My young niece had shared with me a powerful poem she has written about women, in part of it she wrote:

“Imagine a life
Where she wouldn’t look over her shoulder
And see a man doing no work
But he will still be paid more than her”
 
I longed to be able to say “We’ve evolved beyond that” but, while many men do of course work (and work hard), it gave me pause knowing this was an observation from our next generation and correlates with many of the facts and statistics I’ve read about ongoing inequality.

She gave me permission to share it and a good friend of mine responded:

“It is true, our hearts are somber that our young rising women look out and see a world that works only for a few. However, we, the elders, know there is good work to be done, and we eagerly pass on the baton encouraged because we can now hold better reflections and conversations than our elders did.”

This is so true.

When I was invited to speak as an influencer at a summit for woman this week, an interesting mix of emotions ran through me. I was grateful for the opportunity, surprised to be thought of as an influencer and excited about the prospect of women taking a fresh look at themselves.

But while speaking fits with my longer term vision, I had to step back and really assess whether this is something I’d like to say yes or no to in this moment. My gut told me “Not yet, I’ll be over extending myself”, my mind niggled “Am I just making excuses? Am I afraid?”

I sat with these questions for a while. I can’t deny wondering how I’d measure up, but I generally enjoy public speaking. I find it easier to express myself when I know people are actually interested in what I’m talking about and the platform is mine uninterrupted for a while.

So I laughed at myself and thought how ironic that the true issue lies at the heart of an aspect of my feminine side that needs to be honoured.

Having operated in the corporate world for many years running from meeting to meeting, which plays to the masculine aspects of my nature, I now try to keep everything as fluid as possible because so much of my life still revolves around the kids’ schedule, which in turns revolves around school (again a very masculine way of working).

I’ve discovered I need time that is fluid so I can dial it up or down depending on how I’m feeling.

For example, I was reflecting in a conversation this week on how I see a woman’s monthly menstrual cycle in terms of my energy; to me it’s like four seasons in a month. There are days when I feel decidedly Spring-like and want to get on with more physically-taxing tasks, there are days that are Summer-like when I feel very social, then there more Autumnal days when I turn inward and reflect,and finally the Winter days when I really do not feel like going out at all and want to rest a lot more.

Why is this talked about so little still?

The whole female physical structure gears up month after month, for four decades of a woman’s life, to create and host another being. And having brought two beautiful little beings into the world, I know it’s nothing short of miraculous. The whole process is not an aside, it’s inherent in my existence as a female, and I feel the beat of my life goes way more smoothly when I can go with that rhythm instead of a man made one.

I was reflecting on my life changes further after having a quick e-catch up this week with a publisher I haven’t spoken to in quite a while, who was wanting to use a quote from an old article I’d written. I was asking her how she is finding motherhood and, in return, she asked – other than busy – how I’ve been?

I know that seems like a routine kind of exchange, but given the topics I write about and the ones she publishes, I thought more deeply “how have I been?”

The ten years since I began my own journey into motherhood flashed through my head.

In that time everything has come under a spotlight, no stone left unturned. When the pressure is on – and it was, the heat higher than at any other time in my life, everything came into sharp focus.

I had a short, pointed reminder of my old life a couple of weeks ago when I found an old schedule of my day I’d written out when the kids were very young:

You can probably guess by the schedule I quickly lost patience and energy for the career and corporate world I had worked so hard to attain success in. Motherhood demanded the more feminine aspects of me to come to the fore, the children needed me to really see them and be able to hold their space emotionally.
 
The codependent relationship style I had unwittingly entered into as a child and unconsciously adopted in adulthood became untenable. My strong desire for my children to be who they truly are, forced me to identify and take responsibility for my people pleasing ways. Becoming healthier and creating better boundaries has shaken all my primary relationships to the core.
 
It’s been nothing short of a metamorphosis, one I’m still emerging from. It left me depleted and, while I’ve found more balance, I’m only really starting to rebuild strength from that more authentic platform.
 
But the thing that struck me was just how intense and polarizing the middle years were, suddenly thrust into the realms of watching my mother die (from colon cancer) while simultaneously dealing with violent outbursts and constant tantrums from both kids over a period of a few years as they started school and struggled (neurodiversity can be subtle).
 
I swung from one extreme to the other in my close relationships. No longer able to give others the attention I once had, being hyper attuned to their needs, I became much more self centred out of necessity; getting angry and resentful when my boundaries were trodden upon. While I survived, it was painful.
 
I see this in a similar way to the male-female balance having swung to an extreme as women have tried to reclaim a more worthy sense of place in the world. So many women, in the name of equal rights, have swarmed to university, to jobs and a world that was predominantly the domain of men.
 
In the process a new archetype arose in our collective consciousness, the superwoman, she who can do it all. In truth, having been one of those for a while, I feel it was nothing short of torture, and I was certainly not comfortable in my own skin. I think men too have become confused and resentful about their roles. What’s the answer?
 
What I’d dearly love to see more than anything, is the needs of the newest born of our race being recognised far more than they are so the emotional pandemic and dysfunctional cycles of human existence are broken. In those earliest months and years, if I had known then what I know now about healthy attachment and attunement, I would not have shipped my children off to someone else while I went to work, no matter how wonderful she was.

But what my kids needed wasn’t just their mother present in body, they needed me fully present in myself, not the wounded child in an adult body that I was.

As Teal Swan so eloquently says “You cannot be attuned to a child and have them grow up narcissistic or codependent. You cannot be attuned to someone and drop a bomb on them or shoot them. You cannot be attuned to someone and say the wrong thing to them. You cannot attune to someone and stay in denial about his or her reality”. 

If a woman wants to become an engineer or a CEO, sure, why not. Or if a man wants to become a stay-at-home-parent or a hairdresser, fantastic. Or, possibly even more controversially these days, if a woman wants to stay at home to look after their kids while the man wants to work, let’s make that work.

But I think the key to all this doesn’t lie in equal rights or opportunities the way it’s been played out, the key seems to me to lie in each of us stepping into conscious awareness of the dysfunctional cycles of thinking and behaviour that appear to get played out generation after generation. In short, while I was hyper-attuned to others, I had to learn to tune into my own needs and desires.

As I have become aware of and ferreted out that dysfunction in my thinking and habits, I’ve rediscovered that the only true power exists within me – a fact I suspect that man-made power constructs like schools, health systems, governments and economic systems would prefer I am not acquainted with.

I can only imagine as people begin to attune to and honour their own unique needs, talents and desires, men and women will see each other through fresh eyes.

My niece wrote:
 
“Imagine a world
United at last
The thick fog of inequality
Raised at last”
 
I believe the inequality of opportunity that exists will melt away in a world where we attune to ourselves and others. We will become comfortable enough in our own skin to be able to admire and embrace the diversity around us. The structures of success will fall away and morph into structures that support the many, rather than the few. This is not a conversation about male or female, this is a conversation about re-parenting ourselves, creating healthy boundaries, truly seeing ourselves and others and fulfilling our potential as unique, wonderful, strange, marvelous beings.
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How You Are Complicit in the Oppression of Others, Womanhood: A Story of Our Time, Even in Grief There Are lessons to Be Learned, How to Stand in Your Truth and Be Heard Without a Fight, Take Back Your Power - Only One Thing Need Change for You to Feel Good  and You See What Happens When You Learn to Speak Your Truth. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

A number of quotes from different authors clicked into a cohesive picture in my mind this week of the many ways in which I had been subconsciously turning away from my true self and the choices that have existed over the years that I had been blind to, instead feeling trapped in so many unnecessary ways…

Saying no to someone by saying yes to me (with grace) is, I believe, one of the most commonly missed opportunities in my life. I have awoken to the many ways in which I abandoned my own free will and now see quite clearly when others are doing this, or – at the opposite end of the spectrum – doing what they want regardless of the cost to others.

I was contemplating this early one morning and found my thoughts gathering some momentum. It started with thinking about my kids’ school, and then expanded across other aspects of education, into the health, financial and government systems.

When I am told to do something I get triggered.

Now I can see that there are situations in which telling versus asking would be important, such as life and death situations. But actually, my experience and observations lead to me believe it’s the predominant mode of communication among families and coming from institutions who hold some sort of (often perceived) authority or power over the people they interact with.

From my own experience I’d say this all comes down to the authentic parts of myself that I denied, suppressed and disowned over the years, in favour of a more palatable me that could survive the indoctrination into my family and society.

In the field of child psychology, and psychology generally, the word Attunement is well known. Dr Gabor Mate, an expert on childhood trauma and its effects on development, says “Attunement is necessary for the normal development of the brain pathways and neurochemical apparatus of attention and emotional regulation. It is a finely calibrated process requiring that the parent remain him/herself in a relatively non-stressed, non-anxious, non-depressed state of mind.”

This can be a huge ask. I am the first to admit that – if I was never aware of my shortcomings before – they certainly became very obvious with young children to challenge me. Of all my relationships, the one with my children is the most intense, followed by the relationship with my partner.

And guess what lies at the heart of our relationships?  Attunement.

“We learn attunement by virtue of other people being attuned to us” says Teal Swan. Ask yourself the following questions...

• Do I feel like my parents understood me when I was little, or even tried to understand me?
• Did they see into me and feel into me and have empathy for me and adjust their behaviour accordingly or not?
• Did they acknowledge how I felt or did they invalidate it, telling me I shouldn’t feel that way?
• How did my parents treat me when I was cranky, frightened or upset?

As I’ve said before, I would imagine most people would recognise the lack of attunement in their own childhood, for being seen and not heard and do as I say not as I do have been predominant tenets of parenting for a long long time. Thus, as Teal also points out, dysfunctional relationships are the norm, not the exception.

One of the most helpful things she says that has really stuck with me is “when our parents were not attuned to us, we went one of two ways to cope with the terror of the experience:

1. We learned that our survival depended on disconnecting from them and retreating into a narcissistic bubble where all that was real and all that mattered was our individual experience. Or
2. We learned that our survival depended on being hyper attuned to the people in our lives so that we could perceive them, anticipate their behaviour and make adjustments to our behaviour accordingly in order to avoid harm.”

So I was thrilled to read Daniel Shaw’s explanation of these two typical responses in a slightly different way that gave me an even greater understanding of this dynamic. In his book Traumatic Narcissism he says “a child who is trapped in a narcissistic relationship system can either externalise or internalise the traumatising behaviour of the adult:

1. The child who externalises their experience perpetuates the pattern by projecting onto others the shame, guilt, humiliation and fear she experienced and cannot tolerate herself.
Whereas

2. The child who internalises their experience first develops a protector identity, usually dissociative, whose aim is to reduce harm by anticipating the narcissist behaviour of the adult. Later, as the child develops, this part that arose out of protection begins to function as a persecutor, a replica of the abusive adult that now lives inside the growing child’s mind.”

A narcissistic relationship system is one in which one or both of the parents are more focused on their own feelings than those of their children.

In hindsight I can see I became hyper vigilant to others’ feelings, internalising everything, and co-dependent in my relationships.

It’s probably no surprise that each of these coping styles tend to attract its opposite and – while one is good at taking care of everyone else’s needs, neither is actually good at recognising and taking care of their own in a healthy way.

So when my partner, the kids, or someone else comes along sweeping me into something with no regard to my free will, it is easy to see why I get triggered.

Even as a child I inherently knew my sovereignty, and I can see – in retrospect that any anger I felt was a sure sign that my boundaries had been violated. But I had nothing I could do with that anger except suppress it, creating trauma, or express it from a defensive standpoint – usually resulting in such an unwelcome reaction that I eventually had to choke down how I felt regardless – also creating trauma.

Bessel Van Der Kolk says “Trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself, of what I will call self-leadership. The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and mind – of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed or collapsed.”

Bert Hellinger, the psychotherapist best known for his Family Constellations therapy, said that belonging is the most important need of children. As such, a child will make incredible sacrifices to belong to her family system.

Daniel Shaw puts it this way “Children will go to great lengths to keep their parent’s good. Even if this means becoming the bad one in relation to the parents.”

Jane Peterson, Director of the Human System’s Institute points out that a healthy relational system is quite different:

“In a healthy dyad, both members are seen as selves, or subjects, with thoughts, feelings and needs. Healthy relationships are marked by a mutuality of relations and reciprocal interactions. Giving and taking is a dynamic flow with the contributions of each member valued by the others. These systems are marked by fluidity, the ability of members to tolerate and even appreciate points of view that are different from their own.”

She goes on to say “for the person wounded by the narcissistic behaviour of a similarly wounded adult, this can sound like a fairy tale. The way back to self-love, mutual interactions, a flow of giving and taking seems far away. It is possible and it takes work to repattern the brain and nervous system to learn what safety is, and to be able to receive love and appreciation.”

I see this played out beautifully in Lisa Romano’s story. Lisa Romano developed people pleasing tendencies through her hyper attunement as I did, and has shared her story in The Road Back to Me and My Road Beyond the Codependent Divorce. Both books are an easy read and give excellent insight into these complex dynamics through the everyday insidious examples that I have seen crop up time and again in my own relationships.

She shares:

“I had to learn to let go of my fear of displeasing my father, and accept that in living my own life, it was quite possible my father would in fact abandon me. In so many ways however, he already had…In all of my fear, I could never have known, that ultimately I had been taught to abandon and reject my self.”
In trying to figure out why she felt so angry as she started to become aware of and reclaim her sense of self she shares a conversation with her therapist:

“When my mother was angry she would rant and rave and sing her long list of complaints about me, or my sister or my brother….If she was really mad she’d clench her teeth and get in our faces and yell until she turned cherry red.”

I recognised this pattern from my own childhood and – one day – found myself starting to repeat it with my small children and knew then and there I had to take action.

Her therapist enquires:

“Did she hit you when she got angry?”

“Yes sometimes” Lisa answers

“Did she curse you?”

“Yes” Lisa says

“Did she ever label you as bad, or selfish, or call you any other mean names?”

“Yes. She said I was bad a lot. She called me selfish all the time….”

“…Lisa, I know why you are angry. Depression is anger that has been turned inward. You are angry now, because for the first time in your life you are taking you seriously.”

“…Lisa, you cannot heal what you do not allow yourself to feel. The more you feel, the deeper you heal, and the better you feel.”

She reflects in a later chapter “Although I was aware that my family was a codependent dynamic unit that operated under the veils of denial and, as I recovered from codependency in my life, I would inevitably need to confront my familial dysfunction in the process, I was not prepared for the enormous fortitude it would take to do so, or the avalanches of grief that were becoming as familiar as breath itself.”

“Only when I am asked to explain how it was that I made it through those early years after my marriage ended, do I stop to realise just how far I’ve come, and how many mountains I have climbed.
From the time I was a child, within my chest was a beating heart that beat the drum of desire, a desire for peace. My heart would not rest until, within my being, I found peace.

If I have learned anything in this life it is this – all love starts with self love…and self love comes only by way of embracing the courage to tell the truth, even if that topples over a few apple carts along the way.”

Beautifully put.

But where to begin? I had a friend ask this week whether I used The Completion Process after reading the book, or whether I used a practitioner. As I responded, I just do it myself, among many other approaches I use to heal the internal wounds I find. That’s me all over, someone very self driven and independent, both edges sharpened by the experiences of trying to stay one step (or ten) ahead of any criticism that might come my way and, again, reinforce the notion that I had no right to a self.

I was reminded though of a powerful question from Tony Robbins’ documentary I Am Not Your Guru:
“Who did you crave love from the most, as a child, and who did you have to be to get it?”

I reread this in an article by Kathy Caprino, who eloquently stated “once you can feel and recognise what triggers you to feel unsafe, unloved and unacceptable, you can then explore the root behind it.”

For me, the first step though was to recognise that was how I was feeling. Because on the surface it manifested more as an ongoing knot of anger and exhaustion from trying to stay one step ahead of everyone and everything.

I simply didn’t see how deeply rooted my fear of rejection was, and I was angry because I was rejecting my self, fooling myself into believing I had to be accepted as someone other than who I actually am in order to survive.

I thought I was trapped in many situations, that I had no free will and certainly no way to exercise it gracefully. I have learned that is simply not true, and I am still learning how to exercise it with grace, but it’s getting easier.

In what ways are you abandoning your own free will? And are you willing to take the journey that will allow you to reclaim it, and allow us to see you and accept you for who you truly are?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Overcome the Greatest Human Fear – Be the True You, What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances, Risk Your Friendships More in Order to Be Fully Loved and How to Stop Being Triggered by What Other People Think. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

My mother-in-law and I went to see Yesterday (a 1970s tribute show) at the theatre and I was immediately transported back to my childhood in a good way. One song took me back to a moment on a Sunday night in 1975, I was only a pre-schooler then, and Sunday was a bath night but it was also the night the Top 40 tunes were revealed on the radio.

I’d forgotten just how big a part in my life music played as I was growing up. The popular music of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s was a constant in my life, with Top of the Pops a much-loved weekly TV show on our screen. One of my favourite activities on holiday with my family as a young teenager was going to the Bournemouth Pavilion in the evenings, where the ballroom was repurposed to serve drinks to hundreds of people sitting around tables listening to the live music. 

While doing healing work on the deliberate journey to uncover authentic me, by necessity I find myself remembering and observing parts of my childhood that are not always so happy, and not useful to my encumbered adult psyche. But there is another side to this work, and it’s the rediscovery of the parts of me that either haven’t seen the light of day in a long time or, in some cases, ever felt safe enough to express themselves.

I was having a conversation with one of my nieces about one of her favourite film series, Divergent. I like the constant reminder in the movies – to paraphrase some of the best quotes from them - we should always, under all circumstances, make decisions ourselves rather than letting society make decisions on our behalf. So she and I then got into a conversation about how much society influences our thinking.

This led to some observations about how much we each suppress our true selves in a bid to try to fit in. But the thing I personally find more difficult is to define that real self, so the music show I went to with my mother-in-law was a great reminder about that aspect of authentic me.

While in recent years my career and children have filled my headspace, making silence preferable to noise when I do have a moment to myself, it was wonderful to experience enjoying listening to, singing along and dancing to music. It also moves me emotionally, and I feel a deep connection with much of what I listen to.

I was watching a Tedx Talk by JP Sears Say YES! To Your Weirdness. I love JP’s humour, and I love the way he uses it to deliver more serious messages like “in seeking others’ approval we reject ourselves” and “a willingness to embrace discomfort is essential”. That makes perfect sense, when I’ve rejected parts of myself in order to fit in, rediscovering those parts and revealing them is sure to be uncomfortable at first.

He also makes the point well that approval (from others) is not acceptance. As a living example of his own work, JP has successfully relaunched his career from Life Coach to Spiritual Comedian in the last few years. Many of his recent videos are full of political satire in the face of current world events and yet amid a backdrop of evolving consciousness. By saying yes to his weirdness, he is now well placed to voice things others may be feeling but aren’t able to put words to.

This reminds me of another article of Teal Swan’s I read recently on How to Receive Love. She makes the point that, while I might think it should be easy to receive love, many people struggle with receiving it. This could be because of conditions placed on receiving it, such as my good behaviour, or feelings of unworthiness, or undeserving, or a fear of losing someone, or even an addiction to reciprocity.

If I take this alongside JP’s point, it is hard for others to love and accept me when I’ve rejected myself. So rediscovering, accepting and loving that real me is of vital importance to my happiness.

A good friend of mine, who is also on this journey, was telling me about some art sessions she is setting up for local kids. In her typical self-deprecating fashion, she said “It’s nothing earth-shattering, just me hosting a small get-together each week, we will discover and talk about a different style of art and (materials provided thanks to a local grant) the kids can have a go at creating whatever painting they want in that style”.

I think that freedom of expression is earth-shattering. My daughter complains bitterly about the painting and drawing at school all being highly dictated, she relishes having that kind of artistic freedom. And for families where art supplies are beyond their means or not on their radar, this gives those kids a place in which to come home to a little bit of themselves, I think it’s beautiful.

I also heard from a fellow seeker this week, who calls his website Inside-Out Mastery. He’s written an article giving ten easy tips to finding happiness when feeling trapped. It is fantastic to discover and connect with others who are on their own journey to self-discovery and sharing what they are learning.

For my niece, she has reclaimed a little piece of herself in sporting some new Doc Martins that speak to the rambunctious, rebellious kid inside.

Every little piece of the real us that we can shine a light on and reclaim is a triumph for our authenticity, a stake in the ground of our own sovereignty. What are the parts of you that have been sitting on a dusty shelf or were long since buried that you might now have the courage to reach for and reclaim? These are the parts that will allow us to love the real you, as truly strange as that might once have seemed.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Respect Your Own Value, Are You Getting Distracted From Who You Came to Be This Life?, Risk Your Friendships More in Order to Be Fully Loved and How to Stop Being Triggered by What Other People Think. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I’m going to go for the short answer upfront: no. However, I will admit there have been times in my life I’ve found it hard to really hear what someone has to say when I’ve known they hold a different set of beliefs or opinions than I do. Why is that? Honestly it’s a question of safety.

To take an extreme, could I bring myself to listen to one of Hitler’s speeches or read Mein Kampf without any kind of a veil or judgement? I’ll admit I could not, I’d find it repugnant. Yet when I read one of his quotes “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed” it feels like a truth; I can think of many examples beyond his where people have been (and continue to be) manipulated like this.

In my own case, it did not feel psychologically or emotionally safe for me to have my own beliefs and opinions (that were divergent to the pack) as I was growing up. It seems to me it was (and still is) the norm. I certainly wanted to fit in, be accepted and feel validated.

Despite being well-intentioned by my parents, teachers and other key influencers in my life, it was damaging enough that I no longer recognised my own inner voice; I would often feel fear, guilt or shame and was inadvertently trained to look outside myself for answers. This is where my strong sense of calling comes from, to help others hear and trust their inner voice.

The irony is, by not living life from my own authentic standpoint and not even really knowing I had one of those (it was more just that life could often seem heavy or off), I attracted all sorts of painful circumstances into my life.

Now I’m an adult with curiosity and critical thinking, and I’ve figured out all those circumstances were pointing me somewhere – back to the real me. And it has taken a while to really figure out who that is, and what I actually believe about life.

So it was interesting to me that, when I wrote ” a central theme of my authentic paradigm is that there’s no one truth, we each hold within us our own truth” in How to Find the Courage to Let Us Hear Your Heart’s Voice someone I know felt really challenged by that.

The context of my sharing that belief was not a teaching, it was a vulnerable disclosure of a desire that I had felt on my journey, a desire to feel validated by those who had brought me into the world, to validate my inherent right to my own worldview.

Having someone feel challenged by that view was a wonderful opportunity for me to check in on how I’m travelling. The key benefit was the triumphal recognition of the old defence patterns that momentarily kicked in, and then drifted away on the tide as I dropped out of flight-or-fight mode, and into the space of the adult who has done some healing, and has the experience and wisdom to now deal with this kind of questioning.

I was intrigued by what these questions would awaken within me. I realised I’m feeling quite secure in my paradigm and I liked the answers that came forth in response to questions about absolutes, right and wrong, good and evil and so on.

For me, it is all a matter of perspective. I am aware of myself as a consciousness inhabiting a human body, but I am simultaneously aware of myself as a far more expansive consciousness – as I am aware of all others in just the same way.

Now that, right there, would challenge many people’s paradigms. I am okay with that; it’s my own experiences of this that have led me to my views.

Do I think in terms of absolutes? Not generally. I find absolutes constricting. But if there is an absolute, and people are able to learn again how to hear and trust their authentic inner voice, I trust this absolute will reveal itself within the sovereignty of their soul.

I see right and wrong as judgements, and wonder “who is the judge?” There are many sides to each story, many hurts, many intentions. For example, how many believe it was right to execute Saddam Hussein? Can killing someone ever be called right? I suspect many people have differing views on the matter.

The same could be said of Al Qaeda’s attacks on the West. I remember wondering as I watched in shock at the twin towers falling, feeling the horror and desperation of the situation and wondering “what drives people to do this?”, yet some part of me understanding that there must be another side to this story.

As to good and evil, was Hitler evil, or were many of his acts evil? Some see no difference in the two. But I can’t help but wonder from what place of inner pain does someone incite such heinous acts?
If you are a child growing up right now in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Yemen or any of the other conflict-torn places in our world today, who seems good and who seems evil, who is right and who is wrong?

And how to do we respond? With revenge, retaliation, punishment?

Now these examples are all what I’d call big-T trauma, they are the kinds of examples commonly recognised as life threatening and harmful in physical, psychological and emotional ways. These are acts that affect whole generations of collective peoples. I see polarisation around who is condemned and why, depending on the perspective.

To me, acts of harm, harm all. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I hurt a creature, I hurt myself. If I hurt this planet, I hurt myself. It is all connected. All I see is that pain begets pain until the light of conscious awareness is shone upon it. So where is the compassion, the rehabilitation?

And how does all of this link into the life I am living, with a partner, children, a family, a community, colleagues and so many other versions of relationships, with whom I can disagree vehemently in what they believe and in how they conduct themselves and in what harm I feel within me in these interactions?

And why do I feel harm? Why do I get so upset? Usually because that person has accidentally tripped over my paradigm, my view of myself and the world and what is right and what is wrong.

As Teal Swan says “When we fight from two different perceptual realities, we only end up strengthening the current beliefs and values of the other, causing further polarisation. Instead we must shift our focus to the vulnerability that the other side may be feeling.”

I see answers to reducing harm by creating awareness, understanding and education in how we indoctrinate our newborns into this human experience. When I think, for example, of Gabor Mate’s insightful descriptions of the first year of an infant’s life in his book Scattered Minds, and how they link to our neurobiology and behaviours, there is much pain created in this world from an inadvertent lack of attunement.  

And I see answers in how we help those who have misguidedly learned that their power comes from taking it from others, they will never be able to take enough to satisfy themselves; the power is within. As an adult I see it as my responsibility to re-parent myself, to create a sense of secure attachment and attunement and learn to interact with the world from that standpoint.

Which brings me back to becoming aware of the unhelpful thought and behavioural patterns that exist within, and cause harm. I am talking about the often subconscious beliefs I might have about feeling invisible, or powerless, or not enough, or too much, or unworthy, or being unwanted, or not important, or different, or inferior, or wrong, or alone, or bad, or deprived, or worthless, or a failure,or a burden, or crazy, or that I don’t belong, or I’m not important, or I don’t matter, or I’m not safe.

The journey to me has involved – and continues to involve – questioning the validity of these subtle little suckers that can create so much misery. These thoughts got planted there from the earliest moments and they simply do not serve who I am today.

As I have become more conscious of these, I have observed myself and others living in very unique, self-created and self-centred webs of protection that out-served their use long ago.  As I confront these and integrate past experiences with the person I am today, I become less defensive, more open, more able to really see and hear others.

I believe a more conscious world is a kinder and wiser world (to borrow a Sounds True tag line), I believe that we can evolve beyond the kind of atrocities that I have talked about in here, and beyond the insidious day to day reactions to the petty disagreements or comments or actions of other people around us.

Do you need to have unified beliefs to be able to really listen? No, but I believe you do need to have clear sight of your authentic self and feel safe and comfortable in your own skin in order to truly see the perspective of another.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Want to Make the World a Better Place? Tune In, You See What Happens When You Learn to Speak Your Truth, Let Us Hear Your Unique Perspective – But Be Kind and Be Wise, How to Stand in Your Truth and Be Heard Without a Fight and Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary). To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.