As a parent, two issues that I have really struggled with, and been out of synch with my partner on, are TV and processed foods. From early on I noticed my kids seemed to exhibit addictive behaviour around these two things.

What does addictive behaviour look like? There is never enough TV or so called treats, there are long drawn and often violent reactions to the withdrawal of these things, a constant longing for them to the exclusion of other, healthier, alternatives (like a trip to the park, or a good meal), and frankly there is a lack of motivation and connection to life. 

But I don’t think the issue is the TV or processed foods; I believe the issue is why they are drawn to them. The same could be said of any addiction. As a society, it seems that certain things (take drugs as an example) are vilified and criminalized even, while other potentially (more) harmful and addictive things (like cigarettes, alcohol, TV, social media etc) are legal and commonplace.

This week I was talking to someone who is in the process of firmly drawing some boundaries around the behaviours she will accept from an alcoholic partner. She understands where the desire to numb likely comes from; it is a result of a family history and trauma most of us would agree was horrific.

However, Dr Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-born Canadian physician (and Jewish survivor of the Holocaust) says of childhood trauma “yes this includes terrible events such as sexual exploitation, violence etc, but it also refers to any set of events that, over time, impose more pain on the child than his or her sensitive organism can process and discharge.

Trauma can occur when parents are too stressed, too distracted, too depressed, too beset by economic worry, too isolated etc to respond to a sensitive child’s need to be seen, emotionally held, heard, validated, made to feel secure. Thus, this is the kind of pain that also occurs in normal, happy, childhoods.”

I can easily see why my kids would have felt the need to soothe themselves using TV or treats, in a world where I – as a normal parent in this day and age – went to work and they spent most of their days in another person’s home with someone who (albeit lovely and loving) was not their mother. And when I was around them I was certainly stressed and distracted a lot of the time.

In Beyond Drugs: The Universal Experience of Addiction, Dr Gabor Maté says “addiction is neither a choice nor an inherited disease, but a psychological and physiological response to painful life experiences.”

Most addicted people use no drugs at all… Addiction is manifested in any behaviour a person craves,  finds temporary relief or pleasure in but suffers negative consequences as a result of and yet has difficulty giving up…It can encompass any human behaviour from work to shopping, sex to eating, extreme sports to TV to compulsive internet use, the list is endless.”

When Maté asks his patients what their addictive focus gives them, universally the answers are about coping with stress, escaping emotional pain, giving peace of mind, a sense of control or connection with others.

As I said in Our Sensitive Souls, “For those of us that are sensitive in our temperament, Maté’s work may lend some interesting insights to assist in healing the scars that run deep in our psyche. In an increasingly frenetic world, where overstimulation abounds, we have a job to do in helping ourselves and our children understand and nurture our strengths”.

To do this job well, I also have to understand the coping mechanisms, soothers or addictions, which have nestled into the cracks. Becoming aware of what I do, what my partner does and what the kids do in order to tune out/zone out/escape reality is a vitally important step in being able to meet life head on and find emotional balance.

Talking with someone else this week, who has a grandchild diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder), I can see how it has served me to give in to my children’s desire for more screen time because, honestly, dealing with the constant emotional tantrums and outbursts is exhausting and screen time provides a welcome reprieve.

However, it does not help my kids to be present, nor happy, in the world around them. It doesn’t help them to find ways to regulate their emotions, build resilience, connect with other people and build relationships and patience, As Simon Sinek says in this clip about the Millennial Generation, where will they find real joy?

The same is true of any addiction. If I can’t find my way through pain without tuning out or numbing myself against it, what chance do I have of finding real joy in my life? And what does that mean for the people around me?

These words came to me “I love all your broken pieces, but I can't live with you treating me like I'm the one who broke you. When you learn to recognise and love those jagged edges the way I do, then we can live in love.” Addiction causes pain to those around us, the ones we supposedly love.

Any addiction points to pain, which points to childhood coping mechanisms that require healing. Recognising and dealing with the consequences of our childhood trauma seems to me to be the most important thing we can collectively do to open the pathway to more joy.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Learn to See What Is in Plain Sight and Leverage Your Feelings to Find Your Authentic Self. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

What I’ve found over my years of investigation as someone who is self motivated to maintain my own health, is that there are a rich choice of alternatives to conventional medicines out there. In my experience, everything has its place, and with an open and curious mind, and a holistic approach to health, the goal of feeling well, having energy and vitality is entirely achievable.

In Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, I mentioned there have been many times in my life that I couldn’t find satisfactory answers from medical doctors. This is not to say there is no place for conventional medicine, on the contrary, but it is only one avenue among a great many.

​An example, close to my heart, was when I was trying to conceive and kept having miscarriages. I got told that Blighted Embryo’s (a cause of miscarriage) only generally happened once and were rare twice. Yet this happened to me on four occasions. Ultimately the response from doctors was a shrugging of the shoulders and not having any answers.

In the end, I found success in conceiving and delivering healthy babies when a couple of factors converged. The first was finally finding myself in a place where it was possible to forget about conceiving, since we had exhausted all natural and medical avenues and were on the wait list for IVF treatment. The second was a referral from someone, who had also had trouble conceiving, to an alternative health practitioner.

The practitioner had earned the nickname of baby doctor from his clients, and I sighed at the thought of going to see this guy who was a herbalist and used iridology to assist in diagnosis. As I suspected, I came away with recommendations for radically changing my diet (not high on my list of habits to change) and herbs. With nothing to lose I did as I was advised and – to my great delight - was pregnant with my first child the next month. The same happened with my second child.

Looking back on my notes of that first appointment, I can see he also picked up (just by looking at my eyes), the injury I sustained to my lower back when I was young, and a sluggish left kidney (which later produced a kidney stone) though I’ll admit I paid no attention to that issue at the time.


It is often the case that people explore alternatives to standard medical care when they are unable to find answers, and find their way back to more ancient wisdom and systems of healing. In the process people begin to gain a deeper understanding of their bodies and what is necessary for healing to occur. This is called the wounded healer phenomenon, a term first coined by Carl Jung.

In Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing, I noted that people often accept that when they go to see their doctor (or go into hospital) with chronic conditions they are likely not going to come out cured, they are going to come out with more medicine. This may temporarily ease the condition rather than cure it, but is likely to be creating deeper issues.

For example, my partner has chronic back pain, many trips to the doctor later they are still just as unaware of the cause or how to fix it and have told him his only option is pain management. His job is physical, so this means committing to decades of potent painkillers such as Tramadol.  These painkillers cause huge degradation to the internal environment of our bodies, ultimately creating breeding grounds for far more serious conditions.

Aspirin on its own, as a more benign example, has the effect of weakening the mucous membranes on the stomach wall and prone to resulting in an ulcer if taken over a long period. Yet if a very similar painkiller is taken on its own in a natural form, like the herb Meadowsweet, the constituents in that counteract that particular side effect. 

When my children then came along, I found myself at the doctor’s surgery more than I liked. In that first four years my kids had already been prescribed antibiotics at least once a year for relatively minor chest and skin infections, so I decided to focus on the more natural healing methods I’d come across over the years.

As I said in Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, my journey around health and healthcare has been a long and windy road over a number of decades. I’ve tried many different types of healthcare by many different healthcare practitioners, and read and researched a whole lot more.

There was an article in the Telegraph last year in the UK, about their Royal Family’s commitment to holistic health, which then went on to do a bit of a spot poll online that probably demonstrates the split in attitudes I come across in others quite well:

• 51.65% said “Yes – I’m a believer in maintaining harmony with our minds, bodies and natural world”
• 7.09% said “I’m very skeptical of choosing unproven medicines over evidence-based real ones” (for this read Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing)
• 41.25% said “Not at all – there’s no evidence that homeopathy (which is apparently the British Monarch’s preferred healing modality) is effective as a treatment option”

 
I do find, however, many of the greatest skeptics and cynics, while vocal and crude in their opinions, have simply not been put in a position where they’ve yet needed to go beyond the bounds of the medical and surgical treatments on offer via their publicly funded or subsidized doctor.

Recently I was told by a cynic that homeopathy could, in fact, be dangerous. I suspect they meant in the sense that they believe it’s no more than a placebo and thus an absence of ‘proper’ healthcare. For my part, I think the only thing that's dangerous is when people stop thinking for themselves and put their health in someone else's hands. 

Personally I find homeopathy extremely effective, especially now that I have found a Heilkunst practitioner, which refers to the more comprehensive system of healthcare homeopathy’s founder, Dr Hahnemann, developed. I’m finding it has a very real and impactful way of unraveling the various traumas and indignities my body has weathered over the years.

In an article in the Huff Post in December 2017, Dana Ullman observed that skeptics and cynics spread a lot of misinformation. He found it remarkable that many skeptics of homeopathy actually say that there is “no research” that has shown homeopathic medicines work. Such statements are false, and yet, these assertions are common in the media and even in some peer-review articles.

Misstatements and misinformation on homeopathy are predictable because this system of medicine provides a viable and significant threat to economic interests in medicine, let alone to the very philosophy and worldview of biomedicine.

In fact Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering the AIDS virus, set out to disprove homeopathic medicine and then surprised the scientific community with his strong support for it after his findings.

In an interview published in Science magazine of December 24, 2010, he said “I can’t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing (i.e. not placebos). They are water structures which mimic the original molecules.” The answers are not found in Biochemistry therefore, they are found in Physics.

Putting aside homeopathy, it is wise to consider the broader history of human healthcare (Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing), take the anthropologists view, which was largely based on herbal remedies. Herbs and fungi used to form around a quarter each of our diets, along with plants and animals. This gave us the required nutrients in a form that kept us healthy. As we focused more on just the plants and animals we've eroded our natural healthcare plan.

After all my own research and experience I came to the conclusion that the focus exclusively on pharmaceuticals in the world of conventional medicine and mainstream media is money driven. No one is looking for cures; they're creating symptoms and things to soothe symptoms.

This was no clearer to me than when my mum was diagnosed in 2017 with late stage bowel cancer. Like many of the baby boomer generation, steeped in the beliefs of the era that biochemical medicine and doctors alone are to be trusted, she was not to be dissuaded from her path.

Now, everyone dies, I accept this, so not everyone is going to be saved. However, I was completely stunned that in the valuable months while she underwent tests and awaited results, there was not a single recommendation or reference to her diet. Setting aside any skepticism about any other healing modality, the concept that what we eat has the ability to harm or heal is almost universally accepted.

​When I watched an episode of the docu-series Remedy about cancer, there was general agreement among the various practitioners that an integrated approach is probably best. One thing that stuck with me from that programme was the comments about those people who choose the solely natural route and then die, like Steve Jobs. As one practitioner commented, people die from the conventional treatment all the time (and in great numbers), and yet everyone seems to accept that.

Chemotherapy started from the use of mustard gas in WW1, they started using it and getting successes in the 1940’s, so after WW2 the electrical and nuclear industries got into the medical game. I just can’t get my head around a concept that basically nukes our bodies, it is so drastic and – while it does prolong some lives – it often has devastating effects.

In the Transcendence docu-series, Chris Wark’s story of beating cancer through breaking negative thoughts and emotions, and using the power of nutrition is remarkable.

He talks about how the fear alone (created from being told you have cancer) creates an internal environment in your body conducive to perpetuating the cancer. Out of fear he booked chemo, but never showed up. Instead he got busy creating better lifestyle habits, predominantly raising his thinking and nutrition. Every time fear would creep in, he’d have to catch it really quickly so those emotions didn’t rule him; instead he used gratitude to focus more positively.

A later Remedy episode talked about The Gonzalez Protocol: a proven, evidence-based, all-natural method that is achieving extraordinary results on both early and late stage cancer cases. The late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez was the pioneer who brought this forgotten method back into practice.

He was ridiculed, called a quack, and lived under constant threat of having his medical license taken away, or worse, but he believed in this protocol so strongly (he had healed hundreds of cancer patients with it) that he never stopped until his death a few years ago. Luckily, his work has been carried forward by his colleague Dr. Linda Isaacs who continues to save lives to this day.

There was a patient of his called Ann that reminded me of my mum’s situation. She had gone to Dr. Gonzalez with late stage pancreatic cancer after being given 3 months to live by modern oncologists. Unlike mum, twenty years on she was sharing her story.

What I liked about Ann’s story was her recount of going to see an Oncologist and refusing to book in for treatment after hearing what he had to say. He had told her that he was recommending chemotherapy in order to give her maybe another 15 months; this is pretty much what my mum had been told too.

When she refused the treatment he said very aggressively “woman, this is your best shot, without it you will die!” She stood up and replied “doctor, we are all going to die!” When she walked out, the nurses (who had all overheard) stood up and clapped her.

When I was in hospital for a minor procedure a couple of years ago, I was talking to the various and many nurses I encountered about my thoughts on the inadequacies of the public medical system, feeling quite sorry for those who feel called to provide care and healing within it. Without exception, they all expressed similar views, opening up to me with their stories.

It was quite interesting to hear about how many of these medical professionals turn to alternative methods of healing in their home. Far from discounting alternative medicines and modalities, it’s that they are not funded, trained or allowed to recommend anything other than the conventional methods and pharmaceuticals available within their workplaces. 

What is really exciting are the advances the scientific community have made just in the last ten years when it comes to explaining some of these other modalities, with the fields of Epigenetics and Quantum Physics really leading the way. Anyone who hasn’t explored the latest research is out of date.

One of the really cool talks I heard lately was a Sound’s True podcast with Mark Wolynn on becoming aware of inherited family trauma. As part of his studies Mark had worked with German Psychotherapist Bert Hellinger, who is known for his pioneering work with Family Constellations.

Family Constellations is one of those modalities that really sounds like woo-woo. According to Hellinger, one way we can express our family lineage is by unconsciously carrying the pain of previous generations so that it might have a chance to heal through us. The thing I liked about Mark Wolynn’s podcast is his scientific explanation as to why that makes sense.

As mentioned above in relation to Dr. Luc Montagnier (the Nobel Prize winner in 2008), who surprised the scientific community with his strong support for homeopathic medicine, these latest discoveries are not always welcomed and many (even in the scientific field) still resist the findings, vigorously expressing oppositional views.

You will find that there is disagreement among experts on both sides of the argument, because all anyone really has is an opinion based on what they currently know. What most people (even the experts) know is often misinformed, outdated and, certainly, always changing.

There is so much information and so many choices out there; I’ve only touched on a few. Every day I get new emails going deeper into other areas. Just this morning I got an email from The Shift Network about a free online summit on Sound Healing and one from sacredscience.com promoting a free 12-day event called Regain Your Brian, with world renowned doctors and neuroscientists exploring enlightened ways to reverse mental decline and think about Alzheimer’s, dementia and all forms of cognitive decline differently.

​At the end of the day, my only plea in all of this is to think for yourself when it comes to your health. I believe there is no one right answer for any of us; only what you feel is right for you in this moment. Embrace life, knowing that our time here in this body is limited, and take back your power – the sovereignty over your own body, mind and spirit - in order to live it as well and as fully as possible.
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy some of my other health related articles. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

​
When asked what surprised him about humanity the most, The Dalai Lama replied: 

“Man. Because he sacrifices his health to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health… He lives as though he is never going to die and dies having never really lived.”

The key to better health lies in recognizing and addressing whatever is creating stress within us, which can be quite a task in today’s day and age. There are many types of stress: everything from the physical (like accidents and illness), to chemical (like caffeine and alcohol) and environmental (like pesticides and herbicides) to emotional (family tragedy, second mortgages and single parenting).

All stress knocks the body out of balance and a combination of all those things creates chronic conditions.

Looking at the lifestyle many of us are running with today, Dr Libby Weaver says, “it’s not the physical threats like a tiger coming at us that is creating stress, what leads us to creating adrenaline and cortisol today are things like caffeine and our perception of pressure and urgency”.

Like many, my day used to begin with an email inbox full of stress and pressure and urgency. When I wake up and see my day as difficult, or that everything is urgent – whereas, maybe in reality two things are urgent – I put my body in sympathetic nervous system dominance (essentially the flight or fight response).

This elevates blood pressure, directing blood away from the digestive system to the peripheral limbs ready for ‘flight’. And while the body has two types of fuel it can use, glucose or fat, in that state it can only use glucose. Apparently many of us have lost the ability to use our body fat effectively as a fuel because we are always running on glucose due to stress hormone production.

Nick Polizzi (of the Remedy series I dived into in Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing) asked why it is that our society is so unhealthy – physically, mentally and spiritually? Why are more people addicted to painkillers and antidepressants than ever before? He asserts the truth is startlingly simple:

We humans have forgotten how powerful we truly are.

I can attest to this. I recall going to our local doctor’s surgery as a child, a place that had multiple family physicians available to see patients with their day to day ailments. The doctor was someone we held in a position of trust and respect, this is who we would go to for answers when we had more than a common cold.

As a kid I had many of the typical childhood illnesses, like chicken pox and mumps, but generally I was considered to be in quite good health. In my teenage years I’d been physically very fit as a competitive swimmer, so the doctor’s surgery wasn’t a place I frequented often.

​This changed in my early twenties. Fresh out of university, floundering to find my path in life, I was working three jobs and entertaining a rather unhealthy relationship after having had my heart broken the year before.

One day, as I was taking a bus into town to meet my boyfriend, all of a sudden I felt as though my heart was going to burst through my chest. This was accompanied by a vice like sensation around my head, I thought I was going to pass out and tried to focus on my breathing. Desperate for fresh air, I got off the bus and began to walk the four or five miles to my destination in the city.

Despite this episode occurring over a quarter century ago, what is marked in my memory is having to lie in a cold dark cupboard (in my boyfriend’s office) for two hours, feeling totally ill, while his boss had him work overtime on an urgent issue before he was allowed to leave. Once home I promptly crawled into bed and stayed there for a number of days vacillating between horrible chest pains and throwing up, which I now reflect upon as a reaction to the distress I’d experienced.

Back in the early 1990’s, panic attacks were synonymous with silly overreactions to something someone said or did, certainly they were not seen as an actual condition causing very real physical symptoms that a doctor would diagnose.

Trips to the doctors surgery resulted in several courses of antibiotics, the chest pains being taken for some sort of chest infection, which then resulted in several bouts of candidiasis treated by anti fungal medication that only served to exacerbate the condition – probiotics were not something seen as anything other than woo woo at this time and not widely available.

There was no internet to use for research in those days, and I found myself at the rather small section of self help books in the library. As a result, I tried an anti-candida diet, which was pretty grueling back then as the range of non-standard healthy foods available was fairly limited.

One of the books I read was by Dee McCaffrey, an organic chemist who had found her way back to health by cutting refined flours and sugars from her diet. Aside of the now well known data on refined sugars and flour, one of the things that always stuck with me reading her story was that she had been one of the scientists in the USA who had come up with the iconic food pyramid.

But the food pyramid the scientists had come up with had been practically inverted by the government in its final publication. Having always pooh poohed the idea of conspiracy theories as the domain of those with overactive imaginations, this was probably one of my first wake up calls that business – money – often runs this modern world, not the best interests of its people.

Ultimately I found my answer to overcoming panic attacks after a psychiatrist finally diagnosed them and then I happened upon a fantastic book by Christine Ingham called Panic Attacks in a grocery store pharmacy. Once I understood the anatomy of what was happening and how to switch out of flight or fight mode by invoking the parasympathetic nervous system, I was on the road to recovery.

In the docu-series Transcendence, Dr’s Bruce Lipton, Libby Weaver and Joe Dispenza remind us of some of the fundamentals for keeping our bodies in a good state of health. They tell us that 90% of illness today is based on lifestyle and stress, not genetics.

“Optimal health is based on the perception of the mind. If I open my eyes and see someone I love, the brain releases chemicals related to love like dopamine/pleasure, oxytocin/bonding, and vasopressin/making you more attractive, growth hormone. So when a mind perceives love, the chemistry from your brain enhances vitality.

The same person, if they open their eyes and see something that scares them, will release stress hormones and inflammatory agents that affect the immune system (cortisone, norepinephrine, and cytokines). When we are in fear, the stress hormones shut down the immune system.” Dr Bruce Lipton

Dr Libby Weaver finds one of the most common things people get stressed about is the fear of letting people down, of how other people see us. This is certainly a pattern that I adopted in childhood. As I talked about in Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling I keenly felt my mum’s angst and stress in ordinary day to day life as she was parenting.

Like most kids, I learned to recognise the signs around this and wanted to smooth things out, bearing in mind kids depend on the adults around them for survival. This would obviously be more marked in abusive households but, since we are all human and experience a gambit of emotions, I suspect it happens to a certain extent in all households.

Dr Joe Dispenza also talks about indoctrinated fear as a major cause of stress, “be afraid of criminals, be afraid of terrorists, be afraid of drugs” …. and so on. Since stress shuts down our blood vessels in the conscious part of our brain, effecting less intelligent decisions, essentially this renders us powerless. And as long-standing British Member of Parliament (1950-2001) Tony Benn once said “Governments do not want a healthy, intelligent population because they are difficult to control.”

“When you turn on the stress response and can’t turn it off, now you are headed for disease” says Dr Joe Dispenza. No organism can live in emergency mode for extended periods of time. Chronic conditions require lifestyle changes. I can totally appreciate this if I take my panic attacks as an example. I had to change the way I thought and the way I felt, and that required me to become conscious of how unconscious I was.

Dr Libby Weaver explains the effects of chronic stress from a physiological standpoint:

Phase 1 – High adrenaline creates a lot of inflammation which is the beginning of most degenerative disease.

​Phase 2 – To keep you alive the body has to damp down that inflammation; cortisol elevates (its job is to slow your metabolism to get you through a famine). So clothes get tight, you diet (confirming the perceived famine), which slows your metabolism further and melatonin levels go down (you’re not going to want to sleep because your body thinks it has to be on guard).

In this mode, it’s not a time to create, imagine, learn, open your heart, or go within, it’s a time to run, fight, hide; so people naturally cling to their fear, worry, wherever is perpetuating the stress. Our attention is ‘out there’ where the perceived threat is, we obsess about time.

I quickly learned to get myself out of flight of fight mode as soon as I became aware of it (and still do today in any stressful condition). I would start to focus on my breathing, slow it down, take belly breaths and extend my exhalation; this invokes the Parasympathetic Nervous system – this is our rest, digest, repair and reproduce system. From here our body works more effectively, it’s also able to use body fat as a fuel, simply because it’s getting the message via the body “it’s safe”.

Another thing we can do is to take micro breaks throughout the day. At the traffic lights, instead of checking social media, become breath aware. While waiting for the kettle to boil, the lift to arrive etc, check in with our bodies. Regular meditation, though, is the best way to increase awareness (read Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success).

As well as making lifestyle changes, eating better, exercising, getting out in fresh air, and spending more time with loved ones to name a few, there are also methods like tapping (also known as EFT Emotional Freedom Technique) to reduce stress.. 

Dr Josh Axe talks about how certain emotions cause disease in specific organs. Emotions of fear affect the reproductive organs, the kidneys and adrenals. Think about a child getting really scared and they wet themselves. Why? Fear directly affects the bladder and the kidneys.

He goes on to say emotions of frustration and anger are toxic to the liver. Grief, sadness and depression affect your colon and lungs and also your immune system. Anxiety and nervousness affects the heart, small intestines and nervous system. Worry affects the spleen, pancreas and stomach.

Taking care of the emotional aspect of health is vitally important, as discussed in Embody Your Spirituality – a Healing Journey. This premise has been known in Chinese medicine for thousands of years. As I mentioned in that previous blog, I personally like Lise Boubeau’s Your Body’s Telling You: Love Yourself and Annette Noontil’s The Body is the Barometer of the Soul to help me fathom what is going on in my body from a thought pattern and emotional standpoint.

I believe it’s time for us to start reclaiming personal dominion over our own bodies. Our body is far wiser than our mind, and it is always trying to communicate with us at a level of absolute authentic need (unlike our mind).  All in all, there is a lot you can do starting today to take ownership of your health and ensure you have a healthy relationship with life’s stress.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy some of my other health related articles. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“Healing is really about self empowerment, whether we use doctors, herbalists or other practitioners, they should be used to guide us only, to empower us to make the right decisions. But when we hand over our power to them we become at the mercy of everything around us and we are not steering our own boat” Rosemary Gladstar

This is one of the opening comments in the first episode of Nick Polizzi’s docu-series Remedy. It presented quite a compelling and concise history of healing that also explained why so many of us are feeling polarized around (what we refer to as) the conventional healthcare system in the western world.

It is a topic close to my heart. For decades I’ve been researching many aspects of health and healthcare in order to manage my own health and, more recently, that of my children. Remembering the details of all that research, however, is definitely not on my list of strengths. Once I’ve formed an opinion, I usually forget all the details that led me there, with the exception of a few golden nuggets and my final conclusions.

As a result, and given I only started publishing articles in the last few years, those I’ve written on different aspects of health and healthcare to date usually pertain to issues that hold my attention in the moment.

However, that Remedy episode inspired me to write a short series of articles that tell the broader story. Since it summed up the history of healthcare so beautifully, I thought I’d start there. This will provide context, especially in cases where people haven’t had much need to look beyond conventional healthcare. Then I’ll dive more into the insights I’ve gained from my own health issues, and some of the healing modalities I use, over the next couple of weeks.

I’ve focused on the salient parts of that first episode and interjected with my own thoughts and insights from other sources (as indicated in italics). Of course, truth is subjective and entirely personal, but this perspective may just give you a fresh lens through which to look at your health, or the words to share with others to help explain your own experiences and feelings.

History of Healthcare

Historically humans were hunters and gatherers and, as omnivores, essentially herbalists by nature; for most of human history food and herbs were conjoined. Then, roughly ten thousand years ago, we started planting intentionally and – as a result – bred a lot of nutritional and medicinal value out of our food.

In our modern world we’ve been filling this deficiency with chemical medicine. While a large percentage of pharmaceutical drugs were (and a proportion still is) derived from plant extractions or synthesis, it is ironic that we call herbal medicine an alternative when it’s arguably the natural form.

Anthropologists, herbalists and scientists commonly agree that this natural form of medicine was discovered, honed and safeguarded in large part by women. It would have been rare to find a woman who didn’t know the plants around them for both medicine and for food because people were always gathering. With a few exceptions like Hildegard of Bingen, this knowledge was passed down orally from generation to generation within families.

That takes us to the point in the patriarchal age of our history where the church began to fear that knowledge women had to alter physiology with plants. So much so, they began to burn and drown women who carried that knowledge in witch trials and inquisitions. Certainly in Western culture we thereby broke the oral chain and our history is written by the then victors.

Within these texts you will find hints of women’s involvement however. For example, there was a famous medical treatise written in the 17th century by a physician named William Withering introducing (not discovering) Foxglove and its medical uses. To his credit he at least acknowledged that he learned from a woman herbalist although she (as was normal then) remained unnamed. Whereas some of the 19th century books would lead one to believe their male authors invented herbal medicine.

From a scientific perspective, these herbs and spices - and the recipes passed down from grandmother to daughter since time immemorial - are literally epigenetic inheritance systems that keep our genome patterns healthy and optimized in relation to our environment. These are as essential to our health as the hardcoded protein genes in our genome.

However, oblivious to this, in the last two hundred years we started getting away from plant medicine altogether in the developed world. This had its roots a little further back with the likes of Paracelsus, when we started moving towards mineral based medicines and then chemical medicines which have taken over in the Western world.

In the US this created a division between people called the Irregulars and the Heroics. The Heroics liked to experiment, doing things like giving people mercury for everything, and a lot of people died because of it. The Irregulars were those who were the natural healers.

In 1847 the AMA (American Medical Association) came into being and the put in place certain regulations that split these two groups. A large part of the split was caused by the need to become licensed through a specified procedure, but women, African Americans and Native Americans (effectively many of the traditional healers) were excluded and could not be licensed.

Also, those who chose to be part of the AMA and be licensed could not discuss a case with someone who wasn’t, even if their therapy was not working.

Then in 1904 the AMA put together a council (promoted by Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefeller family) to evaluate what was going on in the educational system of medicine. Abraham Flexner – author of the resulting Flexner report in 1910 – went around visiting the various medical schools to see what they were doing.

Remember the movie Titanic? This gives me the framework for imagining the pursuits of these men. It was felt to be an age of great discovery, it was that thirst to be first, biggest and greatest that marked the era.

The outcome was that the way medical education would be taught, and ultimately funded, was very codified. So, for example, at that time there were several prominent medical schools of homeopathy –an integral but not so profitable part of what was then deemed conventional medicine – and, after the Flexner Report, funding was essentially gone for those homeopathic medical schools.

If someone wanted to become a physician, the only choice was to learn (what we now call) conventional medicine; focused on pharmaceuticals and invasive techniques.  The travesty was that, after that time, instead of trying to find a way to integrate some of these other modalities they were just left out and even vilified.

​So here we have Scottish-American industrialist and business magnate Andrew Carnegie, and the industrial, political and banking family, the Rockefellers, involved in the way things were progressing in the medical field.

What evolved from this was the understanding that if drugs (through the pharmaceutical industry) were put together with the AMA’s control of the practice of medicine and other factors, it would create a conglomeration that could politically and financially control healthcare.

As I understand it, while the details and the stories are different in other parts of the Western world, they follow a similar theme. Europe fared better in some ways, but today with decades of misinformation and government budgets under pressure, many of the modalities that are considered to be outside of the mainstream are being cut (in ignorance and arrogance in my view).

For example, if you look at the history of the Royal London Hospital for integrated Medicine, you will see that was part of the public health system until very recently. Queen Elizabeth II remains its patron and the royal family (a rare example of a Westernised family that remains rooted in traditions that have been passed from generation to generation) are highly vilified as both users and advocates of alternative forms of medicine.

Yet if people could see past the media hype and look at the facts, they would see that what we now call conventional medicine has coincided with a dramatic increase in most of our civilization’s diseases...

The fact is we don’t have medical cures for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, on and on, yet we’ve been convinced healing is a thing we can do overnight with a pill.

One of the commentators in Remedy remarked “it’s as if we are part of the biggest human experiment in history, one that poses the question: if we take all these toxins, chemicals and growth hormones are we going to live longer?” It’s basically a bait and switch…

Antibiotics and Vaccines

We’ve been convinced that because we have had the use of antibiotics to cure something overnight (although we are now losing this ability as the human biome is adapting faster than we can produce new antibiotics) that we can cure anything. This is far from true.

The convergence of the development of antibiotics and the vast improvements in sanitation and hygiene implemented in the developed world, gave the impression that we have conquered all kinds of diseases.

The same could be said of vaccines. Most of the diseases were well and truly on the decline before vaccines were introduced. For a balanced view about this topic – and facts and data –I like this report by JB Handley.

In contrast when I looked up the WHO (World Health Organisation)’s website for facts on vaccines what I read was startling to me as it basically just denies what it calls ‘the misconceptions’, without directly providing any data to support its claims.

My own feeling is summed up well in a video I was watching by another layperson talking on the subject:

“Injecting a system with some kind of attenuated virus is not a substitute for giving your system a fighting start with a good diet and healthy lifestyle. Our bodies are polluted (think processed foods, caffeine, environmental factors and so on), it’s those choices we make that make our bodies susceptible to illness.

Remember we are talking about intentionally infecting a human system that is in perfect health. There is nothing more profitable than making well people get sick.

Regardless which side of this argument you are on, you do not want to lose the ability to make this choice for yourself and your children. Do your homework; there are scientists, doctors and researchers speaking out and, while often blocked by mainstream media, information is widely available if you look for it. Trust your intuition.”

The truth is, as we have raised our wealth, our lifestyles have led us to a path of chronic disease and illness. These miracle drugs aren’t fixing us anymore. People understand when they go to see their doctor or go into hospital with these chronic illnesses they are not likely going to come out cured, they are going to come out with more medicine.

This is leading many back to the question of prevention, and alternative remedies. People want to feel well.

We have got here because we have put a lot of faith in people other than ourselves, people we have put in an ivory tower. We don’t allow ourselves to be the masters of our own knowledge or investigation. When you get on a healing path, you take your power back.

When we are self responsible we can heal.

Herbal medicine, the oldest and most natural form of medicine became illegal to practice in the US, and still is today apparently. In that country, while the pharmaceutical companies indirectly own and control medical care, it’s felt by some that the insurance side is more insidious. Regardless, it is money that is controlling availability and promoting skepticism and fear, not the realities of the far less costly and more freely available alternatives to the pharmaceuticals.

In the current climate it is positioned that unless a drug is a FDA (or equivalent in other countries) approved drug, it is not effective and may be harmful. A thousand or more years of human trials with a plant such as chamomile is not counted as evidence, could this be considered symptomatic of our arrogance?

No one denies that botanical medicines can have side effects, there was one study done which reported 37 deaths a year due to herbal medicine between 1992 and 1998. But in that same time pharmaceutical medicines caused hundreds of thousands of documented deaths. 

The laws are becoming so repressive in the US that, let’s say, someone wanted to make ground-up Echinacea, you could not print on the bottle that it supports the immune system unless there have been two studies that are published in mainstream literature (bearing in mind most of those publications are paid for – in terms of advertising dollars – by the pharmaceutical companies) and it costs a lot to get the studies done.

You have to have two studies showing not just that Echinacea worked but that the exact form that you’re going to market it in worked i.e. the same exact amount, the same extraction process and the same isolated component etc, which is far more than is needed to know that these plants work.

​There is no money in herbs, they can be grown in our garden, so no one puts research into them. People in medical school are taught “here is how we treat this problem, with this chemical”, there is little – if any - holistic training, not even on nutrition, and medical conferences are generally sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.

For clarity, I’m not against what we now call conventional medicine, as Alberto Villoldo says, it’s diagnostic and surgical techniques are extremely valuable.

Having said all that, I’ll bring this article to a close by coming back to the point Rosemary Gladstar made at the outset. “Healing is really about self empowerment, whether we use doctors, herbalists or other practitioners, they should be used to guide us only, to empower us to make the right decisions.”

My personal belief is that there is no one right way for anything, no one truth, there is only what is right for you right here and now. There is help out there far beyond what you may hear or be offered in your doctor’s office. Is it time to investigate a little more and to start steering your own boat?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy some of my other health related articles. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Lately I’ve been focused on healing my body of the traumas it has endured over my life and it’s really brought home to me what it means to embody my spirituality. I think of it like peeling an onion layer by layer, slowly uncovering all the things that – over the years – I’ve either suppressed or repressed.

I discovered that suppression refers to denial of impulses on a conscious level (for example, if I was deliberately holding back from expressing my true feelings during a conversation), whereas repression involves denying impulses at a subconscious level (for example, if I was born into a family where expressing my anger was not allowed, I may have long since numbed myself to even feeling anger arise in me).

Of course, what has been suppressed or repressed will find a way to be expressed. There are many ways this can happen and life is always presenting me with clues. A quick read of any good book on metaphysical causes of disease, or a chat with any healer that works with the energy in our bodies, will usually point to the thought patterns and emotions that need to come to light in order to be healed.

Continued denial, conscious or unconscious, just seems to manifest in more and more debilitating accidents, events and diseases. This, I believe, is why there are so many people who develop terminal illnesses after many years of locking away their true feelings, and most of the time they are completely oblivious to the links.

When dying of bowel cancer, my mum was much happier just chalking it up to fate rather than reexamining the relationship with her abusive alcoholic father who died very early in her life. Not that it would have reversed what was happening in her body necessarily, but it may have created some healing and slowed things down.

But since I started living life more consciously, the feelings, thought patterns and behaviours that stem from traumatic events are usually quite obvious now I know what I’m looking for. As I mentioned in a previous blog, some of my favourite go-to reference books for this are Lise Boubeau’s Your Body’s Telling You: Love Yourself and Annette Noontil’s The Body is the Barometer of the Soul,

Traumatic events are not just about abuse though, or the horrors of war, there is also a whole raft of developmental and more commonplace traumas that we each experience. These amount to anything that cause us to go against our true nature, for example:

• Early life parent-child attachment issues
• The culture within the family home, community or country that places more value on certain behaviours than others (for example, extroverted behaviour is valued more in Western society which is not so great for sensitive types like me)
• Normal childhood diseases or immunizations
• Accidents, illnesses, surgeries, medications etc
• Other emotionally significant events like parents getting divorced, or me getting divorced, made redundant or the death of someone significant in my life

In essence, anything of significance creates an emotional signature in the cells of my body whether I lock them out of my conscious thinking or not. The body, in a bid to create healing and equilibrium, will continue to attempt to get my attention for as long as I am in it.

When I set my sights on leading a soul-led life, I knew there was a bit of work to do to unpeel the layers of my own metaphorical onion. But, I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t fully thinking through that each layer is also multi layered (in terms of mind, body, spirit) and discovering what is locked away in the cells of my body didn’t cross my mind.

Yet I have lived through each trauma moment by moment, time and again I have had experiences that jolt my nervous system and do unseen damage within organs. I’m discovering that a broad recognition of, say, a troubled relationship with a parent, and sweeping forgiveness doesn’t really cut it.

So committing to unpeeling the layers of trauma is a bit more involved than I imagined, not unlike parenting. It requires dedication, patience and its own time and space to unfold.

I’m particularly enjoying a sequential honouring of my timeline (starting at the present day and working backwards) using a mix of homeopathy and emotional work. This has been surprising and downright painful at times as I said in Learn to See What Is in Plain Sight, but, in reality it’s quite benign compared to the years of trauma now being expressed.

Left squashed down, my body will try to express what is locked in there in a way that gets louder and louder, so by starting to work through the most recent traumas it simultaneously works through the older, related ones.

For example, I have just had root canal work, a dead nerve being the cause of an excruciating facial neuralgia and a subsequent painful abscess; this is a further expression of dental work that took place a year ago. More importantly, it’s an expression of the pain I felt in being taunted as a child as I described in Play Big in Life, Stand Up and Be Seen and the related anger and sadness that I had never really addressed.

Physically clearing out the dead debris is the same as dealing with the underlying thought patterns and emotions, they are just the physical, intellectual and emotional expressions of the same thing and it allows the issue to dissipate.

One of the techniques I like to use to address my emotions is a visualization where I sit with younger me and hear what she has to say about the issues, and then I invite in (in my imagination) someone wise to give their views, and then I let present day me express how I am now feeling and how it has changed my thinking. This allows me to let go of the old feelings that – having now been heard and understood - are no longer serving a purpose in my life.

For years a mentor of mine has talked about change beginning first at a soul level, then – once I have got up my nerve (to do something) - it filters though to the nervous system , then the electrics come online as little sparks go around my body and fire up my sensory system. Once my body is fully online, my heart begins to feel the change, and finally – lastly – my intellect understands it.

Now that my authentic self has managed to get all systems online, in a good few areas, I can really appreciate intellectually the multi faceted way I was sabotaging my own authenticity for much of my life. I also have a greater respect for my body, which is clearly wiser than my mind, and listen to it far more.

I was told a story today of a little boy who had such a troubled start to his life. When he was first able to talk he would get all agitated and kept repeating “I said no” (to coming into this life). His mother, with loving patience and persistence, has taken the time to spend with him in nature and focus him on the beauty of being here, and now he is far more at peace.

I’m sharing this little story as a parting thought on this topic, because recently when asked what the purpose of life is, this (still) little boy said “to experience true love coming back to you”.

That, in essence, is the purpose of embodying our authentic, spiritual self; to experience true love coming back to you. Now isn’t that a worthy goal?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling and Do You Need to Cherish Yourself? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I used to think it was indulgent to nurture myself; the fact that I viewed nurturing myself as pampering was the problem. To nurture is to care for, or to tend to one’s needs. To pamper is when we go beyond that, indulging every whim.

The thing is though, our needs are all different and they change throughout our lives. I’ve learned that the perfect way to show the world what I need is to give it to myself. There was a time though that I used to think that was the job of the other people in my life.

The belief I held was along the lines that if they truly valued me they would know what I needed and be only too glad to give it to me unprompted, in appreciation of that which they valued. If no kind words or deeds were forthcoming that meant I did not feel valued; then I would get resentful and defensive.

Another tact I tried was nurturing others in ways I’d like nurtured to see if they’d get the hint, or – after reading Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages – nurturing other’s in the way I thought they needed nurtured and asking them to read the book to understand me. The same belief still held true though, that it was up to those significant others to nurture me.

It wasn’t until a prior relationship was breaking down and my mentor suggested that I take a corner of the house and make it mine, wholly mine, that I first really heard this idea of nurturing myself. She recommended that I go buy a picture I like – not one that I thought would be acceptable to the other person – and hang it on the wall in my corner, my little nurturing nook where I could read books or write in my journal.

Once I understood that it was up to me to love myself, I ran with the concept and had great fun making that space mine. I booked in regular massages and time with my mentor because I felt I needed to for my wellbeing and personal growth. I took walks on the beach and spent time reading for the same reason.

With Mother’s Day upon us this week, it reminded me I was likely not alone in my prior beliefs. Mothers are renowned for nurturing others to the detriment of themselves, but I think it extends beyond that. In this frenetic society I hear from and see many people putting the needs of others before their own for years and years. Yet how can others truly nurture us if we can’t nurture ourselves?

I have an important and busy job in looking after my children, among other roles I play in life, but I now also know that to do those well I have to look after myself. There is nothing I consider more important to my wellbeing than the integration of my emotional, mental and physical self, so I make a point of making space in my life to nurture this regularly.

This can take many forms. Whether I’m diving deeply into the study of something I find fascinating, creatively expressing myself through these articles, undergoing self discovery work or healing, swimming at the local pool, contemplating nature or life in the great outdoors or meditating in my cosy nook, it’s all part of nurturing myself.

There was a point in my life not so long ago when all my time was focused on work and work, things I did not find in the least nurturing, it wasn’t pretty for anyone, but it’s still taken me a while to get used to carving out time to nurture myself. When I started to do this I used to feel guilty, but I’m truly a better person as a result, much more able to give of myself in ways that are loved rather than resented.

When a friend of mine recently recommended Hawaiian massage, I was intrigued. As I mentioned, I used to regularly have massages when I worked in an office environment to relieve the aches and pains of endless physically inactive hours and the agonizing posture adopted in meetings to pay attention to whomever was taking lead.

However, in those days I saw massage as something to help my poor body get through the days of living my inauthentic life. Since leaving that environment, I’ve been more focused on living life from the inside out.

Hawaiian massage, otherwise known as Lomilomi, goes far beyond massage though; it’s more of a restorative healing. According to Gloria Coppola, it reflects the connection we have with the land (‘aina), the spirit guides or ancestors (‘aumakua) and the breath of life (aloha).

This sounded to me like the perfect kind of massage for where I’m at in my journey, so I decided to gift it to myself.

Nurturing yourself may look completely different your life, it really depends on what is actually important to you and what you enjoy, the important thing is to make some time to do it. Mother or not, male or female, we all need time to put our own needs first in order to live our best life and give our best in life. So how will you nurture yourself today?

If you enjoyed this you might enjoy reading Connect to Your Well-Being and What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution. Contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information if you would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

I am highly sensitive, my partner is sensitive, and both our kids are sensitive. It shows up for each of us in different ways but, despite its various guises, we are all susceptible to overstimulation in our emotional and physical senses.

In a world that is increasingly vying for our attention, few would disagree overstimulation is an issue, yet the world seems to insist on toughening us up. It’s very isolating and I’ve been quite stunned by some of the reactions people have had in relation to this issue, not seeing it as anything other than a sign of weakness.

For example, just this week a teacher told me she believes my sensitive daughter, already overwhelmed by her school day, should be taking on a team sport next term; requiring two after-school/weekend commitments each week. The purpose? So that “she feels she is just like the other kids, and is as strong as the other kids and, like them, has talents and challenges”.

This is quite interesting to me, as the premise seems to contradict itself. Every person does have unique talents and challenges, this is true, but why does that make one strong and another not? I have no problem seeing her sensitivity as anything other than a huge strength that comes with certain challenges.

One of those challenges is that, for her to remain centered, she needs quite a bit of time to unwind – or defrag as my friend aptly calls it – after a lot of social interaction and sensory stimulation. Of course, school, falls squarely in this category. So after years of trial and error (that got downright ugly at times) we arrived at keeping things simple and making a point of heading home after school and staying there.

At home my daughter, who the school would have out pursuing sports that she is neither interested in and also contradicts its own core pedagogy (which advocates not introducing team sports until they are older), is happy drawing, writing and building. It’s the time in which she gets to express herself freely in the home sanctuary.

I also make a point of taking my kids out of school for two reasons. The first is to learn how to swim, in my view a basic survival skill, especially here in New Zealand where we are at the water’s edge in every direction. We have, of course, tried learning after-school and on weekends, but school has already taken the best of their attention and they arrive with ears closed and uninterested in focusing on anything else.

Any teacher worth their salt knows that, to learn, you have to have a student who is able, eager and willing to focus their attention. My kids love being in the water, but timing is everything if they are going to learn this basic survival skill well.

The second reason is for rare and coveted quality time as a family, which I wrote about in Evolving Education – Where Booking a Family Holiday during Term Time Took Me.

Before I move away from this example completely, it’s worth adding that I had shared my observations with the school about my daughter’s sensitivity when I first came across the work of Elaine Aron, though received no response. I had put that down to lack of time rather than a dismissal though; based on the aforementioned pedagogy I’d imagined we might be well aligned, apparently not so.

This is also a school with a long-established form of rehabilitation programme based on the premise that learning difficulties are often due to disruptions in the development stages in the first seven years of life that can result in poor spatial orientation and body awareness, sensory processing challenges, retained early movement patterns and coordination difficulties.

Why these disruptions to development occur is less often discussed but, as I understand it, it is thought to be a result of trauma. The trauma could be, for example, in the form of an illness that occurred right at a critical time of physical development, or an emotional upset such as the birth of a new sibling or a loss of some kind.

This is where It gets more interesting for me as I connect into 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.

In his book Scattered Minds, Maté demonstrates that ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder also known as ADHD - Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) is not an inherited illness, but a reversible impairment and developmental delay. While he believes there is significant hereditary contribution to ADD, it is based on a deduction that what is being transmitted genetically is not ADD but sensitivity.

He asserts that environment has the far greater impact on the circuitry of the brain though and it is that which shapes the inherited genetic material. He believes environment – and specifically trauma occurring within the environment in the first months and years of a child’s life – to be the determining factor in whether the impairment of ADD will or will not appear in a child.

For those with ADD, it is well worth reading Gabor Maté’s work in more detail, but the specific type of trauma that he refers to is the emotional state of the primary caregiver when the new infant enters the world and in those earliest months of care. It is easy to see in an overstimulated world how stress unwittingly creates the type of trauma being discussed, especially where there is a genetic predisposition to sensitivity.

Whether ADD (or some other disruptions to development) will arise, will vary from individual to individual. When he makes the statement that people with ADD are hypersensitive he adds This is not their fault or a weakness of theirs, it is how they were born; their inborn temperament.

In putting to bed the idea that it is not ADD itself that is genetically transmitted, Maté points out that genetic explanations for these conditions assume that after millions of years of evolution nature would permit a very large number of disordered genes, handicapping an ever larger proportion of humankind, to pass through the screen of natural selection. He goes on to say:

We face no such difficulty if we see that what is being transmitted genetically is not ADD or its equally ill manned and discombobulating relatives, but sensitivity.

The existence of sensitive people is an advantage to humankind because it’s this group that best expresses humanity’s creative needs and urges. Through their instinctual responses the world is best interpreted. Under normal circumstances, they are artists or artisans, seekers, inventors, shamans, poets, prophets. There would be a valid and powerful evolutionary reasons for the survival of genetic material coding for sensitivity.

While Dr Gabor Maté’s work is more concerned with what that sensitivity predisposes humans to and how to heal it, I felt it is one of the most empowering paragraphs I’ve read on sensitivity.

On the face of it, it links in well with the pedagogy and programmes at my kids’ school, so you can see why I might be somewhat perturbed by responses I’ve had, or not had.

In venting about this, a good friend of mine bravely said to me “I get why you are angry, but can you share your dreams for the future when the fire has died down, I rarely hear them from you?”

Well, in a nutshell, my dream is that we as a society evolve past this point of treating children in a one-size-fits-all way. Instead of seeing newborns as empty vessels that we can shape, we need to wake up to the critical importance of those early months and years and support families to be there in a nurturing way.

In Our Children Are Changing – We Need to Move with the Times I talked about research such as the Dunedin Study bringing this important link between early childhood and the later outcomes to the fore. As Maté points out , it is recognition by society at large that there is no more important task in the world than nurturing the young during the earliest of years that will make a difference. So much social dysfunction would be prevented and so many productive and creative forces allowed to unfold.

As for those of us that are sensitive in our temperament, we have a job to do in healing the scars that run deep in our psyche from our own experiences and we have a job to do in helping our children understanding their strengths.

I’m also making it a priority to seek out people, practitioners and healthcare experts who have experience and knowledge in this area and who can support our family in our wellbeing and create a supportive community around us.

It’s important for me to raise awareness, for a person has no more choice in being sensitive then they do in eye colour or gender. And, in fact, it’s a huge benefit to feel and perceive the world in the way we do. It’s time to move forward and give more voice to this issue in the most apt way we can, sensitively.

If you enjoyed this you may also enjoy Embrace Your Sensitivity Rather than Have to Protect Yourself from the World. If you would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

It was 1985; my swim team was on an exchange trip with another team in a neighbouring country. I was spending my first weekend away independently from my family. Thirteen year old me was nervous but looking forward to meeting the other family I’d be staying with: a young girl my age, with an older brother, who both swam for their local team.

When I arrived, I met Rachel and her older brother, who was driving us back to their house. I got into the back of his old light blue Ford Capri, his obvious pride and joy, and Rachel and I began to chat. As the journey began through the winding countryside of Lincolnshire, I had been unprepared for the sheer terror I was about to face.

At thirteen I didn’t want to seem uncool, neither did I want to be bad mannered, but taking the narrow winding lanes at speeds in excess of those dad normally drove at on the motorway was pretty hair raising. I was having a complete internal melt down and literally preparing myself to die…

Over the last couple of weeks I had been enjoying some of the talks at the World Tapping Summit. I often forget about tapping as a tool – especially in the moment when I’m blindsided by something that gets me spiraling on a negative track.

Anyway, after listening to a great talk by Carol Look on self sabotaging behaviours, I had started to recognise how my empathic abilities were sometimes stopping me from getting too close to others to be able to help them.

This was followed by another fantastic talk with Carol Tuttle on this very topic. Discerning whether the energy we are feeling is wholly ours, or whether it originates from other sources (like a TV programme or others around us, or even our ancestors).

She covered something very close to my heart, about what we take on board in our early childhood affecting who we become. She made the astute point that, if things aren’t peaceful, predictable and safe in our early years, our ability to read others’ moods is heightened in order to just survive within our family environment.

While this would obviously be more marked in abusive households, it happens to a certain extent in all households, since we are all human and experience a gambit of emotions after all. Carol teaches how to take this empathic gift we have developed out of preservation and protection and use it instead for something that can benefit us.

This really resonated with me, having keenly felt my mum’s angst and stress in ordinary day to day life as she was parenting. Kids learn to recognise the signs around this and want to smooth things out. Yet I can’t help someone feel good by taking on how bad they are feeling, which is precisely what ends up happening.

With my awareness raised I’ve been more alert to taking on energy that isn’t mine and using some of Carol’s techniques to release it.

For example, last weekend I was headed across some native bush in a car with four others. The road we were on climbed up over the hills and back down the other side on miles of dirt track, with many sharp bends and places where the track narrowed to a single lane.

This isn’t my favourite kind of car ride, and not just because of the motion sickness I experience. When it comes to cornering I stick with the slow-in, fast-out technique taught to amateur drivers’ world over. Approaching with caution appeals to my nature.

Many years ago, I did an Advanced Driving course at Silverstone, home to the British Grand Prix. I have noticed in the years since that it appears to be a trademark of most petrol heads to drive as if they are on the race circuit, maximizing both entry and exit speeds when taking a corner. Of course there is unlikely to be another vehicle coming towards you on a race course.

As we were headed along the road I heard my fellow passenger in the front telling our friend, who was driving, to be cautious. I knew my fellow passenger was not looking forward to taking this route due to an experience she’d had many years ago; so my empathy was on high alert.

That is when I became tenser and started to anticipate all the awful things that could happen. While our driver was far from a petrol head, he certainly cornered faster than I would. And as we progressed along the road I added my voice to that of the other passenger, and then the person next to me picked up on the vibe and added her voice and anxiety, while the other passenger just wanted to know when we would get there as she felt sick.

You can imagine the discord. I could see by the set of my friend’s jaw as he was driving that he was feeling under pressure, and it felt like he was digging his heels in by not slowing down. That triggered me further because of past incidents (like the one described above) where I’ve felt like a hostage in a vehicle, absolutely sure I was going to die at any given moment.

This brought the cacophony to a head, with him yelling at us all to leave him alone to concentrate. I imagine there are many out there in great sympathy with my friend, I mean, I get it. Even in that moment I started to get it; just how affected each person’s energy had become by the others and our own spiraling memories and thoughts.

So I just closed my eyes for the rest of the journey and focused on my breathing, imagining myself sitting inside a bunch of reflective mirrors that allowed me to return others’ energy, and leave me free to experience my own while working on becoming more centred.

Carol Tuttle mentioned how it takes men take seven times longer to process their emotions, just because of where the limbic system is situated in their brain, so it was fair to say there wasn’t a lot of engagement from our driver for the rest of that day; he was pretty wrung out. That said, we had all gotten ourselves in a better space by the ride back, which was a lot calmer.

One of my friends mentioned afterwards how sad she was we had that experience, but I don’t see it like that. There is no one person responsible for setting the tone, we are each responsible for our own energy. Our driver friend was as responsible for his energy as I was for mine; the same applies to the others in the car.

The only thing we can each do is start to recognise when we are feeling triggered by something and do what we need to in order to centre ourselves and feel calm enough to get some perspective that is more helpful. All in all, it was a fabulous learning experience for all of us.

I have had many experiences of unpleasant car rides, just like the one I recount at the outset of this article and – when I think back further – all of these reinforced the initial anxieties I took on in childhood sitting in the back of a vehicle and listening to terse phrases about slowing down, and watching out, the energy palpable in those moments.

I can see how I’ve taken on board someone else’s story and made it my own over the years. That is not to say I’d steer away from advising any driver to approach corners with caution, especially with nervous passengers in the car. Nervous passengers versus driver ego appears to be a common scenario.

This is just one example of many in each day I could probably mention. That very same day my partner was watching a documentary about a huge pop star, now dead, accusing him of some horrific deeds. I knew better than to tune my energy into something like that. I am aware of the suffering that goes on in this world, but I am not helping anyone by taking it into my energy.

As I said to my friend, the best we can do is focus on our own energy rather than trying to fix other people, no one needs to take responsibility for how others are feeling. She has a sunny nature generally, so just be the sun that continues to shine. Sure, there will be the odd cloud, but no need to invite a storm because of how others are feeling.

If you are reading this article it likely means you too are aware of taking on others energy. As Carol said, this is huge in itself. Conscious awareness of something is the first step to change. Figuring out what is mine and what is not is a process. It will take many examples to work through, tapping being one way of helping.

Practicing feeling into my own energy versus others may take some practice, but I reckon it’s worth it to just feel the relief of my own unadulterated energy – so much lighter than carrying everyone else’s.

​There are many other techniques and tools to help out there to release the trauma we feel, for that is what taking on negative energy is. Anything negative that triggers us is likely to be creating a trauma signature in our bodies and, left untreated, will eventuate in sickness. A quick Google search brought up suggestions such as bodywork, hypnotherapy, energy work (like tapping) and Biofeedback.

I’m grateful for my empathic gifts, but know that unless I can learn to observe without letting my energy tune into something heavier, it is stopping me from helping as much as I can in this world – which is the real reason I have this gift.

Empathy is the gateway to compassion. For a long time I had understood compassion to mean I needed to get down with the person so they knew I was in their corner. Instead of lifting them up from down there though, I’ve discovered it’s a whole lot more effective if I can help them to lift themselves up.

The reason for that is it’s an inside job. I can make someone feel better by lifting them up, but then what? Then a dependence is created on external things (like me) to make them feel better. When in reality, they are already equipped with that ability inside themselves.

For a long time I’ve created distance in order to help others, by offering perspective. While I will continue to do that, it’s time I created capacity for deeper healing and growth to occur.
What would it feel like for you to lose the weight of how others are feeling? What would it free up capacity for you to do? A world of lighter beings, even just a few, sounds like progress towards a more authentic and compassionate world.

​If you enjoyed this you might want to read Who is Holding You Back?, Shine the Light on the Shadows of Your Childhood or You Are the Gift Your Ancestors Gave to the World. If would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

I have noticed there is a moment, you might not notice at first, but keep observing every time something comes up that triggers you. This moment is fleeting, but it’s pivotal, it’s your choice point.

You will desire nothing less than to satisfy the lust of your usual reaction, the pull will be strong.

If you take it to satisfy your hunger, it will feel momentarily delicious, victorious and powerful. But then the moment passes, and – what was a passing storm – has grown into a cyclone that feels like it’s going to consume everything in its path including you.

Instead, if you resist the pull, it will feel a lot like trying to resist laughing when you are tickled. There is a visceral surge for action within you. Rather than continue to be enslaved, watch it, observe what is happening with interest.

If you can ride this urge without reacting, you will discover it is fleeting. On the other side, you will find the storm passes quickly. On the other side there is a calm centre, a place to watch the whole event with interest from a new platform and you will gain insights for your growth.

You may be triggered many times, many more storms may come your way and each time you must make a choice to observe rather than react.

Eventually you will be rewarded with a realization that those storms don’t even come your way anymore and, even if they do, you are no longer triggered and no longer feel the ugly desires to satisfy the unhealthy reactions that you once felt.

What you now feel, is the peace of your own energy, your inner self unencumbered by the unhealthy patterns unwittingly taken on from the others around you in preservation many moons ago.

You are now free to be you.

​If would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

“Just like a GPS, the universe sends you signs to show you the best course. If you follow the flow, you get where you want with ease and happiness. If you miss a turn (you still get there), the road becomes longer and harder.” Charbel Tadros

“Book your next appointment after cutting out sugar and wheat for at least twenty one days ” said the osteopath. Wait, what now?...

I was looking forward to the appointment with my Osteopath. She has a really nice vibe about her, always positive but in a gentle, understated way. When I first started seeing her for some chronic back pain, she prompted me about getting back in the pool “your body would really appreciate the chance to move, to feel its flow” she said. I heard her and I’ve been back in the pool now twice a week for the last three months.

So there I was, anticipating the usual low key yet impactful interaction and she starts asking me about my diet, after listening to my response she said “your body would really appreciate you cutting out wheat and sugar”.

Dread flooded through me. I proceeded to tell her my journey with food, and explained that I understand the optimal diet is one where the food is in its natural state rather than processed.

There have been only a few times in my life that have necessitated a strict diet, for health and fertility reasons. While there has been an overall positive shift along the scale towards more healthful eating over the years, there is still a lot of unhealthy stuff in there.

So I rolled out the excuses. In short, my diet feels compromised because of the situation I find myself in. I’m the cook of the house and cater to a meat and gluten glutton, a couple of anti-vege sugar fiends with differing but limited palettes and all of them seem to have adverse reactions to trying anything particularly healthy. On top of that, preparing meals is something I do because I have to, not because I love to.

I concluded by meekly acknowledging my awareness that my body really isn’t appreciating the food I’m feeding it and I have an intention to change once there is some time to focus on it. Meaning, I do not really want to prepare my food separately from the family, which feels like an even bigger grind.

As I waxed lyrical on all of this, she listened without comment or judgment. Then she said “So you are putting everyone else’s preferences ahead of your own, even ahead of your own health.” Ouch! “Your body really should be able to recover quicker than it is, there is too much inflammation, and it would appreciate you listening to what its telling you about your food preferences.” True.

Then she surprised me by saying “Book your next appointment after cutting out sugar and wheat for at least twenty one days.” Wait, what now? Didn’t she hear my excuses; I don’t want to do this now. I prodded a little to see if she was serious, she was. “Well, okay” I half joked, “I’ll see you around.”

I left feeling pretty down in the mouth. I was being overtaken by the sense that my time for procrastination was over and I wasn’t yet ready to let it go. After having ignored all the signs my poor body has been trying to give me for so many years, it had to inspire an advocate to speak on its behalf to get the message across more clearly. I was being given such a big sign I’d be a fool to ignore it.

Interestingly, that very afternoon, I started getting an earache in my right ear. I turned to my trusty reference book Your Body is Telling You to Love Yourself by Lise Bourbeau. Under ear problems there was a paragraph that struck home “Pain in the ear that does not affect your hearing is a signal that you feel guilty and are punishing yourself over what you want or don’t want to hear.”

Let’s just say I could see the connection. Then, as I got to thinking about it, I realised the osteopath was only saying sugar and wheat; “That is doable” I started to realise, not so limiting as the previous diets I’ve been on. I just need to cut out the crap (like confectionery and flavoured chips) and choose alternative grains, which isn’t that hard really – and it is only for twenty one days so I can get a picture of the difference it will make.

That said, doing something for just twenty one days and then quitting is not really in part of the fabric of who I am, plus that is the length of time it takes to form a new habit. So I begrudgingly stopped eating processed sugar and wheat, knowing I’d just leapt off a cliff and there would be no going back.

Then, the next morning, I read my daily horoscope as I do for fun, and the words leapt out at me:
“You have learnt the hard way that you can’t always be true to yourself and be everything that everyone else wants or needs you to be. If you always put your own needs ahead of others you would not have a happy or fulfilled life, nor would you if you always put the needs of others ahead of your own.

It is all about balance, realising that we live in a world of give and take. Yet above all, your personal truth can’t be compromised, which means some relationships or situations might have to change. Don’t be afraid of change, for doors open when you are being true to yourself.”

Really, I can’t argue with that either. Having decided to take action my earache had gone and I have enough experience of cutting out these foods to know what a dramatic difference it will make to my body. All the stiffness, aches and pains will no doubt be a thing of the past, as will any other figurative or literal excess weight I’ve been carrying; I’d been neglecting myself from a dietary perspective for a long time.

Signs can be subtle, or more blatant. I find the longer I ignore the subtle signs the louder they get. So what signs do you need to listen to in your life? Is it time to find the sweetness in your life more naturally?

If enjoyed this you might enjoy Food for Your Best Life. If would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

Would your kids, niece or nephew, or anyone else look at you and think you were happy? Would they aspire to a life like yours? Are you happy?

I recently asked an older teenager whether there was anything she was particularly looking forward to in her future years. Her response was – since she doesn’t want kids – she can’t really see past forty (as in, nothing appealed beyond that age).

It made me think about whether those of us past forty make it look attractive in any way. I don’t mean whether we think we are happy, that was my first (and likely defensive) thought pattern. I started to think about my life, the things I’m grateful for and found that I was almost going through this process of persuasion to an extent, feeling I ought to be happy because my life is pretty great.

What I mean is whether I actually feel happy most of the time and therefore project happiness to those around me? If I could hook up a mood-o-meter that took a pulse check on how I was feeling every few minutes throughout the day, I thought about where I’d sit on the scales:

• Mostly stressed or relaxed?
• Mostly distracted or present?
• Mostly negative or positive?
• Mostly unhappy or happy?

And is happy or unhappy a combination of the first three? Certainly they seem like fairly good indicators. There are lots of other categories I could probably name, but these ones provide enough contrast to help me see that – while I still have room for growth - I’ve made a definite shift towards the descriptions on the right these last few years.

What has created the shift for me is tuning into what I’m thinking and feeling more often.
When I think of my life before conscious awareness of my thoughts and feelings, ouch, it was ugly and I was most definitely not happy. I can totally see why someone like me, just running on default, wasn’t radiating anything anyone else would have aspired to.

Like most people, I was all wadded up with thoughts and beliefs that I had inherited from my childhood. Over the years these thoughts and beliefs that had once served a purpose (usually they were keeping me in the good books of adults around me) were no longer serving me at all. The true gift of my adulthood has been the space and freedom to explore who I am, and what I truly think and feel about things.

Just fifteen minutes a day meditating has given me an increasingly conscious awareness of my thoughts and feelings in many given moments, so it’s created a lot of positive change in my life. That said, while it would be great to be relaxed, present, positive, and radiate peace and contentment all the time, I do still get tripped up.

For example, with chores to be done around the house, especially at breakfast or dinner time, there is no doubt my kids get little attention as I juggle between their chatter or requests and preparing food or clearing up, while also often managing other communication with the adults in my life at the same time.

Making it through the period between school pick up and the kids’ bedtime in a relaxed mood can be challenging to say the least. I often find myself saying to the kids “I can only focus on one thing at a time” or “how many pairs of hands do I have?”

It is often said women can multitask, but I find if I’m trying to split my attention is creates tension. And, although I am an optimistic person, my kids certainly hear the word “no” on an all too frequent basis.

So as I contemplate this outside-in view of whether I am any kind of a role model for happiness, it is a bit of wake up call. Even though my life has changed considerably, my kids still get the best and worst of me. It’s obvious that there are still pinch points in my day that don’t feel so great because I get overwhelmed.

This is never truer than when I am mulling over something that happened and dwelling on what I should have done (or what I wished someone else would have done) or I’m thinking about something like imminent chores and their delicately balanced sequence in order to meet some deadline like getting the kids to school or to bed.

Regurgitating the past and obsessing about the future are hard habits to break I find, despite knowing that things always work out and – most often – in ways I could never have planned. Today is yesterday’s dreams, like the beautiful family that I dreamed of – striven for – for many years. It wasn’t the obsessing and planning and worrying that got me there, instead it was a series of unplanned moments that I would call serendipities or coincidences that finally brought it all about.

I have a lifetime full of examples like that, the unforeseen things that happened in the lead up to landing jobs, or meeting partners, or other opportunities. In spite of these examples I often forget all about them and  obsess, worrying about what I should be doing in order to make things happen; noticing things aren’t where I’d like them to be, rather than just trusting a dream will work out when I take inspired steps as they arise.

The answer, then, seems to lie in continuing to practice conscious awareness of my thoughts so I can:

• remind myself to let go of the need to do just for the sake of activity rather than inspired progress, recalling the examples of the things that have taken care of themselves in the past.
• focus on honouring what I say to my kids “do one thing at a time” and give that thing my full attention.

I know a lot of people feel like they’ve tried and failed at meditation because they keep thinking. But I have discovered that noticing my thoughts is actually the point. I have become increasingly aware of how unlikely I am to be either stressed or negative if I can truly bring myself into the present. 

There are a whole host of apps out there to help if you don’t know where to start. Just a quick Google search on the topic immediately brings up suggestions like Headspace, Calm and Smiling Mind, but there are also an abundance of guided meditations on You Tube.

Personally I just sit with my eyes closed in a quiet space for fifteen minutes each day and listen to the sound of nature, constantly refocusing on the sounds as I notice thoughts creeping in that I then let go of.

​Whatever the method, I figure the way to be more happy, and radiate that happiness, is to live more of my life in the moment.

If you can connect more with the present, it will help you become less detracted, more relaxed and more positive – in short, happier. The happier you are within, the more you’ll radiate it outward, and the more infectious that happiness will become. A world infected with happiness, now that does sound attractive!

​If you feel stuck in the weeds and would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

I know for me to truly connect with others, even my kids, or to connect with my creativity, I first need to connect with myself. When I do that I get a feeling of wellbeing, I’m less distracted and more open to opportunities to enjoy life.

​The summer school holidays have just ended here and gave me many opportunities to observe myself in states of connection and disconnection as you might imagine. There have been good times and bad, but on balance I’d say it’s been mostly good.

There were certainly days though that reminded me of when I used to work in the corporate arena. When it got to ten o’clock at night and I’d finally get a moment to myself and know I had missed something. That said, these days I do know what it is I’m missing, it’s the inner voice I can so easily hear when I’m connected to my own wellbeing.

​While I’ve been managing to meditate and go for regular swims, it’s the days when I made choices that worked for all of us that went best; instead of days where I set aside my own needs and then felt like I was making a sacrifice for others.

Like one day when my kids were low in energy and I had organised a playdate at an indoor trampoline park with one of the girl’s friends. I had ignored my intuition to meet somewhere in nature and to organize something separate for my youngest child. It turned out to be an awful experience with lots of infighting and the younger sibling getting ditched by the older ones, so there was more and more upset as the afternoon progressed.

In addition to dealing with the fall-out of this dynamic, I found myself in this echoey, noisy warehouse of a place on a really hot day with nothing but an occasional breeze from outside to cool down. It was hard to hear the other parent, especially with the constant interruptions to sooth frazzled kids, which was a shame as we often have some interesting exchanges.

As serendipity would have it, an Eckhart Tolle quote came through came through on email that night “Ask yourself is there joy, ease and lightness in what I am doing? If time is perceived as a burden or struggle it’s covering up the present moment.” This was precisely what had resulted in the mix of good and bad experiences. So I resolved to maintain my focus on the present moment and follow my intuition so we could enjoy more of our time together.

Then, the next day had been relatively low key and my kids were still playing happily together in the late afternoon. This is unusual as they are generally too exhausted at that end of the day and start fighting with each other. So, as the day was cooling to a more welcoming heat, I took advantage of the good moods and weather and we went to the beach for a late afternoon swim and some fish and chips for dinner.

When we arrived I immediately felt excited and happy to be there, completely well in my being. I had a great time splashing in the waves with the kids and my eldest daughter rated it as one of her favourite summer holiday experiences. It was wonderful, everything worked out well.

But I discovered things can still go well in more challenging circumstances. The other day we stopped at the grocery store to buy a few things for dinner on the way to a park where we were having a picnic. One of my kids came in with me, the other stayed in the car with their grandparent. As soon as we got back outside, my daughter started having a hissy fit because I had said no to having a treat before lunch. There was no reasoning with her; she had jumped into the proverbial well with no way to go but down.

As hissy fits go with that particular child, my best maneuver was to stick close yet not respond as it tends to further antagonize; the less verbal communication the better. I find that if I’m disconnected from my own feelings of wellbeing, I react badly and compound the ill feelings that are running riot in the moment.

As she started in on her hissy fit I had a choice: to push against her reaction which, experience has taught me, is like supersizing the depth of the well; or I can maintain my position calmly and be ready with a nice hug when she sploshes to the bottom and wants to get out again. I chose the latter.

While it wasn’t a great experience sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked up car, holding a child who had lost the plot for twenty minutes, I just focused on watching the people passing by as a distraction and maintained my sense of calm. This also had a positive knock on effect to the others in the car at the time, and we were all able to go on afterwards and enjoy our picnic.

Then today, although there have been a number of appointments to attend and it’s been a busy day, I’ve just been outside to reconnect with the whole cosmos. It’s a beautiful clear night and I can hear the nighttime movement of the cicadas’ symphony playing the in the trees; their chirping is a fantastic backdrop to the boundless sky filled with so much life and wonder. It’s so peaceful and – with everyone else asleep – I finally get time to just be.

This is the stuff I love, delving deep to contemplate the universe and then coming up for air to see the stars. That is when I know I’m connected to my wellbeing.

Yes, life can be busy, but if we don’t connect into our wellbeing it can pass us by all too quickly and in not a great way. No matter what is going on in your life, take as many moments as you can to observe what is happening – something that becomes infinitely easier if you practice short meditations regularly. It doesn’t mean that every moment will suddenly become great, but the good will more easily outweigh the things that throw you out of whack.

The more we are each connected to our wellbeing, the better decisions we make and the better life becomes. The better life becomes, the better it is for all of us; so let’s take time to focus on connecting as many times in each day as we can.

​If you feel stuck in the weeds and would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

In the latter part of the year the theme that kept coming through for me was about relaxing more, getting into a place where I could be open to the serendipities. I wasn’t sure I could even remember how to be like that anymore with two young kids to care for.

But with the pressure of the school day out of the equation for six weeks, life is much more fluid. I’m finding moments where I’m grinning to myself because I’m, well, happy.

The other morning my kids were deeply involved in putting together the new Lego sets their grandad had given them, and I was busy trying to catch up on some work around the house at the same time as responding to all their questions and demands.

I had intended to go for a swim at the local pool to get my body moving and clear my head because I’d spent six hours driving the car the day before. But before I knew it, several hours had gone by. With my dad visiting I was mindful of getting us all out the house at some point to enjoy some of the New Zealand summer.

So I had a decision to make: should I postpone the swim in a bid to get out everyone out the house, or should I postpone getting everyone out of the house to have a swim? With the pool closing early that day, I decided to opt for the latter and put my own needs first.

As it transpired I was back within the hour and the kids and their grandad were still engrossed in Lego; although they had also prepared a picnic in my absence. Meanwhile I had happily swam up and down the pool watching the dappled sunlight reflected on the bottom, grinning to myself as I took each breath; it felt great to take care of my own needs.

I also thought of the many times in the past where I put others’ needs before my own. The many lunchtimes I could have put to personal use at work instead of eating on the go and working through. The numbers of times I have visited people, or had them staying at my house, and not taken the time to even just stretch out my muscles or have a quiet moment to meditate or read a book.

Having kids took taking care of others’ needs to a whole new level. So I grinned to myself again on that day I took a swim as I walked along the beach in the afternoon while the kids made sandcastles with their grandad. These moments have given me the chance to reflect on the wonderful time we are having.

I am enjoying the fluidity and have wondered how much of that I can retain once school goes back. Over the last few years I have had to dial back on a tremendous amount of activity in order to help both my kids’ wellbeing and my own sanity.

School generally takes the kids to the outer edges of their capacity to interact with the world. One child withdraws within, eventually bursting with the force of a volcano, and the other explodes into tirades at the drop of a hat. Both need lots of downtime, so any laissez faire attitude I had about social activity when they initially started school quickly got reigned in.

It also means quite regimented bedtimes in order to arrive at school before the bell rings in the mornings; their natural inclination would be to go to bed later and get up later.  This means we are always pushing against our natural rhythm and desire for more social activity in order to just attend school.

However, as they are getting older I can see their stamina developing and know we will be able to get more fluid over time. I am mindful of allowing their strength and stamina to increase naturally in the way a young shoot does as it grows, I don’t want them to become hardened on the outside at the cost of obscuring what’s on the inside.

By the same token, I don’t want to be so rigid about protecting their space that I’m limiting their growth. Neither do I want to feel like I’m making a sacrifice and becoming a martyr, which is where I have felt myself drawn on many an occasion; all because I’ve previously opted to put others needs before mine too many times.

But this summer I’ve taken the brakes off and let the days unfold as they want to, and it is giving me a good sense of where the kids are up to and a glimpse of the possibilities ahead. That in itself makes me smile, we are slowly edging our way towards more flow.

In the meantime, I am stepping out on the right foot in 2019 and making it a priority to put my own needs first more of the time. What about you? As 2019 gets underway, will you prioritise your wellbeing so you too can be more relaxed and be open to the serendipities that lead to your best life?

​If you feel stuck in the weeds and would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

The art of putting yourself first sometimes means saying “No”, and sometimes it means facing fears and saying “Yes”. To discover more, read on...

​Published in Soul Analyse

While there are not many of us that would dispute the benefits of being fit and healthy, how many of us incorporate regular exercise into our lives? And perhaps the more pertinent question is why?

When I left the corporate arena nearly four years ago, I had been working in a highly stressful, sedentary environment for over two decades. The contradiction in that is well understood from a health perspective.  Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline coursing through us are great if a high level of physical exertion is involved, but if theses have nowhere to go, the effects are quite damaging.

But with a baby and toddler at home, there was barely time to make sure we were all fed never mind thinking about regular exercise, I made do with the mad dash from the ferry terminal to the office each day.

To be honest though, physical exercise has not been high on my agenda for a long time. In fact, it’s been about thirty years since I really took it seriously. There have been moments in there where I played at it for a while, but nothing stuck for the long haul.

When I first left the office environment my priority was to figure out who I am, from the inside out. I stopped having massages for tense, aching muscles, I stopped going to the osteopath for treatments and I avoided any kind of painkillers or other medication. I wanted to get a sense of the real picture.

And over the last few years as I started to write and get clarity about what is authentic versus what I’d adopted through misguided beliefs, I have also started to get clearer about the role our physical body plays. It’s usually the last aspect of our being to reflect our inner state and intention.

Although I consider myself to be generally quite healthy, there are some aches and pains and annoying minor (yet chronic) conditions that have crept in over the years. I guess I could say my body has become stagnant and, like any body of stagnant water, that creates an unhealthy environment for my wellbeing.

Recently I had to take my daughter to the osteopath, and I felt an intuitive nudge to book in for an assessment myself. I figured that, after all the inner work I’ve done, and all the insights I’ve gained, it’s now time to do some work on a physical level.

This has been neatly spurred on by labouring in the garden lately. While it’s been gratifying, by the end of each day my physical body is hobbling around with a back that keeps getting thrown into spasms. It’s definitely time to get moving.

Growing up I tried out several sports: I did gymnastics for a while, swimming, board diving and even cross country running. Then I got more serious about swimming and, before I knew it, I was training for over an hour in the pool every morning before school and then every evening before bed, in addition to the weight and gym training that supplemented it.

After five years of dedication to that way of life, I felt I’d swum all the miles and I’d done all the training I ever wanted to do and have hardly been near a pool or gym since.

There were other sports I tried briefly: mountain biking, climbing, orienteering and hiking, but nothing really stuck. Life got in the way and I spent years of working in desk-bound jobs. So it wasn’t until my mid thirties - after a number of failed pregnancies – I decided to take my fitness seriously again.

I employed a personal trainer and my core muscles screamed in indignation at the drastic reintroduction to being worked out again; it was not an enjoyable experience. I really hate doing repetitions unless they relate more to something meditative rather than excruciating.

If I compare repetitions in a pool to repetitions in a gym, I definitely prefer the feeling of my lungs being expanded and strengthened, as I take a breath in between strokes, than the feeling that my head wants to explode from the way my body responds to squats or pushups.

Yet I still didn’t feel compelled back to the water, though I may have if there had been a decent pool locally. Instead I found yoga. Of course there are many forms of yoga, ranging from the more strenuous, repetitious types that remind me of squats at the gym, to the forms that hold poses for extended periods; I prefer the latter.

The yoga I do is great for stretching out the connective tissues and maintaining flexibility in the joints. So while I had found something that, like meditation, serves my wellbeing and has now been integrated into my life over an extended period, it still doesn’t get my body moving.

When I was at the Osteopath’s for the assessment and she said “what do you do to raise your physical vibration?” I responded meekly that I take a few walks on the beach and a do a physically low key yoga session each week.

Her reply was well aimed:  ” I think your body would really appreciate an opportunity to move, to let each cell breathe and increase its vitality.” That made a lot of sense of course.

We talked then about the options, and I divulged that I had been thinking about taking up swimming again for a while, I just hadn’t yet felt compelled to act. “I think even after just one session in the pool we will see a difference” she said. So right there was my nudge to action.

No longer am I getting in a pool to train for anything competitive, it’s about giving this physical body a chance to move and to replenish itself; to flush out the old and bring in the new. It seems fitting at a time where I feel poised for action on my journey, to get moving: I just have to get moving.

Like anything in life, the signposts appear when we are ready to see them. If you’ve been drawn to read this, it may mean that you also needed a bit of a nudge towards physical exercise beyond it is good for you.

Frankly, our soul’s journey in this realm is experienced through our physical body, so if we want to live in it long enough to feel satisfied that we’ve made a difference, we really need to pay as much attention to that level of our wellbeing as any other.

If what you read here resonates, you might enjoy reading:
When Did We Become So Oblivious to What Our Bodies Are Really Telling Us?
What is Your Body Telling You?
Is More Leisure the Antidote?
If you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

A few years ago now as I was walking around my old neighbourhood, a deeply profound thought struck me:

The closer anything is to its natural state the better it is for us.

Food has become an issue for me. Not because I’m concerned about my weight particularly, though I am overweight according to my Body Mass Index (BMI) and have been for years. For those who don’t know, your BMI is a measure of body fat based on your weight in relation to your height, you can easily Google BMI calculators to work it out.

My issue is more about how I’m feeling; I can just tell the food I’m eating doesn’t resonate with me anymore. As I’ve gone on this journey to a more authentic me, the food I used to enjoy is less and less appealing. After I eat I feel bloated and sluggish, and generally yuck.

A while back I showed my kids a fun video about the digestive system and how our bodies function at optimal health when our internal environment is slightly alkaline. It’s a basic truth I’d learned about our physiology years ago.

We then watched a video about acid and alkaline (or base) foods. We made two big charts, one for acids, one for alkalines, and cut out heaps of pictures of the foods that we eat before sticking them to their relevant chart. 

That was a visual wake up call, with about 80-90% of what we eat being acid inducing food. It’s almost the exact opposite of what a healthy balance would look like. Not surprisingly, if I were to eat a variety of whole foods in their natural state, the balance would be totally reversed and support my natural physiology.

I then bought a book that appealed for some recipe ideas, called Vegge Mama, since my kids eat practically no vegetables and my partner and I are just sick of the ‘same old’ meals. The authors, Doreen Virtue and Jenny Ross, share their food stories at the beginning; Doreen’s father has been a vegetarian since childhood and her mother was a food counselor; Jenny doesn’t say what her childhood diet was like, just that a health crisis about 20 years ago led her to a plant-based raw food diet and then to becoming a raw food chef.

The foods look good, but it’s overwhelming. There are a whole bunch of ingredients I’ve never heard of and, by the time I tried to figure out if that is because it’s an American word for something I do know (like cilantro instead of coriander, or zucchini instead of courgette) or whether it’s just something new to me entirely, my willpower to do something different had waned.

My childhood diet was typical West of Scotland fare. Dinner was meat, potatoes and two veg; breakfast and lunch were usually some form of wheat with some form of dairy; and these were supplemented with snacks of seasonal fruit, bread (with butter and jam) and – if we were lucky – home baking consisting of some combination of refined flour and sugar. Treats were anything fried, , sugar (cooked, baked and boiled in its many guises) and a can of diet Irn Bru (a lurid orange-coloured fizzy concoction sworn to get rid of a hangover).

Cholesterol became a thing in the 1980’s, and so we ditched the more natural butter in favour of foul margarine. Then McDonald’s came on the scene, followed by a whole raft of other fast food choices to complement the kebab shops and Chinese and Indian take-out restaurants.

As life has progressed, many of these elements have remained in my diet. When I became an adult and moved away from home, I learned how to cook many more pasta and rice dishes to add variety to the potato and veg kind. But I soon discovered that very little of these foods are actually helping my body, most of what I’ve eaten for most of my life is highly processed or mono-farmed; far from its optimal natural state.

That is annoying, I feel myself taking a deep sigh as I’m not really a lover of cooking. It’s a means to an end for me, and not something I wanted to have to entirely relearn, changing all my shopping and cooking habits feels like a huge deal.

Hence there are only three times in my life I’ve ‘been on a diet’. The first was when I became housebound for months in my early twenties, undiagnosed with a debilitating lethargy. This was in the days before the internet, so I was reliant on bemused doctors, magazines and library books.

My research, such that it was, led me to the early discussions about Candida Albicans and yeast overgrowth, and I embarked on an anti-candida diet. That was no mean feat in those days, especially given the social context (it was seen as highly controversial and ‘alternative’), and ingredients were hard to come by.

Eventually I was diagnosed with panic disorder and generalized anxiety, so my focus shifted more to ‘mind over matter’, but I had learned a lot about food groups and their effect on human physiology in the process.

The second and third diets that I have ever embarked on were both in an attempt to conceive. After four failed pregnancies, by the time I reached my late thirties I had again begun to look more broadly at my health. Much of what I read reminded me of what I’d learned back in my early twenties. In the intervening years, candida overgrowth (synonymous with internal inflammation in the mucous membranes and resulting health issues) had become a more widely recognised and less contentious issue.

I was drawn to a book by Dee McCaffrey about flourless and sugarless living, and was astounded by her knowledge and experience around this issue. Recently I was reminded of it again when I saw an online course being offered by Susan Peirce Thompson, who has spent years studying the psychology and neuroscience behind addiction when it comes to these foods. Refined sugar and flour are as addictive as cocaine and heroin and block our body’s natural ability to know when it is full.

So it was no surprise to me when a naturopath looked me in the eye and told me “no self respecting fetus wants to come into a gloopy environment”. He may not have used those exact words, but I heard what he was saying and I got it. Both times I switched to a more natural alkalizing diet and I was pregnant within a month, and both resulted in healthy babies.

Of course, in the months and years that followed, with breastfeeding and a family and house to look after as well as a full time senior corporate role to hold down, I reverted back to my old habits. This is an aspect that Susan Peirce Thompson deals with head on – willpower. Her philosophy is to draw a line and make no exceptions for unhealthy food choices, as you would for anything else addictive.

I understand this and the science behind it, and in situations that are ‘acute’ or pressing, I have proven myself capable. Whereas right now, this dis-ease with my health is more chronic, making it feel less pressing.

I know that is not cool, I know that ignoring all the small signs and symptoms only leads to larger issues down the line.

The question is how to tackle it. I know anything that feels like ‘effort’ can negate whatever I am trying to achieve. So how do I go about creating more healthy habits in a way that feels easier?

From a metaphysical perspective, I’ve found discussions about food and energy from the likes of Anthony William and Teal Swan extremely interesting.  Many intuitives often ‘see’ the energy that flows in and around us, including our food, whereas most of us generally only feel it.

The concept of eating food that is alive and full of life energy seems so much more appealing than food that is, for want of a better word, dead.

While I’d easily find food full of kilojoules in a supermarket, I would struggle to find anything with much life energy. Teal’s run down of foods that are worst for us (in order, everything from sugar substitutes and pesticides to dairy and meat) resonated with everything else I’ve heard and read; you can hear this on her You Tube channel.

Vladimir Megre’s Ringing Cedar series also has some fantastic information about our optimal diet and lifestyle, and how to go about tackling it.

I know my ideal end goal is to eat fresh foods I pick from my garden, foods grown with love and in a more healthy (for the plant and therefore me) companion-plant mix. Not the best news when neither cooking nor gardening is really my thing, the kids are fairly picky eaters and my partner is bound and determined to stick with gluten and meat.

So it was of some relief to be reminded, when listening to one of Teal’s videos, that as I follow my path of authenticity I’ll be naturally inspired towards the types of foods that are healthier for me. All I need do is work my way into this incrementally.

That hit home. The ‘all or nothing’ is too much for me right now, too big a leap to make in one swoop. I have to break this down. I decided that each week, when I order the shopping, I’d choose one new recipe to prepare. That way we can try new things, incorporating the ones we like into my new repertoire, which can slowly build up over the coming months and years.

My rule of thumb is that it has to be natural, tasty and easy.

Simultaneously the garden has become my domain. My partner, who has tended to take a lead in the past, is just too busy this Spring to plant up and look after the vegetables (yes it’s Spring here in the Southern hemisphere). So the kids and I have chosen some of the basics and will use some of our time at the weekends to start growing what we need.

While I’m hoping that will inspire them to make more healthy food choices, I recognise this is about what I’m feeling the intuitive nudge to address. Right now they seem more enamored with everything I’ve come to dislike. I trust, in time, they will follow their own intuition around this issue. In the meantime they will find more healthful choices available to them around the home.

Whether you feel a critical need to urgently look at your food choices, or whether this is something that has been grumbling along in the background, only you can determine. The key thing though is to get your head around it. To work out what beliefs you have that are fear based, versus what your body is telling you about your diet.

You won’t choose lettuce and carrots for dinner and suddenly find the path of enlightenment. However the reverse can be true, so trust your inner knowing on this issue. Listen to your body and you’ll discover the foods that will support you in living your best life.

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Don’t Let a Label Be a Limitation – Use it as a Jumping off Point

A quick scan tells me that there is a whole host of online communities and self help groups out there for highly sensitive people, which, in itself is not a bad thing. But when I pick up words like “protecting yourself” and “fragile”, I want to scream from the roof tops.

I have to admit, I’ve always been pretty sensitive about being called sensitive. The term implies weakness, yet I’ve survived this world and - determined to prove people wrong - have even thrived to outside eyes.
 
Sadly that required building a hard shell around me in a bid to ‘protect’ myself. While it didn’t succeed in obliterating the essence of who I am, it completely obscured it even to my eyes; to the point of not knowing me.
 
Over the last few years I’ve set about quite deliberately dismantling the protective armour to discover what lay beneath. Layer after layer unveiled, I am now rebuilding my relationship with the world from my internal core and am truly starting to see how authentic thriving is possible.

I have discovered my body is like a finely tuned instrument, apparently more so than most, every sense I have is sensitive to all that is around it and reverberates within.

I have a deep and rich inner world that I explore asking myself all sorts of questions about life and purpose. I sense other people’s emotions and can tell if someone says “I’m alright” when they are not, I viscerally feel others’ pain and passion – even if it’s only watched on a TV screen, and I sense the same through music and art. When I spend time in nature I appreciate the intricate intelligent design of it all, and marvel at all creation.

I wouldn’t swap any of that because it is the essence of who I am and, frankly, the only experience of the world I would relish. But it does come with another side. With every sense heightened, sensory overload needs to be managed.

For example, the first thing I was aware of this morning was my partner’s rhythmical breathing as I lay contentedly amid that state between dreaming and waking up. This instantly changed as he awakened. Just as my cat’s ears prick up, my body is also on high alert, quickly tuning in to more of the sounds around; a car starting up and our neighbours putting out their bins. I’m awaiting the loud and insistent “mum!” requiring a more hastened arising than I would like.

It is mid-winter here in the southern hemisphere and the days are short, so getting up in the dark is par for the course at the moment. My ideal entry back into consciousness each day would be a gradual and steady awakening of the senses.

I like to open the curtains to slowly let in natural light and let my eyes adjust, instead I open the door to the lounge where my partner had already turned on every electrical light in the place and my world is suddenly ablaze with bright lights, my eyes scrunch in defence; it makes my insides churn and creates a viselike grip between my temples.

That is before I even talk about the smell of coffee or the mood of the other people around me or the list of tasks that require completion before we can get out the door. And because it is winter, my partner had started up the van to heat it up before setting off, so I could smell exhaust.

Suffice to say, by the time I drop off the kids each morning, I feel like I’ve survived something. Just the very fact of living with other people creates sensory overload. It wasn’t so bad when I was growing up, my parents liked things low key too, and we didn’t have 55” TV screens and 24 hours a day of streaming content to contend with.

Yet there were some highlights this morning. In taking the garbage out for collection, I stopped to smell the White Michaela blossoms on the scratty tree at the top of our driveway. I forgive that tree all it’s scratty looks with its half shed leaves, because the scent of the blossoms are just so blissful and were a welcome escape from the exhaust fumes.

Then there was the beautiful conversation with my younger daughter who, in the absence of her older sibling (who is visiting nana) was rather more grounded and calm than can be the case with her sister around. I had this lovely swell of appreciation and deep sense of love flood over me.

Funnily enough I didn’t realise there was a label for the way I am wired and some of the things I’ve found difficult until recently. While I hate labels, this one may serve a purpose, if only to have those I love understand how I experience the world and, hopefully, help others who are wired this way begin to thrive rather than just survive. 

Back in the 1990’s a psychologist called Elaine Aaron coined the terms Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). Personally I’d rather embrace the trait than label my persona, I feel we are all a bit too multidimensional for that.

“Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) is characterized by a high level of sensitivity to stimuli and reflects an increased sensitivity of the central nervous system” says Botenburg et al. “It also correlates with a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social and emotional stimuli.”

Elaine Aaron says “Inevitably HSPs are more easily overwhelmed. When the noise or stuff going on is about right and interesting for others, it’s too much for HSPs. And keeping an optimal level of stimulation – not too much, not too little – is very, very important to every creature. The sensitive ones just need ‘less’ to be comfortable.”

It’s the ‘less’ that is often not accepted or appreciated in a world that is increasingly vying for our attention though, with an acceleration of information and stimulus available. And it’s that social unacceptability that often creates low self esteem and self doubt, or even depression, anxiety, symptoms of autism, sleep problems and more physical health problems.

While sensory overload wasn’t generally an issue for me in my early home life, as soon as I entered the realms of dealing with other people and of the working world, it was often hard to feel good about myself. I remember starting a job in a recruitment office, and being seated right next to the owner of the place who was a chain smoker and sat there puffing away at his cigarettes all day. It made me feel so wretched that the first thing I did was buy a rather large extractor fan and sat it on the desk between us.

Being called things like too sensitive, whiny, anxious, unhappy and even neurotic, and having people tell me to “toughen up” or “just relax, you’re making a big deal out of nothing” was devastating. In fact it led to a whole period in my early twenties where I was diagnosed with “general anxiety and panic attacks.”

This was a defining moment in my life, and one that lies at the root of my distaste for words like fragile and protection. It taught me how my reality was controlled by my reactions. Now, while I can’t readily control the involuntary reactions of my senses, just having an awareness of what is happening makes all the difference, it helps me to control how my body is responding.

While I did not know about SPS back then, there have been moments along the way that have helped me understand that what I was experiencing was not a result of some neurosis.

For example, blue eyes are more sensitive to light than other eye colours. This helped me made sense of the migraines that – since the age of twelve – have often been triggered by bright lights. Yet, without  awareness of sensory sensitivity,  it can come across to others as whiny when I complain about all the lights getting turned on in the morning rather than the curtains being opened.

I also know my body is sensitive to all the popular stimulants like caffeine and alcohol and does not appreciate any medication stronger than Panadol, it can feel awkward to refuse such things on social occasions, especially in the face of people saying “you just need to lighten up”.

Living with others has taught me that some people need noise to drown out their thoughts so they can concentrate, but I know I need quiet so I can hear my thoughts before I can concentrate. So having music on in the house or car can be a point of contention.

Open plan office areas taught me about the perils of horrid fluorescent lighting, uncomfortable chairs, and the soup of human emotions that I was required to swim in just to say I had turned up. That is before we even talk about the endless meetings and having to look in one direction (and look interested) for long, boring sustained periods.

Literally every sense is more finely tuned. I can even get touched-out (I learned that is ‘a thing’) especially when I have kids haranguing me and wanting to cuddle up or have ‘one more hug’ at bedtime after a day of constantly giving my attention out.

Scary or violent movies and documentaries are too visceral to contemplate, and I get overwhelmed at parties, conferences (I have a strong aversion for the superficial) and at shopping malls and definitely kids indoor playgrounds.

These are all things I have known from the inside are not a result of my imagination, yet without being able to educate people more objectively about Sensory Processing Sensitvity, it has often invited many unwelcome comments and been the basis of arguments. It is true to say I was pretty defensive about the issues.

Feeling pain more acutely is another common symptom of SPS. I hesitated when I had to answer a question about that, as dealing with pain is just another part of the armour I’ve worn. I do feel pain but, just as I determinedly focused on not reacting to being tickled when I was younger, I also focused on not reacting to pain.

The reality was that I used to absorb the shock in order to not react to it, internalize it, which is just setting myself up for sickness. When I birthed my second child, I learned how to work with my body in order to feel into and release the pain.  

I just feel so much, on so many levels, and it can be draining. The world we live in can feel like a smorgasbord of stimuli set to frazzle the nerves.

Arguments that others might consider a spat or insignificant, or even just a differing of opinion, are often huge for me. When I left home my mum said “I’ll even miss our arguments”. Not me, I like things to be peaceful.

Yet I was determined not to become a victim so was always asserting my needs, and am quick to stand guard if I sense an injustice.

Then there is the dynamic in relationship with my partner who has Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) which, while sharing some similarities with SPS, also has some diametrically opposite issues to contend with. Each of those has the potential to be the source of the others’ stress, and requires us to each have understanding and respect the others needs in order for us to make the relationship work.

And, of course, there is the grand slam of challenges for someone with any kind of sensory sensitivity: parenting.

With the constant over stimulation involved, sensory overload abounds. I heard another say “I don’t like surprises and I don’t like change, and since parenting is largely comprised of just that many times in each day I get overwhelmed”. While I relate to that, just having to give my attention constantly outward rather than nurturing my inner life is the key factor in energy drain for me.

That said, when I turn back to the amazingly positive aspects of having SPS, I know it also makes me a better parent as I am more aware of my children’s needs. My ability to empathise, my intuition, my creativity, my deep appreciation of little things, and even my visceral awareness of others’ pain and passion. All of it – and more – are the essence of who I am and the key to joy in my life.

I understand why there is a lot of advice out there about protecting our energy, as overwhelm surely drains it. But it is really more about asserting our needs than protecting ourselves. It’s subtle, but it is different. One is about operating from a strong centre core, an inner knowing and honouring of your true self, the other is about defense and armour.

My desire to help others can mean I have often put others needs before my own. But learning to put my needs first gives me more energy to give to others, using the special talents and gifts that being sensitive gives, which makes me happier and healthier.

I read that our authenticity and desire for deep, meaningful relationships, also makes those of us with sensory sensitivity more attractive to others. But the key thing to remember is that good relationships are not about giving more to others, it is about giving more to ourselves. A healthy relationship is one where both people value themselves enough to make sure their own needs are met, just as I wrote about recently in Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First.

Since writing about this journey to me I’ve been on, most of my articles speak to this issue on some level. Some of the relevant ones that spring to mind are Taking Your Own Space, Taking a Break from all that Mental Activity (which talks about strategies for dealing with stress), Step out to reach in, Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success, Life is in the Little Things – Finding the Extra in the Ordinary, among many more.

My daughter also has Sensory Processing Sensitivity, and I have learned it is wise to manage her activities carefully. In her first year at school her teacher wrote “she appears to move between being a very young wisp of a child to a rather demanding princess.” Even now at 7 years old, she is not capable of having play dates or doing any extracurricular activity on school days without getting completely overwhelmed and tuning out or melting down (spectacularly).

But I would hate for her to see herself as fragile, despite all that I have written in here about what it feels like to have SPS.

I’d rather she embraced her sensitivities, anchor herself from within and thrive from her centre core rather than create armour on the outside to deal with it. Just as I too now embrace it as I rise from the ashes of my previously burnt out life.

Having a strong sense of who you are, and embracing and honouring that, gives you that inner anchor. Once you have this, you don’t need the hard shell on the outside anymore, you can let it go. You don’t have to protect yourself from the world. Just prioritize your own needs and you will flourish.

If you want to find out more about SPS there’s a whole raft of information available online. Here’s a great introductory video, an overview and a test. If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“Resenting one or both of your parents for suffering (caused) is a completely normal and human reaction.” As I read these powerful words written by Lise Bourbeau, written in the context of repressed suffering that eats way like a cancer, literally manifesting decades later as a cancer, I wondered two things:

The first was why the role emotions play in our wellbeing is still so widely looked upon as psychobabble. The realization that our emotions don’t just sometimes play a role in our physical state, but rather our physical state is always a result of our emotional state was – for me – both obvious and potent as I recounted in What is Your Body Telling You.

The second thing I wondered is why there is such a stigma attached to this issue of resenting our parents in adulthood. In society we accept it as normal in teenagers, but if this resentment is such a normal and human reaction, yet it causes such unseen damage in later life, why is it not accepted as a rite of passage that people accept and openly talk about?

Looking at it from a child’s point of view, whether your parents are absent or present in your life, either way there is a high likelihood you will resent some aspect of that. If they are absent, particularly if they died, you may feel guilt for your pain and resentment. If they were very much alive and present in your life, there is also a very good chance that you will resent some aspect of who they were to you.

Parents are – in effect – the gateway to a somewhat more limited form of existence than these young ones want to lead. Learning to live in a human body requires focus, and that requires making their world small enough at each stage to gain confidence and simultaneously making it large enough to allow them to fully express who they are in that moment. That is a tricky task for anyone to facilitate.

Often we are driven in our own parenting by the things we resented (and the things we admired) about the way we were brought up, in an attempt to avoid having our children resent us. We want to be loved unconditionally yet often hold back our love in disapproval of our children's reactions at some point or another, if not as part of an adopted regime of discipline.

Seeing resentment as the thanks you get for all your hard years of parenting isn’t attractive, but if instead we were to accept it as a natural and inevitable part of our child’s development into adulthood, helping them figure out who they are and what they do and don’t want in life, it would be more palatable.   

Then, who you are (in terms of the sum of your experiences and the resentments, ideas and beliefs you hold) can cause countless arguments between those co-parenting. And with your children’s unique blend of who they are, and an ever evolving social context, you are bound to trip up somewhere.

Great teachers are emerging, like Mary Willow, but an average parent may only be vaguely aware (if at all) of the various stages of development their child is going through in the years up to young adulthood, never mind have a good grasp of their role each step of the way.

As adults we either continue to carry our resentment around consciously, still berating our parent/s for who they are/what they did, or we just accept it as part of who we and they are and, every now and again, those emotions surface triggered by patterns playing out in our adult lives.

The reason Lise Bourbeau’s words were so powerful, was the dawning of a realization of the damage it causes to stuff these emotions down. I remembered the story I recounted in an article last year, about forgiveness.

The story was of a teacher who got her students to bring in potatoes. The task was to etch on each the name of the person or people who had wronged them and the hurt it had caused. Each student was then asked to put all their potatoes in a sack and carry it around for a week, it could sit beside them when they were eating or sleeping, but they had to carry it everywhere it went.

This was simply an exercise in demonstrating the sheer burden of carrying all those negative emotions. The act of forgiveness does not mean you condone what took place; it is an act of kindness towards yourself, an act of self love.

Certainly most people have emotional baggage of some sort about their upbringing.  The reality is that our ‘sack’ is already pretty heavy by the time we are 8, and yet it’s a period in our life where we have the least amount of conscious memories. None the less, you will have an idea of the emotions in there as they will have attracted many many more examples to reinforce them throughout your life, accompanied by self-limiting thoughts that become beliefs.

It seems that it would be useful to consider that is normal and healthy to face resentment from your children at some point. And, conversely, somewhere in your own emotional baggage are some things you might want to really look at rather than just carrying them around.

So what do you resent your parents for? Once you bring things out into the light of the present day, the process of forgiveness can begin, your load will lighten and you will be free to live a life of wellbeing.

Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or  share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at shona@shonakeachie.com, I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You.  
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Be honest, how much does the way other people behave affect your mood? Your nearest and dearest, your boss, your work colleagues, the guy who served you at the coffee bar?

As humans we have become accustomed to putting others in the driving seat when it comes to how good we feel. In our relationships at home especially, but also at work, how others are being can affect you greatly if you believe you’re not always in control of your own experience.

I heard a great story this week about a couple who had been married a long time, and their grown up son was distressed because his father had Alzheimer’s and he couldn’t bear to see what it was doing to his mother. He was asking a great spiritual master why this had happened and what he could do about it. Alzheimer’s, he was told, is just a form of withdrawing from this physical life.

When someone has Alzheimer’s they initially have difficulty remembering recent events but, as the disease progresses, they sort of recede through time and stop recognizing those closest to them. I recall my great uncle being heartbroken as his wife no longer knew him, speaking only of those in her childhood.

The spiritual master told this man that his father had really deployed a rather clever way of getting his wife, who he had sensed was rather dependent on him for her happiness, used to him not being there. Now none of this happened at a conscious level, it wasn’t as though this man had flicked through the pages of a medical journal, chosen a disease and whamo, there it was.

It never is that way, we desire something (or fear something in which case the desire for the opposite is born), the universe responds. Hence the saying ‘be careful what you wish for’ because we don't get to dictate how it will come about or who is involved. This man or his wife had certainly had strong feelings for each other and a concern that his passing would cause her great unhappiness.

His mother, who was used to being in the driving seat, was struggling because the person she had known was no longer there. The son was lovingly reminded he could not change any of the circumstances, he couldn’t charge in on a white horse and fix this, he could acknowledge that his father was withdrawing from this life and honor his path, he could encourage his mother to look beyond the life that had been hers, and start to see the things in it now that were worth appreciating. Her strength was not in his father, her strength was in herself, as was her happiness.

Whether it's a loved one with an actual form of dementia, or simply an outstanding task that they promised to do (6 months ago),  understand that, good or bad, we bring these situations into our life; not by prescription but by our strong desire (or worry).

When you also realise that feeling good is both entirely within your gift and absolutely necessary in order to go with the flow of our life, you can start to practice getting into the drivers seat of your own life experience.

It’s the minority who both understand and live like this because we’ve become a society dependent on others for our happiness. Despite being born with a joy and happiness that is indiscriminate, we soon receive messages that we can't rely upon our own knowing and intuition, we must rely on others, and so it is that we start to outsource our wellbeing.

Rather than letting the joy flow we unknowingly train our children into thoughts that really just create resistance to the good things coming into their lives. Most of us act mainly from a point of fear, letting our minds run away with the "what if..." scenarios. Many believe they are their mind, rather than it being a tool for creating.

Each day as you go about your routine, watch out for the thoughts you have that attribute how you're feeling to others. I know I do it all the time, with my partner, my children, the lady at the cash desk, the man in the car behind, the list is endless. Now though, I catch myself and think, "that’s interesting, what does that interaction reflect back about me and what I’m feeling?”.

Remember it’s all interconnected. Most of your thoughts every day are repeated, rote repetitions based on past experiences, and because you keep replaying them you keep attracting the same experiences which further entrenches your beliefs. A belief after all is just a thought repeated again and again. It’s based on those thoughts that you take action and it's that action that determines your feelings, and thus your experiences.

If you’re just letting it all happen unconsciously and not taking responsibility for your own feelings, you are missing out on your best life. You can be in the driving seat. It’s not that you will never experience challenges, because challenges remind us of what we don’t want, and in that the desire for something new is born.

In time, as you become more conscious of your own thoughts, and your own feelings, your experience of challenges changes because your perspective changes. You will take a helicopter ride and look at your life from a broader perspective and wonder what dots this experience will connect to later on, trusting it will bring about exactly what you intended – whether deliberate or not.

Your feelings are what attracts your experiences, if you refuse to feel bad, you will start to attract more and more of the things you do want into your life. We know “it’s not what happens it’s how we respond”, yet in our darker moments we reject it, wallowing instead in a pool of powerlessness brought about by our own narrow perspective.

What happens if you have someone depending on you for their happiness? People who attribute how they are feeling to you? While you can take on an attitude of “I’m not responsible for how you feel, you are”, you really just have to be the example. The truth is, if you have someone like that in your life, it’s probably a reflection of your own beliefs.

Stand up and take charge of your own life. The sooner you do, the more you will notice others around you stop depending on you for their happiness because you can’t attract what you're not projecting. There is much out there to help you with the 'how' of all of this, aside of my own articles there are libraries full of wisdom on this topic, go with something that resonates for you.

Make it your mission to take charge of feeling good for yourself. Whatever you desire in life it starts with feeling good about who you are and what you have in your life now. You are not responsible for the details of how it happens or who is involved.

Take the example of the man whose father had Alzheimer's. His mother wished for the father to be well again so that she could be happy, but really, her wish was to be happy. Yes, once upon a time that happiness had come about because of the times she shared with her husband, but if her desire for happiness is the predominant feeling, she would start to attract many other situations into her life that would also give her happiness.
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‘Who’ is not important, other than you. You can start to feel good about who you are right now. Over time, if you practice that, you will find more peace, more joy, more harmony and, as you look back, be amazed at how your life has changed.

​This article was initially published on LinkedIn.

​photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/27526538@N07/9240212796">Ojas' First Shoot</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">(license)</a>