my stuff and put satisfying bundles in the recycle pile while rediscovering the joys of old favourites. I absolutely adore being able to focus my attention on something until I am done with it. I love diving deep and exploring a thought until I’ve reached a conclusion, or physically doing a task and having the pleasure of accomplishing it at my own pace, to my own satisfaction. That is what I have been able to do this weekend. Whereas, when my kids are around, everything is start-stop-switch attention and focus and it can be as exhausting as it is rewarding. Frankly, when I am in that mode, and feel like my flow is constantly interrupted; I can only marvel that I achieve anything at all. Whether amid the chaos, or having time to actually land within myself, these days I can appreciate just how important it is to make time to honour my own needs. What about you, are you stewing in resentment or teetering dangerously close to it? What do you need to do to honour your own needs? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Receive More Love, Appreciation and Respect, Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go? Life Really Does Support Your Deepest Desires (And How to Access Its Support) and Take a Small Break from Your Life to Restart from Your Authentic Core. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. This is the story of my childhood and the inadvertent trauma I experienced that wove its way into the fabric of who I became in ways that were not always helpful - as published on TinyBuddha.com. Click here to read
With all the parenting advice I’ve read and heard, which has a wealth of information about understanding the different developments stages and what is needed at each, and how to manage my kids undesirable behaviour, there seems to be one huge piece missing and that is about how to manage myself.
No one forewarned me that, as Lisa Marchiano puts it “You’re going to project your stuff on your kids. There is no way that you are going to get through any amount of time with your children and not meet those parts of yourself you cut off and sent backstage (the aspects of yourself that are unconscious but we see in others, our blind spots)”. It just brings up so much discomfort and pain. The inherited patterns of behaviour in parents that children react to, and unwittingly develop patterns in response to, are essential for survival in childhood but become unhealthy patterns later in life; and will certainly get passed on unless the cycle is broken. The best description I’ve seen of these is in James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, he describes four archetypes (on a scale of aggressive to passive) that are “control strategies we each develop in order to stop others’ draining our energy”. I summarised these more in Normal Is Dysfunctional - That Is the Growth Opportunity. The thing is, normal developmental trauma arises from normal parenting and remains largely unseen precisely because it is deemed normal. Yet it creates power struggles and destruction; it creates disease, chronic pain and illness; and it stunts individual and collective abilities to address systemic issues within relationships and society. That is the ultimate challenge of parenthood, the ultimate responsibility, to recognise and break the cycles of dysfunction that are still very much alive. Amy McCready of Positive Parenting Solutions says “Children have two major needs: attention and power. And if they are not getting positive attention and positive opportunities to make their own choices they will settle for negative attention and ways to gain a feeling of personal power”. Not only that, the lack of positive attention or opportunity to express personal needs and desires is precisely what leads to the kind of dysfunction that is prevalent in society today. Yet we live in a society of distraction – parents distracted by devices and responsibilities. Not to mention the pass-the-parcel of before/after school care, split families/housing. Men and women, whether parents or not, really struggle in relationships today with break ups rates higher than ever before. Where in all of that, I wonder, are we allowing for and compelling attention on our kids’ development? Relationship expert Terry Real says that the traditional walls for men and women in a patriarchal culture are changing, but are far from changed – and those traditional walls preclude intimacy. As Raine Eisler said “It’s an old fashioned word, but patriarchy really means dominion (power over) instead of power with.” I was sent one of Constance Hall’s blog post’s this week that demonstrates how patriarchy is still very active and it really resonated for me. Her main point was that every consenting partnership should consist of two adults whose working hours are equal regardless of whether they are paid or unpaid work. The original has a sort of angry rant feel to it, yet she makes some really good points, so here is a version with the emotional charge toned down a bit: “The thing about not doing your share of house work or child rearing is that is more insidious than a simple “I can’t be bothered”; domestic responsibilities do not disappear. Children do not raise themselves. Housework doesn’t do itself. Every time you sit on the toilet, eat food from a clean plate, watch on with pride while your fed, educated children smile, it’s because someone has put in effort for you to receive that privilege. And if it wasn’t you, it was someone doing your share. Remember that expecting someone else to do your workload is oppressive. It’s saying “you can have equal rights only when you’ve met the basic needs of others”. Support each other because domestic duties are about so much more than clean sheets, it’s about respect and showing your kids what is and what isn’t a healthy way to care for themselves.” I think that is a great message, but there is another side to it, which is the person who allows that to happen. I know because I am one of those people who has too often taken more than my fair share of responsibility and felt overwhelmed and overburdened and then resented the heck out of it. This represents a typical narcissistic/codependent relationship, which is also typical of the type of normal dysfunction I refer to earlier in the piece. Trauma expert Pete Walker describes this as the most common relational hybrid. Terry Real describes the same blueprint as grandiosity versus inferiority/shame-based and is the most prevalent pattern he sees in relationships also. “While women can show up as narcissistic”, he says “it is more common for men to be this way”. Terry’s view is that we don’t value relational skills in a patriarchal culture. He goes on to say “We code relationship as feminine and we do to intimacy what we do to many things feminine: we idealise it in principle and we devalue it in fact”. I know this reality well. Having worked since I was fifteen, first through school and university and then in a corporate career, I know what working long hours and having high levels of responsibility looks like. What I didn’t know was what motherhood looked like. At first I saw my corporate career as a welcome temporary escape from the monotony of those early childrearing years, but then it became clear that regardless of how I felt (which with a baby and toddler was starting to look more like burnout), my children needed me at home. There was a piece I wrote describing a typical night after getting home from work, and one day I will publish it, because it heralded the start of this journey to me, but for now I’ll just share my concluding thoughts that night: I know it’s too much. I know my child is telling me this. Yes, as exhausted as I am, as distracted by work, the long arduous and unfulfilling hours of work, it’s time. Time to uncover what the heart and soul desire, for all of us. Six months on from that I published my first blog and have done so ever week since, recording the deliberate journey to a more authentic me, which included balking and rallying against this idea of my own feminine nature and role as a mother. I was raised in an era where I was brought up to believe that women can do anything men do. But as a friend of mine said beautifully “that overlooks the essence of the feminine, the need to find her own rhythm and inner desires in her own time and in her own reflection”. We had been having a discussion about the government’s financial support for parents with low income. I find it infuriating that - on one hand - our law (through Property Relationship law) recognizes that a stay-at-home parent is equal to a full time job, yet the government will not support a stay at home parent of school age kids unless they are at least in part time work. When I recently tracked how many hours of my week are dedicated to childcare and domestic duties, it was seventy hours on a typical school week and ninety on a non school week. Bear in mind school weeks typically only represent 180 days (allowing for ten days where at least one child is sick), how many employers are happy with employees only working half the year? Recognising that encouragement of women into the workforce was an attempt to stop the judgements of not only solo mothers but women in jobs, it was however done in the context of patriarchal structures. Quite aside of keeping the toilets clean and putting food on the table, the job as taxi driver, chief attention giver, boundary holder and referee, the role and responsibility of a parent can be all consuming. One night when my kids’ father and I were talking, our youngest daughter came into the room and asked for my help with something. I thought then that this is precisely what being a mum looks like, constantly being interrupted and on duty. And those interruptions can range from an innocuous “how do I spell...?” through to world-war-three erupting in the lounge. In fact, I find distraction my biggest challenge in parenting. If I am distracted, there is no connection, and the constant pull on my attention triggers responses that are less than optimal for my kids. As the primary caregiver, my attention being on the kids is just a part of the job when they are around, from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to sleep. Adapting that attention as they grow to help them towards independence is also part of the job, but that’s on a continuum; in development terms though kids are in their teens before they can healthily handle longer periods of more independence. So while going to work as soon as kids are in school is encouraged, to me it’s not okay to be required to work on top of the typical seventy hours of attention required on the home and kids in order to receive financial help. Before the world of COVID19 restrictions we had been on a family holiday in Hawaii. In conversation with the retail assistants, hotel staff and restaurant workers, it became clear that working two jobs to support their families was necessary, and this was women who had partners who also worked. What kind of quality parenting can people give in these scenarios? Terry Real is quick to point out that both men and women are knocked out of real intimacy and connection with themselves and others from childhood. Citing the work of Jean Baker Miller and Carol Gilligan at the Stone Centre, he says:
The problem is, as author, research professor and social expert Brené Brown has taught us, we connect through vulnerability. Terry believes that “While Millennial’s (thankfully) are different, the rest of us are still suffering under the old codes. Leading men and women into real intimacy is synonymous with leading men out of patriarchy.” In Why the Integration of Feelings and Logic Will Save the Human Race I quote Teal Swan as saying “The restoration of balance within the human race is not about decreasing masculine power while increasing feminine power...it is about both rising to power simultaneously”. I particularly like the short article from psychologist Shari Derkson that explains the aspects of masculine and feminine and what integrating them within ourselves might look like. She says “There is a movement towards inviting more feminine aspects into our lives, states of being, rather than doing; such as through stillness, meditation and tapping into our intuition and creative processes. Equally, it is important for both male and females to develop the more masculine qualities of rational and logical ability, clear non-attached thought and problem solving etc.” James French, who works with rescue animals and cultivated The Trust Technique, demonstrates through his work how lack of connection in humans (and propensity towards dominion or power over instead of power with) shows up just the same in animals as it does in children. James says "Any animal displaying fear, aggression, anxiety etc is a sign of an over-thinking state, but when brought into a peaceful state you can connect through more positive imagining/feeling states instead”. What I love is his observation that sensitivity in animals or people doesn’t change, it just transforms from positive sensitivity (the feelings of connection, joy, love) to negative sensitivity (the feelings of fear, shame, guilt). This could equally be applied to children. “As a child”, as Dr Gabor Maté explains, “we are born feeling our connection to our parents and we are reliant on them for survival. Being rejected by them in any way, big or small, is devastating. So when we are rejected, we have a choice, to reject them or reject ourselves (or more likely parts of ourselves). But we can’t reject them as our survival depends upon them.” Luckily the skills needed for connection with children, and with each other, are skills that can be learned. Terry Real makes the point “There’s skills in learning to connect to yourself and others. There’s skill in learning to love yourself. There’s a skill in learning good boundaries. And there are skills in learning how to stand up for yourself with love and respond with generosity instead of defensiveness.” Changing the way we see parenting is pivotal, but that requires first a change in who we are as individuals. To begin to recognise our dysfunctional stances and structures and perhaps to look at them through more integrated eyes that include more of the aspects of our true nature without the walls we have erected around us in response to our own childhoods. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, How Dead Does the Horse Need to Be to Want to Get Off?, Womanhood: A Story of Our Time and Embracing the Feminine within All of Us. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Image by Mote Oo Education from Pixabay Someone, who knows I’m interested in childhood trauma, recently told me she thinks I should “just let go of negative memories”. Another person wondered, if something was so lacking in my relationship with my parents, how am I not experiencing greater dysfunction or even death, which he proposed was statistically more likely than being able to draw intelligent conclusions.
Interestingly I have never said nor felt that my childhood was negative, it was normal, with some good memories and some not so good memories; and I certainly had two parents who wanted and loved me. They were just two people doing the best they could, parenting in the normal way. So I decided to write this as resource for people like me who do personal work in order to move past any suboptimal wiring and fulfil my potential, while some look on in bemusement wondering why I would feel the need to do any work when I had such a normal childhood. Normal doesn’t mean optimal, and can be as traumatic within our bodies as a readily recognised trauma. In fact, I believe this is society’s biggest opportunity for growth. For a long time the predominant theme of child rearing has been about teaching children to be good and fit in. This is all very well, but it is best done after a healthy sense of self and safety has been established, and this appears to be little understood. Feeling safe relates directly to the nervous system, the command centre of a human’s flight-fight response. Neural pathways connect one part of the nervous system to the other and neural pathways do not care whether parents/caregivers intentions are good or how much they love their children; they simply start forming in response to the child’s reaction to how well (or not) their needs are met. “As a child”, as Dr Gabor Maté explains, “we are born feeling our connection to our parents and we are reliant on them for survival. Being rejected by them in any way, big or small, is devastating. So when we are rejected, we have a choice, to reject them or reject ourselves (or more likely parts of ourselves). But we can’t reject them as our survival depends upon them.” Some examples I gave recently: there is the baby who is left to cry, the baby or child who has to eat to a schedule, the child who wants their parent’s attention and will do anything – positive or negative – to get it, the child who is given no opportunity to explain their side of the story, the child who is left alone to think about their actions, the list goes on. These are all normal, everyday occurrences, not things an adult necessarily thinks of as rejecting their child. However, if I put my adult self in those shoes, imagine I am so upset I’m crying and everyone ignores me, how do I feel? If I’m not hungry (or feeling sick) and I’m made to eat how do I feel? If I am trying to get someone’s attention and they ignore me, how do I feel? If I appear to have upset someone and yet they won’t communicate with me, how do I feel? None of these feel comfortable; at one extreme they actually make me question my very existence (especially if they are regularly occurring situations) and, at best, make me feel isolated and unimportant in the moment. So it’s not hard to imagine how utterly devastating such things are to a baby or small child who is completely dependant on that adult to meet their needs. This creates a type of developmental trauma, which is sometimes known as small-t trauma. This kind of trauma is normal in our society, and it happens bit by bit over time. Then there are the inherited patterns of behaviour in parents that children react to, and unwittingly develop patterns in response to. These are essential for survival in childhood but become unhealthy patterns later in life, and will certainly get passed on unless the cycle is broken. The best description I’ve seen of these is in James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, he describes four archetypes (on a scale of aggressive to passive) that are “control strategies we each develop in order to stop others’ draining our energy”. He says “It’s often easiest if you start by taking a look at which strategies your parents employed:
I suspect no one wants to feel like a victim or held hostage to their past circumstances, but rejecting the idea that unconscious reactions in childhood may have inadvertently created limitations or unhelpful belief patterns and behaviours is a missed opportunity for growth. The kinds of common subconscious unhelpful belief patterns that get perpetuated are: I’m unworthy, I’m too much, I’m alone, I don’t have, I’m powerless, I’m not wanted, I’m invisible, I’m bad, I don’t belong, I’m a burden, I’m crazy, I’m different, I’m not enough, I’m a failure, I’m not important, I’m inferior, I’m not loved, I don’t matter, I’m not safe and/or I’m worthless. Claire Zammit and Kathrine Woodward Thomas created a fantastic document that goes into each of these in much more depth and is well worth a read. This is not our only trauma of course, I just think it’s by far the most common and least recognised and – bottom line – the one that needs addressed in order to grow and evolve from the other types of trauma we create. One therapist told me she has worked with children who have no apparent developmental issues but instead inherited predispositions to emotional dysregulation (having emotions that are overly intense in comparison to the situation that triggered them). Considering genetics does, on the face of it, seem sensible. But as you may deduce from what I have written above, I find it hard to imagine that most people are not in some way affected by parental – usually well meaning – interactions in our early years. I am also not keen on the genetics argument; it feels too much like a free pass to behaving poorly on an all-too-regular basis, when I truly believe that (if you can read this) it is within your gift to change how you react when triggered, and also in fact your responsibility. Remember those neural pathways? As in the seemingly normal and benign examples I gave of rejection, these became very entrenched in my system throughout childhood, as my nervous system did what it needed to continue to do to keep me feeling safe. I can’t change those pathways that fire ever time, say, someone criticises me (which is exactly the kind of situation in which I may have emotions that are more charged than the situation warrants). However I can:
I cannot change my reactions through a decision alone; it requires awareness, curiosity, focus in learning new skills and persistence. Also bear in mind that no child is born with emotional regulation, so it’s having a parent or caregiver who cannot model effective coping skills that puts a child at risk of emotional dysregulation. Upon suggesting we educate future generations on the impacts they have on newborns and young children through secure attachment and attunement, the therapist I was talking to was concerned that would put huge pressure on parents and create a sense of blame for those who are doing their best. I believe each person is always doing their best (in any given situation, with the cards they have been dealt and with what they know). But it is the adults (not the children in their care) who have the capacity for reflection, insight and change, to develop healthier coping styles. That said, even with good intentions and good emotional regulation it is inevitable people will suffer other types of trauma in the journey through life. But, overall, people would begin with a sense of safety and self, and that would make a huge difference to the way other trauma is dealt with and, in fact, whether it is even created. Therapists like Dr Terry Levy, who runs the Evergreen Psychotherapy Centre, won’t work with children until they’ve worked with the parents. They also use a life script that gathers the kind of information that is relevant to getting to the heart of the types of dysfunctional beliefs and behaviours at play in a person’s life. For me it's not about "oh look at my trauma" in the sense of "isn't it terrible". As light-touch as my experiences are (in comparison to some of the atrocities that happen to people), they have shaped me deeply. I see how I have been limited by my own beliefs and trauma reactions within my body, it has kept me playing small, from fulfilling my potential and acting from a place of compassion. So I can wholeheartedly appreciate that if light-touch trauma can do that, what a slam-dunk the big-T trauma (sexual abuse, violence, war or political violence, natural disasters, serious accidents, life threatening illnesses etc) causes. Now the real key for me is this. Big-T trauma and its effects are becoming well recognized. But little-t trauma, especially normal developmental trauma, remains largely unseen and yet lives within almost every single person on the planet today. It creates disease, chronic pain and illness and it stunts our ability to address systemic issues within our relationships and within our society. That is why I share my experiences and insights, to shine a light on the microscopic stuff, the irritating sand in the oyster shell that are our pearls of wisdom, our key to compassion and evolution. Could I be wrong? Sure there’s always room for a misread of reality because it’s all about perspective. But if this resonates with you then I have every confidence that with awareness, curiosity, focus in learning new skills and persistence, you can fulfil your potential in every area of your life. As family therapist and author Terry Real says “We may not (right now) be able to bring peace to the Middle East or to Syria or whatever else but we can bring peace to our living rooms. So start with your life. And your life is your relationships. So learn how to do that and do it really well.” If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, Life Really Does Support Your Deepest Desires (And How to Access Its Support), You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Is Your Responsibility and Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I was having an interesting conversation my hairdresser, a young adult, about childhood trauma. It may seem like the kind of conversation to have with a therapist rather than a hairdresser, but she was fully engaged in the conversation and I love that it’s something she readily recognised as an opportunity for our collective growth.
The kind of trauma we were talking about is developmental trauma, the kind everyone experiences (as distinct from the big issues that are more readily recognised as traumatic). She is at a point in her own development, having recently moved out of home, where she is more readily able to express the impact her parents have had on how she feels about herself. Like me she comes from a pretty normal family, and in fact her parents both work with people who have experienced the big-T trauma we all recognise, and they regularly have to deal with addiction, violence and abuse. But she can see how her parents, although well meaning, created limitations in the way she feels inside herself and interacts with the world. That in itself is huge. From what I observe, most people do not want to be held hostage to their childhood if, in fact, they even think about it at all. I certainly felt it was something to put behind me when I was free to live as an adult, determined to be different in all the ways that had irritated or wounded me. Well, there were two problems with that:
With enough difficult experiences under my belt, and enough distance from most of them, I could see the patterns. While it’s easy to blame others, I finally recognised that the common denominator in all my experiences was me, and I was the only part of any equation I could control. Many people never really feel safe to explore whatever junk they have in their own trunk, but I knew that there must be something I was doing or a way that I was being that kept eliciting the same variety of responses, in ever increasing intensity. I also knew that I had become someone that didn’t feel real to me, but I wasn’t sure what was real for me because I had been moulded and had grown accustomed to the way I interacted in the world. Now with years of personal work under my belt I can readily recognise that I suffered from insecure attachment, a lack of attunement and enmeshment trauma . I had become a co-dependent, people pleaser with poor boundaries; susceptible to those, like narcissists, who care not for others. That is a mouthful I know, and it’s all psychology-speak to most people, but what it comes down to is that I needed more positive emotional attention and connection from my parents than they gave. This had nothing to do with my parent’s intentions, which were good. There is no mystery or malice about any of this; it arises from their own anxieties and ways of being, and the predominant beliefs in our society (for many centuries) about child rearing. That is to say, children are to be moulded rather than to be held as they unfold. To give some examples, there is the baby who is left to cry, the baby or child who has to eat to a schedule, the child who wants their parent’s attention and will do anything – positive or negative – to get it, the child who is given no opportunity to explain their side of the story, the child who is left alone to think about their actions, the list goes on. Even if I put my adult self in those shoes, if I am so upset I am crying and everyone ignores me, how do I feel? If I’m not hungry (or feeling sick) and I’m made to eat how do I feel? If I am trying to get someone’s attention and they ignore me, how do I feel? If I appear to have upset someone and yet they won’t communicate with me, how do I feel? None of these feel comfortable; they actually make me question my very existence at one extreme (especially if they are regularly occurring situations) and, at best, make me feel isolated and unimportant in the moment. Yet as an adult I have full mental and physical capacities that allow me to express myself, to reason out others’ behaviours and to take action. As a child, and as a baby especially, I have none of those things. It doesn’t take a huge leap to imagine the magnitude of devastation felt by the burgeoning human when ignored like this, especially if it’s the common pattern. And it doesn’t then take a lot to understand that the chemicals that get released in response start to form our neural pathways, within our brain and nervous systems. The emotional reaction, in the form of chemicals released in our brain and body, starts to wire our responses to similar situations. This is the essence of trauma. If a baby or child is questioning or worrying about its existence as in the examples above, those chemicals that form our neural pathways are in the survival category. This then creates an ongoing chronic trauma response to similar situations throughout the person’s life. And, as I have discovered, that is generally what is at the root of all human dysfunction. It manifests from small-t trauma, the kind of developmental trauma pretty much most humans on the planet are subject to, resulting in unhelpful and self-limiting patterns of beliefs and behaviours. As it also manifests from big T-trauma, the reliving of horrific experiences again and again. It would be easy to see myself, or anyone, as a victim of these circumstances. But what I’ve discovered is that I – and anyone - can form new neural pathways. I also realised that it wasn’t my parents’ behaviour that made me who I am, it was my reaction to it; albeit subconscious. And if these are my reactions, I can change them. More than that, I realised if I didn’t change them, not only would I be living a life of limitation and chronic unhappiness, I would perpetuate the same thing with my own children through my own anxieties. I realised that the only way for me to be able to be fully present with my own babies and children was to take a good look at the junk in my trunk that was constantly distracting me and weighing me down. In short, I realised that my childhood experiences were not my fault, but they are my responsibility. If we want the next generation unencumbered by the often invisible chains that have held our families (and the family next door, and next door to that and so on) in bondage to unhealthy and self-limiting responses, then we have to be the one to make it a priority to get free of them by creating healthier responses. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, In What Unseen Ways Are You Abandoning Your Own Free Will? Overcome the Greatest Human Fear – Be the True You and Why Projecting is the Best Tool for Self Awareness. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Someone was sharing with me this week various struggles they are having as a parent, which I could relate to. Partly it was about the challenges in parenting a child who is so different in personality, and partly it was about unwelcome criticism of her parenting style from others.
I was then listening to a podcast with Lisa Marchiano on Meaning making, Motherhood and the Journey of Individuation which sums up what I suspect is actually going on in this situation. Lisa says: “You’re going to project your stuff on your kids. There is no way that you are going to get through any amount of time with your children and not meet those parts of yourself you cut off and sent backstage (the aspects of yourself that are unconscious but we see in others, our blind spots)”. I know from my own journey that this is what is going on for me in any situation that is triggering, and I can project onto anyone, it is just the nature of parenting that makes the scenarios so intense and frequent. In fact, so much so, that Lisa quoted Fay Weldon who said “the best part about not having children is that you can go on believing you’re a nice person”, which makes me chuckle. However, throughout the conversation I was having, what I could feel was this sense of deep longing within the mother to be seen, I suspect this longing comes from the parts of her that were denied, suppressed or disowned in her own childhood. We talked about her childhood, not so much about details of it, but more the relevance of her own experiences which, like me, she felt were fairly normal. Neither of us had experienced anything that would be typically recognised as traumatic in the sense of physical or sexual abuse, domestic violence or any of the other big-T traumas. But I know trauma is not just the big stuff. In fact, trauma is not an event, it’s the reaction to an event (or ways of being chronically ill-treated) within our bodies, that becomes stuck and replayed again and again when triggered. What most people don’t recognise is their own trauma, because it has been normalised. In the movie The Wisdom of Trauma, which features Dr Gabor Maté, I also got a glimpse of Frizi Horstman’s Step Inside the Circle documentary that I found impactful. Frizi runs the Compassion Prison Project and gets right to the heart of the issue by getting everyone to stand in a circle and to take a step forward with every question she asks that the person identifies with. She starts with “While you were growing up, during your first eighteen years of life, if a parent or other adult in the house would often insult you, put you down or humiliate you, please step inside the circle.” It quickly becomes evident that – as Dr Robert Block says “Adverse childhood experiences are the single greatest unaddressed threat facing us today.” The point Dr Gabor Maté really impressed upon me when I first read his work a few years ago, is that trauma is more pervasive than in just those we recognise as being locked in a prison. In fact if the prison guards were asked to step inside the circle (or the prison management, or those working in the Justice department, or the elected politicians, or – for that matter – the lady living down the street) then I suspect it would be become very evident that trauma is omnipresent. One of the most striking examples Dr Gabor Maté often cites is the crying baby. Babies are helpless; they have very little at their disposal to signal their basic needs. They cry because they are hungry, tired, want connection (need connection), are too cold/too warm, need changed and so on. Yet even today there are parenting methods that actively advocate letting a baby cry without intervention in order to train them (when to eat and sleep to the parent’s – or otherwise deemed healthy - schedule). Even as I type this I can feel how triggered it makes me. I am incredulous at how little is known about human attachment and attunement among people generally. I want to scream, I’ll be honest. How is it possible that people cannot see that leaving a baby to cry without any intervention teaches that baby, that person, that they are alone, their needs are not important? There is a time to teach children to wait, sure, but it comes later, once secure attachment and attunement are established. What does attunement look like? Teal Swan says “Ask yourself the following questions...
Healthy attunement means feeling understood and having those feelings honoured. Healthy attachment means taking mutual joy in spending time with, and being connected with someone. So as I was talking to this lady about her childhood, I asked her – since it was seemingly so benign in its normalcy – whether she would (if she could) send her own child back to live in her own childhood? This created an immediate sense of perspective. I wondered, why is it she and I seem to share this sense that it was okay for us to go through our own childhood experiences, yet we didn’t want to consciously repeat them with our kids? In Terri Cole’s book Boundary Boss, which I’ve found both insightful and practical, she says “Get a picture of yourself as a child, every time you look at the picture practice compassion...beam yourself with pure love.” I’ve had childhood pictures up for a while, and pictures of my partner as a child, so I can have compassion in the times I’m seeing a hurt child acting out rather than a self-regulated adult. Yet when I look at my own photos it is not compassion I feel. It is more a sense of inadequacy, like maybe this child – me – deserved the childhood I had. Notice I’m being honest here about how I feel. My intellect does not agree, my intellect knows that a four-year-old cannot be inadequate and that any sense of inadequacy was likely a projection upon me. In fact if I were to be faced with one of my own kids’ feeling a sense of inadequacy I would be quick to take them in my arms and beam them with pure love, no doubts. Yet when faced with myself as a younger child, I lose all desire to. Isn’t that interesting? “As a child”, as Dr Gabor Maté explains, “we are born feeling our connection to our parents and we are reliant on them for survival. Being rejected by them in any way, big or small (over an extended period), is devastating. So when we are rejected, we have a choice, to reject them or reject ourselves (or more likely parts of ourselves). But we can’t reject them as our survival depends upon them.” And through Dr Maté’s work, and that of many many others like Teal Swan and Claire Zammit to name a couple of those often quoted by me, I have come to recognise that right there denotes the kind of childhood trauma I’m suggesting lives in probably every person on the face of the planet. Now I’m not saying every person would feel in some way ashamed of themselves as a child if they looked at a photo of themselves at a young age. I suspect only those of us who have internalized the feelings would. To add some depth, I’ll go back to one of my favourite explanations of all time on this, summed up exquisitely by Teal Swan: “When our parents were not attuned to us, we went one of two ways to cope with the terror of the experience. We either learned that our survival depended on:
She goes on to explain that neither state is healthy. “It is not a fulfilling life to spend all your energy obsessively trying to keep yourself safe by attuning to other people at the expense of tuning out to yourself. But the destruction on this planet owes itself to those people who have learned to cope by retreating into the egocentric bubble... You cannot attune to someone and say the wrong thing to them. You cannot attune to someone and stay in denial about his or her reality.” I’ll never forget talking to my mum about her childhood before she died. She did not readily share details during her life, she was simply what I would have called very dark on her father and her eldest brother; her father being an abusive alcoholic and her eldest brother was a half sibling who abandoned his family of birth, as his father before him had abandoned them. My mum, like a lot of people, never saw any value in revisiting those childhood experiences; she couldn’t fathom why anyone would partake in coaching never mind counselling, perhaps because she felt herself adequate enough and externalised her experiences. She certainly did not believe she was in any way held hostage to her experiences, which is what most of us would like to believe I suspect. Yet there I was talking to this mother about her parenting and, as she recounted the beautiful demeanour of a coach facilitating a class she was attending, she was moved to tears as she related to me the gentle way this facilitator spoke to and nurtured her audience. In turn I was moved as I saw so clearly how the little girl in her desperately wants to be related to. Instead she had experienced harsh words, and little warmth and affection growing up. And she internalised this, thinking she must be getting these harsh words because something is wrong with her. Frizi Horstman, of the Compassion Prison Project, concludes “We are all magnificent, beautiful humans, but we have trauma fogging our vision of ourselves and others”. She makes the point that when we are triggered, we are in our flight-fight mode. Learning how to recognise this and regulate our nervous system is the key to accessing our magnificent selves. Certainly we cannot do this if we are stuck in survival mode. So if you feel like something is wrong with you, or something is inherently wrong in others, there is, we are all experiencing an ongoing cycle of trauma, passed unconsciously from generation to generation. Our job is to wake up to it, heal and help others. As Gabor Maté says, it appears clearing trauma is the zeitgeist of our time. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy In What Unseen Ways Are You Abandoning Your Own Free Will? How to Find the Courage to Let Us Hear Your Heart’s Voice, Overcome the Greatest Human Fear – Be the True You and Why Projecting is the Best Tool for Self Awareness. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. A few times in the last week I’ve been triggered by communications I’ve received and my mind has gone into overdrive compiling responses.
I know enough now, and generally have enough restraint, not to react when I’m triggered. This is eloquently summed up by Teal Swan in her article on criticism when she says “Be aware that the reactivity that spirals us into criticism is always a by-product of trauma we have suffered. It is indicative of the ways that we have been hurt. If we tend to that hurt, we will be less reactive and become less critical. Our opinions will then be wanted and received well by others.” Tending to that hurt is the bigger part, as I talked through in How to Stand in Your Truth and Be Heard Without a Fight. I think of it like doing the groundwork before a new construction project can take place. By the same token, I want to express my perspective and to hear that of others. As Teal says “We need feedback, our growth and awareness depends on it… But feedback falls into two distinct camps:
Criticism is often done in a state of reactivity when we are in a state of defense, it has no regard for whether the person on the other end is receptive”. She makes the point that there is really no such thing as constructive criticism “The more the person you are criticizing feels compelled to defend their value, the less capable they are of absorbing what they are hearing.” Then she goes on to say “We have to be aware of why we feel the need to share our opinion. And even if we have good intentions, we must still ask ourselves if - despite the good intentions- we are harming the other person with our critique.” I thought these were really good questions as I worked my way through the fire consuming me, not wishing to leave my relationships in the burnt ashes of my reactions. Relationships are important to me, but I also often have a tendency to put other people’s needs before my own, and to rush in quickly to prove my worth, which I covered in How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns. So I have to look with real curiosity at what’s actually going on in each situation. What was triggering me this time were some communications from the kids’ school that opened up an old wound. A wise person once gave me an analogy of putting our hurts into the manure pile versus the freezer, the manure pile being preferable as it fades to nothing over time. But this wound had obviously been bunged in the freezer, unattended, since it stung just as sharply as if it were fresh. Anything that requires or encourages extracurricular activity throws me into a spin, since my kids have well and truly had enough in the process of just attending school each day. By the same token, I’m a person who attended school without any real issues while also managing a few extracurricular things and, later, an all-encompassing training program as a competitive swimmer. I prided myself on my resilience and strength (part of perfectionist tendencies designed to prove my self worth and avoid the harsh criticism and punishment), and still laugh/cry at the memory of me pulling my daughter’s dummy out of my bra in the middle of a corporate meeting, wondering what it was that kept itching my skin. So when receiving various communications this week contradicting the school’s own philosophies (zealously encouraging our kids into extracurricular sports activities and daily violin practice), on top of extensive requests for my personal participation in fundraising activities, meanwhile hearing a comment made to the whole parent group that was clearly criticising my individual decision on pursue external remedial support for my kids to help them work with their brain instead of against it, triggered me in gasket-blowing ways. It created a surge of feelings comprising being overwhelmed by contradictions, criticised, disregarded and undermined. The little girl inside me whose thoughts and feelings were unimportant to the adults making decisions, who had to strategise to canvass and rationalise my opinions, and get my needs and desires met, swung into full counter attack and defense mode. I observed all this. I struggled between the part of me that that wanted to lash out at those whose words poked at all my old wounds, and the part of me that wanted those people to simply understand the unintentional ways in which their words have landed. I want people to understand what it feels like when your kids have different wiring, unseen and yet overwhelming. I especially want those who are charged with the care of my children during their time at school to know this. If I go further with this, what I deeply desire is an educational approach that caters to the neurodiversity and differing talents of all children. But I also know that, while those who educate my children during school hours care about them, there are another twenty five or more other unique kids in the class to cater to – quite aside of the teachers they report to, the school board, the Education department and the many other stakeholders involved. I know that those who educate my kids also have their own rich perspectives, and most likely their own wounds. I know that in order to be truly heard, I will have to be kind, to tread softly. I recognise people don’t make me feel a certain way, I simply feel what I feel in reaction to what they are saying because of my own unique circumstances, experiences and disposition. So, while tending to that wounded part of me - the groundwork that has to happen before I share anything - I have asked myself many times:
I have reworked my response many times in my head; continually refocusing within myself to hand the talking stick to my heart; the warrior self versus the infinite self. Early in the week, in a more peaceful moment, my inner voice spoke its truth plainly. It took another few days to get my mind aligned in order to proceed without the criticisms that wanted to work their way in there. All along the way I kept asking myself whether any response was required at all. In the end, I did send one because – as I’ve said - I deeply desire an educational approach that caters to the neurodiversity and differing talents of all children. So I believe it is important to voice our perspective in the current environment to create the seeds of awareness that may one day spout into positive changes. I received a response thanking me for my insights and also for seeing what the teachers are contending with, and with – I felt – a genuinely hopeful interest in seeing where the approach I’m taking with my kids leads. I have a perspective that is different and valuable and so do you. But be kind to yourself and to others, and be wise in your ways of sharing. Tell us your story in a way we can hear it, so it can benefit the growth of the whole. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Change Unhealthy Reactions, How to Stop Being Triggered by What Other People Think and Honour Your Story but Free Yourself of Its Shackles. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Eckhart Tolle, a master teacher on the concept of presence, said “Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there”. I can relate to this.
When I was at the chiropractor, I asked her what she had noticed in my body this week and she said “It was twisted, it easily untwisted but it was twisted none the less (in my usual left hip to right shoulder pattern) – like you are being pulled in this direction and that direction”. As soon as she said it I pictured a tug-of-war, rather like Dr Dolittle’s fictional Pushmi-Pullyu animal being pulled in different directions. It made absolute sense to me because it’s how I feel when the family are all at home and I have things I need to do, yet they are clamouring for my attention. Of course, here in the southern hemisphere, it is school summer holidays, but this year – with so many lockdowns in process – I am sure there are many parents around the world contending with the same issues and on more intense levels. For my kids I’ve found there is balance needed between planned activities and having enough downtime in order for boredom to kick in. School takes care of much (often unwanted) planned activity during term time, but during holidays that falls more to me. Though as the kids get older they obviously have more of their own ideas and plans, which can bring about a whole other level of conflict and logistics to manage. Another of my favourite Eckhart quotes is “Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found”, it has also always been the place in which I am most in touch with my own thoughts and feelings, my sense of self, which is something I desire for my kids also. When boredom kicks in for the kids, though, I both relish and dread it. I dread it because it is a temporarily painful experience for me, they start to complain and pick fights with each other, looking towards me as a beacon of hope to solve their boredom and their conflicts. However, I have found that it is often wiser if I avoid doing either, and simply give them each some positive attention before turning my own attention back to whatever I was doing. But I also relish their boredom because, once they get over this hump – which they do (and they do a lot quicker without devices on the scene), I see the magic of their creativity come to life. This used to create other issues as, when they were younger, it often involved turning our lounge into some fantastical kingdom, which could look like someone had taken the contents of our cupboards, strewn them over the floor and then stirred with a big spoon. However, as they get older, they get better at tidying up with less intervention. Then, of course, there are the other things that need to happen, like clothes being washed, food purchased, meals prepared, alongside the support I provide to my partner in his business. And because none of this really floats my boat I heed Annette Noontil’s advice: “It is best not to do more than 50% for people because it takes away their opportunity to learn and grow. If you have to do 100% for someone make sure you are learning something for yourself from this opportunity.” Which is why I make it a priority to type these posts each week, it’s my time to really sit down and take in what lessons are presenting themselves. So when I ponder on what I really need to know when I feel pulled in these different directions, here is my take out:
With humanity experiencing so much turmoil right now, I imagine many people feel pulled in different directions. What is your life trying to teach you? What do you need to know right now to feel less torn and more present? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, When the Thing That Binds You is the Road to Freedom, How to Stop Being Triggered by What Other People Think, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns and You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. I’ve discovered that, like everything else in my life from the way my kids behave, to the things that happen, sex is yet another thing that reflects back to me parts of myself that may be about old thought patterns and feelings.
When I was reading about Pavan Amara’s Take Back Your Body project, although I’ve never experienced sexual abuse directly, I could relate to the concept that taking back the narrative of sex is a crucial part of healing. Amara says “After any sort of sexual violence, the way you think about sex and your body changes, so you think it’s not under your control, or you have to go with someone else’s likes and dislikes and you lose that connection to yourself. We look at ways of taking that back.” Whether a person has been abused or not, I believe an unhealthy narrative about sex prevails among the collective conscious, and feelings of fear and shame still too often dominate the landscape in both sexes. I recall listening to Teal Swan sharing that each time she runs a workshop and asks participants to raise their hands if they have felt fear for their life, all the women and many men raise their hands. When she starts to narrow that down to a shorter and shorter timeframe, the men are often gobsmacked that most women in the room still have their hands up when she asks who has felt that fear in the last week. History tells us that females (and many males) have suffered at the hands of power-hungry men for centuries and, while life in the twenty-first century is changing in many places, oppression still exists both in the world around us and reverberates in the world within us. This is something I am mindful of in relation to my own experiences and those of my children. My eldest daughter was inadvertently exposed to the topic of sex in a fictional story she had listened to recently that had been miscategorised under children’s books rather than for young adults. The main thread of the story was about time travelling back to Arthurian times to save the future. However, the plot apparently also included two teenage girls having sex and a baby being born. This brought up questions for her about what sex is and, while I did not mind having the conversation, I hadn’t anticipated having to answer quite so many questions for another year or two. I had to explain to a somewhat bewildered young girl, who finds the whole concept rather abstract, that a whole new view of the world opens up when hormones start flooding our bodies in the teenage years; sex becomes desirable (when allowed to unfold naturally) and is just nature’s way of making sure we humans survive. It made me reflect on my own experiences emerging into young adulthood, recalling the perplexing question of what a French kiss might be and what exactly was I to do with my tongue? And just how embarrassing everything seemed at that age, even asking that question of anyone was too much. When I think of my first kiss in that genre, with an eleven year old boy in my class using his swanky digital watch to time it to two minutes, his tongue like a slab of meat sitting unchewed in my mouth, and his eyes focused sideward to the timer on his wrist, it was clear I wasn’t the only one clueless and uniformed. Of course, that was just the overhang of Victorian virtuosity in our upbringing. Here, on the opposite side of the world, my partner was brought up in a different culture entirely; Kiwi male bravado reflects an archetype of patriarchal male entitlement to female flesh, like a set of untrained puppies that grow old having learned no tricks at all except the art of enthusiastic and instant gratification. Both those examples are clearly not everyone’s experience, especially those that have been exposed to sex or experienced sexual abuse at a young age, but it demonstrates how we all view sex through a filter of our own experiences; and there does seem a lack of examples around what healthy sexuality might look like. Being the digital age there is no lack of material available on the topic of sex, but how much of it is actually helpful? I’ve noticed in this era of Coronavirus lockdown, on social media there seems an increase of bored blokes sharing weird videos and material designed for shock and titillation. My youngest daughter, unbeknown to my partner, was looking over his shoulder when his phone pinged and there was one such video that popped up – sent via a social media app by an aforementioned archetype of the bored Kiwi bloke. “Mummy” she cried “someone has sent daddy a video of a man bouncing an exercise ball, like the one you used to have, on his willy.” She thought this was hilarious, and thankfully didn’t see enough to have absorbed the sexual component of it. Needless to say, my partner has since taken a much more mindful approach to his device. To me, of the prudish upbringing, this type of media automatically gets categorized in my psyche as smut and makes me view the man in the video (and anyone sharing it) as sad. In my partner’s psyche, it’s just funny, something to send on as a bit of bravado and one-upmanship in the shocking humour stakes. Being a mother of daughters and someone who deeply understands how even things that are seemingly benign in intent can shape a person’s psyche, I am inclined to err on the side of caution when it comes to exposing my kids to life beyond their current point of development, a hard task in today’s world. As I said in From Desires of the Flesh to Deep Connection our sexuality is deeply connected to all our other interactions. When I listen to the demeaning lyrics of a rap song, it creates images in my head, the same happens when watching a video, reading news, playing games… on and on. The question we each have to ask ourselves – and for our children as they emerge into young adulthood - is whether these images are pathways to love and connectedness or quite the opposite? Science has shown us that the more exposed to something we are, the more desensitized to it we become and this is especially so when we have been indoctrinated into a way of being since early childhood, we have no conscious memory of our true feelings. I believe that many males simply don’t understand the female perspective and, what they see as harmless can often be disrespectful or even harmful. I get that to most of the people out there sharing the videos I mentioned, it is all just a bit of fun. But there was a time – likely in childhood and before their conscious memory - that it would have created a bad feeling within them. Having read the work of Dr Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-born Canadian physician with a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development and trauma, and in their potential lifelong impacts, I know the harm that comes from children being exposed too early and too insensitively to everything from noise to the thoughts and emotions of those around us. This is where the collective consciousness on the topic of sex and sexuality gets perpetuated; where insensitivity arises. For one friend of mine, this is a huge trigger and I understand why. Our sexuality, like everything else in our lives, develops through the filter of our experiences. Her experiences include bearing witness to a wide range of sexual abuse. As a healer, she knows the damage to our psyche when abuse occurs. For me, as a female who has not been subject to what we would term abuse, I still bear witness to the thoughts and feelings and mistreatment of females and have my entire life. Everything from the lewd wolf whistling that accompanied any passing of a work site from a young age, to frightening moments at the hands of testosterone charged males fuelled with alcohol or even just at a football match. There is definitely a sense in my psyche that these things are the manifestation of a collective experience that views females as objects rather than with reverence. So when it comes to the realm of my own body and my own relationships, this collective sense of my female heritage creates part of the lens through which I view sex. I suspect the reason this plays out so emotively for me is because my soul knows reverence for both the masculine and feminine and can sense that neither is being truly honoured in much of what I’ve discussed here. Sex is to be enjoyed, of that there is no doubt, but what are the blocks in the pathways to mutual joy that exist in your life? What are the fundamental ideas and beliefs you have that stand in the way of honouring this? What experiences do you need to heal? And what messages do we want to send to our collective sons and daughters? If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be at Ease With the World Around You, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You? and Womanhood: A Story of Our Time. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. The only way to be at ease with the world around me, is to be at ease with the world within me; which feels like a big job at times. It never ceases to amaze me how I might face the same circumstances as hundreds – thousands, or even millions – of other people and yet the range of responses to those circumstances is as varied as the people involved or even just observing.
Right now there is an excellent example of this globally with around a billion kids on the planet, who usually attend school, finding themselves at home with parents like me who are suddenly expected to home school on top of everything else. Or are we? As I contemplated this whole arena of my kids learning at home during lock down, knowing I have actively considered and rejected the idea of home schooling for my family many times, my mind wandered to what my legal obligations actually are at this time. After a few Google searches, I could find no answers. It reminded me of when my curiosity led me to investigate what our legal obligations are around attendance, how it is recorded and what actually constitutes a red flag. I like transparency and, instead, what I seemed to find is smoke and mirrors. If I feel there is an expectation set around me delivering something, I get triggered. As a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser, this homeschooling stuff It is right on target to test me. This is the crux of what I mean about becoming at ease with my inner world, the felt expectation is a narrative I created about the outer world. And while it is likely there are people in political power and the educational arena that have their own agenda and are indeed driving those expectations, I also recognise the opportunity that home schooling gives me at this time. The fact is, my kids need some sort of attention, many times in each day; for my youngest it is a great deal of the day. I have choices: I can determinedly plough on with what I’m trying to achieve for myself, I can sweep aside all of that and just focus on my children, or I can manage some of both those things. The key for me is the word manage. I need a plan; I had one in fact before we ever went into lockdown. I knew it was a prime opportunity to teach my kids how to get involved more in looking after themselves and the home they live in, there is also quite a number of card games and board games that largely get ignored in our house that I could see would be useful additions to managing the family dynamic. Device time is a non starter for us, we already conducted that human experiment and came out the other side as I talked about in What Addiction Has to Teach Us on the Pathway to Joy. We certainly did not want to be cooped up with two frazzled kids, but I could see this was an opportunity for us to connect more as a family and cultivate respectful communication and compassion for one another. What about school work? In its doses. There are things my kids are drawn to, and things they hate, this feels like the time to focus on what they are drawn to. A good friend shared with me the words her child’s school had sent about accessing online learning materials throughout the lockdown; they were salve to my soul: “The work on the Distance Learning site are suggestions only. It is up to individuals families to decide how much of the work their children complete. They are not intended to place undue stress on your family at this time.” It was as if a weight lifted from my shoulders and my heart had space to breathe. I needed to hear that. While it wasn’t directly from my own kids’ school, with the flight or fight response within me now set at ease, common sense and rational thought did manage to kick in. If that had come from a school in our country, it is the answer I had been seeking. The communication went on like an enchanting, deeply resonant song drawing me in: “Don't worry about your child regressing in school. Every single child is in this boat and they all will be okay. When we are back in the classroom, we will focus on their learning and meet their educational needs. Teachers are experts at this! Don't pick fights with your children because they don't want to do any activities. Don't scream at your children for not following the timetable. Don't insist on 2 hours of learning time if they are resisting it. See if you can make learning fun through their play. Over the coming weeks, you may see an increase in behaviour issues with your children. Whether it's anxiety, or anger, or protests that they can't do normal things - it will happen. You will potentially see more meltdowns, tantrums, and oppositional behaviour. This is normal and expected under these circumstances. What children need right now is to feel comforted and loved. To feel like it is all going to be okay.” In short, this kind of heart-felt communication set the perfectionist and people pleaser in me at ease. I felt understood, I felt my children were understood; I felt validated. I recognised that this is exactly the kind of communication I need to write to myself more often. While this is a deep process of conscious learning for me, I also recognise there are many parents who don’t have these same triggers. They may be adopting the home school curriculum and that works well for them and their family, or they may wholeheartedly take an entirely different direction without even a thought or a care for what anyone thinks or expects. My triggers are not necessarily your triggers, but you can be sure if you are feeling ill at ease in the world right now you are being triggered by something. Become aware of the narratives in your head, this is your opportunity to do something about them, it does not serve you to be in a chronic flight or fight state. Yes, there is a new virus out there. Someone you know or someone you care about may even have died, and this – like all death – is hard for those left trying to figure out who they are in the world without that loved one. However, most people will not catch nor die from the virus; I know the more robust my immune system, the more likely I am to remain healthy. Nothing compromises a human immune system quicker than fear (check out Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress for more information on that). The chances are that you, like me, are faced with the challenges, and therefore opportunities, these movement restrictions have created. This is life calling you to become unencumbered of ideas and beliefs that may have served you once, but no longer do. Dive into the narratives, and really challenge yourself on whether those narratives help or hinder you. Becoming at ease with our inner world is the key to being at ease in the world around us. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Is This the Opportunity of a Lifetime?, Are You Overlooking the Obvious Opportunities in Your Life? and What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Image by Andre Mouton from Pixabay I can see that loving me for who I am, today, not what I can be tomorrow, and loving my life for what it is today, is a worthy goal in every respect. But if I can’t do it today, if I can’t love myself, will I beat myself up? Or will I allow in enough love, enough understanding, to be gentle with myself and simply try again tomorrow, knowing I am doing the best I can?
I don’t find it easy to be kind to myself. Growing up I learned I often had to be something else, someone else, than who I was being in that moment, to be loveable. This was inadvertent, through a combination of messages about acceptable behaviours and my parents’ reactions to my thoughts, desires and requests; it was certainly not intentional on their part. Then, in early adulthood, I fell totally and utterly in love. Finally, I felt I had someone who could love me for me, someone who brought out something more light-hearted in me. But less than two years later, he left me. As I was swallowed by a gaping chasm of pain, loneliness and grief, I blamed myself for being too needy and too serious. Maybe I was those things, but I can see now I was still loveable; the only person who didn’t understand that was me. I beat myself up about that for decades, decades, and kept playing out some version of needing to be more in my life in order to be happy. And did it make me happy? No, according to an amazing lady I met recently who has the capacity to reflect back to me exactly who I am being in that moment, formidable is what I have become. This is not gentle; it is not kind; it is not loving; it is harsh. With my partner incapacitated at the moment, having broken his leg, this is probably the most time we have had together since our children were born. It has led to some interesting and introspective conversations about the things our children are reflecting back to us, things that we might want to change about ourselves and our habits. I’ve always known how different my partner and I are, but what these conversations have crystallised for me is just how self satisfied my partner is versus my opposite sense of self dissatisfaction. He has a self satisfied light that beams from him; it was one of the first things that attracted me to him. In truth, I believe that light is within us all, it is just that it’s often obscured. In our parenting, while my partner and I each recognise aspects of ourselves that are less than desirable, our reactions to that are quite different. I am hard on myself, feeling less than, and driven to change. He is far gentler with himself and, while wanting and committing to change, still remains essentially self satisfied. It is not that I haven’t felt the satisfaction of the expansive and joyful feeling of connecting with the source of who I am, it is more that many of my thoughts and beliefs disconnect me. The sense of self worth I have was not built from the inside out; it was built on trying to please others outside myself. This is something I have sought to fix on the journey to me, and I have spent the last few years getting to know many of the parts of me that I have denied, rejected or disowned. But my reaction to these recent conversations with my partner has given me another lens through which to look. I can consider that the path to enlightenment is also, paradoxically, another path upon which I can opt to beat myself up. Spiritual growth is something I thrive on, and there is no doubt it is a good thing. However, if I see the growth as necessary for me to be somehow more worthy than I am today, then I know that is not serving me. It is, in fact, contradicting the very growth I seek. Being gentle with myself, while learning to love all the parts of me, is something I am yearning and learning, slowly. It takes vulnerability and willingness to set strong boundaries around my own needs and desires. Meanwhile, I know that every day of my life I’ve done the best I could, with what I knew, felt and believed at the time. I can’t change the past, but I can change how I view it, and I can certainly change how I view things in the present. What about you, how hard are you on yourself? Do you fear that going easier on yourself will lead to more disappointment or not meeting other people’s expectations? Do you feel worthy of love? I like to look at it this way, would you benefit from more love? And if you are not able to give it to yourself, do you think others will be able to love you enough to make up for that? I pray that we each find ways to let the love in, because I don’t have to use much imagination to picture this world full of people who are withholding themselves from love. But a world full of self loving people? Now, that would be quite something. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Why Resenting Your Parents is Healthy, You Are the Gift Your Ancestors Gave to the World, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling and You Are Not as Important to Your Parents as You (or They) Think. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. Heal Your Past Hurts To Help You Fulfill Your Potential. I want to acknowledge the many awful moments that my children have experienced the worst of who I am. Moments where I’ve dropped into flight or fight mode and spewed forth the worst of who my parents were to me in those same moments.
You know the moments, the ones where you suddenly realise how much you sound like your mother or father? I also acknowledge the many awful moments in my life where my partners have experienced the worst of who I am. These were the moments I also dropped into flight or fight mode, or the sympathetic nervous system response, reacting to something that reminded me of the way I was treated as a child, only this time I wasn’t powerless to hold back my fury at such treatment. You know the moments, the ones where you feel criticized, undervalued, blamed, or the many myriad of emotions that our parents used elicit in us as we were growing up? I am not perfect, and I am not always right, if there is such a thing. But I do observe most of us walking around as our child selves dressed in adult skin. The real test is under stress, which is when we revert to old patterns. I know that it would have helped me a lot growing up to have heard “it is not you; it is my stuff that I am dealing with”. Instead I heard “it is you, it is your bad behaviour that is making me act like this towards you.” As a child, I had no context of the family history, I had no concept of what either of my parents had suffered themselves growing up, but I saw it written in their behaviours, and I thought I was to blame. This is not about the atrocities that happen, though it applies to those things too, it is about the far more pervasive emotional abuse that occurs unknowingly in most households. If I interact with others outside the home and have friends and colleagues who think I’m a nice person, it is lovely. But if I then walk through the door of my home each day and become someone less than lovely, it is a huge warning sign that I’m being inauthentic. The exhausting pretense of going out into the world and acting in ways I was taught and learned were appropriate means I then come home and am too tired, perhaps too hurt even, to keep that all up. How I interact with my children, the example I show them in terms of my own emotional equilibrium and how I maintain it, is everything. I can yell at them from the kitchen like a director shooting a movie and expecting absolute compliance, or I can walk over to where they are and look them in the eyes while talking to them. I mean, if I had a guest in my house, I wouldn’t just yell at them would I? I can carry on yelling at them to hurry up while I myself am barely making it to the car on time, distracted by a message on my phone. Or I can ignore my phone and be more present with my kids and help get them to the car on time with much less fuss. Heck, we could even make a game out of it. All of this seems so ridiculous and yet it is normal. Generation after generation unintentionally and unwittingly repeating wounds and hurts; until someone says “no more”. For me personally, I have to be that person. I can’t accept behaviour from myself that perpetuates constant pain and mediocrity. If I am to fulfill my potential, if my kids have any hope of fulfilling theirs, we must unburden ourselves of these patterns. From all I have been able to ascertain, although many people tend to spend many hours in therapists offices around the world delving into their childhood, it takes more than just recognising where these behaviours and patterns come from. I have known many people able to recite quite aptly exactly why they are the way they are, and yet feel powerless to change. Despite the best of intentions, without actual healing taking place, each time I get triggered, my sympathetic nervous system is turned on and, boom, I am back in child mode. That takes a huge amount of willpower and persistence to overcome. True healing only ever seems to take place if the memories of the relevant events are refocused while in an open and relaxed state. As I mentioned at the outset, it would have helped me a lot growing up to have heard “it is not you; it is my stuff that I am dealing with”. Instead I heard “it is you, it is your bad behaviour that is making me act like this towards you.” That creates a shame state which is totally destructive. Instead, if I can go back into some of those early memories in a relaxed state, preferably guided by someone who is experienced in this type of work, I can acknowledge that child-me deserved better. I can then refocus the memories away from an attachment to me being somehow bad, by recognising the real culprit; my parents’ own childhood traumas. In Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation I talk about The Completion Process by Teal Swan, one of the most powerful techniques for healing I’ve used (and continue to use). Here is a link to an enlightening video of her doing this process with a client, it is certainly excellent at demonstrating just how early in our life these traumas occur and the patterns begin, and how to heal them. There is also this other article that gives a great overview of trauma recognition and releasing techniques. Marisa Peers is another good self help source. Family Constellations is a possible way to go; there are many ways to conquer our shortcomings and suffering, it is just a question of finding something and someone who works for you. As I said to someone else this week, you are never too old to heal. If there is breath still in us, I believe it is in fact our duty. I truly hope that you will make the quest to give yourself the love you deserve a priority in your life. It really will be a huge gift to you, but also an amazing legacy for your family. I will be cheering you on and celebrating as you step into your best life, giving us all hope and inspiration. If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy You Are the Gift Your Ancestors Gave to the World, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling and Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. |
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