I was listening to Lisa Romano talk about Our Soul’s Growth and how conditioned we are for constriction rather than expansion. She says “Self-efficacy, self-individualisation, personal growth and cultivating a success mindset – in spite of any lack we have been conditioned to believe in – are the only path our Soul will ever be concerned with”.
 
Earlier I had been talking to someone whose partner had been the victim of terrible abuse in their younger years, an all too common story. They did not want to talk about their trials; they just wanted to forget them. Again, this is very common.
 
Unfortunately though, these hurts – whether physical, mental and/or emotional – do affect us in one way or another. In this case the person concerned is extremely angry as a predominant state, and – knowing that acting in anger is not an acceptable way to behave – constantly tries to tune out in order to manage it.
 
But even those of us who don’t have stories of what we would consider terrible childhood abuse, carry neurological wiring relating to our younger years that may not be serving us as we grow. Lisa refers to a discourteous interaction with an abrupt and seemingly uncaring shop assistant, as an example, which may trigger subconscious memories of the way a sibling treated us, and our hard wired reaction could lead to a response in the moment that we are less than proud of.
 
I can relate to this. I recall a camera shop owner in Tenerife trying to get me to pay a higher price than I had agreed and I literally exploded at the guy and pretty much cleared the shop. After all the haggling, he then started backtracking and trying to add extras and telling me I had agreed to something I hadn’t. Having being brought up with strong morals around truth telling and harsh punishment for lies, in essence the child in me over reacted and I was mortified at having acted that way – especially in public.
 
Yet when I feel into that example, it’s all about the conditioned constriction I felt and had been conditioned to operate within my younger years. Not that it’s a bad thing to be taught good morals, but often my side of the story was swept aside and – as the elder one – I had to take responsibility. It left me feeling that my voice was unheard and unimportant.
 
So now, in similar situations, when I notice I’m over reacting, that is my soul’s call to expansion.
 
And I have found that this is the first and most important way to reach for growth, simply by being able to notice. That in itself has been transformational as I said in Change Unhealthy Reactions. When I am triggered, the pull to satisfy the lust of my usual reaction is strong. That is my neurobiology.

But if I satisfy that hunger, although it feels momentarily delicious, victorious and powerful, I begin to see that - what could have just been a passing storm - I have now spun into an out of control cyclone. Instead, if I can ride the urge without reacting, I discover it is fleeting.

I can also attest that until I learned to observe my reactions without being consumed by them, I was a slave to them. Making a lame promise to just observe in the triggered moment doesn’t work, because when I was triggered my prefrontal cortex – the rational part of my brain – was closed for business.

Instead, I took up a short 15 minute daily meditation, practicing noticing my thoughts and letting them go. This naturally expanded to other times when I’d suddenly catch myself in the middle of ranting at the kids to tidy up, for example, and started to adjust my reactions in ways that were more productive.

I noticed way back when I was involved in corporate change and transformation, people will often comply out of fear when others are angry or in a dominant position, but it’s short lived and – if they feel they can’t openly defy – they will find covert ways to do so. The same applies in parenting I have found, and any other human relationship. Finding a mutually agreeable way forward always leads to the best outcome.

From noticing my thoughts and taking a different tact, I was able to change a lot right there. But I have also noticed there are triggers that seem to reappear like perennial weeds, and those require a bit more focus in order to stop them coming up so often. Those are the ones tied to strong unhelpful beliefs like “I’m not enough” or “I’m not worthy” and so on.

This is deep work, but it is also deeply satisfying to reap the results as my soul’s desire for expansion has taken hold and become the new way of approaching life. I’m no longer the constricted child, except by my own making. I accepted the challenge to overcome that neurobiology and reach for responses that are more in alignment with my full potential.

In what ways are you constricting your growth and what could you do to start to turn the tide and reach for expansion instead?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Is Your Responsibility, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, Are the Most Loving, Courageous and Compassionate Parts of You in the Driving Seat?, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries? and Give Yourself Permission to Live Life in Alignment With Your True Nature. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

To some people it might be really obvious what emotions like resentment and frustration have to do with boundaries; to me, it wasn’t. I had never heard of healthy boundaries until a couple of years ago.
Boundaries can be defined by my personal happiness, desires, needs and personal truth.
 
Like many people growing up, I was allowed these things so long as they fit with the family and societal view of “the right way to do things”, which is to say I only felt I could be myself in so far as that fit with what others thought was okay. Anything that fell outside these parameters was considered anywhere from unsuitable to downright dangerous.
 
It has taken me a long time, and a lot of heartache and pain, to understand that who I am – my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, values etc – is absolutely fine to be. In fact, not only is it fine, it is both necessary to my own wellbeing and to the complex contrast and symbiosis of all beings in our world.
 
But it takes a bit of sifting to figure out exactly who I am at times. That list I mentioned - my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, values etc – is a real mix of my innate thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, values versus those I have learned. And to add further complexity it’s not at all always obvious which is which.
 
Last week, when I had been reading an article about building relationships in a paradigm of compatibility versus compromise, the bones of this sentence really stuck with me “When you build your relationships on the foundation of compatibility, you don’t believe in giving in when it comes to anything in a relationship that will cause you to feel resentment, frustration or pain; or that will compromise your sense of personal wellbeing”.
 
Having learned a fair degree of information about boundaries over the last couple of years, it struck me that these emotions are a good litmus test of both where my boundaries are and when they are not being honoured. I learned early on that anger is a sign of transgressed boundaries, but I wanted an early warning sign not an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff, and that sentence does a pretty good job of summing it up.
 
The thing I’ve really learned about boundaries is that they are mine to hold rather more than something other’s cross. Generally speaking, if I have and hold healthy boundaries then others don’t get the opportunity to stomp on them.
 
I worked through a great example of this on a course last weekend using a NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) technique for making changes at a fundamental level.
 
We were asked to think of something that kept triggering us, and the trainer had just been talking about a client who was in high avoidance when it came to dealing with letters and emails, she literally had hundreds and thousands of each unopened. It turned out the client had been through a nasty divorce in the past and, every time she received a nasty letter or email, she had what the trainer called an “unresourceful” emotional reaction – which eventually led to complete avoidance all together of opening any emails or letters.
 
With that example resonating for me, I looked at my own triggers around receiving unwelcome texts and emails. Another course participant took me through the logical levels, looking at the behaviours that typically accompanied the receipt of unwelcome texts and emails.
 
I could recognise the way my body behaved in reaction to these easily: outwardly I shut down, snapping at those who try to connect with me in that moment. Inwardly my mind starts swimming, my tummy clenches, my chest tightens, my throat constricts and my jaw tenses, sometimes I might start shaking. Then eventually I notice my head, neck and shoulders all ache as I am constantly ruminating and that leads to chronic headaches, migraines and other unwelcome health issues including kidney stones.  
 
These behaviours, all indicative of a dysregulated state, have of course become a habit over time. It is a learned response to unwelcome and chronic attempts of another to exert control, accusations, lies, blame and so forth. As a close friend of mine put it, it had become a habit to feel “terrified, angry and f#cked off” in these situations.
 
We then looked at the beliefs that sit beneath these habits and behaviours, which sound a bit like this is in my psyche: “this is a threat I need to keep under close watch at all times”, “they are trying to hurt me”, “this is a threat I have to respond to immediately”.
 
So this part of me, that believes these things and behaves in those ways, what does it value? It values safety, it values the truth. And who am I identifying as in that moment, what part of me is in the driving seat? The victim, I realise.
 
As Tony Robbins says “Inside of you, there are parts of you that are incredibly gracious and generous, but there is also a part that is selfish. We all have loving parts and not so loving parts, playful parts and boring parts, courageous parts and fearful parts”. Then he said poignantly “The real question is not Who are you? The real question is Which part of you is in charge right now?”

Identifying as a victim is clearly not a resourceful place to act from, so we worked from there, what identity would be more helpful? Empowered, it would be much more resourceful if I could put an empowered part of me in the driving seat in these situations.

So then I looked at what values the more empowered me holds. In that state, I value being intentional with my attention. I also value my truth and that of others, and I value my boundaries and those of others.

In terms of beliefs, in that more empowered state or identity, I trust that I will always be in the right place at the right time for my desired growth. I trust that, in life, I can hold my intentions above anything malignant or distracting.

In order to hold that, it would be helpful to develop a habit of intentional visioning, being forward looking – not in a “what if...” ruminating kind of way – in a resourceful, empowered “what I imagine for my life” kind of way.

To create that habit I have to change a few behaviours. Here is where the rubber meets the road. If I make this too big a stretch I’m more likely to fail to create the desired habits. Instead I opted to integrate setting my intentions alongside another habit I already have well established. Each night when I write in my gratitude journal, I now set my intentions for the following day.

And I separate out my intentions into things that are for me to focus on, versus things I leave up to the serendipities of life, in a place of trust that things are always working out. For example, today it was my intention to be present with my children. It is school holidays and we are enjoying quality time together. It’s also my intention that our house sale goes smoothly but, having done all I can do in order to make that happen, I can now set that aside today and trust it will unfold as it’s meant to.

I also meditate daily, so I’ve integrated my intentions with that practice, allowing my attention to be directed there at the start of the practice as a touchstone. Having done those things, when I now imagine receiving a gnarly text or an email, it feels that I can do that from a more empowered standpoint. It’s a process.

As I said in How to Take Things as They Come When You Have Learned Not to Trust, when Lisa Romano’s clients ask her "When will I feel better? When will I no longer be reactive? When will I feel peaceful? When will I gain back my self-confidence?" And she responds “The truth is, healing takes time and it takes mental toughness training to undo the psychological as well as neurological issues chronic abuse creates over time. There is no quick fix” this is where the rubber meets the road.

Establishing better boundaries is a day by day process of noticing when you would benefit from taking a different tack – the indicators being the unresourceful feelings like resentment, frustration and other types of pain – and then figuring out new ways of approaching things. So when you next feel resentment, frustration or pain, or anything that will compromise your sense of personal wellbeing, what will you do differently?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? , Are the Most Loving, Courageous and Compassionate Parts of You in the Driving Seat?, Your Mind Will Try to Protect You By Resisting Your Healthy Boundaries, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries? and Give Yourself Permission to Live Life in Alignment With Your True Nature. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was reading Tapas Dwivedi’s words on How to Get Comfortable Being Alone and they really spoke to me. My ex and I separated a year ago and it's only been in the last three months, when I was finally able to move into my own place, that I've at last had the periods of solitude I've needed to start to come back to myself.

I call it my in-between space, and I am in no hurry to leave it. Tapas’ description of solitude as a duvet feels so apt. I often wonder how many people there are living this way. Not just in the world, but even in my own neighbourhood. And I also wonder how many more are surrounded by people who are lonelier than those of us living alone.

If I can paraphrase my favourite words from his article it is these:

“In the raw moments of loneliness that succeed a breakup or bereavement, when we have nowhere to run, we encounter our true self; like I did. And it was scary. It felt like sitting in the corner of a dungeon with a chain locked around my ankle as a stranger towered over me. I wanted to run away, but there was nowhere good enough to run to.
I realised what a shell of a person I was now that my ex-wife had left me... But I was starting to get to know myself from a brand new perspective. Solitude has the power to teach us about ourselves. It is the gym where we must go to train.”

As a consequence of his experience he advocates solitude as a practice for everyone and concludes “Soon you will get to know the most interesting person you have ever met. One who will always be with you no matter what else you lose”.

Now I’m not sure if I would consider myself the most interesting person I’ve met, but I can’t deny the wisdom in his words that I am the only one who will always be with me no matter what or who I lose. So it makes a good deal of sense to get to know and befriend myself. I have to be the one I can rely on to see me, to advocate for me, and to hold and heal me through the hard times.

That has been my biggest lesson these last few years, starting to understand how to have and hold healthy boundaries. As I said to a friend of mine, having kids separates the mature from the immature, we either choose to grow up or we don’t. And I certainly no longer had the capacity to pander to persistent immaturity in an adult – in me or anyone else. 

After full time responsibility for my children most of their lives, separation has proved a somewhat welcome opportunity to hand over some of that responsibility and have a little balance restored in my life. Not that I would have chosen this upheaval for my children, but if they get more quality time with their other parent then that is a good thing. 

It certainly is strange indeed to have motherhood change so dramatically and so suddenly though. Accepting my kids are not going to get consistency in terms of limitations, routines and parenting styles and continually redirecting them back to the other parent when they are there, instead of rescuing them all, is the biggest change.

Otherwise it's nice to have some space to myself and then good to have the children back again. And while I have that space I sink into my solitude like the deliciousness that it is. When the time is right I trust I'll feel the urge to break out this chrysalis-like state, but right now I'm enjoying reacquainting myself with that person who, as Tapas’ said, has been living in the basement all these years.

It’s not easy, particularly when reckoning with the me who abandoned myself for so long. My friend wrote a beautiful prose yesterday that feels so apt:

“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don't recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. It takes commitment and respect for the other to not let yourself succumb to your own one thousand deaths.”

To love and respect others fully, without giving away me, is to love and respect myself just as fiercely.

I read an article by Teal Swan this morning talking about the difference between relationships founded in compromise rather than compatibility. She says “Compromise means we settle conflict or reach alignment by way of mutual concession. In essence we believe it’s loving to concede something of value”.

Whereas compatibility is where coexistence is beneficial and adds to the wellbeing of both. She says “It is about creating the right arrangements with people and putting people in the right place in your life according to their and your personal boundaries (personal feelings, thoughts, desires, needs, behaviours, truths etc)”.

As Teal points out, often when we are in conflict with another person, it is because we are operating from two different paradigms. One believes in compromise and the other doesn’t and so you are pulling in different directions for a solution, enhancing the feeling of unworkability on both sides.

What I love about this contrast is it’s shone a spotlight for me on a more conscious way of being in relationships to anyone. As I begin to feel into who I am and what my personal feelings, thoughts, desires, needs, behaviours, truths etc are, it gives me clarity on how to proceed more successfully in creating compatible relationships of every kind.

As Teal says “

“When you build your relationships on the foundation of compatibility, you don’t believe in giving in when it comes to anything in a relationship that will cause you to feel resentment, frustration or pain; or that will compromise your sense of personal wellbeing. You don’t believe in mutual sacrifice.

You don’t believe that balance in a relationship is about meeting half way. Instead, you believe that loving someone means making sure they are not in pain. And them loving you means making sure that you are not in pain, even if that means that you cannot be with a person in a certain relationship arrangement because of it.

Therefore, you also don’t believe in having your own singular happiness at heart. But you don’t believe in sacrificing your singular happiness for the sake of the other person’s happiness either. And you believe that in order for a person to be right and good, they must be willing to look at the incompatibilities that are causing pain and be willing to find a different, more compatible arrangement for you both. You believe in symbiosis rather than give and take.”

With that paradigm in mind, as I alternatively retreat under my blanket of solitude these days versus when I have roles to perform, part of this transformation in the cocoon is very much a revaluation and reorientation of the way I interact with the world and what I will and won’t accept.

Like Tapas, I believe everyone would benefit from periods of solitude in order to get clarity on what parts of us have been living in the basement for years, and who we would like to show up as in the world today. If this sounds like a yearning you have, in what ways could you draw solitude around you like a warm blanket to get to know yourself better?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Give Yourself Permission to Live Life in Alignment With Your True Nature, How Blissful Would It Be to Abandon Your Life Load?, How Living Your Passions Fully Combats Feeling Lonely, Loneliness – Meet the Most Important Person in Your Life, Does Your Heart Long to Be Accepted for Being Just You? and Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

A friend of mine gave me some well meaning advice to “Take things as they come”. This means to deal with things as they happen without planning for them, and do what feels right with a composed state of mind. This sounds like an excellent goal, but I also know that reaching that goal requires a lot of practice when someone has learned the hard way not to trust others.

I recalled this week one of the clearest memories I have of first experiencing what now seems to be popularly termed gaslighting. This is when someone is psychologically manipulated into doubting their own sanity.

I was twenty years old when a driver coming from the opposite direction crossed the central line and ran into the car I was driving, glancing off and hitting the car behind me before flipping and landing on its roof.  No one was seriously injured thankfully, but I did have whiplash and bruising.

Months later, as the driver of the oncoming vehicle disputed causing the accident, my cousin – who had been my passenger that night – and the guy in the vehicle behind us were all called to testify in court as to the circumstances of the crash. I remember my cousin being terrified, and me being the strong one saying “It will be fine, just tell it as it happened, we didn’t do anything wrong”.

My mother had strict morals, and honesty was one of them. As a child I was punished severely for telling lies. Once I recall spending two pence change, from whatever I’d  been sent to the shops for – bread I think - on a piece of bubblegum. When I got home and tried to say I’d lost the money, my mum came down hard. I recall the exact words as I was being punished “This isn’t because you bought the bubblegum, it’s because you lied about it”.

We were not allowed in the courtroom as the others each gave evidence, so when my cousin came back to the waiting area visibly shaken and upset, I was most definitely feeling far more nervous than I was letting on. That was my stance then and now, be strong and if I don’t feel it, fake it.

I stood in the stand and started to give my recount of that night when the accident occurred. The guy’s lawyer, the one who had hit us in the oncoming vehicle, said to me in a rather austere tone “I put it to you Miss Keachie that you were the one who crossed the central line and hit my client’s oncoming vehicle”.

Unprepared for such an accusation, an outright lie, I was in shock and blurted something like “I bloody well did not”. Then the judge reprimanded me for swearing – another thing I’d been punished for as a child. I didn’t know it then but I was in full flight or fight mode, more accurately freeze mode, and completely lost for words and shaking. It was all I could do not to break down and cry right there in the witness box.

I discovered afterwards that the defendant, the man who had crashed into us, was on his way home from a night shift and had fallen asleep at the wheel. He pleaded not guilty in the hopes of avoiding prosecution as he was training to be a driving instructor and his career would be ended before it had begun with this kind of conviction.

That is when I really realised for the first time that not everyone had been brought up with the same morals. To lie under oath seemed so huge to me that I was quite in disbelief the defendant and his lawyer had the gall to do it.

But still I held tight to my beliefs, I was wired to.

Recently another lawyer I’ve been working with told me that she sees this common pattern between parties where one shoots off wild accusations, or twists the truth, to get what they want and the other wants to spell out the truth in the hopes that the other party will see reason and capitulate.

Her view is that it’s a waste of time with that kind of person. I agree, though it took me a long time to see it.
Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic and, according to Ike Allen and Ande Anderson of Avaiya University, “Signs that someone is gaslighting you might include:

• Denial of your recollection of events
  
• Refusal to consider your point of view
• Calling you crazy or overly sensitive when you voice concerns
• Or twisting what happened to shift the blame to you”.

Often in order to reinforce this manipulation, those gaslighting use a tactic called triangulation. Triangulation happens when one or both of the people involved in the conflict try to pull a third person into the dynamic, often with the goal of deflecting some of the tension, creating another conflict to take the spotlight off the original issue and reinforcing their sense of rightness or superiority.

Author and coach Lisa Romano, who was the victim of gaslighting and narcissistic abuse for many years, says “If you are the target of a narcissistic person and are experiencing triangulation, what’s happening on the outside is that the narcissist is talking to rational people who, in their heads, think there must be some rational reason this person is so upset. They do not understand that they are dealing with someone who sees themselves as a victim and is causing triangulation as an insurance policy”.

When Lisa went to therapy with her ex husband he was like a different person. She would think “If only you were like this at home we wouldn’t be here”.

She says we see it often in the court system when someone is exaggerating claims, or just outright lying and warns “You have to be careful as there are some judges who fall for this, thinking this must be pretty bad if this person is so upset”.

Lisa discovered there is little understanding that, when it comes to people with high conflict personalities, you have to take that rationale and throw it out the window. People on the outside of this dynamic are not learning about narcissism or codependency and don’t understand when you tell them “This is what I’m dealing with…. I can’t trust this person” or “This person is different when there is no audience”, it makes you sound crazy.

Even within those relationships, and I have had the misfortune to experience a few in my career and in personal relationships, it took decades for me to realise that my default wiring of “There must be some misunderstanding here, let me explain..” would always be fruitless. The high conflict person appears to have no conscience and simply wants their own way.

Worse, as Lisa says “If you stay in these relationships, soon enough you will feel that you are losing it, and suffer from self doubt, anxiety, rumination, depression, chronic stress and eventually have a nervous breakdown and/or develop serious health issues. All the while the people you love will wonder if you’re the one who is causing the problems as you’re so highly anxious and perhaps even seem neurotic”.

So when that lawyer said to me that the truth is a waste of time with that kind of person, while I agree, I can also see that the truth - the facts - are incredibly important. They are the solid ground upon which to stand in a world where another would have you believe an entirely different reality.

In the corporate world we used to calls this ACE, an Arse Covering Exercise. But when it comes to manipulation and especially gaslighting I’ve found it’s incredibly important just for my sanity.

Lisa relates “Your reaction to a narcissist's abuse will be the focus of their attention. When you react to it, they use your normal healthy reaction as proof that you're crazy, and that you should not trust your perceptions. As they remain calm, observing your natural emotional response to abuse, you begin to doubt your reaction is valid. Reactive abuse is a weapon narcissists use against their victims for the purpose of controlling their minds from the inside out”.

Lisa admits that, upon reflection, there were times when the way she reacted to this was nasty and snarky. She says there were even occasions she could have characterized her own reactions as abusive. This is what I would call “letting someone get a rise out of you”, they basically succeed in winding up their victim.

As her healthy self-doubt got lost in the emotional abuse she endured as a child and as an adult, she wondered:
"Maybe they are right. Maybe I am just a negative person. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I am too much. Maybe I have no right to feel this way. Maybe I should not react so strongly to their passive aggressiveness. Maybe the silent treatment is not so bad. Maybe their criticisms are meant to help me. Maybe my desire to feel closer to them is unrealistic. Maybe I should just shut up! Maybe I should not make such a big deal out of catching them in another lie. At least they don't hit me...”

After episodes like these, she would remain in emotional hangovers for days, weeks, and sometimes months, which I could relate to. She had no clue what reactive abuse was, or how a narcissistic person used their victim's reaction to maintain mind control. 

So “No”, I thought when challenged by the lawyer, the explanations of the facts and the truth aren't for the perpetrator, it has long since been recognised they are not interested in those and have no conscience. They are for the lawyers and, ultimately, a judge, hopefully all reasonable people who are able to give sensible advice and make sensible decisions. 

However, as my first experience with the driver’s lawyer in the courtroom showed, the perpetrators even have their own professional flying monkeys. I’ve also experienced this in recent years where I still somehow remained shocked that a professional would use the same gaslighting tactics in order to win their client’s case.

There is no denying that it has taken me a long time and enough distance and perspective to see the behaviours and the patterns so clearly. And until I had some distance from it there was no doubt my inner instinct was always to respond "You misunderstand, here's where I'm coming from" in the hopes that somewhere a penny would drop and the crazy-making would cease.

And back to that friend of mine who gave me some well meaning advice to “Take things as they come”, well, I’m getting there but it’s not an overnight thing.

Lisa’s clients ask her "When will I feel better? When will I no longer be reactive? When will I feel peaceful? When will I gain back my self-confidence?" And she responds “The truth is, healing takes time and it takes mental toughness training to undo the psychological as well as neurological issues chronic abuse creates over time. There is no quick fix”.

That is why online videos, podcasts, courses, books and so forth are so valuable as they provide easily accessible platforms that give people who have been the target of narcissistic attacks an opportunity to educate themselves and others. And the more I have studied this advice I can see it’s universal and the road to recovery requires consistent practice.

Here are some things that I have done, as summed up by attorney Rebecca Zung, to start regaining a sense of power:

1. First, start creating some boundaries.  Even if they are tiny.  Then enforce them with all your might.
   
2. Second, start to notice when they get emotional.  Start even observing their emotions out loud to them by saying things like "I see that you are upset."  It will start to help you distance yourself from the situation and start to see the situation as an observer. This is the part where I like to record the facts.
   
3. Third, start to notice your own triggers.  Observe. Do not under any circumstances show your emotions to them if possible. Pretend like you’re reporting the news.  Never explain, justify or overshare.
   
4. Fourth, journal your feelings onto paper.  Put it all out there. Allow yourself the grace to feel yourself to feel your emotions. The only way out is through. Then burn it if you have to.
   
5. Lastly, gather a very close inner circle of a super supportive group of trustworthy people around you who will help you maintain sanity, build you up and gain confidence daily.  
   

I hope you have never had to, and will never have to, experience these kind of attacks on your personal opinion, needs, desires, credibility and, frankly, sanity. However this pattern of playing for top down control is one of the most prevalent patterns in our world today, playing out not just in relationships between two people but on a much wider scale through governments and media.

If you ever wonder how seemingly intelligent and successful people fall victim to these kinds of tactics, or feel ashamed that you have yourself, there is an excellent podcast series by Tiffany Reese that a friend recommended to me called Something Was Wrong. In 2018 Tiffany launched her award-winning podcast which tells the stories of various abuse survivors, and aims to validate victims and educate the public on important topics such as emotional, physical or sexual abuse, coercive control and gaslighting.

But be reassured by these final words from Lisa Romano ” Today, I have learned to discern wolves from sheep, lions from kittens, and bears from earthworms. This is me, acknowledging danger and staying mentally strong and connected to my divine guidance system in spite of potential predators”. In short, Lisa learned to trust herself again, as am I, which lends nicely to being able to take things as they come while being savvy to – rather than gaslit by - the toxic patterns that are more common than you might realise.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Embrace Your Authentic Self, Shed the Toxic People in Your Life, Could a Broader Perspective Benefit Us All Right Now?, Why Do Some People Seem so Self Absorbed and Not Care About Others?, Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, In What Unseen Ways Are You Abandoning Your Own Free Will?, From Frustrating to Fantastic – How Do We Get Organisations to Meet Our Needs?, Overcome the Greatest Human Fear – Be the True You, Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go? and What I Love About Being With Narcissistic People. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Last week my kids were watching the Kim Possible movie. It’s about a teenage spy who feels overshadowed by a new agent. She loses her identity as “being the best” and doesn’t know who she is anymore. Her mum says “You are who you have always been, you’re still Kim Possible”.

The same day I read a quote from Glennon Doyle “Ask a women who she is and she will tell you who she loves, who she serves and what she does – I am a wife/sister/friend/career woman. The fact that we define ourselves by our roles is what makes us untethered and afraid. If a woman defines herself as a wife, what happens when her partner leaves? Or the kids go to college? Or the company folds?”

I observe the same regardless of gender, our roles in relation to others seem to define our very sense of self.
Perhaps having been through many changes in my life that have redefined the roles I’ve played within relationships and careers and other arenas, it has helped me to see the qualities that make me uniquely me:

• I am always curious about why people behave the way they do
  
• I am always curious about life, energy and creation beyond the physical senses
  
• I am always curious about the interconnectedness of everything on our planet, seen and unseen, understood and misunderstood, and beyond
  
• I am always looking for ways to best express my thoughts and feelings
  
• I am generally kind, sensitive, thoughtful and generous in nature
  
• I am a person of my word, and take promises and responsibilities very seriously
  
• I enjoy being around people who evoke my curiosity and evolve my worldview
  
• I prefer quality over quantity
  
• I love being out in nature, especially near the ocean and other bodies of water
  
• I trust in the process of change and transformation - in all its guises. I’ve seen it from a retrospective standpoint enough to welcome it in and embrace it even though it’s usually not the most pleasant experience
  
• And I am well aware that I am not everyone’s cup of tea
  

There are times when different parts of me take the lead, and those parts are not always defined by healthy behaviors, yet they were all born from healthy reactions that – at the time – served me. I’ve had to look at these parts of me, the behavioural patterns that may no longer serve and observe, question and make different choices in order to create healthier patterns.

As a result there are times I can be fiercely independent and at other times codependent. There are times when I am centered and confident, and others when I am anxious or in flight or fight mode. There are times when I’m deep and serious and others when I’m carefree and playful. There are times I am extremely introverted and closed off from the world, and others when I am open and social and really quite extrovert. There are times when I’m present and times when I’m distracted. I’m human.

You might like me, you might not. You might like me one minute and hate me the next. My job is to learn to be okay with that rather than bend my shape to fit something you might like and lose myself again in the process. I’m always coming back to myself, and that happens more frequently and with a stronger pull these days if I veer off course.
I listened to someone express their opinion on something recently, who felt the need to preface it with these words:

“Things do not seem to me to always match the popular narrative. We are living in a time where people are being silenced and alternative opinions are being monitored for questioning the narratives pushed to the public. It is a time of living in fear of ridicule, judgment and social persecution.

Even if I wanted to share my most honest insights about the global and collective energies I would likely be censored, deplatformed or trolled. I am aware I have to filter much of what I have to say, to be careful with my wording so as not to offend others. Yet ultimately I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, I am not attached to anyone needing to believe my truth as their own.”

I feel the truth of where they were coming from. In so many ways, aspects of this world seem to be going backwards. While I firmly believe this is actually part of a process of “turning up the heat” on the things that really need to change, I also believe that the thing that will see us through is getting a clearer view on who we each authentically are.

I read an email from Brianna MacWilliam yesterday “Oprah once said that the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude, which I personally found really inspiring. But she left out one really crucial part – how damn hard it can be to change your attitude when so much that compels our thoughts, feelings and behaviours is largely unconscious, and therefore beyond our awareness and control. That is of course, until you become aware. Then a whole lot more falls within the bounds of your control”.

I believe the key to human evolution right now lies in this bit of work, becoming aware of who we each truly are. The ability to define our qualities and talents and anchor ourselves in that, to observe our thoughts and our reactions and figure out which part of us is in the driving seat and whether it is serving us, this is the key to a kinder, more empowering world. So who are you? Go ahead and introduce yourself to the remarkable human behind the roles that you currently play and anchor yourself in that.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Introducing the Authentic You, Take a Small Break from Your Life to Restart from Your Authentic Core, Leverage Your Feelings to Find Your Authentic Self, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success and Do You Always Express Your True Feelings? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

My true nature. I have no blueprint for this. So I am starting afresh.

I like to sit in the silence to simply feel my feelings. But they are uncomfortable and I want to distract myself.

I like to read but I can’t get into it, I’m restless.

I like to walk on the beach, so I do, but when I am there I remember the years I have walked the beach alone and having to justify why I even go there at all.

I like to swim but when I do my brain gets preoccupied with thoughts, replaying things from the past and thinking through future “what ifs”. I look at the sun shimmering on the bottom of the pool and I feel present for a second and then my mind gets lost in the swirl again.

I am agitated. My nervous system doesn’t know what to do with itself, it is still on alert. It is still trying to protect me from the onslaught of criticism, the insufferable entitlement of someone else who thinks they have a right to approve or disapprove my every decision.

That was my truth. I’m in recovery but it’s an ongoing process. I’m grieving the years I allowed myself to be subject to such nonsense, and forgiving myself because I was doing the best I could with what I believed to be true at the time.

A family member once said “He doesn’t try to control you does he?” It was a rhetorical question, them thinking I did as I pleased without any pushback. And yet one of those moments where – if I had been mid-drink – I’d have coughed and spluttered with the choke. They knew us both, how could they not see the level of control going on?

It was likely because I had created a mist or a veil of sorts around our life, I looked like I had it all together and was endlessly patient and understanding.

Growing up I had developed a strong and confident persona. It was one borne out of both rebellion to control and in defiance of people who did not believe in me – the “I’ll show you” kind. I was disciplined; I swam competitively and did well in both my education and my sport. I did well in my relationships at first and I did well in my career.

I pivoted in my relationships in my twenties when losing someone I thought was “the one”. My self esteem spiraled. In retrospect, in order to feel more in control, I labeled myself as wrong in some ways i.e. too needy, too serious, too this, too that, not enough this, not enough that. In actual fact I further abandoned my true nature at this point, and my relationships went from slightly misaligned to completely incompatible over the years.

That is how I found myself in a relationship with someone who lacked a fundamental respect for my true nature because, actually, so did I. It took that being mirrored back to me in relationships for me to begin fighting for it again.
The thing is, as an adult, there is no need to fight, only to reclaim. I am no longer a dependent child and if I made myself a dependant adult then that was on me, I’d given my power away.

Dr Les Carter says “People who generally use tactics like berating and belittling those who choose not to comply with their agenda, unable to engage in constructive dialogue, consciously or subconsciously have the goal of elevating themselves while diminishing others. They lack a fundamental respect for your distinctiveness”.

And “Even when they have their moments of pleasantness and cooperation, it cannot be fully trusted since it is only a matter of time for the narcissistic pattern to take over again, they can’t stop themselves”.  

I can attest to this. My choices, the things that make me uniquely me, and the things that were different to their preferences, were all deemed unacceptable. Everything from my preference to go to sleep later, reading rather than watching TV, eliminating refined sugars from my diet, through to the time I would choose to invest in myself studying, taking care of my wellbeing or wanting to travel to see friends and family – all were all subject to ongoing covert and overt disapproval in one form or another.   

And when I stopped working in order to take care of my children, money was then most often the focus of resentment and, ultimately, control. When I had been earning money independently I had felt able to protect my independence better. When I relinquished that for what I saw as my duty at the time, since my children clearly needed more focus and attention, I felt trapped.

It took a long time, but I slowly learned healthy boundaries and I am now learning how to hold them in the face of the crazy-making pattern I had got locked into where someone could lack a fundamental respect for my distinctiveness and yet still presume I should remain loyal and subservient towards them even after they left the relationship.

Dr Les Carter says “This pattern of berating then requiring loyalty is completely nonsensical, to the point of absurdity, yet it is very common. When you are on the receiving end of such treatment, your challenge is to extract yourself from the crazy-making pattern and, instead, choose to chart a different, healthier course”. Indeed.

So now the things I did for myself in defiance of criticism, I get to choose from a place of inner peace. The years of meditation practice I’ve done have proven so useful in this, because that is also about learning to observe (rather than be totally identified with and get swept away by) my thoughts and feelings.

The restlessness, the anxiety I feel comes from a nervous system that hasn’t felt safe to make those choices to be in alignment with my true nature without being on high alert. To choose from a place of inner peace I have to retrain and regulate my nervous system, it’s a conscious process of recognizing when I’m triggered into a fight or flight pattern and becoming the observer rather than the reactor.

I choose to sit in the compelling agony of wanting to take action and yet not taking action, or sitting with a mind that has gone into a freeze state and allowing myself to observe and stay there until I start to come back into my body and thaw.

It is past time, I now consciously walk off the battlefield and leave others to fight their own demons. It is time to chart my own course and give myself permission to live in alignment with my true nature. It is time to wake up and wonder “who do I want to be and what do I want to do today?”

So what about you, are you living life in alignment with your true nature?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Introducing the Authentic You, Take a Small Break from Your Life to Restart from Your Authentic Core, Leverage Your Feelings to Find Your Authentic Self, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success and Do You Always Express Your True Feelings? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Non-binary means not relating to, or composed of, or involving just two things. While the term is becoming popularised though those who do not identify with the male or female gender, I am really excited about what it is signalling for our human growth potential.

When someone close recently identified as non-binary, it made absolute sense to me. I believe we are all a mix of masculine and feminine traits and – like everything else – it’s easier to think of people on a spectrum in terms of their sexuality rather one of a definitive two things.

I thought the same thing this week when I saw a post from an old friend supporting a guy they knew who had donated money to a political party, and some followers of his music were outraged, threatening to sabotage his musical career because they didn’t like his choices.

As Morgan Freeman said “Just because I disagree with you does not mean I hate you. We need to relearn that in our society”.  

For a long time we have been living in a black and white world. One that denotes something as good or bad, true or false, male or female and so on. This kind of polarisation has been no more obvious than in the recent pandemic where governments and the media did their utmost to promote fear and polarisation over the choice of a vaccine.

Families have been torn apart by this idea that you need to do something in order to keep everyone else safe, and if you don’t you are not only irresponsible but a bad person. As I said in Ask No One to Be Different So That You Can Feel Good I feel an inherent truth in those words, not the ones I heard espoused by politicians.

Brianna McWilliams explains how it is that some of us come to appreciate a broader, subtler palette of thoughts and emotions than others. Brianna specialises in the area of attachment theory and how it affects our relationships as adults. She notes that those with a disorganised attachment, also known as fearful-avoidant attachment, are particularly prone to black and white thinking.

This arises, she says, because as children we learn to understand our feelings through our caregivers tuning in and reflecting back to us what we are experiencing which builds our vocabulary and understanding beyond the binary “It feels good” or it feels bad”. If our caregivers don’t or cannot reflect back more understanding than that, we then lack the same.

Worse, in the era of behaviourist parenting – still the predominant style – there is a tendency to translate behaviour into beliefs that the behaviour itself defines the person as inherently good or bad, introducing the eternally damaging dynamic of shame into the equation along with guilt.

I like to challenge myself in recent years to consciously look at things in a broader context than right or wrong, which my parents had strong ideas about. Instead of looking through a lens of or, I look through the lens of and. This leads me to see the many ways in which things can be both right and wrong.

For example, although there were many ways in which I could demonstrate I have been victimised in certain relationships, there has always been learning and personal growth in such circumstances.

What if there’s an inherent juxtaposition in everything because – instead of a binary world – we live in a world of contrast, a contrast that allows me to figure out my own unique true north instead of being taught it by someone else?
And what if every day that changes on some level? The person known as Shona Keachie is a collection of trillions of cells, a collection of emotions, experiences, multiple psyches, skills, opinions and on and on.

I first felt this acutely when – in my twenties – I did a lot of personal development work. I remember listening to Florence Littauer talk on stage about four distinct personality profiles and – as hugely entertaining and insightful as it was – I knew life is more complex. It can be helpful to see patterns, but it is also true that I can show up differently in a work situation than a personal relationship and differently again in a friendship, and different in all of those depending on the people within them.

As Tony Robbins said “Inside of you, there are parts of you that are incredibly gracious and generous, but there is also a part that is selfish. We all have loving parts and not so loving parts, playful parts and boring parts, courageous parts and fearful parts”.

Then he said, poignantly, “The real question is not Who are you? The real question is Which part of you is in charge right now?” In fact, Tony firmly believes he doesn’t change people; he just gets them to put another part of themselves in charge.

I believe that applies to all the various parts of us, the tangible and intangible. The mind, body and emotions can be complex and ever-changing. To me the LGBTQIA2S+ community are on the leading edge of a new kind of – and kinder - approach to the human experience on Earth.

Who we are is not so simple, it’s shaped by many things. To try and make anything from our sexuality to our cereal preferences and any other minor or major life choices a straightforward binary equation is far too limiting, it stymies our growth as individuals and as a society. Is it time to embrace the full spectrum from shades of grey to the rainbow of choices that define our uniqueness in every way?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Don’t Tell Me What to Believe - Help Me Find What I Already Know, Are the Most Loving, Courageous and Compassionate Parts of You in the Driving Seat? The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself, How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? and Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by Ri Butov from Pixabay

A friend of mine sent me a link to a Luke Chlebowicz video to cheer me up one day. Luke is a life coach and posts all sorts of empowering material, but this one was of him dancing around his lounge with a huge smile on his face, which made me laugh. To make my friend smile, I decided to reciprocate with a video of some “no cares” dancing around my own lounge. It was such fun.

It reminded me of another post I’d seen on Happiness Chemicals – And How to Hack Them. This appears to be a common image in various guises online, though it’s unclear who the original schematic should be attributed to. But it lays out the four main happiness chemicals:

• Dopamine – the reward chemical
• Oxytocin – the love hormone
• Serotonin – the mood stabilizer
• Endorphin – the painkiller

And gives examples of things people can do naturally to boost their mood. According to the British Science Association, dance has been scientifically proven to reduce levels of cortisol caused by chronic stress. It also causes the brain to release dopamine and endorphins. So although it might seem counter intuitive this kind of activity can help with relaxation as well as being a great mood booster.

It certainly works for me; I’ve been dancing around my lounge since I was a teen watching playbacks of Flashdance over and over. But if dancing isn’t your thing, any exercise or just listening to feel good music, or watching rousing movies can really help.

Even catching up on clips from the Jubilee Concert in the UK last weekend was fun. Adam Lambert opened with Queen, taking me back to seeing them play live back in 2013 and how the atmosphere of a crowd like that is nothing short of pure elation.

I’ve certainly been more mindful of taking care of myself as I have navigated some tough times over the last year. Amid a constant barrage of unreasonable demands, false accusations and gaslighting it can be easy to lose sight of the good things in life. Being more intentional about all the things that keep me sane and stable has been a must for me: regularly meditating, taking beach walks, swimming and making time for friends.

It would be easy to look to others to fill the gaps inside, but that is a temporary fix, and has often led to me giving away too much of my own power and settling for less than I deserve. At this point in my life it is my priority to feel like I’m standing on solid ground.

Another way of releasing frustration can be to scream my lungs out when driving along rural highways. To be fair, the scream can be let loose anywhere, but if I did that at home at least four or five neighbours would investigate so it’s much more liberating when no one can hear. Rae Oliver writes a good article on Scream Therapy but I can attest to the benefits of discharging my nervous system in this cathartic way.

In fact I encourage my kids to do the same, not in reaction to one another in the moment, which can be addictive and unhelpful, but in a more of a controlled release as we are driving.

There is another component that has come into life lately though, that old saying about “dance as if no one is watching and sing as though no one is listening” hits the nail on the head. I had a friend from the UK who video called one morning. I was sitting in my dressing gown, hadn’t yet had a showered and declined the call sending him a text “Can’t possibly answer a video call right now, I’m sitting in bed with greasy hair etc”.

Then I thought “Mm, what does it matter?” and so I called him back and we had a good old catch up and laughed about my hair. Being authentic is important to me, having bent my shape to fit others for a lot of my life and reaped the (painful) consequences of abandoning myself, so extending it to my appearance is a bold step, backed by an inner self confidence.

The journey to me has been an inside out job, it has involved identifying what’s triggering me in the moment, and going back to the roots of a trigger when I have spotted unhealthy patterns. It has involved cutting ties and learning new habits, and healthier, more self caring ways of being authentic. And it’s not a journey at its end, but it’s a journey that has put me on a path that feels more akin to one I intended for this life.

Inevitably though there are moments when life seems heavy, and it’s down to me to lift myself up.  When life is getting you down, what are the ways in which you lift yourself up?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, I Am a Recovering Approval Seeker and Control Freak, Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling and Loneliness – Meet the Most Important Person in Your Life. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

My friend remarked to me this week, when I mentioned I just had to learn how to deal with being hated by a particular person, that they probably didn’t hate me at all. That is true, they may not, that is more my evaluation of their actions. They may in fact be resentful, jealous, guilty, or any number of things, but the bottom line is they don’t treat me well.

There is that famous saying “Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth” and yet…

When those people out there who had a nice secure attachment bond growing up, or those who learned to project their pain on others, then have a habit of saying unhelpful things like “Just ignore them” or “Who cares what people think?” or “Learn not to give any fks” people like me want to scream.

Being brought up in a world where it felt like my quality of life very much depended on being liked, and being “good”, I became hyper attuned to others. What people thought of me – to my nervous system – felt like a matter of life and death, it’s hard wired in my body and mind to care. 

When I sense someone not liking something I’ve said or done, I go into this mode of “well, clearly there is a misunderstanding because I bear this person no ill intention”. More than that though, my body goes into a flight/fight/freeze reaction and I can ruminate for days, weeks, months – even years depending on the person and situation, always searching for a way to make it safe.

I saw a post this week that really resonated “Know this: You can’t control the versions of you that exist in other people’s minds”. It reminded me of another popular one I had seen a while back from Kira J that read:

“You have to become okay with not being liked. No matter how loving or kind you are, you will never people please your way into collective acceptance. You could be a whole ray of sunshine and people will hate you because they are used to rain. Be okay with shining regardless”.

There’s no escaping the truth of this, I’m totally on board with it, but it just doesn’t feel safe within my body to be disliked so I have too often given away my power in order to keep the peace.

Then one of my kids had been getting taunted by a classmate and – for fear of losing her temper and the consequences that would bring – she had been avoiding the situation. Clearly my child couldn’t avoid school forever; this is something she needed to learn how to deal with.

So as I looked around for some age-appropriate inspiration, I came across a short video by psychologist Liz Laugeson on Comebacks for Being Teased that hit the nail on the head. The more I’ve thought about it, her advice works for everything from school bullying to living with someone with raging narcissistic tendencies.

Her statement “We all get teased at some point, but it’s how we react to it that often determines how often or how severely it happens” caught my attention. She comments on how the advice adolescents are usually given is to either to walk away, ignore, or tell an adult/authority which often doesn’t work.

It’s only when “They act like what the person said didn’t bother them and, in fact, what they said was kind of lame” that the teasing/taunting/bullying ceases. That’s because the instigator is trying to get a reaction, it makes them feel powerful, and if one isn’t forthcoming it’s not worth the effort. And while most people prefer positive reactions, negative reactions are better than nothing.

Attorney Rebecca Zung agrees, she teaches widely on negotiating with people with narcissistic traits and has guided many adults through separation and divorce. She calls the positive reactions – like praise, admiration and adulation – top shelf narcissistic supply. But says people with those traits will absolutely settle for bottom shelf reactions like anger, fear, or any other negative emotion.

It’s the emotional reaction – whether negative or positive – that feeds the need for dominance and control. That is because, as is also the case in schoolyard teasing, what lies beneath that need is a deeply insecure person.

Having been at the receiving end myself, I also know what it’s like when those around me then try to place a "reasonable person" lens on their advice, advising to just sit down and talk things through, getting frustrated at the prolonged nature of negotiations and angst on my behalf.

Not that their advice is incorrect, that is of course what I had attempted; it is sound advice if negotiating with a reasonable and cooperative person. However, if the other person’s energy literally feeds from taking power, it feeds from the fight itself.

I’ve learned that people with narcissistic traits are never going to sit down and state what they want like a reasonable person. Win-win is not in their psyche, it's win-lose they feed from. They stage war, but they don't want to win the war without having many drawn out battles along the way. Every battle is a chance to win power over the other; it's how they get their energy, and their very sense of self.

It is why, Rebecca Zung says, that “just giving them what they want doesn’t work. They will find a way to drag things out, twist your words and continue to try to provoke a reaction”. The only way to deal with it is by not giving them the satisfaction of an emotional response.

It's not any different than the taunting my daughter was subject to. When she reacts emotionally and says "Stop! Why are you doing this?" That's the reaction right there that makes the provoker feel powerful because they've made the other person feel powerless. It’s when you can give off the impression you don’t care that takes the steam out their pistons.

It was of course hard keeping my centre and personal power in the face of multitudes of spurious accusations in relation to those people and things closest to me. The temptation to respond to even the smallest and most ridiculous of barbs is always there, my inner child’s voice still says “there must be some misunderstanding, let me explain…”.

But the bottom line is, if that person doesn't treat me well, if their communication is devoid of basic respect, then it's designed to provoke. It's certainly not in the realms of fair and reasonable, it's more in the realm of street fighting.  And the situations I’ve been through have been so extreme it’s taught me life lessons that will serve me well going forward.

This desire to explain, to educate the other person that my intentions are good, it’s a fools desire when over and over for many years that other person has chosen to ignore the countless kind and thoughtful things I’ve done, the thousands of reasoned explanations and evidence of my inherent goodness.

Like Kira J says, I can’t people please my way into acceptance, I need to accept myself and accept that the other person – for whatever reason – is simply not going to see my sun as shining and hold some strong and healthy boundaries around that. What is the old saying “When the horse is dead, get off”, yes indeed, I reckon that horse was already a pile of bones many times over in my life, and I’ve looked at it seeing the potential it could have with some life breathed into it. Huge painful wasted energy.

No more giving away my power, end of story. Nor is the answer in taking from others, however, even when they are goading and pushing and trying to get a reaction, win-win is always the way to go. The satisfaction of revenge and retorts are temporary and only fuel the flames, they too are an emotional reaction. I want to keep integrity and walk away with my head held high.

To end I will quote another post I saw this week from Sasha Tozzi, wise words indeed. She says “Choose people who:

• Choose you
  
• Ask how you are
  
• See you
  
• Let you be you
  
• Feel good to your nervous system
  
• You can breathe easily around
  
• You don’t need to perform for
  
• Are good for your mental health\Want to see you win
  
• Don’t try to control you”
  

Amen to that.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Make Your Communication Clean, Open and Honest and Get What You Want, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Do You Always Express Your True Feelings? Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear and Why You Should Consciously Engage in Body Talk. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

A therapist was observing the couple in front of her. She observed the husband was living in a prison of his own making, within a limited image of who he felt he should be. He acted more like a drill sergeant than a supportive husband or concerned father. He didn’t ask questions, he ran an interrogation. He didn’t acknowledge his fears or vulnerabilities, he asserted his ego.

Of the wife she observed how she seemed hyper-attuned to her husband’s tone and speech. He had been talking about some frustrations at work and the therapist could see how his wife seemed to be searching for a careful balance point between affirming his indignation and stoking his anger. She had clearly learned that her husband needed to be right, that he couldn’t handle being confronted or contradicted.

In a private consultation with the wife the therapist noted the wife’s resourcefulness and the seeming contradiction between her skills and the power she gave over to her husband; the price she paid to keep the peace.

As I was reading about this couple a wave of recognition passed over me. The therapist’s observations were an exact match to those a therapist had once shared with me, about me. I fully recognised myself in this (apparently common) scenario.

What she said next also really hit home. “The wife’s habit of avoiding conflict with her husband at all costs was as damaging to her children’s health and their family dynamic as were his domineering behaviours. They were partners in making control the language of the family, rather than empathetic connection or unconditional love”.

It’s not for the first time I feel great gratitude to find myself in much more healthy circumstances these days. I am also deeply thankful for the opportunities to learn from the past and grow beyond the unhealthy behavioural patterns that started in childhood and have dominated much of my life.

One of the lessons that has really hit home for me this week was something I had heard Brianna MacWilliam’s talk about in relation to anxious types like me. She had been talking about clean, open and honest communication.

She explains that the anxiety stems from the style of attachment bond formed with (usually) our primary caregiver/s as children. Those who are anxious (as opposed to secure, disoriented or avoidant) tend to feel unsettled and worried about the security of relationships, and one of the strategies used to manage anxiety and overwhelm is controlled behaviour as in the example above.

However, another common aspect of an anxious attachment style I recognise is that, with high expectations on myself, there are also high expectations of the relationship. Earlier training having taught me that there was a certain way that things “should be”, I certainly entered my earlier relationships with that mindset.

Then in 2006 I heard Abraham Hicks say “Let go of the cumbersome impossibility to trying to control other people and circumstances” and it struck me like a lightning bolt. By then I’d had enough experience of how cumbersome it really was, and I began to pivot and allow others to be more of who they are.

That said, when a good friend of mine talked this week about the strain of “having to mastermind” the family dynamics when her family were all together, I could relate to this too.

Although I went into motherhood determined to allow my children to be who they are, they also needed healthy boundaries. And although I knew intellectually that my kids would be their own unique selves, I also hadn’t expected them to be so different from their parents in so many ways.

For example, I never had any issues academically, or in attending school – in fact I managed this alongside two and a half hours in the pool training every day. So it was quite the surprise to me that my kids seemed to get so easily overwhelmed and resistant to school, swimming lessons and other activities that I had enjoyed growing up; even the social and fun stuff like going to the beach.

Add the anxieties of their unexpected reactions to the soup of a relationship with a partner who thought it was obviously something I was doing to make the children react this way, my anxiety increased. Because I had learned the cumbersome impossibility of trying to control others, I became more controlled and resentful within myself and in managing the children’s activities in a bid to manage their and my overwhelm.

Over the years, and as we have come through a good deal of these troubling times, I slowly uncovered that my children’s neuro diversity had much to do with their early overwhelm and still does today. However, I felt bottled up and the burden of my own and others’ expectations weighed heavily upon me.

Being anything less than perfect felt dangerous to me as a child. In a world of approval and disapproval, right and wrong, punishment and reward, I had become hyper attuned to their needs and determined to stay ahead of the curve so as not to trip anyone’s wire.

This often results in unreasonably high expectations of myself and others and resulted in the kind of relational style the therapist observed. To start to relate to the world in a healthier way, I needed to start being honest and communicating openly about my needs and expectations. Thus began the learning about having and holding healthy boundaries.

But within that, even once learning about what are and aren’t reasonable expectations of myself and others, there was still the need to communicate openly and honestly. If I am feeling anxious or insecure, learning to communicate that directly without blame or criticism has also been a long journey. That means vulnerability and what I discovered is not all relationships are safe to be vulnerable in.

In Brianna’s words “Just because you become a good communicator it doesn’t make you a magician. It makes you a fact finder – how possible is it going to be to have a compatible relationship with this person unburdened by miscommunications and defensive posturing?”

And if I hadn’t been convinced of that before I certainly have become convinced of the soundness of those words through many months of communicating via lawyers. Each time some posturing would arrive in my inbox I would start to shake and go into flight or fight mode.

My initial responses would then be laden with what Brianna calls “evaluations of other’s behaviour”. I learned a long time ago to own my own feelings, to say “I feel” rather than “You are/did”. But what I hadn’t learned well until recently was how to keep that clean. Saying “I feel rejected” or “I feel attacked” is an evaluation of someone’s behaviour, it’s just a covert way of saying “You rejected me” or “You attacked me”, it doesn’t address how that actually makes me feel inside.

And running away from feelings is something I have done over and over. If I feel someone is rejecting me, how does that make me feel inside? Unworthy? Too much? Not enough? And if someone is attacking me how does that make me feel? Angry? Frustrated? Unseen? Misunderstood? Undervalued?

I realised if I’m going to make an “I feel” statement I need to make it a noun rather than a verb to keep it clean. I have to sit with the evaluation I’ve jumped to in my head, and start to notice more what I’m actually feeling in my body.

And when it’s obvious that someone doesn’t give two hoots about my feelings, just stick to the clear facts. No point in giving away power as the therapist said above, especially to people who are feeding on that and unable to ask questions, or acknowledge their fears or vulnerabilities.

What that ongoing correspondence has given me has been practice ground to get clean. To shake down all the unhealthy and disempowering communication habits I had developed over a lifetime. What I wanted was to assert myself without feeling like I’d thrown another shot over the bow. While temporarily satisfying, I would quickly become anxious about what was going to come back my way.

And when I wrote my last communication, even before receiving a response, I knew I had achieved what I wanted. What I had said could be heard, it contained no blame or criticism. I had finally learned to stand on solid ground.

Even if we don’t always get what we want, most of us just want to be heard. So in what ways would you benefit from making your communication cleaner, more open and honest in order for your voice to be heard?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Why You Should Consciously Engage in Body Talk, Do You Always Express Your True Feelings? Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear and Your Mind Will Try to Protect You By Resisting Your Healthy Boundaries. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Many decades after the war had ended, holocaust survivor Dr Edith Eger finally began to do the inner work necessary to thrive in her life. She said “At Auschwitz, at Mauthausen, and on The Death March, I survived by drawing on my inner world. I found hope and faith in my life within me, even when I was surrounded by starvation and torture and death.”

However, of her life after the war, she said “My inner world was no longer sustaining, it became the source of my pain, unstoppable memories, loss and fear… I tried to banish the memories of the past, I thought it was a matter of survival.”

Then she reflects “Only after many years did I come to understand that running away doesn’t heal pain… (In America) I was further geographically than I had ever been from my former prison, but here I became psychologically imprisoned… running from my past, from my fear.”

Dr Egar, now a renowned psychologist, also observes “There is no hierarchy of suffering. Nothing makes my pain worse of better than yours”.

She has worked with many patients, both those with overt trauma like her own, and those suffering from more covert chronic trauma of childhood development in a world where parenting has centered on controlling behaviour and ignoring feelings for far too long.

Dr Gabor Mate, another child of the holocaust, agrees and says “Trauma creates coping mechanisms.  One way is soothing that leads to addictions, but another way is, if you get the message that you’re not good enough, then you might spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are, compensating by taking on too much”.

I recognise all these dynamics at play in my own life. I realise I was compensating my whole childhood for my mother’s poor relationship with her father: an abusive, alcoholic liar who died of lung cancer when she was only seven years old. It understandably shaped her whole way of being in the world, as does everyone’s childhood.

My mother was always afraid of anyone getting the better of her, or of us, of being duped, and – as such – had strong unshakeable opinions about the way things should be and a very controlling nature. As children, her reaction to our behaviour (my brother and I) dictated the landscape, and I was never sure whether she would be angry or calm, but she was angry a lot.

To compensate I became hyper attuned to everyone else’s feelings in order to anticipate danger, a perfectionist to ward it off and highly anxious in my relational attachment style.

Like Dr Egar, mum banished the memories of the past and talked about them very rarely, and she certainly made no concession that she had been shaped by her own childhood experience in a way that did not allow her to be the fullest expression of herself.

Now a mother myself, I have been forced to confront the unhealthy behaviour patterns I myself adopted as a child many times over. When I read Dr Egar’s words about her return to Auschwitz decades later, I recognised the truth of them straight away:

“Arbeit Macht Frei, seeing those words made me realise they do spark with a certain truth. Work has set me free I realise. Not the work the Nazis meant – the hard labour of sacrifice and hunger, of exhaustion and enslavement. It was the inner work. Of learning to survive and thrive, of learning to forgive myself, of helping others do the same. And when I do this work I am no longer the hostage or prisoner of anything.”

When I was listening to an interview with Sarah Durham Wilson this week, author of Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine, she really spoke to this sense of many of us being stuck in our child selves.

She talks about the journey of meeting with the maiden (or master) the little girl or boy inside who has been waiting to be mothered for a very long time, about journeying to the underworld (the hurts experienced and the compensations we made) where you start to forgive and release, to alchemise the pain into mothering wisdom. The pain becomes medicine.

This is what makes Dr Edith Egar and Dr Gabor Mate so good at their jobs and able now to speak on world stages about their experiences and lessons, not just from their own lives, but that of the many thousands of people they have helped. They have taken their pain and alchemised it to medicine.

And so this is the task that Sarah Durham Wilson points to. The journey from the patriarchialised mother, where it’s all about keeping you small as a (so called) act of protection, to the great Mother consciousness, which is the opposite and says “you are perfect as you are and cherished always”.

My own healing journey has attracted many more opportunities through other relationships over the years to see all the unhealthy patterns and behaviours I adopted. My work right now is to break the pattern of fighting to have my opinion heard, of my chemical addition to chasing closeness from those unable to give it (the emotionally unavailable), and to ease the pervading sense of anxiety over constant rejection and abandonment.

To break the patterns of codependency, enmeshment trauma, and an anxious attachment style, I’m learning to have and hold healthy boundaries, to have reasonable expectations within relationships and communicate my needs directly without blame or criticism, to take responsibility for feeling my pain and discomfort rather than trying to avoid it by jumping into my head, or trying to fix others’ problems, and to take responsibility for regulating my nervous system.

I vowed to my closest friends that I will keep heading into the underworld to alchemise my pain until it becomes medicine, to keep going in and meeting the cherishing mother until it becomes how I talk to myself and others, and to bring that energy out into the world just as those before me have done.

What unacknowledged pain is there within you? What hurts did you compensate for as a child, what coping mechanisms did you develop, that may now be creating limitations in your life? Are you ready to head into the underworld and do your personal work? Is it time to heal ourselves and to bring back the cherishing mother energy that has been absent for a long time?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People, Get Emotionally Healthy - Is It Time to Break the Chain of Pain?  and Risk Losing People to Make Room for Those Who Can Honour and Cherish You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by AD_Images from Pixabay

I was reading an email from Lisa Romano this week that really spoke to me; it's about breaking the patterns of intergenerational people pleasing, codependency and enmeshment trauma.

She said “It took me decades to unravel the layers of my mind, false beliefs, and mind-twisting misconceptions regarding my value as a human being. There was a time of isolation much like the dark cocoon a crawling caterpillar must encapsulate itself in while they endure its metamorphosis.  It took me years to sift through what was negative brainwashing versus what was true about my divinity as a soul”.  

Given, as I’ve said before, I seem to attract people who are unreliable, unavailable, uncommunicative and leave me feeling like I never really know where I stand with them, that is a pretty big pattern that points to some – as Lisa calls it – negative brainwashing.

“When someone is brainwashed” she says “they don't know it. What has been accepted by the subconscious mind becomes an unconscious script the minimally conscious mind never questions.”

Her mother lived in fear of upsetting her father, although her mother would have said she loved him. However, Lisa and her siblings knew her mind was always preoccupied with what her father needed, felt, thought, and required to remain calm. Dinner was always warm, the milk in the refrigerator never spoiled, and their home was near sterile, yet her mother would have told you she was happy. 

I know that story as I have been that mother.

Lisa said “Knowing what I know now about negative childhood brainwashing, perfectionism, and the fear of making a mistake, it now seems so clear that as a child, I never felt safe. It was not safe to laugh or cry, jump, run, or rest. My childhood home was so rigid, that I had no choice but to remain on guard”. 

I know that feeling too, it lives within my nervous system.

My childhood story is not an exact mirror of Lisa’s by any stretch, but the end result of unhealthy patterns is. As Lisa says, changing from a codependent way of relating to others to a more healthy one is a sobering experience. Like Lisa, love, acceptance, pleasing others, feeling needed, and fixing other people's problems are ways I, as codependent, get my “fix”.

Her words are exquisite, when she says “Ending my addiction to people, relationships, and feeling loved required that I find myself within myself rather than in the reflection of the worth others found within my relationship with them. I had to stop looking for people with problems I could fix and I had to learn to feel the lack of control choosing not to people-please created within”. 

In recent weeks I’ve really begun to see which of my relationships are healthy and which are not, and why not. And I’ve made painful decisions, risking losing people by spelling out what I want our relationships to look like. That is all I can do, I can’t make them desire something different, if they do and we are aligned, great. It will take practice and new ways of relating to make it happen.

If people are not on the same page as me, whether it is because they don’t desire to have the same kind of relationship I want or they don’t feel able to make the changes required for us to have that, then it is time for me to cut those ties and ultimately make room for more healthy relationships.

And in the cases where those unhealthy relationships are – by necessity – ongoing, I am working hard to make my boundaries a lot clearer.

Which is why I then appreciated Rebecca Zung’s words this week when she said “There will always be toxic people and things in life.  You can’t control that.  But you can control you.   So how do you change you, Shona?“
She loves the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.  And says ”these are four agreements that you make with yourself:

1. Be impeccable with your word. You use this to create your entire world.  Everything flows from this; your story, your perceptions, everything. 

2. Don’t take anything personally. Everyone lives in their own story. The way people treat other people is always a direct reflection of the way they feel about themselves.  Hurt people hurt people.  

3. Don’t make assumptions…Because most assumptions are not the truth.  We make up stories about we think is happening based on our own perceptions and then proceed based on those assumptions (which were most likely wrong to begin with).  Chaos then ensues. 

4. Always do your best. Because then you are in integrity in your life in every way, knowing that you are doing everything you can to negotiate your best life.”

Both Rebecca and Lisa are fine examples of people who have become consciously aware of unhealthy patterns in their lives and learned different ways of being to the degree they can now teach others.

In Edith Eger's book The Choice she reflects on her time in Auschwitz and how, while imprisoned, her inner world was full of hope and life. Yet in the years afterwards she reflects on how, by not dealing with the ghosts, her inner world became the prison. She later became a psychotherapist and so has helped thousands break free of their inner prison.

She said "Conventional wisdom says if something bothers you or causes you anxiety don't look at it Don't dwell on it. Don't go there." … but "Far from diminishing pain, whatever we deny ourselves the opportunity to accept becomes as inescapable as brick walls and steel bars. When we don't allow ourselves to grieve our losses, wounds, disappointments, we are doomed to keep reliving them"

Lisa Romano’s email wrapped with the news of her granddaughter being born and her observation that her daughter is in a much more healthy relationship, which must be so gratifying to know that she has broken the chain of pain that continues unabated until someone becomes consciously aware of it and makes different choices.

She ends with encouragement that I have taken in and would like to share:
“Dear One, it does not matter how many times you fail to set a boundary, or how often you ignore those red flags as long as you stay on the path of becoming aware of the aching wounds of your inner child. Seeing the cracks negative childhood brainwashing has created is to stare fear in the face and to refuse to look away.”

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People and Risk Losing People to Make Room for Those Who Can Honour and Cherish You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by jplenio from Pixabay 

I did an exercise this week going through and listing – for each romantic relationship where I’d felt emotionally attached – that person’s negative qualities and what I disliked about them/ how I felt around them. Then I circled the common qualities between each.

It seems I constantly seem to attract people who are unreliable, unavailable, uncommunicative and leave me feeling like I never really know where I stand with them.

Then I looked back and thought about the negative feelings associated with being in my childhood home: walking on tenterhooks, never knowing where I would stand/what I’d meet (good mood/bad mood), knowing that my opinion wasn’t generally what counted and I’d have to fight for what I wanted, no one acknowledging their feelings except blame/shame based on us kid’s behaviour.

It’s not hard to see the parallels. And as Teal Swan says, “this is what creates the subconscious feeling of love within, and what fuels that instant biochemical reaction to others”. The only way to break it is to become aware of it and do something different.

That sounds easy enough, but life always feels bigger than that in the moment.

As I write this, it is Mother’s Day here in New Zealand and, rather appropriately, yesterday I was at an all-day Family Constellations workshop with a group of other women, some of whom I knew, others I didn’t. The topic was centred around our female lineage and it was really nourishing for my soul I have to say.

Family Constellations is group trauma therapy work, focusing mainly on ancestral trauma. Apparently in South America the courts sometimes insist upon it in separation cases. And it’s been very popular in mainland Europe for a long time, but there's only about 30 qualified therapists in New Zealand of which a good friend of mine is one.

What I really love about this kind of work, playing the parts of other people's stories, it really helps me get how we are all just players in this game of life. We all have stuff, and so much of it is not ours to carry in this moment.

Most of it belongs way in the past, whether with our ancestors or past lives of our own past in this life, we seemed pulled into these loop patterns playing out the same stuff over and over until someone steps out the ring and plays by different rules.

I can see so clearly from my own patterning that one of the key dynamics I’ve actually been playing out for most of my life point to the relationship between my mother and her terminally ill, abusive, alcoholic father in her earliest years. What frustrated me was she could never see that. I’ve learned most people can’t – and don’t want to – see their “stuff”.

As Edith Eger says in her autobiographical account of her time in Auschwitz and her experiences and reflections thereafter as a psychotherapist:

“Conventional wisdom says that if something bothers you or causes you anxiety then just don’t look at it. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t go there. So we run from our trauma and hardships or from our current discomfort of conflict.

For much of my adulthood I thought my survival in the present depended on keeping the past in darkness and locked away. I hadn’t yet discovered that my silence and my desire for acceptance, both founded in fear, were ways of running away from myself. That in not choosing to face my past and myself directly, I was still choosing not to be free.”

Clear about my ancestral stories, and what is mine versus theirs, my stuff really boils down to this... strong boundaries; that’s really my only stuff in this moment.

That means making hard decisions, and cutting some people loose in my life that are not healthy for me. That’s heartbreaking, because my biochemical reactions want to save people I love, but in trying to save them I lose myself.

Just this week I hard to make a hard decision like that and it hurt me to do it, I won’t lie. It was a long time friend that I often talk to in snatched moments, and I wanted us to agree on a time where we could catch up with no distractions for a change. Maybe they had other commitments, I don't know because they didn't actually answer when I asked twice if they were around at a certain time.

I was clear about how much that time without other distractions would mean to me, but it was like I’d never spoken the words. They just continued right on with the snatched moment’s conversation as if we live in a parallel universe.

When I pointed this out, the same thing occurred; it was as if I’d never spoken. So I got on my big girl pants and told them I felt sidelined and rather hurt, and it was time for me to draw some healthy boundaries around this for myself. A true friend would be able to hold my feelings as well as their own; friendship like any relationship is a two way thing. So that brought to an end our conversation and most probably the relationship.

Although I can see this person’s patterning and what causes them to act this way, it doesn’t excuse it, certainly not when it’s costing me heavily. I now fully understand that in order to have room in my life for healthier, more fulfilling relationships, I have to let go of the ones that are hurting me.

So what about you? Are there any unhealthy patterns or dynamics in your life that you are avoiding addressing for fear of losing people? And are you ready to risk those in order to find the healthiest, most fulfilling relationships that will honour and nurture who you truly are?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, The Almighty Growth Opportunity in Dealing With Emotionally Unavailable People and Use the Contrast and Challenges in Your Life for Your Growth and Expansion . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I have been pondering this week how I might be addicted to getting emotionally unavailable people to open up, and the ways in which it limits my growth and potential. I love deep connections and, whether it is getting someone who is naturally shy or someone who is frankly just outright out of touch with their emotions, I have pursued connection with many emotionally unavailable people as if it’s the Holy Grail.

It’s like there’s an inherent hunger and life keeps presenting new ways to satisfy it.

Terri Cole talks about a common trauma pattern she sees in clients, popularly termed in psychotherapy circles as the mother wound and the father wound.

She says “While they have some similarities, mother wounds tend to cause over-giving, enabling, and taking on the role of the fixer or rescuer. Whereas those who struggle with father wounds tend to feel unlovable, unwanted, not enough, and constantly try to prove they are worthy of love by doing, instead of just by being”.

We all have our own stories and these types of behaviours and feelings seem to be prevalent in our society, perpetuated through generations. But I can certainly see in my own early life the people and occasions where I would have liked to have felt more seen and had my emotions validated.

The thought has occurred to me that the reason life keeps presenting me with the same challenges isn’t likely to be about going around the same old loop trying to get a different outcome. It’s far more likely it’s  giving me an opportunity to change the way I react and look at what is happening inside me instead.

I was reading this from Teal Swan last week, which is quite a simple and healthy way to think about things:

“As a species, people are in the process of progressing towards the actualization of the awareness that in a relationship, there is a “you” and there is a “me”. Whereas people tend to think that in any moment, it is either “you” or “me”.

To have a “me” is to have awareness of your own personal feelings, personal thoughts, personal integrity, personal desires, personal needs and therefore most importantly, your personal best interests and personal truth. And to care about it.

To have a “you” is to have awareness of the other being’s personal feelings, personal thoughts, personal integrity, personal desires, personal needs and therefore most importantly, their personal best interests and personal truth. And to care about it.

When you have committed to conscious living and to awakening, both must matter to you, regardless of whether they matter to the other person.

But for a relationship to be a truly mutually beneficial one, both must matter to you and to the other person as well. If both the “me” and the “you” matter to both people in a relationship, the door is open to identify what the highest and best option for both parties is.”

For me it’s been a journey going from foregoing the “me” in order to please “you” to a more healthy state of “me” and “you”.

That has required some deep work over a number of years learning about what my own needs are and, as Teal says, also what my own feelings, thoughts, integrity, desires, and therefore my own personal best interests and personal truth look like. And to care about it enough to take different action, which has involved learning how to have and hold healthy boundaries.

Someone I’ve known and loved for many years – who is not able to express his emotions well – said to me this week (when I called him out on a hurtful comment) that I over analyse. I find this is a frequent catch cry of people who cannot express their emotions well.

It used to send me into a spiral of self loathing and I’d feel like there was something wrong with me. In fact, as I shared this with him, I also said “I won’t pretend I’m not staring down the barrel of that right now, but I’ve learned I’m actually okay, pretty healthy in fact”.

Sure, I analyze, I’m a born psychologist, it’s what I naturally do. But I also learn and grow, and now I see the growth opportunity in these types of interaction.

There is no sense trying to get water from a well that has long since dried up and is not interested in replenishing itself, that is for sure. No matter how much I want people to feel safe enough to express their emotions with me, it’s not a given.

My friend and I were talking about different types of emotional unavailability. As a trauma therapist this is her take:

• There are some people who look inside and it’s a blank. Sometimes that’s because they were stunted as children and were not allowed to have an emotion let alone express it. Also, sometimes it’s due to their neuropathy as some people are so pragmatic that emotions seem a waste of energy and they bubble up rarely.
• Then there are those who don’t feel safe to express or can’t fathom the words to express how they feel, or they can sift and sort into categories and therefore it all comes out as whatever default they have in place.
• Then there are the narcissists of the world who have found their winning way is one of making other people responsible for how they feel, and have also found that other people are convenient dumping grounds for their toxic projections, pain and handy reactions that feed whatever size their narcissistic appetite.
• Also, there are people who are aware of what they feel, and can fathom the words, and do feel safe but simply just don’t want to tell another person their feelings because they just don’t want them to know (clue – these are the healthy ones).

This week I was also accused of something I would never dream of doing. It was, of course, a misunderstanding. But it is also part of a pattern, a very toxic and unhealthy pattern in this particular relationship, where it seems to me that the thoughts that are formed are really a projection of that person’s worst fears.

The catalyst this time appears to be a mix up in dates, dates that were communicated weeks prior in writing and also discussed verbally. However, this person believed that I had gone back on my word and – despite sharing the previous email with it all laid out in black and white – was still of the opinion that I “make everything hard for them”.

When I say catalyst, the true catalyst I am sure does not even exist in anything real between us, for time and again we have done this merry dance. I suspect it is likely a manifestation and projection of their own unresolved wounds. Therefore, it is not my stuff to solve.

However, because I have to have an ongoing relationship with this person I have to mitigate repercussions by holding very healthy boundaries and ensuring that communication – when it needs to occur – is as clear as possible and in written form.

It is interesting how life keeps presenting these opportunities for me to really bed-in my learning. In another conversation this week where I was being pushed towards a formal agreement I’d been waiting for some time to discuss, and is very important to me, I felt quite proud of myself as I held a firm boundary with someone for whom this was more of a tick box exercise:

“There has been zero discussion about this and now, within a 24 period, I'm supposed to sign off on how we manage this important aspect of my life going forward without the other person – again – not having supplied the information I requested five months ago (and want) in order to make my decision. No, sorry, I have kids still up and wide awake needing my attention and have no space to even think about this right now, so I'm not rushing in and making a snap decision tonight”.

And so life goes on, and as it does I expect I will become less and less attracted to those who are unable to express themselves emotionally, and, now that I am on the right track, it will certainly bother me less when it does happen.

What about you, are you subconsciously attracting do-over’s into your life and going around the same old tracks causing you hurt and pain? Is it time to take a different perspective and start holding healthier boundaries in order to attract those out there who are able to hold a space for both the “me” and the “you” in our relationships?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, Relationships are Just a Series of Moments – True Love Lies Within and Use the Contrast and Challenges in Your Life for Your Growth and Expansion . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was listening to Tami Simon interview Shannon Kaiser this week, and she was talking about how the contrast of life points to our growth. This lady was talking my language because I truly believe our challenges are there to assist our expansion.

When I was quite young, I remember having this thought that, logically, how could I appreciate something good if I had never experienced something bad? So I really felt there was a purpose to this life of duality we live on Earth.

Good and bad, male and female, chaos and order, turmoil and peace, black and white and so on, all of it and a lot more are a spectrum of our dynamic and ever changing experiences in life.

I was talking to a dear friend this morning about balance. She has been sculpting on the topic recently and it’s deeply resonated with her because it’s a topic she feels really challenged by. As a busy mum and someone who runs twice-weekly art workshops for kids in her local area, trying to fit seventeen hours and more of study into her already hectic week has been a real challenge.

Getting an opportunity to outwardly express how she inwardly feels contending with the day-to-day struggles has been a glorious process of unwinding. It is part of a structured study programme exploring a wide range of creative processes, and she was saying at the outset some of her work felt manic, fractured and incoherent, “not very good”. I suspect it is all truly reflective of the layers within, it’s taken a while to really tune into and land in her creative space.

This was resonant with other conversations I’d had this week with busy mums. For me, being creative is something I have to make space for. Like my friend, if I try to tap into something out the blue I just get all the static and noise that bubbles beneath the surface of my day-to-day existence of school runs, organising play dates, sports and activities, grocery shopping, making dinner, washing and the ever-present need for attention to name a few.

It’s that there is a feeling of constantly being “on standby” and the need to create a large bubble of space in which to safely land in the middle and tune into what is really wanting to be seen or felt. It’s all very well to take an hour to go for a walk, or to take a yoga class or meditate, but real landing spaces where I can power down my vigilance to what’s going on “out there” and tune into “in here” for any length of time are like solid gold.

And yet, as I just said to another friend, a busy dad, the days are long and the years are short. My children will grow up and then I’ll be left hopefully cherishing the memories of the activities and things we did together, and the noise of all the more intense and monotonous things will fade as I feel into and appreciate the contrasting expansiveness of having more and more time to myself.

Of course in the meantime I meditate, walk, swim and write as regular practices, as a way of acknowledging the world within me and giving permission to myself to explore. Sometimes I get that same chaotic static as my friend initially experienced, but by making these practices a regular feature in my life, I can usually get past this quite quickly.

But listening to Tammi talk to Shannon Kaiser about her new book Return to You, I did reflect on some of the other challenges in my life.

As my dear friend said to me this morning (when I was relaying the details of life in my new home, and just how much joy I had gotten from buying my new “contemporary light green metallic” electric kettle and toaster) “I can imagine just how liberating that felt after feeling trapped for so long. There was no one else you had to consult about it, or justify it to, you could just do it and not worry about the repercussions”.

While not the topic of this article, it is certainly true that many things have conspired to keep me feeling trapped for a long time, and I am most definitely still getting used to the idea of freedom and enjoying these little moments of getting to really feel into it, the contrast makes it all the more delicious.

Another thing that can challenge me is loneliness. Over the years I have often felt lonely; not feeling seen, understood or valued. On the flip side this makes it all the sweeter when I have good company and I really appreciate the wonderful friends I have all the more for the many positive things they bring to my life.

All of this is not to bypass the feelings I have, but to simply observe them and appreciate what life is teaching me about those aspects of myself. Neither do I need to hold myself in bondage to what I’m feeling, which I have often had a tendency to do, staying in unhealthy situations and relationships for too long out of a misguided sense of loyalty, duty or obligation.

But these are all points for growth and expansion, and all my experiences are a perfect match – if I choose to see them this way - to calling me forwards towards my best life, and basking in appreciation at the other end of the spectrum.

So what about you, what challenges do you face in life? Are you able to feel into what life would be like if the opposite were true? Remember it’s in experiencing the contrasts of life we move towards our growth and expansion.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Purposeful in Your Focus - Your Glass Is Actually Still Half Full, Your Soul Wants You to Soar, When to Act on Possibility, Want to Be Delighted and Amazed With a 'Lived Life to the Full' Epitaph? and Be Compassionate and Curious to Live Your Best Life. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was talking to someone this week who was feeling the way I think many people feel from time to time: overworked and under recognised. I certainly knew the feeling, and I also know the trap I often used to fall in – and still do at times – when I’d look at those closest to me and start wondering why they aren’t:
a) helping, and
b) making me feel more appreciated.

Instead of looking at another and getting disgruntled, resentful even, that they are not doing enough or appreciating me enough, I started to consider whether I was doing enough for myself. And so that was the question I posed to this person too “Are you mad at them or are you really just mad at yourself because you’re not talking the time to honour your own needs?”

It brought to mind an ex partner who used to often feel resentful that, when he was out working, I would be doing a yoga class, or going for a swim. What he failed to see in that moment was not only the myriad of things I did do to contribute to our life together but, perhaps more importantly, that he needed to take better care of his own needs rather than focusing on what I was doing or not doing for myself.

The discussion also triggered some old wounds for me around the parenting role. Early on in my children’s lives, when I was still working in my corporate career, I remember reading an agony aunt type response in a magazine to a woman who was complaining that she had been ditched by a friend of hers the minute her children had come along.

In essence, she was complaining about the lack of attention and time her old friend had to give and was feeling very put out. The response did not pull any punches, it was centred around enlightening this childless woman about the rigours of family life and just how little time and energy her old friend would be having for herself right at this point, never mind for anything else.

I could see quite plainly how someone would feel left out in that situation and, while the response was centred on what this woman could be offering her old friend rather than complaining, I did think it was time for her to move on and find other people who were more aligned and able to prioritise socialising with friends without children involved.

In my life it wasn’t that I had friends who couldn’t understand nor value the parenting role, instead I had a partner who simply couldn’t see – or perhaps acknowledge – just how all-consuming parenting is when there are dependent children at home.

I was still a bit blinkered at the time to the level of unhealthy and dysfunctional patterns between us and, in an attempt to prove my worth, kept a diary of my time for a week both out of curiosity and defence. Most hands-on parents won’t be surprised to know that there are somewhere in-between 70 and 90 hours of my week regularly focused on childcare or domestic responsibilities.

Even if you share those responsibilities with someone else, that is still a lot on top of other responsibilities outside of the home. In fact, for me it was a major triumph to fit in a yoga session each week, and go for a swim or a walk, but it was also essential for my sanity and wellbeing. As was taking the time to learn about dysfunctional patterns and healthy boundaries.

I think if most people count up how much time they spend in front of a screen (not working) each week, they would be surprised. I gave up TV years ago to free up some of my attention to direct inward and get to know who I am, what I am thinking and feeling amid the constant and often torrid seas of parenting. It was so all-consuming something needed to give.

And now that I am at a point in my life where I am having little doses of time without having responsibility for my kids 24/7, I can attest even more fervently to the all-consuming nature of parenting.

This Easter weekend my kids are away with their dad and I’ve had three whole days to myself. In that time I’ve achieved more in terms of settling into our new home than I have in the two weeks prior that we have been here.

Last night I put a garage-full of boxes up in the attic and finished the job late. The night before I tried on boxes full of clothes that have sat in my wardrobe untouched for a long time, it’s been years since I got to play dress-up. I finally got the chance to Marie Kondo my stuff and put satisfying bundles in the recycle pile while rediscovering the joys of old favourites.

I absolutely adore being able to focus my attention on something until I am done with it. I love diving deep and exploring a thought until I’ve reached a conclusion, or physically doing a task and having the pleasure of accomplishing it at my own pace, to my own satisfaction. That is what I have been able to do this weekend.

Whereas, when my kids are around, everything is start-stop-switch attention and focus and it can be as exhausting as it is rewarding. Frankly, when I am in that mode, and feel like my flow is constantly interrupted; I can only marvel that I achieve anything at all.

Whether amid the chaos, or having time to actually land within myself, these days I can appreciate just how important it is to make time to honour my own needs. What about you, are you stewing in resentment or teetering dangerously close to it? What do you need to do to honour your own needs?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Receive More Love, Appreciation and Respect, Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go?  Life Really Does Support Your Deepest Desires (And How to Access Its Support) and Take a Small Break from Your Life to Restart from Your Authentic Core. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I’ve just been for a walk at the beach, the first in a week as I’ve been busy moving house, moving lives. This has been a long anticipated moment, after cohabiting with my ex partner for over eight months for largely financial reasons. My friend asked “How does it feel to be in your own place?” I responded that I hadn’t yet landed enough to feel, my nervous system hasn’t yet got the memo that all is now well and it can relax, there still seems so much to do.

It’s a beautiful sunny autumnal day here, there are only a few white fluffy clouds in the sky, although it’s windy at the beach and the paragliders were out making the most of the conditions. As I watched one paraglider start the laborious process of pulling in his sail, I thought how well it represented the process I’d gone through earlier today to rein in my focus.

I’m in the early days of setting up my coaching business and had met with a client not long before the house move to gather lots of information that I hadn’t yet had time to distill into something clear and crisp. So, since the kids are with their dad today, I thought I’d take the opportunity of some headspace to do just that.

After figuring out which box my notes were in, I then began the process of pulling in my energy and focus to wrap my head around everything I’d captured over a number of occasions. It really did feel like I had been up there among the clouds just like the paraglider, and now I was standing on the ground having to pull myself in piece by piece. And just when I thought I’d got a hold of it, suddenly a strong gust would pull me in a different direction.

After about an hour of this I began to feel that I was able to navigate what I was doing with much more ease and focus. Finally I was able to block out the chaotic scene of unopened boxes around me, and stop thinking about what else needs to be done. Sound familiar?

The irony is that one of the things my client and I had been discussing was overwhelm. When he first started out in business, it took a while to get used to the vacillating sense of not enough work one moment, and too much the next.

We had talked through the upsides to the sense of overwhelm, which my client had described as part of an internal healthy check and balance system, and one he has developed helpful coping mechanisms to manage, such as writing lists and breaking things down into steps. And we had talked about how to reframe things when that feeling of overwhelm is upon us.

Serendipitously that next day I saw a post on LinkedIn called How to Reframe Your Thoughts When You’re Overwhelmed. The examples were:

• “There’s no way I’ll get this all done” to “I can do this one step at a time”
• “I don’t know where to start” to “I’ve prioritised before and I can do it again”
• “I’m not qualified to do this work” to “I am smart and capable”

So as I sat on the beach, after having consolidated our discussions into something more streamline and tangible, I thought about what overwhelm actually feels like in my body. Other than the aching, arms, neck and shoulder muscles I’ve felt this week, as I had said to my friend, I hadn’t really had time to think about how I feel.

At this point I became aware of a sense that that something over my left shoulder was wanting attention. It was more of an energetic nagging kind of feeling rather than anything physical that was there.

I wondered what that might be, as it was similar to the tugging sensation I used to get at night in the temporary welcome silence between switching off the TV and devices before dropping off to sleep when I worked in the corporate world. So I simply imagined this nagging feeling as a person who could give me an answer and I asked “who are you and what are you trying to tell me?”

In my imagination came an answer “I am a part of you that you have temporarily abandoned”. That made sense given the context. “What do I need to do to reintegrate you?” I asked. “Just focus upon me” came the reply.

And as I sat there on the beach having this conversation with myself and focusing my awareness into that space outside me and over my left shoulder, I became more aware of my breathing, more aware of my surroundings, and of the waves that seemed to be pressing across the tops of each other in a motion that reminded me of the way a massage therapist smoothes out tight and tired muscles with a rippling movement.

Back in my body, back in conscious awareness of my life and where I am, with gratitude for my beautiful surroundings and new place to call home. I no longer felt overwhelmed, I feel I have everything in hand, I just needed to remind myself of the bigger picture and then zoom into what was happening on a more micro level so I could focus on the next right thing on my path.

One of the benefits that client had mentioned of having me as a coach was “the work you do to quieten the minds of the directors and managers to allow them to create strategic direction that fits with their purpose and values”. This reminded me again of my busy corporate career and the mentor I had engaged for that same purpose.

The truth is though, that while I and others can certainly create space and questions that allow for someone to switch gear and come back to themselves for a while, note that it is about coming back to oneself. The answers are not out there, they are inside. And whether it’s an imaginary conversation with myself, or one assisted by another human being, it’s all about that continual flight and landing on my own unique path.

​Allow overwhelm to be part of your vital check and balance system, take its steer and come back into yourself to discover what your next right step might be.
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Simplify Your Life to Be Accepted and Loved as Your Authentic Self, Focus Not on What Was Taken but Embrace What Was Given, Life Really Does Support Your Deepest Desires (And How to Access Its Support) and Take a Small Break from Your Life to Restart from Your Authentic Core. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Glennon Doyle tells the story about challenging a preacher (who had been talking about the “sins” of homosexuality and abortion), who (after much discussion) finally responded with “What you say makes sense in the ways of the world. But God’s ways are not our ways. You must not lean on your own understanding. Faith is about trusting.”

She realised that he wanted her to believe that trusting him was trusting God. She says very pointedly “My heart and mind are my connections to God. If I shut those down, I’d be trusting the men who led the church instead of trusting God”.

I was confronted by this same dynamic myself a few weeks ago when two brave or foolish people knocked on my door to tell me about their God. They asked if I believed in God the Heavenly Father. I replied “If you mean in the sense of some hierarchy where God is separate from me then no. If you mean in the sense that I am, you are, that tree and all that is, is a projection of something you want to call God then, sure, I can go with that.”

The man at my doorstop heard not a word, he was so intent on selling me his own beliefs; that there is both a God the Heavenly Father and God the Heavenly mother. And when I moved to respond to this again with my own view, he asked where I got this from.

I replied “From within me, it is what I know to be true for me”. Then he started to aggressively come at me with these words “Which book did you read this in? Who taught you this? We have been taught false beliefs”.
“Mm” I thought “How ridiculous that you think you are offering anything different. You are not interested in me having my own inner relationship with that which you call God, all you are interested in is me believing what you tell me”.

At this point I stated that, while I’m happy to have a conversation on the topic, I wasn’t happy to have someone come to my doorstep to force feed me their own views and attack my own beliefs; and abruptly shut the door.

Then this week I was talking to someone who was feeling very torn. Their long-standing therapist had told them – despite their strong desires around finding a new partner and making money – that this wasn’t their life path.

I started to get quite agitated on their behalf as I listened to the story. From my own journey through life there is one thing that stands out to me as a guide, and that is the desire for something healthy is a sure-fire signal to go after it.

The question of whether these are healthy desires is a valid one of course. If what the therapist was saying was some form of “You would be wise to proceed with caution in terms of attracting a mate because you have some inner work to do, and who you attract right now may not line up with your highest and best potential, let’s at least do some work on healthy boundaries first” I could understand it.

If the therapist was saying “Hey, remember you have issues with using spending as a coping mechanism and tend to get yourself deeply in debt, let’s work on some healthy financial goals first” or similar, then great. But this was a flat out “No, you are not destined for a mate and money this life”.

I was incredulous that someone who has a yearning for a deeper connection with another, and who would like not to have to worry about money, was being led to believe that this was simply not in their escrow and – worse – feeling bad for wanting those things and left wondering what to believe.

Then I realised that it is really not so long ago I too had no idea what to believe anymore. I remember all too well the point in my mid thirties suddenly realising that I was trying to be so perfect; to be everything for everyone else I actually had no idea who I was.

In her book Untamed: Stop Pleasing Start Living Glennon sums up my own experience quite well when she talks about how returning to ourselves is confusing at first. She says “It’s not as simple as listening for the voices inside of us. Because sometimes the voices inside of us, which we’ve assumed speak the Truth, are just the voices of human beings who told us what to believe; it’s our indoctrination.”

Going on from there she acknowledges “Some of the hardest and most important work of our lives is learning to separate the voices of teachers from wisdom, propaganda from truth, fear from love and – in her earlier example – the voices of God’s self-appointed representatives from the voices of God Herself”.

My own journey was not an overnight one, but I absolutely can discern between my intuition and knowing and the more fearful indoctrinated beliefs and propaganda. As Sarah Blondin puts it, the first step is to sit down in the stillness and listen. But getting from confusion to clarity is a process, and requires practice.

I heard a broadcast by Neil Oliver recently, another person who has learned to listen to his inner knowing and question things, and he quoted the phrase “the truth shall set you free”.

That got me thinking, the truth can be painful. On the journey from confusion to clarity, which is ongoing given that there are often many hidden agendas even in the most benign crevices of day to day life, there have been many “ah ha” moments.

That first moment when I realise that something or someone in my world is not as I believe it to be, everything becomes disorientated, and the ground beneath my feet no longer feels solid. I can get angry, go through stages of grief and then, of course, there is fear and shame and guilt for having been gullible in some way.

As a coach I am aware that it is my job to equip people to hear and believe in their own inner guidance and wisdom, and to discern their truth from their fears. I will not be the one running their business, or living their life. As a wise lady said to me recently “You are not meant to be their crutches, you are meant to hand them their crutches and make them aware – even give them a push – celebrate when they no longer need them”.

Having been taught from childhood (as most of us are) to look outside ourselves for answers (I only have to think of the New Zeeland Government’s approach to managing COVID19 and positioning themselves as “the one source of truth” to see blatant examples of this everywhere), I know that along my journey there are many people I have overly relied upon for advice and support in the absence of inner clarity and confidence.

But therein lays the key. The goal is to gain that. With inner clarity and confidence no one will be able to tell you what to believe, they can only help lead you to what you already know.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What Is Holding You Back? Reclaim Your Worth, Your Love, Your Power, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down and How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I’ll readily admit, it’s a little embarrassing to attest to some of the poor behaviours I’ve put up with from various quarters and I certainly never saw myself as a victim. My self image is one of strength, I definitely have a strong “I’ll show you” voice within, and I would say that to most people who know me
I am a strong person. The message I got growing up – and still get from society - is that showing weakness or vulnerability is unwise.

But not all parts of me were in agreement. Heck not all parts of me are in agreement, there are still plenty of times I am filled with self doubt. Being me isn’t easy. And I have to say right up front a huge thank you to my closet friends for being a safe place to lay down my inner fears these last few years, those parts of me that chorus things like “I don’t deserve this/I deserve this”, “but what if I’m wrong?”, “can I do this?”, or “who am I to even try?”.

And thank goodness for those other parts of me that say “there is no deserve, just accept it or reject it, that is my choice”, “I know this is my truth”, “of course I can do this, it wouldn’t have occurred to me otherwise” and “who am I not to try?”

I am so glad I finally tuned in and listened to myself, my inner knowing, and figured out what was going on within me. I can only describe it as discovering all the false beliefs I took on in order to fit in.

There are some overt things that come to mind, like growing up believing marriage is forever and then getting divorced...twice. Which led me to understand that I know it is far more important to me that I am with the right person for me than to stick with someone who is incompatible for the rest of my life.

But the more covert things were the tricky suckers. It was those self depreciating and self limiting beliefs that I was even in denial of, or oblivious to, or ashamed of, that I really had to become aware of in order to stop doing things like attracting incompatible partners, or colleagues.

So in conversation this week with a truly amazing young person who has been getting bullied by a group of students at school, I wondered what to say that could possibly be of any help.

As an adult there have been some gnarly and embarrassing moments in my career that have really tested me, and pushed for me to develop strong boundaries, just as I experienced many of those same kinds of moments in personal relationships. Being bullied though? No way, it just did not fit with my self image at all.

Or did it? Well, it depends on which part of my self image I was looking at. If it was the part of me that took pride in sorting out that mean boy who was picking on my brother when I was young, then no it did not fit with that. If it was the part of me that knocked on the door of the Head of the school to whistle blow on the weapons being carried by dozens of students that day in order to fight a rival school, then no it did not fit with that either.

As a kid, the only time I remember being beat down and not standing up was when I was about age five and some older girls, who were supposed to be walking me to school, told me I had to pray into this parking post we were walking past, which I thought was stupid, but I did it anyway out of fear. That and, of course, the authority figures in my life to whom I was taught to be deferential. That was survival.

Yet as an adult who had started to discern between my indoctrinated beliefs and my true knowing, I became conscious that I still saw myself as the tough person, the one who was not going to let anyone else get the better of me or anyone I felt obliged to defend.

But in truth I had certainly pivoted in my early twenties and began to doubt myself when I was rejected by someone I’d been deeply in love with. That was definitely a point from which I more clearly attracted people into my life who highlighted the parts if me that were not so sure about how worthy I was of anything.

So there has been a lot of water under the bridge when it comes to having confidence in who I am and how to deal with people who are essentially bullies. “But how to use that to help someone else?” I wondered, it just seemed like a lot to try and convey.

When I tried to distil down what I’ve learned about how to navigate my way with bullies, here is what it looks like:

• Don’t get drawn in but stand my ground. “Be a grey stone” I was once advised, which is to say, don’t give away anything emotional. Stand straight, shoulders back, hips squared and look them in the eye before turning back to what I was doing before interrupted.
• Circle back when the emotional charge has died down (which may be a day or two later) and speak to my boundaries, recognising that the other/s might have a different viewpoint, but never-the-less stating how I see things and what I will/won’t accept. There have been times I have had to use others, even a lawyer, to do this, it depends on the severity of the situation.

However, that is what things look like on the surface after having done inner work to reclaim my self esteem and self confidence and learning good boundary skills. Underneath there is still an initial feeling of shock that this person/these people can accuse me of something I am not or did not do – knowing that they know this.

As someone brought up to value honesty - and passionate about self-honesty and authenticity - it has been a rude awakening that not everyone else is. It’s startling to realise the crazy, nasty behaviours I saw played out in TV dramas, comic books or in movies, sadly really exist in the world I live in.

And doing the work to reclaim my self esteem and confidence wasn’t an overnight thing, so for someone who is facing a bully who hasn’t done their inner work and may be completely identified with parts of themselves they don’t see as strong or brave, just looking the bully in the eye and asserting their body language in the moment is huge in itself.

I know when my body is in flight, fight, freeze or fold, projecting something that looks like assertiveness rather than passive or aggressive behaviour is a monumental challenge. However, it’s one to overcome. It’s a hard thing, but as Glennon Doyle says “we can do hard things”.

Truly.

And that is what led me to ask of this young person how confident they are that:

• This will pass, there will come a point when this episode in their life is in the rear view mirror

• They can do this, they have it within them to face this hard thing

That is the part that is lacking right now of course, the confidence, because they haven’t yet had to overcome something like this challenge. But they can and they will.

Because when I think about the life of a human, and I think of all these amazing early milestones humans make, like learning an extremely complex system of language, or learning how to walk, or swim, none of us just gave up because it was too hard.

I watch my daughters at times really struggle with the fortitude required to conquer things that don’t come naturally to them, one in particular thinks she should be able to master things on a first attempt.

That just isn’t real life, and neither is it very satisfying.

Hard is what sits at the edges of my comfort zone. Some things in life I’ve made harder for myself than needs be, but I’ve worked through it none the less. And everything hard is eventually in the rear view mirror. There is a saying when bringing up children that “the days and long but the years are short”, I think the same applies to adversity.

When in the mist of adversity it feels endless, gruelling. I realised this week that I shall never forget the milestones in relation to the restrictions imposed in the last couple of years, and oppression surrounding those, as they have absolutely run in parallel to the same felt within my personal life.

In fact, the New Zealand vaccine pass system was introduced right around the same time I was doing my utmost to extract myself from a very toxic situation. Then last week, as the government finally announced that they were scrapping the system, that very same day I finally got an agreement in principle that will bring an end to the noxious personal circumstances I’ve been living in.

When things get bad I look to history and I see the ebb and flow of human atrocities and I know that everything passes. I also know I can deal with hard things. Why? Because whether I’ve screamed at the top of my lungs or in silence “I can’t do this anymore” I have. And I’m still here. And each time I face an adversity I know there are many more who are in worse situations and they too have survived.

More than that, way more than that, those who have used those circumstances to fuel their growth, and to shine their inner light, those are the people who have given me the courage to take the next step and do the next right thing.

So this is my message to those who are facing challenges they think they can’t overcome. You can and will. Let no one keep you down, you can do this, let your inner light shine and it will not only make your own life a little lighter and brighter, it will give courage to others around you too.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What Is Holding You Back? Reclaim Your Worth, Your Love, Your Power, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, Be Compassionate and Curious to Live Your Best Life and How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I know what it is to be with someone who values me, and know what it is to be with someone who values only what I can do for them, and I know the difference; the heartbreaking, devastating difference.

“You were the only one who couldn’t see he didn’t value you hon” my friend said. “You are wrong” I told her “My heart broke every day”.

Being with someone so locked in their own pain, unaware even of their wound, projecting the pain back on me – always – is an absolute mind bender. I was brought up to be honest and to value honesty, and when someone blatantly lies, projects back their own poor behaviour directly at me and leaves me in no doubt as to their disdain it is shocking.

It is so shocking because it is said with such conviction that I begin to doubt myself. So many instances and in so many ways, all the while busy, so busy and distracted by life, too busy to have the space to step back and take proper note of it all and see what was actually happening – until I did.

So long as I was for him and not against him, so long as I fed his need to feel important then all was well in our world. I was his emotional regulation.

But don’t dare to crtitise, don’t dare to ask a simple, reasonable request. For anything that required any more was met with nothing less than non committal, often deflecting responses. That was at best. At worst it would be like standing in the direct line of staccato machine gun fire while all the oxygen was sucked from the room.

Though now and again, after a long time usually, an occasional request might be met, intermittent reward psychologists call it. It keeps the nervous system on alert the whole time, nerves become frayed and the rewards so few and far between it creates more desire than regular rewards ever can. It is cruel and dispassionate, a power play designed to keep its perpetrator feeling in control.

It is manipulation, not necessarily conscious, though the perpetrator is not unaware how appropriate their behaviour is, they just feel entitled to that which they take. What is wanted is positive attention and, like the toddler they once were, now dressed in an adult body and clothing, they rage and tantrum if their needs are not met and everything is your fault. Negative attention is better than no attention.

Really, I only asked him to clear up the cushions he’d scattered, or pack his own suitcase the next time we went away. That was the one that ended it, the “final straw”.

“He didn’t pack his own things?” my friend asked in awe. “I’ll tell you how that began, long ago” I responded. “When we met I wasn’t working and the first few times we went away, I would have packed while he was at work, just to be nice. He would have been grateful, and it would at first have been one of those things that was simply nice to do for someone.”

Then, it became not only an expectation but an entitlement. Proving how good I am, proving my value, as heartbreaking as it was, it was familiar. These were the fruits of my own wounds, and those had been there long before we met.

Yet on the inside a part of me knew, always knew, my worth. “You were born worthy” I hear Sarah Blondin’s voice. I know. Yet, child me did not get that memo. I understood I had to be good “or else”, to do as I was told. Oh I raged and protested at times like children do, but relatively little in comparison to what I felt on the inside.

I know. My children rage, I let them. I let them express all those big feelings in a world that wants to suppress their experiences and their feelings. They had lots of rage at times and when they were younger, they had the most awful meltdowns.

After being cooped up once in the car driving fast along a highway, back from a holiday, my daughter lost all control when she discovered the cake she hadn’t finished on our last stop was safely locked away in the back of the car, unable to be reached. Having no capacity for rational thought, and with me driving and unable to solidly be there for her, she was unable to regulate her emotions and threw her bottle of milk square between the seats in frustration; it hit the windscreen.

After a few miles I was able to pull off the highway and stop. Then I was able to go take my daughter in my arms and just hold her until she calmed.

My visiting parents, who had also been held hostage in the car during all this, were shocked. It was plain to my mum that this wasn’t a one off, my calm and steady approach told her this had happened before. She worried – genuinely I think – that if I didn’t take this in hand then I would soon have a grown teenager on my hands raging at me. My dad asked how I could stomach it.

As I’ve often quoted, in the words of Dr Gabor Maté “It is often not our children’s behaviour, but our inability to tolerate their negative responses that creates difficulties. The only thing the parent needs to gain control over is our own anxiety and lack of self control.”

My parents were anxious, little wonder, it was not a comfortable experience, and keen for me to discipline my child so that she would behave. That is what they had been taught, and that is what they taught me.

But I knew that “behaving” meant suppressing feelings. It meant that at the very time my child had gone into flight or fight mode – which is, in essence, our body signalling that it feels under threat – I would further threaten them. Me. Who is the one person in their whole world whose job it is to make them feel safe.

No. Let me correct that. My children have two parents, but I was the one in this case who had the day to day responsibility for my children, I was the one with whom they had and have a strong attachment bond.

So when I would feel my anxiety well up in response to some of my kids behaviours in those early years, just as Dr Gabor Maté had observed, I had to learn to calm my own nervous system first. It took a huge amount of emotional energy and focus.

And there I was, unsupported, dealing with children and with other adults who never learned healthy emotional regulation. Too many stuff it all down, others blow up and project it out.

To my friends, to others I worked with and who knew me in different arenas I was and am a strong, capable woman. I always knew this. Always. Even when I lived with someone who could not see my value nor would ever acknowledge it.

Even when faced with burn out from the conflicting demands of my career and very young children, or the regular awful meltdowns that carried on into those early school years having young kids with (at that time undiagnosed) dyslexic tendencies who struggled so much in the school system that they came home wiped and seeking emotional balance, or the hands on support to help their dad get set up and run his own business, or then the cruel depleting death of my mum.

I was the rock for everyone, and managed to manifest some rocks of my own, with kidney stones entering the landscape of my health.

And faced with all of this, amid entitlement and derision, I continued with a steely determination to figure out who I am beneath the suppressed emotions and dysfunctional beliefs. I rediscovered my inner knowing. I took the time while the children were at school to explore my passions:

• Becoming me, exploring the knowing versus the beliefs. Encouraging and coaching my kids to be an authentic expression of themselves and helping others (who want help) do the same
• Exploring the interconnectedness of everything and the clues that gives us in our lives about fulfilling our potential while simultaneously living symbiotically with everyone and everything
• Leveraging the power of intentionality, wonder and faith
• I love psychology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology and other social and behavioural sciences. But I also love philosophy, the wisdom traditions, epigenetics, quantum physics, the science of consciousness and where these things converge with sacred science. In short I like to make sense of the natural world and also enjoy all the therapies rooted in observations of the natural world and wisdom passed down through the ages.
• Reading, writing, beach walks, walks in nature, time with friends

Small drops, tiny scoops, step by step. I’d study free content, read books, I was resourceful as I eked out time between my child care and domestic responsibilities. Never encouraged, always disparaged.

But my inner knowing grew. And, when at last he led me to therapy “to fix me”, I then became more aware of the dynamics not just within me but between us. I then started to track the lies, the hypocrisy, the spite and controlling behaviours. I began to stand on solid ground again rather than feeling caught in a flush system swirling around and around.

Yes I know what it is to be with someone who values me, and know what it is to be with someone who values only what I can do for them, and I know the difference; the heartbreaking, devastating difference.

There are so many chapters to this story, so many aspects to speak to, so much I could share and relate. But for now, the thing I have learned is that my heart did not break, it can hurt but it never can nor will break. My heart is full of love and, at worst, someone else trying to exert their will over me can obscure me from feeling that if I am unwise and look outside of myself for validation and love.

What a huge gift that is in a way. When kept from something, the will to find it and reclaim it grows stronger. The more it is denied, the stronger the desire becomes. We have seen this in many ways across society in the last two years.

So what are you being held back from and what can you do to reclaim your worth, your love, your power and the full potential of your life?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, Be Compassionate and Curious to Live Your Best Life, What I Love About Being With Narcissistic People and How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“Just because it’s common doesn’t make it right” I said. I was talking to a lawyer about a response she was composing for a client. Her client had been acting in accordance with initial good faith agreements between the parties involved while, instead of just saying they had changed their mind, the other party had been denying there had ever been any agreements.

Not only that, but rather than addressing anything directly, the other party had started accusing her client of excessive expenditures never made, threatening to cut off finances and being verbally abusive on a number of occasions, with many examples of petty, spiteful and dishonest behaviours.

Her client had wanted to address these directly along with the evidence that had been carefully documented through emails, texts, social media trails, recorded conversations and others who could confirm what had actually taken place.

The lawyer seemed reluctant, she said “We are trying to reach agreement; I like to keep emotions out of it, stick to the facts and just focus on the deal. Going down that road will just piss off the other party”.

While I could see the sense in that, I said “But isn’t that precisely what the other party is doing? Meanwhile they are not being confronted with the evidence of their lies and are actually dictating the narrative while not even coming close to a fair deal”. She responded “It’s just tactics, I see it all the time, and it washes over me mostly”.

“Yes,” I said “But just because it happens all the time does not make it right”.

This reminded me of an interview I heard last year with a national politician I used to work with. In retaliation for whistle blowing he found himself personally attacked through revelations of his private life. He commented on how affairs were rife in Parliament and said “While I’m not saying it was right, it was all part of the game, it was the accepted norm”.

I used to see this often in corporate cultures too where behaviours that would not be misplaced in a school playground would often come to the fore wrapped in a professional gloss.

It puts me in mind of a talk I once attended with author John Parsons, whose most popular book is about keeping children safe online. He points to this tendency for us to look at online games as being a separate reality that exists outside of ours where it’s okay to kill people because “it’s not real”. Yet the themes and narratives of the games are played by real people, through real interactions.  

Just as they are in the legal system, or the political system, or any other system I could care to mention.

It’s as if we live in a society where the fundamental traits that create cooperation, cohesion, compassion and a more joyful and peaceful existence, are just swept aside in a bid for power and control. What happens in the legal arena, the political arena, the corporate arena and the online world, are just examples of sub sections of our culture that are somehow seen as less real and just a game making quite deplorable behaviours somehow okay.

As I had been contemplating all this I opened up my Insight Timer app to listen to a Sarah Blondin meditation and the quote “What you allow is what will continue” popped up on my screen.

There are many people who help those at the receiving end of toxic behaviours, but who is holding those responsible for them accountable? Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “There comes a point when we need to stop just pulling people out the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in”.

When author, philanthropist and activist Glennon Doyle started looking upstream, she learned that where there is great suffering, there is often great profit. Now when she encounters someone struggling to stay afloat she knows not only to ask “How can I help you right now” but, once they are safe, to also ask “What institution or person is benefitting from your suffering?” which is how she became an activist.

At what point do we stand up and say, actually, our legal system isn’t working, our political system isn’t working, our corporate cultures don’t work, these online gaming systems don’t work, nothing big and institutional works, it’s simply breeding grounds for the power hungry and the worst of human behaviours get perpetuated.

Another interesting point Glennon  makes, when asked about why she refers to god as a she, and whether she believes god is female, she says “I don’t. I think it’s ridiculous to think of god as anything that could be gendered, but as long as women continue to be undervalued and abused and controlled here on Earth I’ll keep using it.”

She makes a point worthy of exploration. It does seem that these covert power plays, that are rife in our society, do play nicely into suppressing females in many ways – though not exclusively by any means.

I can certainly attest that, as someone who was very independent (financially and otherwise), it was extremely hard for me to forego that in order to look after my children. When I met their father he had talked about being a stay-at-home dad initially, but isn’t something that appealed so much when up close and personal with the tasks of daily child rearing and domesticity.

I too had wanted to give our children that gift of my attention they needed but, as the main breadwinner at the time, it wasn’t feasible. Nonetheless with a baby and toddler at home wanting my attention all night long after being farmed out all day – albeit to a beautiful and loving soul who looked after them well – I was soon in the burn out zone and knew something had to give.

Moving to another part of the country where house prices were more affordable meant being able to be with the kids in the ways that they needed.  However it also meant moving away from the opportunity for me to earn income in the way I had previously.

The last 15 years of my paid career were spent in senior management roles working for large organisations advising on and leading strategic people changes to enable transformation to their customer experience. These roles are few and far between in New Zealand as a whole, but generally not available where I now live.

In the meantime I helped the children’s father establish and run his business, which is now thriving. My personal intention in returning to work, when the children were old enough, was to use some of my previous skills and experience to work more directly with individuals.  

With a special interest in the field of trauma and how it impacts on human potential, I have been on a very personal journey of study and self growth and have amassed a large body of published work in the years since I left my corporate career. Training in clinical hypnotherapy was how I had planned to re-enter the workforce and make a living.

But with the urgency of a separation, and the introduction of restrictions in the educational sector as well as mandates in the healthcare sector, I instead decided to combine all my previous experience to provide business coaching, contracting and consulting to businesses.

What that means though, is that - in addition to the initial period of financial uncertainly while establishing a business and hours obviously restricted within school hours and term time - being full-time carer of our children put me at a financial disadvantage both during the relationship and post separation.

Given that it will likely take at least 12-18 months to establish a stable income history to enable a home loan to be secured, house price rises and loan restrictions could make this an impossible goal. In the meantime, my share of the equity from the sale of our family home will diminish as it will be needed in order to pay for living costs. This is a common scenario facing women everywhere.

Then when you add to that some of these common underhand tactics being played out between parties in the legal system, it’s not hard to see where Glennon Doyle’s conclusions have come from.

I for one intend to ensure that I fully express what life is like from within these sorts of unjust scenarios, and what I have and can learn from them, in the hope that by sharing it brings into the light what lives in our shadows and plays over time and time again. Only through examining the toxicity that we allow and learning new ways of approaching things, will we start to foster the kind of cooperation, cohesion, compassion and a more joyful and peaceful existence that we all deserve.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Find the Courage to Let Us Hear Your Heart’s Voice, Kneel at the Doorway of Your Heart to Usher the Dawn of a New Era, You See What Happens When You Learn to Speak Your Truth, Let Us Hear Your Unique Perspective – But Be Kind and Be Wise, How to Stand in Your Truth and Be Heard Without a Fight and Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary). To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

This week I listened to a meditation on Attracting Your Soul Mate. I’ve had access to this for quite some time and have never felt compelled to listen to it before. As I heard the words “the person who is the best, highest, most compatible and committed person for you” I became acutely aware of something often referred to as my point of attraction.

The law of attraction became more widely known back in 2006 after Rhonda Byrne released The Secret, but it was very much associated with manifesting material things. However, as it’s based on a universal principle, it’s something I’ve inevitably become more acquainted with over the years of personal growth and development. One thing I know for sure is that in order for me to experience something I want, I have to be an energetic match to it.

For instance, just to demonstrate the point, if I wanted to build an amazing career as a popstar then I’d really have to believe that was possible in order for it to actually eventuate. In my case, while I might have occasionally dreamt of the glamorous life of a popstar when I was younger, all parts of me were not at all in alignment with this.

I didn’t believe I had a good voice, nor did I believe I had what it would take to be that one-in-a-million who makes it to the big time, and nor did I really believe in my heart that kind of life would be as glamorous as it’s sometimes portrayed. In fact I thought it would be hideous to be under such public scrutiny all the time.

So that right there is some pretty big resistance to this fleeting dream, and at the very heart of why I’ll never wake up one day to find I’m a top selling artist singing on stages around the world. However, would I like to attract a career that reflects the best and highest version of me? Heck yes!

And yet… I hesitate, because what I’ve discovered is this universe has some very backhanded and uncomfortable ways of delivering my desires. If I dream instead about teaching and leading and speaking on stages, for example, and my point of attraction isn’t a match, but I truly truly desire it, well then I’m going to get an opportunity to become a match. It just may not be a very comfortable opportunity.

It did strike me earlier in the week when reading what Teal Swan had to say about comfort zones and taking risks, life is rather like a bowling alley. Instead of seeing wanted and unwanted as a polarity, I saw them more as two sides of a bowling lane. There is a comfort zone in the middle, but the ball can go off to (either) side at any time. In life, both are a call to growth and expansion, whether it’s inspiring and exciting or it’s scary and awful very much depends on how much of a match I am to where I want to go.

My last relationship was a startling example of just how mismatched I was to my strong desire to be myself. In my head I pictured that as being with a person with whom I would feel at one with myself. I was not a match to a kind and inspiring relationship because I was not kind nor inspiring towards myself.

In fact I had a whole heap of self doubts, low self esteem, and a number of dysfunctional beliefs and enmeshment trauma standing between me and the dream in my head. In short, I had no clear view of who I truly was in order to be at one with that. And I ignored the many signs that pointed to this not being a relationship in which I could find my way to feeling at one with myself in a kind and inspiring way.

Due to my lack of awareness and unwillingness to listen to my inner voice (which ignored many warning signs), summed as being fear driven (fear of missing the opportunity to start a family) rather than love driven, the bowling ball had fallen on the side of the alley that meant I was in for a bumpy ride. But to give the universe its credit, it delivered the perfect match to all my desires in terms of the growth and expansion that needed to occur.

Growing up I thought of relationships as a search to find a part of me that was missing, the yin to my yang. In fact, I had my wedding ring engraved with the yin and yang sign all around it to symbolize just that.

What I didn’t realise then, was that I am a whole person, yin and yang. I didn’t know that I had fragmented myself into many parts as I was growing up and – in an attempt to gather all the parts of me back together that I had denied, disowned or suppressed – I was attracting do-overs of all my earlier challenges in a subconscious attempt to get a different outcome.

The parts of me that saw the light of day were those that have been encouraged, loved, applauded even, the rest were kept in the shadows where even I wouldn’t look too closely. And I’m talking about simple things like productivity; human productivity is valued more highly than humans being, contemplating, and observing and so on. Yet I am someone who flourishes when I have lots of time to just be.

All parts of my identity have been shaped by both my outer and inner world. I am acutely aware that I have been steeping in a patriarchal, misogynistic, racist, sex-biased (and many more prejudices, to which we appear to have now added vaccine status) societal soup.

I am aware of how these many prejudices and dysfunctional ways of relating inadvertently (certainly from my parents’ point of view) led to my many unhelpful beliefs about myself about whether I was a worthy human, whether I was enough, or crazy or different and so on. And, what I had to be to be loveable.

It’s been a long journey back to me. But as I was listening to this idea of attracting a person with whom I feel the deepest sense of belonging, companionship, wholeness, love and joy, the person who is the best and highest and most compatible and committed person for me, this no longer seems out of reach or unrealistic.

It no longer feels like I’m a half of a whole seeking to complete myself through another. I feel more that I’m a person who is whole, who has shone the lights on my shadows and reintegrated parts of myself I’d long since rejected. I know the journey is not over, but I no longer feel at war with myself, I feel more largely at peace.

And so I feel excited at what I might now attract into my life as this feeling of peaceful incubation wants to merge with another part of me that feels more like the nature of the sun, a large frission of energy that is ever expanding.

It’s like there’s been a shift from “a half plus a half equals a whole” to “a whole plus a whole equals more than the sum of its parts” That would apply as much to a mate, as to a friendship, or a working situation or anything I engage in.

Does that mean I’m the best and highest version of myself? Unlikely, for while there is breath still in me I imagine I will keep growing and expanding. But I do feel whole, I do feel authentic, I do have the skills now to hold healthy boundaries, and the skills to notice when there are incompatibilities and how to address those.

I’m no longer scared of what I might attract into my life, I’m excited to see what comes next. I also know that, regardless which side of the bowling alley the ball falls, whether my experiences were planned or unplanned, I have the strength and courage to grow through and become more.

What about you, how confident do you feel about whether you are attracting the best relationships, friendships, career, life that match the highest version of yourself?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, A Triumph of Authenticity - Can You Embrace the Totality of Your Being?, Simplify Your Life to Be Accepted and Loved as Your Authentic Self, Does Your Heart Long to Be Accepted for Being Just You? and How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

I was talking to various friends this week about those three magic words I love you. Our experiences of hearing and speaking those words all vary widely, and my own relationship with them has changed dramatically over the years.

The first person I ever said those words to, and recall hearing those words from, was my boyfriend when we were twelve or thirteen and we used to write letters to one another. I grew up believing – mainly through movies and books - those romantic relationships were where a person expressed any kind of big feelings.

Saying I love you to family members was more in the domain of those crazy Americans we used to watch on TV. Certainly not in our homes, nor in popular culture in the UK, it just wasn’t something people said to each other; a definite overhang of centuries of emotional repression.

Yet in recent years it has crept in. I personally remember the creep very well, I didn’t just suddenly find myself saying those words to all and sundry, and still don’t of course, I am selective. But my world of expressing and receiving love now goes beyond romantic relationships and it was a process.

My niece and I were having a conversation about what is happening with Russia and the Ukraine. To me, this is all connected; it isn’t something that happens in isolation. I was sharing with her that I resonated with one of Brene Brown’s posts where she said “We stand with every Ukrainian. We stand with the thousands of brave Russians demonstrating in protest, risking their safety to do so, and all those devastated by this unprovoked, terrifying, and reprehensible war”.

It also brought up for me the hundreds of thousands of protesters around the world whose governments are not only ignoring their messages about the overreach in regards to COVID19 restrictions, but vilifying peaceful protesters in the mainstream media as violent troublemakers. I’ve seen many times now firsthand live footage of what is actually happening versus what gets reported.

So, what do I think is really going on... first COVID19 extremism and now Putin invades the Ukraine, is the world going to hell in a hand cart? 

No I'd say not. I'd say it's more like Mother Earth is ridding herself of a poison. All that was hidden beneath is bubbling to the surface. The atrocities of 80 years ago amid the horrors of WW2, with characters like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco etc did not just disappear. The narcissistic traits that created pain and war then are still seen in many people today, in many households, workplaces and they are very obviously and sadly seen in many people in power positions.

I think this is a time of taking off rose coloured glasses, and many still have them on so there could be more to come, but we are collectively starting the process of clearing out all the junk in our trunk.

As I awakened to the lie that power is an external force to be complied with, and is instead an internal allowing of love from within, that is when space was cleared within me. I have come to feel this love as the powerful force it is.

I think it was around the time I started to find my feet as an adult I can remember my mum saying “Love you Sho”. For a long time those words would send me into freeze mode. As I spoke to in Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful the relationship I had had with my mum in childhood had created a lot of anxiety as I grew. Love was not unconditional.

As in most households and upbringings, there were expectations around behaviour and, if not met, there would be punishment, withdrawal of love and words such as “you should be ashamed”. So for many years I was not able to receive those three words I love you from my mum, nor anyone else outside of a romantic relationship.

I would feel like a cat caught in the headlights and avoid saying anything in response and come up with other phrases to smooth over that awkward moment. It wasn’t really until I started doing my own inner work not long before my mum died that I began to clear space for the love that I am to rise up within me.

There was – and is ongoing – a necessary and conscious look at all that dwells in the shadows, and a deliberate process of forgiveness and healing. This also gave rise to new possibilities, new connections and a place to receive and give those three words more freely.

But perhaps the biggest gift has been the ability to feel those three words in relation to myself. As I have begun to reintegrate the parts of me I had rejected as I grew, because they hadn’t fit into what was expected or desired of me back then.

In recent years I’ve been able to more easily say to my closest confidants, family members and girlfriends “I love you” with more and more ease. To me it means something like “I see you, the real you, in all your glory and pain. I’ve got your back. I trust you not to betray me. And it hurts my heart when I see you being dishonored”.

And it’s also been easier to say it to my guy friends recently without that romantic overlay/entanglement. That boyfriend from my younger days is still in my world. The level of intimacy in our relationship has obviously changed over the years as we each went on to have other relationships, had kids and moved to different countries.

But our friendship has endured and I love to hear how he and his family are doing, and we generally have the other’s back when life throws some pain our way. These things are not always easy, and I have to respect and honour the other people in my people’s lives. Everyone is at a different stage of their own journey and the relationship they have in terms of self love and the words I love you.

I do believe that as each person finds their way back to and expresses the love that they are, it purges more and more of the poison that stops each of us from feeling and receiving the love that is there.

The more we take responsibility for healing our own wounds, the less we will see of the atrocities that are happening today. We can rise in anger, and well we should, it is better than powerlessness, but we can also find the powerful force of love within and allow that to rise up and to get to know our true nature which is powerful beyond imagination.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Why the Integration of Feelings and Logic Will Save the Human Race, How to Quieten the Inner Critic, When to Act on Possibility, Embracing the Feminine within All of Us, , What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution, Connect to Your Well-Being  and Could a Broader Perspective Benefit Us All Right Now? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

By happy circumstance I found myself at a Soulful CEO circle this week. Six of us sitting in the shade of a mature Cherry Blossom tree in the summer sun, taking time out to contemplate the topic for the session, which was around using our intuition to grow/start our business.

The conversation centred on those intuitive nudges, or flashes of inspiration, we get and – often in instant response – the voice of the inner critic that comes up with all the reasons why that is a bad idea.

It was a good reminder of the tug of war that often happens in my inner world. The inner critic is very convincing as it’s all about safety. However, its voice was born very early on in my life when safety was linked (as it is for all humans) to approval from my primary caregivers. The messages were then reinforced over and over in various settings in childhood, like school and competitive sports, where the desire for approval was very much linked to the innate instinct for belonging and safety.

There was never really a point in my life where someone said “trust your inner voice”, it was more the opposite. Even as an adult it is the same memo that society often plays back, the messaging around the current pandemic could be no clearer a case in point. The overarching theme – certainly here in New Zealand- is “do not trust yourself, trust your government instead, this is the one source of truth”.

I am in wonder that more people are not incredulous at the wildly differing advice, approaches and mandates globally, from these one sources of truth. The only one source of truth that exists, I believe, exists inside each of us.

And yet I suspect the biggest pandemic on planet Earth today is self abandonment.

This is sometimes referred to as the mind versus heart, or ego versus intuition, and how to know which voice is speaking?

Serendipitously, as I’m reading Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living at the moment, she has been talking about this very issue. She recounts a conversation she had with a friend about a pivotal decision in her life. Her friend had suggested that she get really present in her body and out of her head.

When she had become more present in her body – which for me is most easily achieved by intentionally focusing on breathing in/out my tummy and becoming aware of how my body is feeling – her friend asked her to relook at her choices one by one, each time asking “Does that feel warm to me?”

At this point her decision felt obvious, as one choice felt cold, icy actually, like she might die of cold. The other felt warm, soft and spacious. Her friend said “Your body will tell you things your mind will talk you out of. Your body is telling you what direction life is in. Try trusting it. Turn away from what feels cold and toward what feels warm”.

Glennon goes on to say that these days, in business meetings, she is not looking for justifications, judgements or opinions, she is looking for knowing. She listens for statements like “I did the research and sat with these options for a while, this one feels warm to me”.

I was talking to a friend about growing his business. Since starting the company, he had taken on a couple of employees, both more by chance rather than through a specific job search. I love this organic approach, but I also think its potency truly comes into its own when setting some intentionality around it.

If he can take some time to imagine a future team of people who collectively represent the same values that he himself projects from his inner world, who can collectively deliver his vision, he can start to wonder just how that might come about and listen out for the intuitive nudges that will undoubtedly pop into his head.

Envisioning the biggest contribution I can make in life, spending time just wondering how that could look, then actively asking, “I wonder how this will come about” primes me neurologically to receive all sorts of interesting insights and impulses into how my dreams can be achieved. The trick is to follow the ones that feel right, without letting my inner critic sabotage each idea before it even takes flight.

Right now I have the impulse to update my online presence and profile in terms of what I have to offer in the business arena. My current presence doesn’t convey the level of skills and experience I have working on businesses as well as in them very succinctly.

With all the years I had in senior management, working at the strategic end of business, I haven’t even listed three of the four businesses I have helped set up and run; far less joined a lot of dots that give me quite a comprehensive toolkit as a business coach/consultant. I need to create outwardly the shifts that have occurred within me.

As I said in Do You Want to Make a Heartfelt Change to Your Career? between my own personal growth that needed to happen, and the collective dysfunction that I’d seen over and over in organisations getting in the way of meaningful and lasting change, I hadn’t expected I’d even want to return to that world so I hadn’t really focused too much on it.

Of course my inner critic has been hard as work with every impulse I’ve had, “who are you to offer these services?”, “are you good enough?”, “do you have enough skills and experience?” and lots of comparison with many others out there. In the session under the cherry tree this week, I listened to most of the others voice the same concerns about growing their own ventures while simultaneously thinking, felling and saying to them “Of course you can do it, go for it”.

I recognise these voices for what they are, momentary doubt from my inner critic just trying to keep me safe. But it’s all good, I am safe. It’s actually mainly with excited anticipation I think about stepping back into the arena. I have an authentic edge now that makes all the difference to me in the type of work I’ll engage in, assisting and guiding people in running a business by helping them clarify the vision of their business and how it fits with their personal goals. 

As I listened to some of the others air their inner critic at the Soulful CEO circle, I thought of Glennon’s advice and realised that, when I lean into this, it feels warm, smoking hot, like I’ve got this. I can hear and I trust my inner knowing.

What about you, have you had any impulses or intuitive nudges regarding your career or business? What has your soul been whispering and what has your inner critic had to say about it? Maybe it’s time to thank our inner critic for trying to keep us safe but, smiling, say “I’ve got this” and go step forward into your new future.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Why the Integration of Feelings and Logic Will Save the Human Race, How to Quieten the Inner Critic, When to Act on Possibility, Embracing the Feminine within All of Us, , What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution, Connect to Your Well-Being  and Could a Broader Perspective Benefit Us All Right Now? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

A man told me a story of a woman he had known growing up and, one night, their relationship unexpectedly became more than friendship. It had all felt so natural and he had never felt so in tune with anyone as he did then. However, the next day he panicked, lost in a sea of feeling unworthy and misplaced loyalties to others.

As a result, theirs was a story that never unfolded. Both went on to other relationships, the kind of relationships that played out every painful thing they had each believed about themselves.

It was a sad tale, and one particularly poignant for me, I was that woman.

What could have been I wondered? Yet if I am to wonder anything, it cannot be regrets for there is a future still to be lived. I certainly wonder at the path I took, always looking outside myself for love.

I had had some really good relationships up until the one. As he walked across the train station, a friend of a friend coming out with us that night, the moment seemed to slow and everything else faded away except him walking. I knew right then I was in trouble, my heart lost.

After almost two years together, he decided it was time to leave, and I was broken; devastated, left standing at the edge of an abyss. I wallowed for a long time in a sea of utter misery, blaming myself for who I was, who I had been. I had grown up thinking relationships are where I find the love I had been seeking, and if this guy didn’t think I was worthy then that was my truth.

Other relationships followed, all reflecting the parts of me I rejected through their incompatibilities or – if they were compatible – they were unavailable. Each one reinforced the painful beliefs I had about me. These ranged from lack of worth, to feeling like I was too much, through to feeling like I was unseen, with many others in between.

So in the aftermath of that night with my friend, it was just further confirmation, and I felt hurt, abandoned and alone.

Now many years later, I look back and see so clearly that it was me who had abandoned myself thirty years ago, when the one turned out not to be.

It isn’t until recent years that I began to really wake up to how much more I deserve, and how that it is an inside job. I have to love me before anyone else can.

My friend said he often thinks of that night when he wants to forget the painful things in his life for a while. I replied “The thing is, I’m not a forgetting-things-for-a-while kind of woman. I’m a remembering who you truly are kind of woman.” I guess that is why the memory has stayed with us both.

I had decided this week to participate in Teal Swan’s 7-day self love challenge. On day four she posed a list of ten questions, I got stuck at the first one “What thought do I most want to think about myself?” I couldn’t think of anything, “Something kind and loving but what?” I wondered. I thought if I could look at what’s on my mind most, what I am feeling the most, then I could flip it and create a loving thought.

There’s an almost constant pain in my throat and chest, like I’m trying to swallow down big emotions. I’m sure that is exactly what it is, I’m well practiced, and now I am feeling into the pain of the last fifty years instead of pushing it away. But I couldn’t match the thoughts to the feelings, they were at the edge of my awareness beyond my reach. I decided just to wonder and to let the words arise in their own time.

Learning to love myself is one of the hardest, most gratifying things I have ever done. I feel pain a lot, I think it’s inevitable and most probably temporary. It’s certainly better than the pain of rejected myself and all that life brought me in response.

Glennon Doyle talks about this when she tells the story about going to her fifth recovery meeting (on her sixth day of sobriety) and how she decided to explain how much she hurt and how being alive doesn’t seem as hard for others as is for her. Someone explained to her “It’s okay to feel all the stuff you’re feeling. You’re not doing life wrong, you’re just human, feeling all your feelings is hard, but that’s what they’re there for. Feelings are for feelings. All of them. Even the hard ones.”

She did not know that all feelings were for feeling. She had thought she was supposed to feel happy. That happy was for feeling and pain was for fixing and numbing and hiding and deflecting and ignoring. She thought when life got hard she’d gone wrong somewhere, that pain was weakness and she was supposed to suck it up. The more she sucked it up the more booze she drank down.

From that day she began to return to herself, to practice feeling it all. She learned “Firstly, I can feel everything and survive. Second, I can use pain to become. I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not pain is the fire of revolution. Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.”

I see and feel many aspects of who I am reflected back in many ways through others. There have been tens of thousands of people doing this 7-day Self Love challenge right along with me, I hear their stories and feel their pain, and everyone has a story.

The years of stuffing down my own needs and desires and true feelings, are now welling up and wanting to be seen. I imagine it’s very much like the pain of coming off a drug, the pain wants to be seen and acknowledged. There are only two choices, one is to seek a salve, for me that would be connection with others who can validate me externally. The other is to sit with the pain, and validate myself.

A good friend said to me this week “Name one thing you love about Shona”. It gave me pause. At first I was actually unable to answer. “After all this work I’ve done, surely I can find one thing to love about me?” I thought.

Then a voice within me said “kind”. Yes, I can own that, I am a kind person and I do love that. Then the voice said “perceptive”. Yes, I can own that too. Then the voice kept coming, soon I had a decent list.

Circling back to the question I couldn’t answer on the Self Love challenge “What thought do I most want to think about myself?” it’s “I’m here, I’m listening”. And I am listening, I feel and am processing the hurt of having abandoned myself for decades, but it’s better late than never. I’m coming home.

In her book Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living, Glennon says we are all bilingual, we speak the language of indoctrination but our native tongue is the language of imagination:

“The language of indoctrination is the language of the mind, with it’s should and shouldn’t, right and wrong, good and bad. In order to get beyond our training, we need to activate our imaginations, our storytelling faculty. So instead of asking ourselves what is right and wrong, ask ourselves, what is true and beautiful?”

She asks:

“What is the truest, most beautiful life you can imagine?

What is the truest, most beautiful family you can imagine?

What is the truest, most beautiful world you can hope for?

Write it down, these are out blueprints, our marching orders...”

So did you, like Glennon, like me, like too many, believe that happiness was for feeling and pain was for fixing and numbing and hiding and deflecting and ignoring? Are you ready to sit with your pain and make plans for a more beautiful version of your life? What is the truest most beautiful version of your life you can imagine right now?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Do You Want to Make a Heartfelt Change to Your Career?, Simplify Your Life to Be Accepted and Loved as Your Authentic Self, Does Your Heart Long to Be Accepted for Being Just You? and How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.