My dad and I have been watching the Star Wars movies in chronological order this week. What I love about it is the focus on “The Force” which, to me, is a fairly accurate representation of how all life is created, how things manifest and how it is all connected.

It makes me chuckle that so many of the characters in the movie (and people watching it) think of it The Force as a fictional or imaginary thing only.

What I also love about the movies is that the battles never seem truly over. It’s a great reminder that – on this physical plane – we are never really done. Good never truly “wins” over bad because they are two sides of the same coin, which is continually flipping over and over; where one story ends another begins.

With each spin of the coin, each new chapter, each new book, perhaps we learn more. However, as I learn more, I also discover that what I don’t know becomes clearer, vaster, and it seems infinite. Feeling into “the force”/my intuition/centre of peace/heart centre/divine consciousness perhaps, seems to me a very sensible way to navigate life.

Regardless of what one believes, when meditating and contemplating from a point of stillness, it is quite simply far easier to reach good, solid decisions than it is when I act in anger, fear or resentment, or some other form of unhelpful emotion.

So much of life is reflected to us in movies, good and bad. The weather here in New Zealand has been so bad this week that another movie we watched was the new one starring Tom Hanks, A Man Called Otto, which was an excellent portrayal of the good and bad in ordinary life.

One octogenarian’s review I thought was rather poignant “I can be a curmudgeon, not an intentional one but one worn down by constant change and a slipping away of one’s past. Life’s successes and tragedies form us all if we make the distance and Tom Hanks showed how a once young man in love can change into an Otto today”.

I really resonated with his comment that “the drab setting and snow were brightened by the one thing we are all craving – kindness”.

Yes I see, hear and sense meaning in everything. Some people say I over analyse, but I am happy to trust that I will probably never know the vast majority of meanings. Life has presented me with enough information though, many times over, to know that the things that eventually come together in my life are most often a series of unexplained, unpredicted chain of events that leads me to trust in following my intuition, major or minor.

Just today I was driving to a garden centre and, as I passed by another one on the way, I felt an intuitive tug towards it but carried on with my original plan as the one I was passing is often really busy. A few miles down the road I hit traffic and, after the queue not moving for some time, turned around and went back to the one I had passed.

Because it was so rainy, the place was actually pretty empty, so we ate a delicious lunch (the cafe had a much better variety of food than the one we had been heading for) and I got the two houseplants I was after with ease (after thinking the other garden centre would be better stocked).

I could have sat there in that queue of traffic for another ten minutes, or longer, but instead I decided to go with the flow, and follow my intuition back to the other garden centre; and I’m really glad I did. I know it’s a benign example, but there are so many of these in every day.

I suspect there are many examples of where we talk ourselves into things or out of things, which start to then become harder and harder because they are bucking our flow. Like Tom Hanks as Otto trying to commit suicide three times, each attempt foiled by unsuspecting neighbours who give him an opportunity to live his last weeks/months on Earth embracing life and feeling more completion, in the bosom of kind neighbours and warm friendships, before naturally passing on.

In particular, his neighbour Marisol makes a huge impression on him. In a life where he sees so many things are “idiotic” and so many people acting like “idiots”, Marisol is persistent, relentlessly kind and unexpectedly emotionally honest, forcing him to take a hard look at how he is acting.

I can’t help but feel we make life hard for ourselves by so often “trying to do the right thing” rather than feeling into what is right for us in that moment. More and more I embrace the saying my gran repeated many times “what’s for you won’t go by you”, more and more I trust in that Force, flow and serendipitous moments.

Where in your life can you see examples of this? What are your intuitive nudges telling you? Is it time to leverage the astonishing power of your intuition, flow and kindness (towards yourself as much as others)? May we all be a Marisol and have a Marisol in our lives, and may The Force be felt by all.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy You Deserve Kindness, Be Fluid – How to Go with Your Own Flow, How to Use Your Intuition With Confidence in Business and in Life, Choose Kindness, Forget the Shoulds of Life and Focus on What Inspires Instead, Let Us Hear Your Unique Perspective – But Be Kind and Be Wise and How Would It Feel to Have More Ease, Joy and Flow in Your Life? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was doing a short workshop on self leadership this week that provided a couple of ah-ha moments.  This was about how I approach my life and lead myself, which is also usually an indicator of how we lead all other aspects of our life (including our families, or teams of people).

Facilitated by Yvette Rose, the workshop posed some interesting questions that I thought it worth sharing:

“Who was the leader in your house? (meaning who set the rules/tone)

In my case it was my mum. Yvette talked about her dad’s “it’s my way of the highway” attitude that I resonated with and think many people recognise.

How did you respond to that?

I responded by trying my best to be as good as possible to avoid any wrath or punishment.

How did you experience your ability to step into leadership as a child?

I would often fear having my desires belittled or attacked and, instead, I started to feel more responsible for how my parents felt instead of how I felt. As an adolescent I took on more leadership roles through my swimming and school activities, looking back I had an over-developed sense of responsibility.

In relationship to that response you had as a child towards the leadership in the home, how did that influence your ability to lead later in life?

I got burnt out, trying to please others too much. I didn’t really know myself, nor have any boundaries as I didn’t know what my wants, needs and desires truly were. I always wanted to get ahead of any criticism and hated feedback, trying to micromanage the feelings of everyone around me.

What does being a good leader mean to you?

It means setting a good example, having good boundaries, being respectful, being kind, letting others take responsibility for themselves, communicating clearly and authentically.

What leadership qualities do you possess?

I have great vision, a strategic mindset, I’m a team player and I follow through on my word. I have been busy learning about developing healthy boundaries and how to communicate with emotional intelligence.

What are you good at in your life?

My organisational skills, ability to see under the surface, see patterns, analyse and empathise with what is going on for people on a psychological and emotional level; and I understand how developmental trauma impacts people’s psyche and behaviours. I have good business acumen and try to show up as the best version of me possible in all my relationships, particularly as a parent.

Where in your life would you like to be a better leader?

I’d like to be more mindful of only giving advice when it’s asked for. And perhaps on a personal level in self leading as I transition into a new phase of my career. I’m journeying towards aligning my inner and outer worlds in every area of my life.

How have you failed to achieve this?

I’ve been distracted and on a road to recovery from some pretty toxic patterns in my life.

What step can you take today to correct this?

I think it’s a case of continually reminding myself of the positives, the life lessons, and consciously applying all I’ve learned about my how to bring more of myself into the world while honouring others and where they are at.

An article by Briana MacWilliams also caught my eye this week. She was talking about breaking free of toxic relationship patterns, and recommends that we strengthen our connections with loving supporters, and commit to connecting back in with ourselves, before we try to break free. Otherwise, she says “you will feel physical withdrawal and go running back to repeat the cycle”.

It was an interesting piece describing the role of naturally occurring dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and adrenaline in our bodies (and how they interact when simultaneously attracted to and threatened by someone), saying the addiction can be every bit as intense as, for example, a cocaine addiction.

It was a good reminder that recovery and discovery time is actually important in order to strengthen the relationship between me and me. 

Where in your life do you feel you have a fear of leading?

Yvette’s answer here was about bringing out more of herself in social situations as, once people discover what she does for a living, socialising can often turn into work. For me, I can see this could become a similar challenge and I’m mindful of incorporating more fun and adventure into my life as I also lean forwards into the next phase of my career.

What would happen if you fully stepped into leadership?

There is possibly also a lingering fear of getting too wrapped up in whatever I’m doing and losing myself again. And there is another part of me that draws a blank at this question, as if I’m in freeze mode.

Is that how you felt in childhood in response to your individuality?

Yes. I suspect as a child a degree of my sovereign self went into a kind of stasis , so when I try to imagine “me” with a fully integrated inner and outer world I still draw a bit of a blank.

What do you need to embrace in life to be a better leader?

Continuing to embrace the path of thawing out and integrating my inner and outer worlds, along with developing the skills to do that.

Who or what can you not control in your life?

What other people think, do or feel. Also situations and circumstances around me are often outside my control. Many of these things I can influence, but the only thing I can control is my reactions to people and circumstances.

What are you willing to commit to today in order to make what you want as a leader a reality?

I commit to investigating and working through the stasis/freeze/thaw and allowing the fullest expression of myself to engage with the world in a meaningful way. I also commit to only giving advice when it is asked for, and even then in the context of my own experience.

Yvette then had me acknowledge the difference between leading and feeling too much responsibility, the difference between leading and feeling attacked and the difference between leading and being in a freeze state. It was interesting to bring those into my awareness.

She also talked about how, as we look around at the moment, it can feel like a “shit show” playing out on the world stage. Her solution for that would be to have each leader get a psychologist or a life coach so they could stop taking out their “mum and dad stuff” on the rest of the world. While that would be amazing, she also recognised the only thing we can control is ourselves.

Can you see the opportunity in answering the questions posed in relation to yourself? Make a start today to become the unwavering and genuine leader of your own life.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy In What Unseen Ways Are You Abandoning Your Own Free Will?, Be the Change You Want to See, Have the Courage to Follow Your Heart (and Let Your Kids Do the Same) 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.

This week the theme seems to have been “you can’t please everyone”, which is pretty apt for someone like me who has been learning about and practicing more healthy boundaries and communication in recent years.

It is school summer holidays here and, for the first time in a few years, we have overseas visitors back again in New Zealand. For my children and I, that heralds the start of long anticipated catch ups with loved ones.

My kids have grown a lot since we last had anyone here for an extended period but, as they have gotten older, it hasn’t really gotten any easier to figure out what to do with our days.

Each child is as different from the other as they are from me, and - add other loved ones into that equation - it feels like I’m sitting a practical exam after completing a people pleasers anonymous course.

Both my kids are highly sensitive as well as strong willed but in entirely different ways. So one gets highly anxious in crowded indoor spaces like climbing centres, bowling, shopping malls and so forth, whereas the other has those things as top activities on their list. The other gets thrown into a tailspin around loud or startling noises, so the movie theatre is a no-go which – predictably – is the other’s
preferred indoor activity.

Outdoors seems like an alien planet to them most of the time. I love the beach, my kids prefer trees, but even those are of little interest these days. When they were small kids we could be lost for hours in the woodland while they created fantastical worlds seen only in the imagination. Near any body of water they’d inevitably end up in it and needing the change of clothes always kept in the car for that reason.

These days it seems that the only things of interest are screen time and friends. Going for a walk is like suggesting an hour of torture. What New Zealand has to offer is the great outdoors. Lacking the thousands of years of human history of the UK where I grew up, there are not swathes of places of interest like grand houses, castles, museums and theme parks to tempt.

Yet, with visitors who have come to spend quality time with us and enjoy our summer, it’s hardly an attractive proposition to sit in the house while the children are zoned out doing their own thing.

Now do not take this as me saying that the kids get to dictate what we all do, that is not the case but it is a factor. The reactions to doing things other than their default are as varied as everything else, one gets quiet and withdrawn, the others gets loud, vocal and sometimes downright rude.

I’ve noticed adults aren’t much better and, in many cases, just expect the children to do whatever they are told. This isn’t how I have brought up my children. I want them to know and be who they are, to know their own needs, wants and desires, yet also to have some respect and consideration for the same in others.

A friend of mine said they can envisage my kids at age 25 all wild and free, but in a deeply understanding “knowing themselves and what lights them up” way, and reckons what I’m doing in the meantime is trying to give them a safe space in which to grow into that. It is certainly the aim, but that requires continually shifting strong but negotiable boundaries as their development occurs.

As I try to navigate this, and the interaction and reactions from others whose needs, wants and desires are often entirely different again, the basic question I have to ask myself in all this is “what do I need and want right now?”

It’s in taking care of that I start to break old habits. Making sure that amid the navigation of my children’s needs and that of others, I am taking the time for some basic self care. When I do not have visitors, I meditate daily, read, sometimes take a nap, walk at the beach often, do yoga and swim regularly.

Now I may not be able to achieve all of that while I have visitors, but I have to retain some of it in order to strike a balance. First recharge me, and then I have the resources for others.

The best way I have found of making nice memories with such a diverse and often conflicting range of needs and wants is to let each person (including the children) have their own preference in rotation, within reason (clearly an adrenaline sport might not be the best idea for an elderly relative, for example). There are likely many more ways of solving the same problems and I would love to hear what works for you when dealing with conflicting desires among people.

Do you attempt to please everyone and lose yourself? Do you still gravitate towards pleasing certain people in certain situations in order to avoid anxiety, unpleasantness or even conflict? Or have you developed a secure enough sense of who you are and what you need to be able to cater to that as well as holding the needs and desires of others that you care about in high regard?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Fulfil Your Long Desired Yearning for Belonging, Start With the Self and the Rest Will Take Care of Its-Self, Embrace Your Sensitivity Rather than Have to Protect Yourself from the World and Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

By relationships here I am talking about all relationships; those I have with my children, clients, romantic relationships, friendships and so forth.

Something I read this last week, that really resonated with me, was talking about how most people treat their passions like side shows in their life and – as a result – do not feel free. It said “Instead of living authentic lives that align with our wants, needs, values and passions, we discipline ourselves instead to do what is uninspiring, irksome, boring or menial in pursuit of some reward or avoidance of some pain”.

The challenge was to write down a list of things I didn’t want to keep doing, situations I don’t want to experience, people I don’t want to see or spend time with, unhealthy foods I’ve been eating and negative thoughts I’ve been telling myself. As I did this, I was also diving deep into a module on relationships in an attachment theory course I’m studying.

I have shed some pretty unhealthy relationships these last couple of years, leaned a lot about my own needs, values, wants, desires, passions, talents, priorities and so forth, and how to have and hold healthy boundaries around these.
However, I am also aware that unhealthy patterns don’t just disappear overnight, I haven’t just instantly leapt from insecure attachment to secure attachment or from hyper attuned to others to a consistently more balanced attunement towards my inner world, it requires an ongoing commitment to keep learning from my circumstances and how I’m navigating life.

So I felt called to look again at my relationships and how things are shaking out as I am applying everything new I’m learning. Because really it’s not just about the people I want to see or spend time with, it’s also about what I want from each of those types of relationships.

With one friend, for example, I realise I’ve been investing too much in the potential of the relationship rather than the reality. In other circumstances this friendship could develop into a romantic partnership, so the boundaries have become a little blurred at times. It’s been time to pull back a little and reassess the place and priority they take in my life.

Talking to another friend of mine who has been navigating a post break up relationship with their ex over the last few years, they were saying that although they had tried to remain friends, the ex – who had since moved on and remarried – was clearly crossing old boundaries and my friend had had enough and felt disrespected.

Terri Cole, author of Boundary Boss, often talks about who we let into our VIP area. I think this is a good distinction to make for relationships that could be (or used to) be close but either current circumstances do not permit it or we don’t want that. Both my friend and I were approaching the same dilemma from different angles, but we both needed to adjust our level of intimacy and boundaries relative to those people.

Talking to another friend this week I was also reflecting on how I’d never really been taught about healthy relationships. In terms of romantic partnerships I was more taught that love was something mysterious and “you’ll just know” when it’s the right person.

But what I’ve come to realise now that I’ve been round the loop a fair few times, is that feeling of “just knowing” is more associated with a strong attraction which can be fuelled by many things from old trauma patterns to physical chemistry and everything in between.

The point that has been driven home to me in recent years is that compatibility is a much better predictor or longevity and healthy relationships. In the coursework I’ve been working through on Briana MacWilliams course, she provides a handy matrix for helping determine different dimensions of compatibility that most people value. I worked through an exercise to rate how much I personally value each of these dimensions, and what my beliefs and fears may be in relation to each one.

We were looking at factors such as:

• Domesticity – how well you both contribute to the day to day routines and necessary functions of the home
• Affection – the importance of physical affection outside of sexual connection
• Generosity – a willingness to be generous towards each other without feeling depleted, taken advantage of or manipulated

And aside of these, things like admiration, sexual chemistry, cultural backgrounds, future goals, intimacy needs, entertainment, intellectualism, humour and spirituality come up commonly. For me I’d add:

• Maturity – awareness of unhelpful behaviour patterns and an ability to work through conflict healthily

I’ve learned that there really are no right or wrong needs, values, priorities and so on, what’s important though is compatibility if I’m looking for health and longevity of a relationship.

And while that is relative to a relationship at the most intimate end of the scale, where an ability to hold each other in equal regard is all important, it also led me to think about my role as a parent in relationship with my children where – certainly the younger and more dependent on me they were – there is less reciprocation.

It was my birthday recently and several people lamented how hard it must be not having my children with me on my birthday (they were having summer holidays with their dad), I have to be honest and say “are you kidding???”

Until last year I was generally wholly responsible for my kids care 24/7, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There was very little downtime, mainly when they were at school, but the rest of the time my attention was usually focused outwardly on them. I understand there are some people who take to this like a duck to water, but I was exhausted.

After years and years of trying to have children, and four failed pregnancies, the younger years when they were breastfeeding, then mobile, then issues like trying to integrate into kindergarten and schooling, discovering dyslexia and dealing with constant meltdowns, I was doubtless burnt out.

While I’m extremely glad I got to hold and navigate my children through their early childhood, as they enter adolescence it is certainly not without some measure of relief that there is now shared responsibility for their care and I get periods of time where I can focus more inwardly and on progressing my own life.

At the start of adolescence my kids are still wholly dependent on their parents, but as we all navigate the years ahead, adolescence will take them into adulthood where they will becomes wholly responsible for themselves.  My job is therefore to progressively give them more responsibility and help them become ready for that. And part of that is an almost constant redefining of boundaries, my own in regrd to my relationships with them included.

As we step more fully into this new year, where are each of your relationships relative to what you truly want from them? Are there people you no longer want to see or spend time with? And, of those you do, what changes can you make so that your individual needs more closely match with the demands of the relationship? For as my friend and I reminded each other “what we allow is what we will get”.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Learning the Fundamentals of More Healthy and Balanced Relationships, Are You Ready for More Healthy Relationships? Relationships are Just a Series of Moments – True Love Lies Within, How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve and Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by Shazib Nadeem from Pixabay

As I have approached this new year, I’ve received an abundance of guidance around the introspective process of contemplating and stocktaking my life. While I’ve had some deep and insightful conversations with my friends and with myself when meditating and journaling, the most helpful exercise has been in recognising what my true fears are around success.

With those exposed, it is then easier for me to address whatever is holding me back.

I was reminded of this simple concept when reading There Is No Such Thing as a Fear of Success and this straightforward exercise was offered to help uncover the real issues:

“Close your eyes and imagine achieving what you want. Let yourself play it out. See how that achievement changes or doesn’t change each different sector of your life and your relationship with each different person, thing and place in your life. See what your mind tells you is the reality of what will happen as a result of achieving what you want. Then answer the question: If I achieve what I want, what bad thing would it mean or what bad thing would happen?”

I knew straight away that the things I want the most in my career and personal life also bring with them a fear of losing me again.

As a child I felt that my needs, wants and desires were not a priority, there were always others to consider. Most often I was concerned about maintaining peace, and thus was concerned about how others would react to whatever was happening in the environment or what I was doing, I usually tread carefully and tried to manage all of that. When I really wanted something that was not a given, I knew I had to fight hard for it, I also knew I was disturbing that peace.
My nervous system was therefore generally in a chronic state of anxiety and – when I really wanted something – I would go into fight mode to go after it. Day-to-day I’d be acutely aware of and actively managing the emotional environment around me, which was exhausting, and felt the only way to get my needs met was to leverage the inner energy that came with the build up of anger at those needs being ignored most of the time.

This became a way of being in the world as I grew. When I first struck out on my own as an adult, it was to move in with my partner at the time. Inevitably there were compromises and – although the number of people in the household was less – there was now another person and extended family whose needs and expectations formed part of the picture.

No more than in parenthood did my propensity to manage the emotional environment around me become stretched to the limit. I thought I’d have had breaks and respite from parenting, but those only occurred when I was out working in my career. It wasn’t a low responsibility type of deal, quite the opposite. Eventually I became burnt out.

Other than a few periods in my life where I’ve had the opportunity to take a number of months out from the merry go round, I haven’t had my fill of me-time and certainly haven’t had enough of it on a consistent basis. I never mastered the art of having me and having others.

While I have experienced all that taken to extremes in recent years, I also finally recognised the dysfunctional patterning in it all, and started to learn about healthy boundaries, about healthy ways of communicating my needs, wants and desires, and the many and various ways to regulate my nervous system and recognise when anxiety and old wiring are in the driving seat.

I’m free of the obligations that came with a prolonged, unhealthy, (less than) romantic relationship, but I do still have obligations to my children, to making a livelihood and I feel an obligation not to lock myself away from commitment and connection to others. Quite the opposite, I’d like to be a living example to my kids of healthy relationships and commitments in action.

Still. I have no template for having me and having that.

Intellectually I trust that I’ve done the work, I’ve started to reap the benefits in many areas of my life, but I have no template of that trust within my body. The old associations between romantic relationships, career and loss of me time are still hard wired in my nervous system. There’s no way through this other than conscious, active management moment to moment, to create new, healthier, neural pathways over time.

The first step to achieving this is recognising those old associations then, as Teal says in her article, “once you have that answer, the real work is about addressing that fear or that unwanted thing directly because that is the real problem, not the getting of what you do want”.

I’ve started that work more actively now, firstly with this free guided meditation on calming my fears that you can download.

But as you head into this new year, when you consider the deepest yearnings on your wish list, can you start by identifying what is it that is really getting in the way of your achieving those things? Once you have identified the obstacles, then your real work can begin.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Overcome the Greatest Human Fear – Be the True You, How to Fulfil Your Long Desired Yearning for Belonging , There is Nothing to Fear, Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, Autonomy – Break Free of Money Fears and Be Fearless - Let No One Cast Shadow on Your Light. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

As I head into the new year, traditionally a time of reflection and resolutions, what I am reflecting on is not to jump into a resolution list of “shoulds”. Some things take time to percolate; there are often other pieces outside my control that need to move into place before inspired action can be taken.

On a recent trip to the South Island I caught up with a good friend that I haven’t seen in a couple of years. We originally met in the aftermath of our corporate careers, in their slow disentanglement from consulting work that appeared soul destroying. For a while it seemed like a sticky spider’s web that just could not be escaped.

With much more creative and fulfilling aspirations for our lives, it did feel for a good few years that we each were a bit lost as to which direction should come next. What was so lovely about catching up was to now witness the huge leap forward that has happened in their life.

From the realms of corporate strategy and marketing, that did nothing to light a fire within them, I now see my friend revelling in an amazing multi-room art space they have created in a large tin shed at the back of their house for over 40 local children to come each week and simply explore. It also regularly attracts local adults for a bit of art therapy.

As we were talking I was struck by how things have a habit of falling into place at the right moments in life. After seeing them struggle for a number of years and face one challenge after another, this move had opened doors with grace and ease, everything seemed to show up at just the right time.

This was a useful reminder as I play with what might come next for me.

“I should get on and rebuild my career “I find myself thinking. That is the voice within me that is sort of saying “come on, this has been on your to-do list for a while and you haven’t done it yet, get a move on”. Yet, while it is on my to-do list, it’s in that category of “when I’m ready and things have lined up”.

In the absence of the inspiration to act, in the wise words of Grand Pabbie in Frozen 2, “all one can do is the next right thing”. Right now I’m mainly studying, learning and exploring. This is a time to ponder, dreaming up ideas on how best to use the many strings on my burgeoning bow. There are so many opportunities to help people who are seeking it that it can be hard to know where to begin, though my intuition tells me - as always - begin within.

Having been in the midst of major transitions in my own life, it is easy to see when I step back that some things are not to be rushed. It’s about following the inspiration when it takes hold, trusting that things will fall into place in their own perfect timing.

“Where does that trust come from?” I was once asked. Perhaps it is innate but certainly it is supported by the benefit of hindsight. The further through life I go, the more evidence I gather for this faith in life to provide opportunities and happenstance just at the right times and in ways I could never have predicted.

When I look back on how important people, pivotal opportunities and circumstances came into my life, I most often couldn’t have planned those if I had tried.

Talking with another friend who, like me, can become very quickly and intensely attached to people, ideas or situations that feel right to us, we were both acknowledging the huge growth we are undergoing as we learn to allow the slower moving parts of life to move into place of their own accord.

I’ve just started reading a novel at the moment with this very theme at its heart. Three women from different generations become unlikely friends in a chance meeting that helps them deal with the next stage of their lives. This is the very fabric of life it seems.

My gran used to say “what’s for you won’t go by you”, and I have taken heart in this many times in my life. I am often philosophical about things that look like losses on the surface, yet turn out to be blessings in the long run.

One thing is for sure, this life is ours to make of it what we will. Identifying what I yearn for is a step I can take, I can become conscious of that which has perhaps been rattling around inside me unacknowledged. It is a step within my control, though it’s often aided and prompted by just the right questions or thoughts shared from others.

So what is on your mental to-do list that still needs time to percolate? Is there any inspired action you could take in that direction? And rather than continually berate yourself for not having moved in that direction, what else is there you can focus on in the meantime with ease and grace that will make you feel you are moving forwards?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Life of Your Dreams?, Want More Energy, Clarity and Time?, Dreams May Be Free but They Are Also Essential to Progress, The Power of Time Out This Holiday Season - Reconnect With the Real You, Follow Your Heart: Everything is Possible in 2017 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.

Image by sare7 from Pixabay

I was contemplating this idea of belonging as I took a walk along the beach, and wondered whether in order to feel a sense of belonging we have to first belong to ourselves?

Reflecting on my own life I recognised how I had flitted between relationships, jobs and places. Often simultaneously I stayed too long with people and places I had outgrown, due to an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and loyalty and a fear of starting over.

Certainly I have started over often enough now to know everything is possible. But I also remember years ago when I worked in the Railways in the UK, working alongside people who had been there their whole life. To me it was obvious that there were also those of us who were cycling through but I did feel a yearning for that feeling of belonging.

So I thought I’d look at this more deeply by working through the approval exercise I talked about in How to Attract People Who Love You the Way You Are: Accept and Approve of Yourself. I did this to become more aware of the subconscious benefits to being alone/not belonging that rang true for me. Here was the list I came up with:

• Perhaps I did not come to belong to “what is”, perhaps I came to create a new place of belonging
  
• Knowing what I don’t want has helped me to define more of what I do want
  
• If I don’t belong I can criticise without feeling a sense of responsibility (!)
  
• There are fewer expectations on me
  
• I can remain more fluid, free to go where my energy wants to
  
• I can avoid conflict more easily (!)
  
• I can keep my energy pulled inward
  
• I can avoid creating appropriate structures and support that would enable me to get my gifts and talents out into the world
  
• I don’t have to get to know the needs and concerns of too many people because then I would feel responsible for helping fix them (!)
  
• I don’t have to learn the cultural norms of groups or communities and engage within them, which feels like an energy drain
  

There were a few ah-ha moments in there, and I can also see a lot of these are just old stories relating to and arising from the people pleasing, codependent, poor boundaried me. Due to my misguided beliefs about relationships arising out of my childhood and younger years, I gave my all in a handful of situations throughout life that just about drained my life force.

So I turned to my favourite resource on dysfunctional patterns to look for some ideas about how to more forward and embrace a sense of belonging, some of which I have already adopted, here is what resonated:

• Get to know the needs and concerns of those around me, appreciating the value of just listening and understanding over giving advice and solving problems (this actually feels like a weight lifted off my shoulders)
  
• Volunteer my skills and talents for the benefit of a group
  
• Cultivate relationships with particular physical environments and “sacred” spots that serve to ground me
  
• Foster a deep connection with myself, checking in frequently to notice and name feelings, needs and desires (so I’m “with” myself)
  
• Develop a capacity to share these with others in a way that allows them to see/feel me 
  
• Grow the ability to ask for support in ways that help others understand exactly what I need from them and how they might give that to me
  
• Cultivate the ability to recognise and appreciate the many ways people extend connection and care even when they feel somewhat foreign or superficial to me
  

This week I’ve been doing a 5-day study challenge with Briana MacWilliam on courageous communications. This has been a well worthwhile endeavour to really embed some of the skills I’ve been learning in recent years around communicating boundaries and how different things are important for people with different attachment styles (depending on how much closeness or distance they need in order to feel safe).

So yes, there has been and is ongoing work involved, but each time I have the courage to approach things in new ways – especially when I am willing to get vulnerable about my own feelings and communicate those in a way that are authentic rather than defensive, while being mindful and adapting to how such emotional honesty might land – a little bit more of the inner me starts to shine outward.

The more of me that shines from the inside out, the more chance I give others to see and accept the real me, which is what, I believe, will fulfil the long desired yearning for belonging.

For those who, like me, who feel that they don’t belong, I will share a few words about the deeper truth of this as written by Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Johnson in relation to actualising belonging:

• I deeply care about others and making a contribution that is of benefit to the whole
  
• I am a unique and essential citizen, my contribution and authentic self expression is essential to the wellbeing of all
  
• I am a pioneer, venturing into uncharted territory as a leader and trailblazer
  

So what benefits are there/have there been for you in not belonging? And are you ready to let us see you and help you build a world in which you can be authentic and accepted for who you really are?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Loneliness – Meet the Most Important Person in Your Life, Are You Ready for More Healthy Relationships?, Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary to Get Your Real Needs Met, How Living Your Passions Fully Combats Feeling Lonely, Is It Time to Let Go of the Idea That You Are Needed? Embrace Being Wanted and Learning the Fundamentals of More Healthy and Balanced Relationships. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

In a recent text conversation with a good friend of mine, they commented “you are very intense”.
Now that is something I’ve always taken as a criticism rather than a compliment, and tears welled up in my eyes. I let the conversation meander in a different direction after that, but I have done sufficient personal work - and know my friend well enough - to know that what I was experiencing was an overreaction.

In the circumstances, I intuitively knew that what my friend what saying was in reaction to my analytical nature and it was code for “I don’t want to dive into to this right now”. But my head was swimming and I felt sucker punched, although the conversation moved on I didn’t, I was frozen in that moment internally.

And when there is an overreaction like that, I know that it’s an old wound that hasn’t been tended to. I made a mental note to work through and process whatever wanted to be seen.

There’s many ways to process old wounds, but a couple of days later I was reading an article that was talking about the fastest way to line up with people who hold intense positive focus towards us.
The premise is, to experience people who see us as perfect the way we are, we have to first see ourselves that way.

It made the point that spiritual people are often some of the least likely to engage in relationships like this as, in general, we are obsessively committed to the path of self improvement. I could relate to this. And it did make sense to me that to “improve” myself means being focused on my shortcomings, which is a negative bias.

The answer therefore is to actively practice self approval towards who I am in this moment, as if nothing will ever change about me for the rest of my life. Teal’s article suggests that every morning when I first wake up, pick one thing I don’t accept or approve of about myself. The challenge is then to think outside the box (and elicit help if needed) to write a large list of things that make me feel better about that aspect of myself and even approve of it.

The example given in the article is around being “emotionally unstable” but I could see this would be an excellent way for me to reorientate myself in relation to this aspect of me that is “intense”.

In truth, I know that the part of me that is curious about why people think, feel and act the way they do, is inherent in my nature. It’s so much a part of who I am that I cannot separate myself from it, and the reason it felt like a sucker punch is because it felt like a rejection of who I am.

So I started to write my list of reasons that make me feel better about this “intense” aspect of myself:

• I’m a good person to know if you want help analysing your inner world
  
• This curiosity is what allows me to help others fulfil their potential (should they seek to) and do my work
  
• The more I understand people’s motives and triggers, the better I can orient myself in the relationship
  
• It makes me more self aware and willing to grow from experiences
  
• It means I’m always learning and growing, which feels good to me
  

Then I ran dry, so I turned to my trusty resource from Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas which takes a deep dive into the kinds of unhelpful belief patterns that often live within us. In here I felt this “I’m too intense” was akin to “I’m too much” and the following statements helped me lean into this aspect of myself:

• This gives me the opportunity to name, witness and welcome all my feelings, needs and desires and expand my capacity to hold and contain the entirety of who I am (this feels pivotal and right on cue for where my life is at)
  
• It allows me the opportunity to expand my capacity to receive support and sponsorships from others
  
• It enables me to expand my sphere of influence by taking on large projects that match my energy level, gifts and talents
  
• It affords me the ability to navigate the balance between my full self expression and the impact I’m having on others, learning to tune in to others and read the effect I’m having on them so I can ensure my intention is being served (this relates particularly well to the example with my friend who just wasn’t ready to look at anything more deeply)
  
• I am intelligent and highly competent
  
• I have highly developed professional skills
  
• I am resourceful and able to make things happen
  
• I’m able to hold vast amounts of responsibility
  
• I’m capable of earning a lot of money
  
• The full expression of my gifts, talents and knowing is beneficial to the wellbeing of all
  
• I can receive the full power and force of who I am and unleash that into the world
  
• The fulfilment of my needs and desires is necessary to my complete expansion (this feels like a truth statement)
  
• I am that aspect of the power and presence of the creator which is deep enough and wide enough to contain the entirety of my inner experiences
  
• I welcome in all my thoughts, feelings, needs and desires, they are not too much for me
  

I will admit that many of these at the latter end of the list feel like I’m looking at a job description with big shoes to fill. It feels possible, it makes sense, yet it’s also more than a little nerve-wracking. I guess that is the gap between where I am and full self expression. But it also feels that to disapprove of this aspect of myself is to deny an aspect of creation that intended to be this intense, so best I get on board!

When I spoke to my friend after I’d processed this, straight away they encouraged me not to see this aspect of myself as a negative, In truth, they actually felt it was more of a positive trait than anything.

Would you like to line up more with people who hold a positive focus towards you? To experience people who accept you just the way you are, you have to accept yourself that way also. So which aspects of yourself would you and others benefit from you working on some self acceptance and approval?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What Happens When You Accept Yourself And Stop Seeking Approval?, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Believe In Yourself Even if You Feel No One Else Does, When Life Is Getting You Down – How to Lift Yourself Up and How to Receive More Love, Appreciation and Respect. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was talking recently with a friend of mine about relationships. Their current relationship is not really honouring them well, and they were musing how – once the job of raising children was done – they might just go live alone and have a pet Labrador for company.

On one level I could relate, I will confess to saying something similar myself not so long ago. And while certainly some time alone to recoup and restore is healthy, I would hate to give up on relationships because of my prior poor choices, or for my friend to either. It seems by far the better choice to learn from the experiences, and change my perspective while also learning healthier boundaries and how to hold them.

A while back I listened to a meditation about finding your soul mate and I realised as I listened just how far I had convinced myself that maybe I wasn’t meant to have that kind of connection with someone. But these words really captured for me the essence of what that kind of relationship would mean and rekindled the desire to be open to it....

“Imagine what it will be like when you first recognise another person as the best, most committed and most compatible person for you, the person designed specifically for you. See or feel how it will be as you become aware that they have recognised you also and – in doing so – both of you have found home.

Even if you don’t feel worthy, the reality is this person was made for you and belongs with you and wants only you.
Feel yourself willingly and wantingly surrendering to that magnetic pull because of how badly you want each other. Imagine what it will be like to feel the heat of their body next to yours and how it will be to touch them and know that they’re there and there to stay.

Sense what it will be like to join your lives together and to feel the kind of love and commitment that can only be shared by someone who you belong with and who belongs with you.

What does it feel like and smell like and look like and taste like to be matched and partnered with this person who is the highest and best and most compatible person in the world for you?

What does it feel like to not have to put any effort into getting them to like you? They love you so much, there is nothing better to them than being with you. That is what they choose fully and with all of their being. Feel the unbreakable security of a connection like that.”

Now I will admit that I don’t think there is just one person for each of us on the planet, we are each dynamic beings with the ability to change at any time, and we do, and therefore who we are attracted to and who we attract can change.

But in the pursuit of recognising my own insecurities, unhealthy patterns, working through the lessons, learning new ways of relating and putting the best parts on me in the driving seat, it makes absolute sense to me that I would therefore attract healthier relationships.

It certainly helped me become more determined not to “settle for” again, because being in a relationship with the wrong person can be far more painful and lonely than not being in one at all. The one sentence in the meditation about not having to effort in order for people to like me, is very relevant to my people pleasing and codependency tendencies and habits I’d developed over the course of my life.

The more aware I am of unhealthy patterns that have played out in the past, the more I have learned from them, the more secure I am inside because I am no longer looking externally so much for validation.  

I’m also very aware these days of the difference between love and attraction. What I mistook for love in the past was actually just strong attraction, and those were not all healthy, loving relationships that is for sure.

Teal Swan says that what stands between us and great relationships – the reasons we attract unhealthy ones – are pain, trauma patterns and incompatibility.

Each of these are huge topics on their own, but I certainly came to realise that just having awareness that I am worthy of great relationships was a giant leap forward because I’d often be overly loyal and gotten into and stayed in relationships that weren’t working.

Luckily I always attracted pretty healthy friendships, but oftentimes have attracted a mix of good and bad (and awful) when it came to working or romantic relationships. Owning my part in those was worth its weight in gold.

Also learning from what I did different when it came to friendships was interesting, that is an area where I’ve always had better definitions around boundaries and been less “attached”. Yesterday I was with eighteen other women as we honoured a friend celebrating her milestone birthday.

These were all women who are aware of their stuff and on their healing journeys. The birthday girl went round us all and said how she met each one of us and what we mean to her. It was sweet and a really lovely example of how we get different things from different people. No one person can be everything but each should honour us in some way with mutual respect and flow of energy.

What relationships do you struggle with? Which relationships honour and enrich you versus those that seem to deplete? Is it time to honour yourself and let some loose? Recognising that on fifteenth of November this year we welcomed the eight billionth person alive at this time on the planet, there are a lot of people to be in relationship with, why not choose those most compatible with our best selves?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy It’s Time to Get Savvy With That Thing Called Love, Explore, Uncover and Show Your Real Needs and Desires to Be Happy, The Ways in Which You Think You Are Being Helpful but You Are Not, The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself, Relationships are Just a Series of Moments – True Love Lies Within, How to Receive More Love, Appreciation and Respect, What Is Holding You Back? Reclaim Your Worth, Your Love, Your Power  and How Does Who You Say I Love You to Heal the World? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

There is a difference between being wanted and desired for who I am versus being needed for what I can do for someone. I’ve learned that both can happily coexist but in that situation, if I was unable to do what it is I usually did or was completely over doing it, there would be respect and understanding and mutual agreement on a way forward.
 
In my own life I had expected as a mother I'd no longer be needed in a gradual way, when the kids started to become teens and into early adulthood. These were kids I had long awaited and it wasn’t an easy road to having them. Yet I found my responsibilities shifted from full time parenting to part time much earlier than imagined, with no control over that decision.
 
It’s a common situation I imagine with so many couples separating these days, and many blended families. While it certainly has its benefits, it’s also takes an undeniable toll on all concerned.
 
Someone was talking to me about being needed in this way, as they are in an unhealthy relationship where there are children involved. I could relate to what they were saying, I had tried to give my own kids as healthy an upbringing as I could, while being thoughtful and kind, and doing everything I was apparently needed for in the relationship and home.
 
My expectation going into parenthood was that it would be a shared responsibility, yet I found myself with the lion’s share, giving up my career to become the parent they needed. I was lonely and burnt out and found solace and wellbeing in good friendships and in the learning and growth from my experiences.
 
Like all parents, there are things I value and want for my kids that I know they'll get when they are with me.  I think subconsciously I believed if I did everything that was needed of me the kids’ future would be safeguarded, because I'd be there to hold boundaries and provide the support they need emotionally. Yet I found myself discarded anyway.
 
Looking back there were many many red flags, I had tried to convince myself I was more than just a commodity as a partner and mother, but it turned out I wasn’t and it’s given me a whole new perspective on being needed.
 
One day I was full time mum expecting a gradual return to myself/my own career/life etc, then suddenly life changed direction. I generally try to look at the positives but there are times I'm just running on empty. I certainly find it hard to be a stop/start mum; it’s a challenge to get into the space and momentum to get my livelihood into focus before suddenly I’m school mum again and the kids want and need my help and attention or they are off sick and so forth.
 
I shared with this person that there are many things I could feel bitter about, but mostly though I grieve the parts of me I gave away and allowed to be treated so poorly and accept so little. My big realization in the aftermath of my relationship was that I had simply been a commodity, rather than being loved and accepted for me.
 
What I realised was I wouldn't even have attracted that dynamic initially if I had loved and accepted myself enough to know and hold far healthier boundaries around my own needs and desires.
 
The same could be said of various positions I worked in throughout my career that ended in redundancy. People and organisations where I had been loyal and given huge parts of myself, yet what did it all amount to? And the amazing thing I discovered is that people not only survive without me doing what I used to do, they can oftentimes thrive also. Given the opportunity to step up, many do so successfully.
 
Someone wise shared with me recently a reflection on their own relationship "I can only love the parts of her she shows me". That is the clincher, it is my responsibility to assert myself, to become consciously aware of and brave enough to be honest about what I need and want and be strong enough to walk away when it’s not forthcoming in whatever kind of relationship or interaction I am having.
 
As a child, like any child, dependant on the adults who look after us, I had to bend and mould to fit in that space. But I am no longer a child; I get to choose which relationships to be in. But I also have to trust that ‘out there’ there are people who are waiting with open arms, looking for the kind of person I am and what I have to offer.
 
I understand that is hard for many of us to believe when – at the very time our neurons started firing and wiring – we felt we had to be someone else to be loved. Certainly my nervous system was wired on the basis that it was necessary for me to act and behave in certain ways in order to fit in.
 
Being needed in that way is an illusion. There's no love, loyalty, connection and belonging in being needed. When those things are not there and I do for others what they can do for themselves, well, I can only tell you it makes made me feel resentful and worthless.
 
I’ve learned if those things like love, loyalty, connection and belonging are not there and I am needed because others can’t do things for themselves, there has to be some form of exchange to make it feel valuable. Gratitude or reward can come in many forms, and certainly there is huge satisfaction in teaching someone how to do something new rather than just doing it for them.
 
So what are the dynamics in your most interactive relationships? Remember there’s a big difference between being needed because of what you can do for someone versus who you are to someone. Have the courage to stand up for who you are, embrace being wanted for that because it won’t just garner you more respect, you will all be much happier even if it means taking separate paths.
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary to Get Your Real Needs Met, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns and Ways to Reach for Growth Rather Than Reacting With Old Conditioned Constriction. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

This week I was at a Family Constellations workshop, which addresses personal and ancestral trauma in a group therapy setting. It happened to be all women in the workshop, and we each had different issues we wanted to look at ranging from unwelcome and unhealthy patterns in our lives to taking a deeper look at anger (and why they felt unable to express any) or love (and why they felt unable to let it in).

As always it was an insightful day, and afterwards I headed to the nearby beach to take a long walk. When I was there I met an elderly tourist who had been here travelling for several weeks, and she was intrigued by the Bluebottle jellyfish that had washed up on the shore.

As we got talking, we seemed to wander into the topic of relationships and it transpired that – similarly to the other ladies I’d been in the workshop with – this lady, although older, also had the same history as most of the workshop participants with the father of her children.

It is interesting how many people I come across with this co-dependent dynamic of a people pleaser coupled with someone more self absorbed. Although it’s not exclusive to women (I know several males who tend to be the pleaser) it certainly seems common. I have read its one of the most common dysfunctional relational patterns there is.

Certainly as we all shared stories over lunch, and then on the beach, the commonality of patterns as these relationships broke up was extremely similar. The more self absorbed partner was focused on money and material things, using lies as a means to get what they wanted with seemingly no moral regard (and certainly no regard to the equal rights of their prior partner), and very quickly moved on to new partners in order to help manage their childcare responsibilities and provide the validation they needed and adulation that had long since waned in their previous relationships.

This makes sense to me since one is a giver, the other a taker. These are patterns we learn in our childhood – both insecure - seeking responses and reactions from the other for validation of a sense of self and value. And yet healthy relationships are founded on a balanced flow of give and take, where each person’s wants, needs and desires are held in equal regard.

What I was heartened by in the workshop, is the conscious awareness that each of us had awakened to in terms of owning our own parts in these dynamics, and the willingness and desire to learn and grow from them.

I now recognise that I grew up with an anxious attachment style, I was overly attuned to others’ feelings and most definitely derived my sense of self worth from the responses and reactions of those around me, rather than having a healthy sense of self esteem. As a result I became a perfectionist, a giver, had an over developed sense of responsibility and was highly independent, rarely asking others for help. I became what Terri Cole would describe as a high functioning co-dependent.

What also seemed to be a commonality between the women I spoke with this week is, once children come along, our focus necessarily shifted to their needs and – as a consequence – our value to our partners changed and diminished as we found ourselves alone in the arena, and often berated for our choices.

It is a rude but necessary awakening, especially since women are socially conditioned to nurture, fix and care for others. And, certainly in my case, like many, when children are involved there is a much deeper sense of obligation to stay and fix things or at least ride them out. Also in my case there were practical financial challenges to overcome, having made a conscious choice to leave my career and focus on child rearing in the hopes of providing my own children with a healthy sense of attachment and emotional regulation.

However, life had a way of manoeuvring, and I found myself navigating through a post-split carnage beyond my control and sharing more in common with these other ladies than I would ever have thought possible for myself.

It is an experience that has been simultaneously difficult and rewarding. I won’t deny as I’ve learned to have and hold healthier boundaries, especially with people whom I had previously over-catered to, it has brought about the death of some relationships and the reorientating of others, as well as new relationships that are on a more healthy footing.

The older lady I met was reflecting on the ways in which her grown children mirrored some of those unhealthy patterns in their own relationships and how hard it had been reorientating to them after many years of overgiving and finally deciding enough was enough.

When a friend of mine had then been talking about how female lionesses’ choose multiple partners in order to have the strongest cubs, it made me reflect on how it’s my offspring that have given me the strength to become aware of and tend to my own wounds.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to learn and live my own lessons alongside my children’s development years. Who knows how they will turn out, they do and will continue to have their own challenges for sure, that is life, but at least I feel they are now seeing more healthy examples of behaviour from me in terms of interacting with others.

And, as one workshop participant put it, even as we learn healthier ways of being, the anxiety that comes up in our bodies in response to our older, well-worn pathways still remains. Certainly for me it has taken more than just conscious awareness of unhealthy patterns and why they occur to create great shifts.

In fact, one of the things I got real clarity about at the workshop is the top down sequencing I’ve been using all these years. As a child I learned to suppress and deny my own feelings in favour of the things I was told were “right” about pleasing others, which required my head overriding what my body and nervous system were telling me.

I realise that it’s now time to take a more body led approach. There’s a phrase that most learner drivers in the UK learn about sequencing when about to brake or turn the vehicle “Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre”. The workshop facilitator suggested this was an excellent thing to apply in learning to be more body led.

Using my body as a mirror, a reflection of how I truly feel, when I’m considering doing something for myself or others, sounds a smart way to go. I can use it’s signal to tune into whether my body’s response reflects something healthy or unhealthy, and then use my head to determine (on the basis of that answer) which manoeuvre is more healthy for me, more in alignment with my true needs, wants and desires.

If something is going to cause me frustration, pain, resentment or otherwise compromise my wellbeing, I’ll know it’s something to say a firm “no” to. Sometimes that will mean feeling anxious (my body’s wired response to those earlier childhood beliefs about what is “right”), this is when I need to actively practice regulating my nervous system in order to help my body learn some new wiring when I repeat this over time.

And I’m also aware that, in the past, if I had wanted to say “no” to anything it would also require a rational explanation as to why it was the wrong thing to do. This would often involve making others’ wrong for asking in order for me to feel I could legitimately reject their requests.

Learning how to say no without making others wrong is also another skill to learn, because it requires vulnerability, and the ability to express my true feelings (where appropriate) requires a more sophisticated emotional vocabulary than I’ve used to date.

And, finally, a quote I read this week (from an unknown source) also hits on another aspect that is important in getting relationally healthy:

“Ironically, when we start to get better, we also start to get sad – because we realise how much we’ve missed out on, how badly certain people failed us, what the younger version of us actually deserved. Healing involves healthy grieving. No way around it.”

Do you feel relationally healthy? Learning to become healthy is more than just a decision, though it starts there. It’s an ongoing commitment to learning healthier ways of being and doing, and a willingness to practice and repeat putting you first (with grace) over time until it becomes embedded as the “safe” thing in your body. But, as the lady at the beach said, better late than never!

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary to Get Your Real Needs Met, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns and Ways to Reach for Growth Rather Than Reacting With Old Conditioned Constriction. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I sit on the other side of the world to many people I care about, and certainly much of my heart is thousands of miles from here.

Here though exists my reason for being, my reason for staying, the little lights that I fought so hard to bring into this world.

There was once a girl who would never have allowed herself to play second fiddle, to be mistreated, to accept anything less than uncompromising love. Yet I have allowed all of that. What became of me I wonder?

I know exactly. I blamed myself for my broken heart, made myself wrong.

And what is uncompromising love? I now know undeniable attraction, sometimes toxic in its calling me back to myself. I know incompatibility. I know pain. I’ve known pain for so long it’s hard to believe that the kind of love I long for exists but I know it does.

I see good people in toxic relationships, people I’d give a lot to be with in my inner world, locked in their own pain. What is that? That is not love, it’s the opposite of love, the denial of self love.

And yet here I am, heart aching, feeling everything deeply as always, longing for the kind of love that feels good, feels like home.

We all go about our lives and I watch people in relationships and wonder – beneath the veneer of going about doing things together - what are they to each other? Are they habits, are they distraction, are they pain, are they duty, are they a trophy of some kind or are they love?

I listen to songs about heartache and I know heartache, it’s a familiar friend. Bittersweet in its calling. Beautiful in its potential.

This time, for my own sanity, I choose to fulfil its potential. It is the gap between who I am and who I can become...

Someone self loving. Someone with clear boundaries and a big heart. Someone who has stepped into the fullness of herself. Someone who is ready for life’s next ride, be it bittersweet or full of sugary goodness.

It is time to be in healthy relationship with myself in order to get done what I came here to do, whatever that may be; which includes a love that feels like home.

Life is played out through our relationships, be it our intimate relationships, or our relationships with parents, children, ancestors, friends, colleagues or just those that are passing through. All change, all growth comes from looking in that mirror. All blame, shame, pain and guilt also comes from looking in that mirror; as does love. I get to choose.

As do you.

Is it time to get savvy with this thing called love? This is the life we are here to live; this one, happening now. The one that is inside our heart, how does it feel? Does it feel like love or does it feel like pain? Take heed either way and plot your course.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself, Relationships are Just a Series of Moments – True Love Lies Within, How to Receive More Love, Appreciation and Respect, What Is Holding You Back? Reclaim Your Worth, Your Love, Your Power  and How Does Who You Say I Love You to Heal the World? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Many years ago I was fortunate enough to work for an organisation that supported its people really well through a major change. Every single person was losing their job as the organisation merged with several others, with a reduced number of opportunities available for those who wanted to take on larger roles and relocate.

As part of the support we were given guidance on burnout by a counsellor who taught it as quite a simple concept. I like simple concepts, they stick with me. We were being taught the importance of self care, learning that we humans have a certain amount of energy reserves – be it physical, mental or emotional.

It’s like a fuel tank. If we don’t fill up and replenish our stores, there’s not a lot to call on. And by the time the warning light comes on, we’re running into the dregs, which is not optimal for our engine. The advice of manufacturers is not to run on those as it’s not the healthiest fuel. This is same for our bodies.

Self care is our way of filling our tanks, and replenishing our reserves so we don’t reach that tipping point where we stall and burn out because we haven’t taken the time to take care of ourselves along the way.

I know that sometimes that means adjusting my plans. Like this morning, on the one consistent day of the week where someone else holds responsibility for adjusting their plans should either of my kids be unable to attend school, I was asked to adjust mine instead.

Unlike the people pleasing me of the past, my adjustment of plans did not arise because I agreed to this. It arose because of the reaction when I held a healthy boundary and did not. Immediately there was an emotional reaction and a threat.

Like any normal person under threat, my flight or fight centre was activated and – although I remained outwardly calm and stood my ground - I needed to take time to regulate my nervous system before going ahead with my plans for the day.

If I hadn’t, this article may have read quite differently, lacking the added perspective I found on my long walk in nature.
I made a good decision this morning. I’m trying to build a career where I help people step into their potential and I have to do that from a place where I have a healthy amount of fuel in my tank and feel personally empowered. In building a business, a relationship, anything, it has to have healthy solid foundations in order for it to thrive and flourish.

And right now after many years of allowing my boundaries to be overstepped, I’m in recovery and I need time for self care. This is a necessary part of rebuilding my career; it’s part of the foundations upon which I will stand for the rest of my days. The time I have for me is important time, whether it’s a walk on the beach, my head in some study, an appointment with a client, catching up with friends or writing an article.

In the past I would have treated self care as a nice to have, or something that I did only after I’d taken care of everything else. Sure, when I had screaming babies that needed fed, changed or any other need, that was not the time for me to press pause and take a long walk in nature. The best I could do then is take a step outside and breathe deeply, adjusting my perspective in the moment to focus on my baby’s needs.

However, when dealing with other capable adults who do not need suckling, that is no time to put their needs ahead of my own. It’s all shades of grey of course, depending on the person and the situation, but my rule of thumb (again another simple concept, this one from Teal Swan) is that if foregoing my own preference will cause me frustration, pain, resentment or otherwise compromise my wellbeing, then I will not do it.

This morning, very on-topic, this landed in my inbox from Teal.

“The most common causes of nervous breakdowns are: 

• Past traumas
  
• Problems in intimate relationships (such as break ups or divorces)
  
• Experiencing the death of a loved one
  
• Problems relative to occupational pursuits like career or schooling (such as sleep deprivation or a schedule that is too rigorous or interoffice conflicts), health problems (such as injuries or chronic illnesses) and financial problems (such as debt or poverty).
  

All of these boil down to one thing: the emotional pain of feeling unsafe. So, in the midst of a nervous breakdown the only thing we're craving is safety.”

She adds a paragraph that I think is priceless “Unfortunately because of how stress works, we're often unable to see any way out. Fantasy is oftentimes the last resort. Some hope a mystical unicorn will magically rescue them. While others get their hopes up with ideal partners, ideal situations, configurations of the stars and so on…”.

And goes on to say that we all need reminders from time-to-time on how we do have control of the steering wheel of our lives. One suggestion she gives is to brainstorm as long a list as possible of things that make us feel safe. 

Examples could look like: Drinking hot tea, cuddling up under a weighted blanket, listening to music that feels soothing, taking an Epsom salt bath, going on a nature walk, calling a close friend, watching a comedy series online, baking something in the oven which warms up the house, meditating in the backyard, getting sunshine outside, walking barefoot on the earth, asking a loved one for a hug, going on a long drive and holding grounding crystals.

I would concur that, when feeling triggered and unsafe and the thinking part of my brain has shut down, cultivating and retrieving my own version of this list has become a go-to method of self care in tough times when it’s hard to do anything that requires more effort.

Longer term though, a discipline of regular self care – for me it’s things like a short daily meditation, a weekly yoga practice, swimming, beach walks, reading, caching up with friends and so on – are vital to meeting my responsibilities in a healthy way, far less keeping me moving forwards in the direction of my deepest desires and dreams.

What I have also learned through various job changes and separations and so forth, is that people are always more capable than they might appear, both others and me. When I put my self care first with conviction, nothing falls over, quite the contrary, people step up. And that puts me in a better position to give help where it’s really needed and beneficial for all concerned.

Radical self responsibility equals self care, as a friend of mine says. So is there a place in your life where you are putting the needs of others ahead of your own? And what could you do straight away that would help you take better care of yourself?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Are You Willing to Take Your Sovereignty While Allowing Other People Theirs?, Build a Healthy Self Concept, The Quiet Whisperings of Truth That Inspire Our Life, The Ways in Which You Think You Are Being Helpful but You Are Not and What Resentment, Frustration and Pain Have to Do With Your Boundaries. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Last weekend a good family friend came to visit and it was the first time in many years I’ve felt at ease about such a thing. Free of all the familiar feelings of having someone else look over my shoulder, disapproving of the choices made about which activities we would do, when we would be back, how much money was spent, it was bliss to just go with the flow and not worry about anything.

As another good friend of mine said “That’s normal by the way, the way it should be”. I suspect for many, like me, it hasn’t been normal at all. Without good boundaries in place, and in relationships with people who do not consider my opinions or feelings important, be that personal or professional, I’ve experienced enough of a share of the opposite to know which feels better.

The contrasting good feelings of dancing to the beat of my own drum are very welcome, and they did not come about by accident. What I have learned is that passively waiting for someone else to show me courtesy, consideration or respect is fruitless, instead it is an inside out job.

As I wrote about in Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful, while I had two parents that loved me and what I’d describe as a normal childhood, nonetheless I became hyper-attuned to others, over-sensitive to criticism, and a perfectionist, particularly under stress. It led to all sorts of pain within relationships and, upon becoming parent, I could see I needed to address some things. I had little sense of self and had to learn about having and holding healthy boundaries.

Learning about who this self is, what my real needs, desires, opinions, talents, interests and so forth are has been a conscious effort. For so long my sense of self came from what was reflected back from those around me, which led to a lot of people pleasing behaviours and a massive amount of suppressing and bypassing my own true nature.

My nervous system recognised this as “normal” because it’s what I subconsciously did in childhood, but normal isn’t synonymous with healthy.

Now, with a good few of years of exploration, learning, help and a healthy change in circumstances, I’m starting to really feel into a whole new rhythm and way of being in the world – being me.

Being me doesn’t mean I can’t be in relationships with others, it means I only choose to be in healthy relationships with others; relationships where my needs and priorities are held in equal regard to the other’s, and vice versa. Or, as Teal Swan puts it, “and” relationships rather than “or” ones, where both yours and my needs are met.

I was doing an exercise earlier in the week with Briana MacWilliam, a creative arts therapist, and was asked to begin by scribbling using both hands simultaneously. As we got deeper into the exercise, what stood out for me as I was doing this was the rhythm my hands had gotten into. It felt almost like the soft swooshing of how I imagine it to be going down a gentle ski slope, or floating down a lazy river, first one way, then the other.

It was a calm, gentle flow and interestingly, although I’m right handed, my left want to take the lead.  It’s often said our left side represents the more feminine, intuitive and creative parts of ourselves, and certainly it felt that way, it was like an embodiment of the easeful way the weekend preceding it had felt.

As Briana took me further into the exercise, I could sense it was going to be a useful and easy way for me to tap into that feeling in future. A bit like when a smell can suddenly elicit a memory, when I lock something positive like this feeling into my body, it’s far healthier than the numerous stressful experiences that I now work at soothing and integrating.

I remembered a few years ago I did a Future Self meditation with Teal Swan, and I remembered the contrasting feeling within my body of a more relaxed future self compared to my then stressed comparison, where my nervous system felt constantly locked in a state of anxiety.

As I reflected back on this I could see that the fruits of my focus on developing and holding healthier boundaries are starting to ripen. And that feels good. It feels easeful, joyous and liberating.

Where in your life are you giving your power away and not showing up as your true self? How appealing would it be to feel more ease, more joy and more freedom in your own life? Are you ready to take the journey?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Yearn for Better Outcomes? First Commit to Observing Your Reactions, Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, What Resentment, Frustration and Pain Have to Do With Your Boundaries, The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself and The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

When my children celebrate their birthdays, these have so far been a poignant moments for me as I revisit the memories of their birth.

Ten years ago this week, the midwife had assessed me as being in early labour and – based on my prior experience – I knew it could take a while for anything to happen. So I decided to take a short walk around the neighbourhood. “Walking” might be stretching things, it quickly became more like a slow collection of steps then a standstill as various states of contractions and breathlessness passed through me; it turned out my labour was more advanced.

I asked my walking partner to slow down, “Stop whining” he said quite seriously.

That right there is a break point, the break point from my perspective. Yet, duty prevailed with children in the mix, and life carried on. But I can see now that rage and resentment simmered below the surface, turned in on myself because I was too distracted, busy trying to be a patient and present mother, to do anything with someone else’s crazy behaviour other than turn it in on myself. 

Fast forward ten years and I have just emerged from a rather stressful separation, marked by fifteen months of nasty lawyer’s letters. There was no reasonable discussion, just paranoia and projections and an inability to hold my rights in equal regard. Now I have kidney pain, possibly the third crystallisation of all that emotional toxicity.

Of course it’s not healthy to hold onto that kind of anger and resentment, and with the separation now in the rear view, the cycle has moved to grief.

How could I have let this happen? What could I/should I have done differently?

Then I caught up with my osteopath. She has been treating me on and off for a number of years. She knows my body and my situation very well and, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel compelled to dive into the details of the affronts that had landed in my inbox. I did say that everything was now settled, but I didn’t feel any energy towards telling her about the nasty crescendo that preceded it.

Instead I was focused on sharing what I’m doing now and what my plans are for the future.

What I am doing now is learning from what has happened. Learning about what my own needs are, and how to take responsibility for those. I’ve always been too focused on sorting out other people’s issues and, as I said to a client, when things happen to us that are outside our control, it may not always be our fault but it is our responsibility.

By letting others shoulder their own responsibilities, it gives both them and us the opportunity to step into our respective power and potential.

After my mum died at the end of 2017, finally losing the battle with cancer that had become more and more debilitating and heart wrenching with each month that passed, I returned from two gruelling trips back across the world – firstly to see her before she slipped away from us and secondly to attend the funeral and spend time with my family.

Most gruelling were the responsibilities I shouldered around organising the trips, the children and all the many details and logistics, all with no real emotional support and little practical help from within the relationship. Right after that I had my first stone.

If you’ve never had a kidney stone, it’s agonising as it descends down the ureter (the thin muscular tube that connects the kidney to the bladder) but, like anything, it hurt much less once I understood what it was and what was happening.

Those trips had been a peak of frustration and grief, the precipice of burn-out mixed with the resentments of my life situation and two young children to look after.

The second stone appeared weeks after a stressful family vacation a couple of years later, both situations where there was no escaping the resentments I felt towards the circumstances I was in.

It was with mixed emotions that I received the words “I want to separate” last year. On a personal note it was a huge relief (though I hadn’t known then what was going to ensue in order to disentangle the details of our lives), but the strong sense of duty towards our children remained and I knew there was a long road ahead supporting them emotionally as they learn to live in lives that are now divided.

Children need both parents, regardless what those parents may think of each other. So there is no shutting that other person out of our lives entirely, regardless of how we feel we’ve been treated.

What there is though is the opportunity to make sure I don’t give away my power like that ever again.
In the years leading to our separation I started to understand developmental trauma, relational dynamics like codependency and enmeshment, and learn about things like insecure attachment and hyper attunement, as well as the importance of having and holding healthy boundaries, and how to do that.

My osteopath and I reflected not only on the huge gift of the beautiful children that came from that whole chapter of my life, but the deeply poignant life lessons. We laughed as we both came to the same conclusion at the same time, that I perhaps was pretty stubborn to have needed such a painful life lesson.

But I also feel we are all just playing our parts in a way. There’s really no point in harbouring resentment and grudges, certainly I do not need to give away any more of my personal power, but neither do I need to punish myself by carrying the pain of what’s already past and done. It is what it is, it served a purpose, and I am wiser as a result.

Even if a third kidney stone does eventuate, I feel it’s the last crystallisation of that painful extraction process. I fully intend to ensure I’m not repeating the mistakes of the past, instead I am thankful for the lessons and all the new things I’ve learned about myself and life. Most importantly, I have used it to step into more of my potential.

What painful things have happened in your life and in what ways have you changed your thinking and behaviours as a result? Are these adaption’s serving to shrink away from your potential or to grow into it?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Mankind’s Great Summons: Turn Your Pain Into Medicine and Heal the World, What Resentment, Frustration and Pain Have to Do With Your Boundaries, The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself and Get Emotionally Healthy - Is It Time to Break the Chain of Pain?. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by Caroline Hummels from Pixabay

This week has been a gift of alone time with the kids at their dad’s and grandparents. I love my children, but I do not love my attention constantly focused outward and the endless rounds of chores and commitments required in looking after myself, never mind others. My attention wants to go within and deal with what often feels like the internal carnage that resides there.

So I was doing an exercise where we were asked to depict our inner world versus our outer world in picture form, with a divided ambivalence mask and use it and the space around it. It was an interesting exercise, I drew my outer world as a conglomeration of people and things that require my attention and that drive my outer responses.

These included the voices of my parents and teachers who taught me what is appropriate and acceptable, to the voices of my own children now with their own needs and demands, the voice of media and government who sway the general mood of what is acceptable or not in today’s world, and the friends, clients and other people I interact with day to day.

That side of my mask was painted to look normal, pleasant but somewhat stoic in its lines as I have bent and swayed to people and opinions over the years that really do not always match my internal world. The little lines around my mouth indicate where I’ve remained tight lipped and the crease on my brows is where I’m concentrating on appropriate responses.

This is the part of me that fervently welcomes the work I’ve been doing on personal boundaries, somewhat surprised that such a thing exists but not at all sure it’s safe to attune more to my inner world and to express that outwardly. There is understandable resistance there I have to work through.

My inner world was more complex, and also split. There is the collection of fears and insecurities I inwardly harbour but there is also a separate very contrasting part of me that feels a deeper, more spiritual sense of peace and “okayness”.

Inner me loves time in nature, which I do oblige frequently in my outer world in order to find some sense of equilibrium. What I want though is what I feel inside to be what I express outside so I attract people and experiences that are a closer match to my true self.

I said to a friend of mine, who sees me as the confident one, “Don’t confuse my ability to jump on the train of the now widely used and socially acceptable love you with close family and friends with the ability or confidence to speak to my feelings, I’m sh!t at that”.

That is why I am learning how to express and expand my emotional vocabulary, and it’s quite a process observing the emotions that arise simultaneously within me, where they sit in my body and use this information to speak to my needs and boundaries more clearly.

Briana MacWilliam, one of whose course’s I am taking, said something really well that I think affects all of us and speaks to all our insecurities.

She was talking about how, overall, a child determines that a parent's responsiveness must mean something about their inherent worthiness. Since a child doesn't have the emotional or mental capacity to contextualise their parents and say:

“Wow my parents are generally invasive or dismissive people, which is a characteristic which was around long before me, and probably has nothing to do with me. And, as a result, they clearly don’t have the tools to do this child rearing thing in the way that I need.

But that doesn’t mean no one else in the world is capable of meeting my needs, or that somehow I am not deserving of having my needs met, ever. If I can just wait this out, I know love is out there for me and I am fully deserving of it.”

Of course, as she says, the child is not capable of that and instead assumes they must be undeserving or is too needy. Hence the internal messages we carry into adulthood that we are often not even aware of.

This speaks to precisely why most of us walk around with mismatching inner and outer worlds. I can’t help but wonder how life would be if we allowed the different parts of us to integrate and be more vulnerable and able to speak to our true feelings.

How closely do your inner and outer world’s match? And would you benefit from being able to attract more situations and people who match your inner world?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary to Get Your Real Needs Met, What Are Our Thought Patterns Really Doing for Us?, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Do You Yearn for Better Outcomes? First Commit to Observing Your Reactions, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns and Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, . To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by Semin Paek from Pixabay

I was doing a class with Yvette Rose this week about rediscovering your brilliance, it gave me a very clear ah-ha moment.

Having been asked to think about a time when I wanted to do something very much, she asked us:

• What emotions did you feel before fear kicked in?
  
• What fear felt like after the initial positive feelings?
  
• Whose face/voice you see/hear when you connect to that fear?
  

The example I chose was my recently rekindled desire to work with adolescents, inspired by the movie Freedom Writers. The initial emotions I felt were excited, purposeful, motivated, curious, hopeful and confident.

Then, after the fear set in, I felt inadequate and lacking in confidence, wondering “Who am I to do this?” and “What if I mess up or get too involved?”

I know where these voices of doubt come from, and the ah-ha was simply that my initial positive emotions were my inner compass, the voices of fear are actually echoes of the separate voices of doubt and apathy from other people. I can also see that their doubt, and apathy, had more to do with what they believed about themselves.

However, I recognise that doubts are seeded there nonetheless, and my job is to learn to have more faith in my own inner compass and intuition than those doubts. I do not want to allow others’ self doubts and fears to become my limitations.

I was taking my kids through Steven Covey’s Circles of Control exercise this week, drawn out as circles within circles, with what we control at the centre:

• Circle of control – things we can directly control (like what we think, say and do, how we respond to stress, what we wear etc)
  
• Circle of Influence – the concerns we can do something about. We have indirect control over those things (such as having a certain influence on others’ thoughts but no direct control over them)
  
• Circle of Concern – those things that matter to us but we have no control over (like how tall we are, how others react and behave, politics, the economy etc).
  

Everything outside of the outer circle is of little or no concern to us (and that will be a matter of personal interests).

This is about controlling the things I can, which includes getting to grips with the voices of self doubt, and getting myself around more people who are involved in the things I’m interested in, and hearing their stories. It may also involve pursuing further education or qualifications, doing voluntary work or gaining some other experience as a stepping stone.

Having been through some big changes in their lives, it was interesting to see where the kids put certain things. My daughter, for example, felt she has little or no control over her thoughts “they are just there” she said. It made me pause, as I suspect most adults believe that too since we apparently think around 70,000 thoughts a day, 80-90% of which are a repeat of yesterday’s thoughts.

Psychologists call these thought patterns, and most of us have very self defeating thought patterns. Last week when I wrote Are You Willing to Take Your Sovereignty While Allowing Other People Theirs? I was reflecting on control patterns, these are patterns of behaviour between people, and are very much linked to our repeating thought patterns.

Some of my predominant self defeating thought patterns are things like: I’m not enough, I don’t have..., I’m too much, I’m alone, I’m different, I’m unworthy and so on. Where did these thought patterns come from? I can see why my daughter believes “they are just there” because it’s not by conscious choice they are there, they are the voices of fear I talked about at the start, and they have been planted there subconsciously from childhood and reinforced over the years through voices of others.

While (because of the repetition) these thoughts have well worn neural pathways in our brains, the good news is our brains are in fact malleable and our thoughts can be changed. It requires belief, focus and repetition. Rather than allowing my mind to work on automatic pilot, I have to catch these unhelpful thought patterns and flush them out.

To change what is an unconscious process, I have to become conscious of it and really shine a light and question it as I did when I looked at my fear around working with adolescents, which were essentially fears about my own worth and capabilities. I then have to begin to reimagine it and continually practice new ways of thinking about the issue and coach myself through the fears.

I’ve done this with almost everything I’ve gone after in my life that felt too audacious or scary. And in every case I’ve had far more to offer than I imagined possible at the outset. That’s not to say that no growth was required, in fact it was likely the growth opportunities that attracted me to begin with, but I don’t regret anything I’ve ever gone after for that reason, there was always something to learn.

And it’s that cycle of stretching out of my comfort zone, learning and growing that has built the resilience and confidence that allows me to teach my kids these lessons with assurity.  Is it scary? Yes. Heck yes. What’s more scary is a life half lived, a life of staying small and not going after the things I want, that my inner compass is clearly saying “yes” to.

What is your inner compass saying yes to? And what thought patterns might be holding you back? Who do these fears really belong to? And what can you do today to help you reimagine a different future?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Believe In Yourself Even if You Feel No One Else Does, What Are Our Thought Patterns Really Doing for Us?, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down, Start From Where You Are, Now Go and Be Great, and Finding Your Purpose – the Magic of Those Who Believe in You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Sovereignty, our inherent freedom, and yet because of the way many of us are indoctrinated into the world it has become something we think has to be given or taken.

My friend and I were having a philosophical debate about a famous quote from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, “Sovereignty is not given it is taken”. My friend said, would it be truer to say “Sovereignty cannot be named because it just is”?
I think both are true, but the reason Atatürk’s quote had resonated with me at this moment is because of the challenges – and therefore the lessons – that have been showing up in my life of late. It brings up for me two very contrasting things:

• Those who seek to take other people’s sovereignty,
• Those who are waiting for someone else to give them their sovereignty

Both of these concepts deal in power and control, something James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy describes well. He depicts control strategies that we each develop in order to stop others draining our energy. These sit on a scale of aggressive to passive and he describes four archetypes; it’s often easiest if you start by taking a look at which strategies your parents employed:

• Intimidator’s threaten verbally or physically and come on too strong, making others frightened. They are so wrapped up in their own anger they don’t care what is happening inside the other person.
• Interrogator’s constantly question, criticize, nag and find fault, making others self conscious and eroding their confidence.
• Aloof’s shut down when confrontation happens. They often withdraw physically or verbally, forcing others to struggle and dig to find out their true feelings.
• Poor Me’s tend to guilt trip, projecting themselves as the helpless victim in need or care and attention. This makes others feel guilty even if they know there is no real reason to feel this way.

Each of these are linked with the corresponding strategies that created them, and that they create. For example, Intimidators create Poor Me’s appealing for mercy, or, the child will endure until they are old enough and big enough to fight back, creating another Intimidator, and so the cycle continues. Becoming  aware of the strategies I and others employ, is how I would start to break the cycle.

Each of us arrives in the world completely dependent on adults for our survival. The predominant tenet of parenting for generations has focused on “controlling behaviours” and it’s little wonder therefore that each one of us adopts patterns that fool us into thinking we have to take or be given sovereignty.

When I attended a course last year, run by the Family Court here in New Zealand, there was an enlightening poster pinned on the wall. It showed two wheels side by side; one showed what equality looks like, the other showed what power and control looks like. And while the wheel showing control clearly depicts physical and sexual abuse on the outside, it very adequately describes the more covert and “ordinary” kinds of psychological, emotional and financial control that happens between people.

In essence this gives some more clarity around quite a simple concept, equality. This being where a person’s rights, needs, desires etc are held in equal regard to another’s. Power and control is where those rights, opinions, needs etc are not held in the same regard.

This is very apparent to me across many areas of society: from familial structures and dynamics to corporate structures and dynamics; from education to health systems; the relationship governments’ hold with their people; the use of media to manipulate popular opinion; and pretty much everywhere there is any kind of human interaction.

I have spent much of this last year, for example, in correspondence between lawyers. Over this entire process, it very much appears that the person I have been negotiating with cannot seem to hold my rights in equal regard to their own. They are represented by a lawyer who – again and again –expresses the same disregard, with correspondence full of backtracking, contradictions, barbs, personal attacks, deflections, threats and a continually emotive and provocative tone.

The whole strategy appears to be about taking power and control, which seems short sighted. There is a requirement in this case for ongoing interaction and cooperation. I cannot fathom why anyone would believe goodwill or cooperation could exist after continued unhelpful and aggressive communication.

However, apparently this is quite normal. Kate Davenport QC, when elected as President of the New Zealand Bar Association in 2018, said she “had set a goal to stamp out rude and aggressive behaviours between barristers (lawyers who can advocate in courts)”. The article at the time said that “much of that aggressive behaviour involved personal attacks on clients and that lawyers were obliged to show that correspondence to their clients”.

She had previously written back to barristers asking them to redraft letters with a reminder of the rules for courtesy. My lawyer set aside most of these nocuous comments and focused on the actual issues at hand which required negotiating. While practical, it often had the same effect of leaving my good character feeling sucker punched without being able to defend myself.

Like many countries there is a regulator for lawyers in New Zealand, which operates a complaints service and it deals with complaints about a lawyer’s conduct, such as “treating you with discourtesy or behaving in an intimidatory manner” among other things. However there was also an article a few years ago reporting that there is no action taken in the majority of cases against lawyers.

As I have traversed these negotiations, many people (who are not directly involved) sit in shock listening to the details and wonder “how do they even get away with that?” and believe a magic “someone” should hold people accountable.
I once believed this too, that the human constructed systems of power and control would themselves protect the sovereignty of the individuals within it, how ridiculous that seems to me now. As my friend said, sovereignty is inherent.

But growing up – like many others – I was taught to be good, to tell the truth and often to put others opinions and needs before my own – particularly if they held positions of authority. It has been a long road to learning to have and hold healthy boundaries even in the face of being manipulated, threatened and my rights tossed to one side.

Of course there are various forms of control, and learning what we can and cannot control is part of the lesson. Clearly there are many cases where one human/groups of humans exerts control and power over others, and just as many cases that highlight that even in those extremes there is still a degree of self sovereignty that determines how well those being victimised fare.

But society would have me believe I control far less than I actually do, which is why most of my lessons are learning and writing about personal power and how to reclaim it.

In my experience there is no magic someone, no one who will come along and give me my sovereignty, not even someone I employ to represent me legally. It is down to me to hold my centre and stand firm on what I believe to be fair and reasonable – in spite of the pressure coming from every angle of those directly involved.

Recently when extremely aggressive attempts were made to railroad me into waiving my legal right to independent representation in the transfer of a property, I remained determined, probably moreso after being threatened. In situations like this it is tempting, when taking my sovereignty, to want to get into the power control game also. But my mantra is I stand up for my rights and allow you yours.

“Therein lays the gold in all of this” my friend said “the courage to speak your truth regardless, where once that had all but been eliminated from you”. That is true, my voice has been long in its reclaiming, and it is a journey – an art and a science - to developing one that can be heard while standing in my centre calmly, solidly, rather than spinning out.

I was reminded of the words Claire Zammit uses in situations where people have an underlying unhelpful belief pattern about not being seen/heard. She has a number of deeper truth statements that I think are worth pondering:

• I see myself. I am deeply present to my feelings, needs and desires. I intuitively know how to ask for my needs and desires in ways that inspire others to meet them.
• I came here to be seen and heard. The more I presence my needs and desires the more I empower myself and others.
• I deeply see and anticipate my own needs and I create structures for their fulfillment in advance.
• The best way to see how much other people do or don’t care about my feelings, needs and desires is to tell them clearly what they are and then see how they show up.

Our sovereignty is inherent; we can take it or relinquish it at any time. To take it we must presence ourselves and be willing to let go where we can of those around us that disregard our rights, opinions, needs and desires. That is our inherent sovereignty though, the right to choose.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Reclaim the Sovereignty of Your Soul, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, Do We Need to Better Understand the Pivotal Role of Parenting to Evolve?, Looking Back to See the Clues to Your Destiny and Build a Healthy Self Concept. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

A friend of mine recently asked if I am happy. I considered this question and decided to answer honestly, no.

I realised that my first thought had been to massage the truth, because I sensed this honesty was going to create discomfort in the other person. Like when someone asks “how are you?” and I generally say “fine” even if something major is happening, because it is just part of a polite exchange.

To say otherwise in a passing conversation would be to stop the flow, and perhaps over share details that I’d prefer to remain private, while make the other person feel uncomfortable or obliged in some way. Unless it’s a close friend, of course, who knows the context of what’s happening in my life at the time so it doesn’t require a whole dialogue to explain.

That said, to ask “are you happy?” is not part of common polite exchange, it does imply a deeper interest in that person’s wellbeing. None the less, just as most parents want their kids to be healthy and happy, wanting the same for those other people we love around us is, I find, common.

So in considering the question I thought “I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time, I certainly enjoy many of aspects of my life, but would I say I’m truly happy? Nope.”

I was then inevitably asked what would make me happy, would it be relationships, work, lifestyle etc?

In between the question and the answer – which was “I’ve come to understand no thing will make me happy, it’s an internal shift I suspect” – I considered the lifelong pattern of pursuing things that (once obtained) I assumed would leave me fulfilled. This had not happened.

Chasing the things, the places, the people, even having a family, were illusions in some respects. It’s not that I don’t value those things, I do, but when I still feel unworthy, not enough, exhausted, insecure and so forth on the inside, it’s hard to feel happy.

Happiness I think is state of being in harmony with myself while also being grateful for all the things in my life, it’s an inside out job. Otherwise I observe the things I’m grateful for from a vantage point of constant inner anxiety, so it always feels off somehow.

I could point to things that have happened in my life and say “they/that made me unhappy” but that is not entirely true and it’s disempowering. Life may have brought me some really stink results at times, but the reason for that is really because of the inner anxiety. Not to excuse other people’s poor behaviours, but attracting them I feel is more a symptom than a cause, based on reactions wired from childhood.

The way I feel on the inside isn’t even a rational result of early childhood experiences. As babies and toddlers we don’t have the ability to rationalise why we might not be getting the attention we need to attach and attune to our self and our own needs, we just assume states of being, unconscious inner voices of shame in not being enough, or being too much and so forth.

Not to vilify parents, everyone tends to do their best with what they know. I found it extremely hard – and was in a heightened state of anxiety – when my baby was crying or unsettled and I just couldn’t figure out why, or when the calls for attention had been so relentless I’d just be crying out myself for some space.

Back to the childhood development though, as my rational mind developed I could argue against those voices and did. When pushed too far I’d get angry at mistreatment, I know I’m enough and I’m worthy at a deeper level and (in my case) even at an intellectual level too. I can give myself lists of rational reasons why, I can read books or listen to others who validate my worth, but it doesn’t mean I feel it. That’s the bit to work on.

Anxiety has been a very general and omnipresent feeling within me for as far back as I can remember. I would never have admitted that even to myself until recent years because – to do so – makes me feel vulnerable. It did not fit with my well developed image of confidence and success, a form of stoicism.

Briana MacWilliam put this beautifully in a course I’m doing, she said “Anxiety can become this pervasive blanket feeling that tends to obscure the more subtle emotions beneath it because those feel scary and confusing.”

Yet, as I wrote about in Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary to Get Your Real Needs Met it’s being able to tune into and give voice to those more subtle emotions that allows me to define my boundaries, that sense of self definition.

And without boundaries, there’s not much for others to relate to.  Pointedly, as Briana points out, “When there isn’t much to relate to, there isn’t stimulation or challenge enough to keep someone invested in a relationship because you have – in essence – become completely unavailable to them”.

Brene Brown’s latest book Atlas of the Heart speaks directly to this also. She talks about workshops she did fifteen years ago as part of shame resilience research, and the participants were asked to list all the emotions they could recognise and name as they were experiencing them. Over the course of five years they collected this data from more than seven thousand people and the average number of emotions named across surveys was just three: happy, angry and sad.

As she points out “Language is the portal to meaning making, connection, healing and self awareness. When we don’t have the language to talk about what we’re experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited.” It’s the purpose and mission of Atlas of the Heart to help name and claim a broader emotional vocabulary.

Boundaries are something I became aware of and started working on a couple of years ago, but as Briana points out “there is a strong need for acceptance and for everything to go well and no one be upset when you have an anxious attachment style” because the ultimate fear is of abandonment. I said to one friend (of my inner energetic state) it’s like sitting watching the lawn waiting for a mole to pop up so I can whack it back down and keep the lawn looking nice.

Doing this course with Briana is really challenging me to think about and feel into what my own needs are to a degree I haven’t before, as well as giving me the tools and language to express them. She says “Your behaviours are geared up towards trying to smooth over conflicts or threats to the emotional equilibrium of relationships and in your social environment”.

Breaking these habits first requires a whole new inner view of my needs and the ability to communicate them with calm confidence. One of the things I love about the work I’m doing is that it’s so thorough. By looking at things I don’t want, I can start to define the things I do want and the ability to frame these in such a way that’s emotionally honest rather than critical of another.

This of course means being vulnerable, this is a huge step change for anyone with an insecure attachment style since each fears rejection. But it comes back time and again to knowing that what I’ve been doing (which is essentially self abandoning) ultimately hasn’t worked for me and only serves up my fears in the long run anyway.

How can I possibly be happy when I’m not being me? When I’m not honouring my true needs and desires, and therefore not allowing anyone else to see, far less accept and love, the real me?

This then is my mission, my goal, and I suspect happiness will be the natural result of realising it while also simultaneously appreciating those things and people I have in my life.

What about you, is it your true self we get to meet in the world? How much unhappiness will it take to be vulnerable enough to explore, uncover and show your real needs and desires to the rest of us? And if that means there are some people around you who can’t work with those, that’s okay, it creates space for people who are more of a match to who you really are on the inside.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy So You Found Yourself… But Are You Actually Happy?, Hating Your Way to Happiness, Embracing Impermanence to Find Your Happy Future, How Much Are You Hanging Your Happiness on Others and What Will It Take for You to Choose Happy? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

A couple of friends and I were discussing our health this week, and I was reflecting how much better I had felt these last few years since deliberately undertaking a healing journey to address the migraines, kidney stones, crazy menstrual symptoms and a few more chronic issue issues that seemed to plague me.

One of my friends said “I credit Anne (my osteopath) for that; she was the one who quietly challenged you to put yourself and your health first”. As I reflected on it, she was right, Anne had been the gentle messenger that seemed to speak directly to a part of me that knew she was right and could broker no disagreement.

The key here are the words quiet and gentle.

Anne is neither confrontational and nor does she go around-the-houses; she just quietly and gently says things like “I think your body would really appreciate if it got some regular movement” and “I think your body might appreciate a break from sugar and wheat”. 

These weren’t random or generic health recommendations, they were things that I had been periodically considering and waylaying for some time, probably at those moments when I would hear what my body was trying to communicate and my mind would quickly file in the “to do later” basket due to the constant feeling of overwhelm.

However, hearing them reflected from the outside and given a voice had a big impact, and led to me taking up swimming again and also switching out my diet to foods I know work better for me several years ago now.

I’m not saying these things were the root cause of all my ailments, it’s simply what my body needed in order to stay steady on the course and not spring any more leaks, so to speak. She was also the person to whom I turned when I was looking for a homeopath, and that led me to Heilkunst and trauma therapy, which is what has really got into the meat of addressing a lot of these ailments that I no longer experience.

While the same recommendations had come from other sources at other times, what cut through was Anne’s ability to connect with and recognise the quiet whisperings of my body’s needs and desires without engaging my mind.

My mind noticed, it even attempted – rather lamely – to list some excuses, but within minutes of leaving the appointments I would already know it had lost the battle and now was the time to take inspired action.

I find there are many different voices within me, often fighting to be heard. Some of the most poignant words that demonstrate this were spoken in Our Warring Self Versus Our Infinite Self by Sarah Blondin. Sarah is another person who is able, in her own quiet and gentle way, to speak directly to the soul’s yearning. I guess that is because what she shares through her podcasts and meditations is just that, her own deep conversations with her inner being.

She describes “our warring self” as “The part of you that hides under the surface, that surprises you when she shows her teeth. The part you deny, push away, pretend does not live there. She is your darkness, the one who dwells in the shallow waters of your being. She is in every one of us. She rides up on the back of your righteous ego, she feeds on ideas that you deserve more, better, different. She lurks in the thoughts and emotions that keep you small. Such intensity and emotion is powerful, palpable; weak in root but alluring in force.”

Conversely, “our infinite self” she describes as “The soft one, tender, always tender. She comes when you ask for help. She comes when you fill your lungs with a conscious breath. She is able to withstand the storms. She catches the furious pain of others, the difficult experiences you face, the things that make you want to fight, and she cradles them, swaddles them in unconditional love over and over. She is the bottomless source of light and love, she is your essence. Pure and wise she lives in your greatest depths”.

And then Sarah goes on to say “She is shelved beside the one who wars. They stand within you, both hands open, a choice. One serves where the other severs, one heals where the other wounds. It takes great strength and determination to choose the soft one when you are in the fire. Yet nothing will suffer more than you if you continue to choose war. They are two polar energies, forces living within you, a choice for you to make at every triggering moment in your life.”

I have given you a snapshot here of her words in this piece, but most poignantly she wraps up in saying “You are capable of being both but please choose wisely for the quality of your life and love depends on it”.

Like Sarah, I can hear the whisperings of my own body and soul when I allow my mind to be still enough to hear them.

In the year my mum slipped away from us with a sudden and aggressive cancer, I found solace in nature. Listening to the rustle of leaves, the twittering of birds, the rhythm of waves lapping on the shore, the solid assurity of tides coming in and tides going out, the sun setting, the sun rising, and the seasons coming and going. As much as the landscape of my world was changing with my mum slipping from the scene, so much went on.

This can seem cruel when losing a loved one, but it also provided somewhat of a solidity to keep going on myself. It was in those quiet moments in nature that everything from the sea to the clouds seemed to whisper quiet truths from my heart to my head, into conscious awareness, about everything from the nature of life and its meaning, to little actions that could make a difference for mum in her final days.

The same was true when the government here in New Zealand, who has only this week finally let go of COVID19 vaccine mandates, overstepped its reach last year and created a segregated society that displaced many of its critical workers, divided families and impinged on day to day lives in ways that I simply could not have imagined a year or so beforehand.

While not everyone could go to the local library to get out a book, swim at the local outdoor pool, go to university, learn to drive or meet friends at a cafe, everyone could still experience nature. And sure enough, while we lived in a world where the punitive actions did not match the evidence, the sun continued to come up and set each day, the tides kept coming in and out, the birds kept twittering and that solid backdrop of Mother Nature continued whispering messages when I connected in with it.

Whether it’s the kind and gentle words of a friend, or the words that seem to come on the wind rustling through leaves as you walk in the woods, the quiet whisperings of truth that inspire are well worth noticing, for they are the truths that inspire our best life.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Give Yourself Permission to Live Life in Alignment With Your True Nature, Rejoicing in Who You Are, Is Your Experience With Religion Stopping You Exploring Your Inner World?, Rediscovering the Language of Nature, Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success, Saying Goodbye, The Miracle of Water, and Taking Your Own Space. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

As someone who writes frequently, it gave me pause to consider whether I currently use a limited emotional vocabulary.

Let me give you an example I heard this week from Briana MacWilliam as she was doing a class for people who are choosing to recover from relationships in which they felt neglected, abandoned or dismissed. She talked about a client who had felt a big jolt around a change in their life, in this case a new partner, which caused a sense of overwhelm and spiralled into anxiety and panic and she was thinking of ending the relationship.

Her vocabulary was vague and it was difficult to pinpoint the issue, but with some work, she could articulate that she was a little bit excited, a little bit nervous, a little anticipatory (all quite positive feelings), but maybe there were also some doubts creeping in, she felt a little challenged, exhilarated but also worried, and all of this was going on at the same time.

This is normal.

However she had not been taught growing up how to sift and sort through all those energetic states, emotions and inner experiences with any amount of sophistication. As a result she had become overwhelmed by the emotional charge of all those different, conflicting, ambiguous feelings in her mind and body, which is what had caused her to spiral. I can relate to this.

In this state she became scared and confused and lumped all those (similar but nuanced) feelings into one big category – “bad”. I experience this quite regularly, particularly around those who appear to chronically ignore what I have said or fail to take into account how I feel.

As Briana said “It’s important to recognise the energetic states moving through our bodies. By focusing firstly on the physical sensations (we are having in relation to those emotional charges) it helps mentally organise them, initially through symbols rather than words”. This is some of the most critical work Briana says she does with her clients and it requires practice over time.

This then leads to being able to describe the feelings more accurately which in turn gives more clarity around what is wanted and needed – and in turn this informs clear communication in terms of personal boundaries. And certainly I would agree that defining and communicating boundaries is critical to ensure I do not attract relationships in which I am neglected, abandoned or dismissed.

The other point Briana was making in the pursuit of more healthy relationships, is that by confronting past relationships defined by this, I am also confronting my attachment anxieties.

Attachment theory and styles are well known in the world of developmental psychology, Briana describes them as an instinctual blueprint in the survival part of our brain and nervous system that determines how much closeness or distance we need to feel comfortable that our survival needs are met.

However, depending on the extent to which the parenting we received was supportive and loving versus critical and demeaning, many of us grow up with insecure attachment and here is an example of why. She describes a young child pretending to be superman. On one hand supportive parents might say “Hey check you out, go you!”, and the child might think “Yeah I am capable of great things”.

On the other hand, a harsher parent might bristle and yell “Stop that noise! Sit down! Look at how your stupidity is ruining my rug and my furniture. I don’t want to hear from you unless spoken to. Idiot!” That child hears that they are worth less than the rug and furniture, and that the natural self exploratory process they were innocently playing with in that moment was offensive, damaging and it inspired punitive repercussions.

If that pattern is repeated, in time the child learns not only to distrust their own intuition and creative impulses but to feel distaste, shame, anger and guilt for even having an inner life. Again I can relate.

They may also doubt that they are capable of great things. So as the child grows and the parent reinforces the idea that the child is bad, a burden, not good enough, not measuring up to some standard of behaviour or condition of love, that thought process gets internalised and psychologists call it our wounded inner child.

It is these subconscious patterns that create and trigger the instinctual blueprint in the survival part of the brain and nervous system and cause people to react in flight, flight, freeze or hide. Fast forward to adulthood and an angry spouse may translate to the person who has grown up with this type of narrative as “I must have done something to upset them, this must really be about me, therefore it’s my fault, I have to fix it to earn their love back and feel worthy of love”.

When really, it’s an insecure attachment blueprint in the brain and nervous system that is sending this message as it has flared up in survival mode. Briana says quite pointedly “Until we can become aware that our attachment impulses are survival impulses (rather than authentic needs of our true self) they are always going to trump our good sense until we can raise our consciousnesses around this issue and mitigate it”.

That might seem obvious but I know from my own experience it’s not easy to do when being flooded with emotions.
This week I received a draft agreement that I had been awaiting for some time, and had requested on several occasions should include a paragraph reconciling this particular agreement with the previous agreement (which was settled on vastly different terms).

When I finally received the draft from the office of the person I had sent two texts and an email to about this very paragraph in the previous 24 hours, in addition to the prior comments, and saw that – again - no such paragraph was included, I was flooded with emotions. This was a deal breaker for me and I will admit I fired off an email in response “Please do not contact me again until this is sorted. I do not appreciate being ignored. What a waste of time and money”.

It is quite unusual for me to be so abrupt but, as I said previously, I get triggered when I feel chronically ignored.  Not long after, I then received a phonecall from their office so, pulling over to take the call, was caught off guard when it was the person’s personal assistant on the line rather than the person I needed to make the change.

They were equally as triggered, challenging me to explain my accusation of “being ignored”. I was at that moment at a loss for words because I had literally attached a screen short of the two texts to that email and felt I was living in an alternate reality. Gaslighting is another form of deliberately being ignored and triggers me even more.

I ended the call at that point as my brain and mouth were not going to say anything calmly and confidently anytime soon. Once I got home I followed this up with an email attachment with screenshots showing the many times I had requested this paragraph in various communications in the weeks prior, both to my representative and the other party’s.

Thankfully the process of writing, a much more focused form of using words than talking, made it a lot easier to convey what I needed to – the facts – rather than simply feeling that I was drowning in floods of emotions and unable to take a breath never mind speak.

And it was with that in mind that when I heard Briana’s sage advice on developing a rich emotional vocabulary I realised the missing link in my recovery. There are four steps not three:

1. Become consciously aware of the unhealthy patterns that get triggered and dysregulate my nervous system
2. Regulate my nervous system – whether in fight, flight, freeze or hide – my priority is to help my body feel safe so my rational thinking comes back online
3. Become aware of those different, conflicting, ambiguous feelings in my mind and body and learn how to describe the feelings more accurately, which in turn gives more clarity around what is wanted and needed
4. This then, in turn, informs clear communication in terms of personal boundaries

For all the words I have in my vocabulary, assigning them in to emotions that are flooding my body was not something I learned to any sophisticated degree as a child. However, I am learning now as an adult how to do this and how important it is in order to be truly heard and create and communicate healthy boundaries.

How often do you feel overwhelmed and unable to express what you are feeling with any clarity? Can you imagine how your sense of health and wellbeing and relationships can improve if you could? Is it time to take a closer look at you inner world and learn how to name the surge of emotions that course through it simultaneously?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Yearn for Better Outcomes? First Commit to Observing Your Reactions, Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, How to Take Things as They Come When You Have Learned Not to Trust  and Taking Your Own Space. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

While I’ve known about the flight-fight response for decades, and have studied it many times over again in relation to trauma, this week I heard a different perspective on it that gave me a personal ah ha moment – something I always relish.

Yvette Rose explained the four trauma responses/reactions in terms of ways that people show up in different situations. Some were the familiar responses when triggered, but she was also relating this to the way people show up and make decisions in everyday life:

Fight Response/Wiring

• Angry outbursts
  
• Controlling
  
• Pushy/bossy
  
• A fear of missing out/have to get ahead of everyone else
  
• Explosive reactions that you can’t contain
  
• Unable to be mindful about others’ reactions
  

Flight Response/Wiring

• Run away instinct
  
• Ants in your pants/restless legs
  
• Overthinker
  
• Workaholic
  
• Insomnia
  
• Anxiety/Panic
  
• OCD/need to get everything just right
  
• Difficulty just being with yourself
  
• No room for stress/ anything that can cause stress (often self-created)
  

Freeze Response/Wiring

• Deer in the headlights
  
• Indecisive
  
• Procrastinate
  
• Stuck/trapped in situations
  
• Waiting for someone to take the initiative/make decisions
  
• Fear of taking the lead/ want to see what others do first
  
• Intellectually dissociate (can see mouths moving but can’t connect to what is being said)
  
• Isolating pattern/not wanting a lot of people around
  

Hide Response/Wiring (sometimes called Fawn) - Freeze can easily roll over into this response

• People pleasers
  
• Latch onto/connect with other people to identify with
  
• Poor boundaries
  
• Overwhelmed because there is no limitations
  
• Difficulty in recognising where your thresholds are so people overstep and you don’t correct because you are a peace keeper/hider
  
• Causes codependency
  
• Needs a leader as there is a fear of stepping into your power
  

As I say, what really struck me as she talked about this, and guided the audience through various exercises in her What Happens After Trauma Masterclass, was that – unlike previous discussions on flight/fight – she wasn’t just referring to what happens when a person’s flight/fight is triggered by a stressful event.

I realised that I can show up day to day as a bit of a Hider. As a recovering people pleaser and co-dependent I have been actively aware of these patterns and learning to have and hold healthy boundaries for a couple of years now. However I’m probably mostly this when I’m in my beginning phase of anything – jobs, relationships, new situations – like a chameleon adapting to new territory.

Then – under everyday stress– I will default to Flight mode, which happens often as I then feel under pressure to keep up the chameleon facade I’ve created. But when pushed too far I will go into a Fight response, like inner me is fighting for its sovereignty.

And if I feel attacked, I will most often Freeze and then go into a Fight response. Then I’ll come out of that back into Flight before eventually settling back into Hide as my peace keeping survival responses kick in.

It is fair to say I was aware I cycle through different responses at different times and in different circumstances. What I hadn’t really been fully aware of is how chronically my wiring is in Flight mode.

I always thought about this as the person who physically runs away from arguments or awkward situations. I can think of a couple of times I’ve actively wanted to flee when I’ve been pushed too far but, as I say, generally Freeze and Fight come into play then.

But I can relate to the restless legs, I have a tried and tested range of techniques I developed in meetings and training courses to remain focused and engaged, like poking myself with a metaphorical stick to stay with the programme. And since physically running away as a child seemed not only stupid (it was generally cold and rainy) but scary, I guess I ran away inwardly instead and became an over thinker.

I had difficulty being me because I had become a chameleon, whatever people in authority had wanted me to be in order to avoid trouble. There was absolutely no away I ever wanted caught on the back foot or doing anything less than what was expected as it brought harsh punishments and humiliation. I wanted to be ten steps ahead to avoid any conflict or confrontation – or anything negative befalling me.

I thought about the relationships I’d left, the jobs I’d left, the interests I’d left behind, the country I left behind. Mmmm, it was an interesting ah ha moment to see just what a pattern for flight I actually have.

Yet now I am embracing life as a single parent, and look forward to the solitude when the kids are with their dad, and love welcoming them home when they return. It’s the first time in my entire life that I get to be with just me, and get to fully own that and accept who I am and what I value, believe and prefer to do and be in life.

It feels unfamiliar, and I still want to run at times. I get itchy feet and start to plan travel and activities. But I’m becoming more aware the grass is never any greener than right at my feet, wherever they are in that moment.

As I talked to my daughter this week about her personal moment of breaking out of her own patterns, it was gratifying to see that doing my inner work had the added effect of helping her see herself more clearly too.

I was very proud of her for speaking her truth to a friend. She hadn’t been unkind, but she delivered unwanted news and they were upset. Being someone who, like me, is empathetic and often a people pleaser, she felt overwhelmed because she could so viscerally feel their disappointment.

She wanted to distract herself from the pain this was causing her, but I encouraged her to stay with it. “Where do you feel it in your body?” I asked. It was in her tummy. So I asked “And where do you think it goes if you ignore it”. She is astute enough to know it stays right there, so I encouraged her to work through it rather than suppress it. “Get it up and out” I said, and for her that meant talking it through. This is much healthier than it reinforcing a pattern and causing physical problems later in life.

The patterns I’ve observed in my own life demonstrate this well. Often if I’ve experienced a big upset of some kind, following the pattern of headaches, stiff neck, shoulders and sore tummy, I’ll often spend several days afterwards with quite an acute pain in my abdomen working its way out as I “digest” what has upset me.

One of the things Evette Rose is well known for is her Metaphysical Anatomy Technique, working with our biology to unwind these emotional blocks and unhelpful patterns we have that – once addressed – lighten the load and help build confidence.

The point she was making is that they way we act when we get really triggered isn’t an isolated incident, is an accumulation of a lifetime worth of experiences – sometimes several lifetimes if it’s a predisposition we’ve inherited from our ancestral lineage.

After all the personal inner journey work I’ve undertaken and integrated, learning how to regulate my nervous system now seems like such a key thing to pursue in relation to really allowing the fullest, most authentic expression of me in my body.

And that seems to mean, aside of decoupling from co-dependent tendencies, that I take the time to simply stay with the impulse to run, to feel through my pain, frustration, anger or other uncomfortable feelings that come up in the day to day stresses of life when every part of my neural network says “go go go”.

This knowledge and practice of “staying” which means to simply “be with” or “be present” seems so obvious now. Of course, it’s in this practice where my body will learn to feel safe and confident. “But you are confident” a friend of mine said. No, I am not always confident at all. The more I get to know the true me, though, the more confidence I gain; so I opt for embracing the lessons my body is trying to teach.

What about you, in what way are your everyday responses different to those when under varying degrees of stress and pressure? Becoming aware of what happens within us is the first step to making choices about whether to and when to change our reactions, which is exactly what changes our outcomes.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Put Mature Parts of You in the Driving Seat for Better Results, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, How to Take Things as They Come When You Have Learned Not to Trust  and Taking Your Own Space. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was watching a movie called Freedom Writers based on the real life story of Erin Gruwell who in 1994, as a naive straight-out-of-college teacher, worked with class of juvenile delinquents, gang members, drug pushers and underprivileged students. The school deemed these kids incapable of learning and felt it was more a matter of them being warehoused until they were old enough to drop out on their own – if they lived to see that day.

Instead of giving up, she inspires the kids to take an interest in their education and planning their future. She encourages them to keep journals, recording the stories of their lives to get them engaged, and assigns reading material that relates to their experiences before taking them on trips to places beyond the streets of their childhood lives, to museums and so forth, and teaching them about the wider world and other people’s struggles.

Specifically Erin uses The Diary of Anne Frank to show them, like them, a 13 year old girl who faced baseless hatred, bigotry, persecution and a system out to destroy her. Eventually, the class’ study of Anne Frank and their continual journal writing leads them to extend an invitation to one of Frank’s protectors, Miep Gies, and to raise enough money to bring her to their school.

When the old woman arrives, she tells the group, “I did what I had to do because it is the right thing to do—that is all.… Anyone, even a teenager, can turn on a small light in a dark room.” After a student calls her his hero, Gies quickly deflects the title: “I have read your letters, you are the heroes, you are the heroes every day. … Now your faces are engraved in my heart.”

The kids went on to graduate from high school, half went to college and some even went on to university and higher studies. The stories of Erin Gruwel and her students, as they move from their freshman year to senior years from 1994-1998 were collated and published in The Freedom Writers Diary, which is what the movie was based on.

It was a timely reminder for me of how – specifically in those years of adolescence – the difference it made to me have someone who believed in me. I was lucky in fact to have several people, two fantastic swimming coaches and others who just said the odd thing along the way that made me dig a little deeper and do that little bit extra that made all the difference to the outcomes.

There are so many ways in which kids’ self esteem can take knocks. Just recently my daughter related a story from her own classroom, where a teacher told her that her writing wasn’t good enough and, after flipping through her whole book told her she needed to “try harder”.

Apparently he then went on to tell the class that their writing can be a reflection on who they are. Ergo my daughter, who has struggled will dyslexic tendencies and made huge strides in her reading these last couple of years, received a message that isn’t good enough, and that she isn’t good enough. From all the study I’ve done on the human psyche and trauma I know this is one of the most common subconscious messages that people play in their heads.

But it’s not just kids who need to feel that belief. I saw an open post dedicated from husband to wife (a lady I know) that was inspiring. It was a page from N.R. Hart’s Poetry and Pearl’s 2 called Unexpected. It starts “She’s the girl you never saw coming. The unexpected one who calms you, centres you…she gets you, really gets you, like no one else ever has. She is your best friend, lover and soul mate wrapped up in the prettiest package” and so it goes on.

It’s a beautiful prose that reminds me of just how powerful having another see you and believe in you can be. But of course, it comes with a warning in my head. I know it’s normal and healthy to want others to see us and believe in us, but it’s not healthy when I need others to validate who I am.  That is the sign of codependency, when my very sense of self is shaped by that approval and disapproval, which is not a fun place to be.

I was also reminded of another aspect of believing in people this week when a friend of mine pointed out that there were times they felt I was trying to change them by empowering them, which can also be seen as a criticism. Again true, I am guilty of seeing people’s potential and forgetting that unless they can see that and want to reach for it, I’m a better friend that can accept them as they are.

My daughter’s teacher may have been trying to convey that he believed she can do better, for example, meanwhile it also implies that who she is isn’t good enough. It would be a different matter entirely if she had heard “I can read this, but I believe there’s a beautiful hand writer locked inside you waiting to be seen, if you want to explore that let me help”.

I think the key is really about allowing people to determine what is it is they want and helping them believe they can be it, do it or have it. I will admit I find it so much easier to believe in others than myself.  Human potential is something I’ve always been interested in and I do believe – objectively – we can each be, do, have whatever we believe we can.
Sometimes the circumstances of my life provide overwhelming evidence that maybe I can’t be, do or have the things I often don’t even allow myself to dream of. I get caught in a loop of inner voices and evidence of my not worthiness. Then I get so distracted with other things it just falls off the radar.

Until I watch something like Freedom Writers and that voice inside me says “remember” and I start to feel inspired again.

Lately I’ve chosen to set aside the inner voices that have distracted me constantly in a bid for justice. Fighting for what I want and deserve is something I became well practiced as growing up. But it’s also an illusion when it creates inner turmoil and not inner peace; the calm, clear knowing of inner peace. Where I’m not concerned with what others think, only how I feel. And from that place I know I’ll make good choices.

Bringing myself back there I’ve started to see again the many reminders of who I am, what inspires me, what I’d love to offer and do in life. The job at hand now is to stay in that centre of inner peace and believe in myself enough to reach out and take the opportunities that are sure to come my way if only I am open to seeing them.

Because there are many people out there, kids growing up every day, and the many adults who try their best to raise these kids. Adults, while trying their best, who still have the inner doubts they had that were seeded there when they were kids, which have inevitably attracted many experiences to really enrich the idea that they are not worthy, or are not enough or are different and so on and so forth.

Breaking this chain is what calls me. It’s why I write to create awareness in myself and others, and why I feel called to be and do more to help kids as they are starting to grow, before life gathers too much momentum and shows them time and time again they are not worth it and stop believing it is even worth trying.

So what inspires you? Where have you felt called to be, do or have more than you are/have/do now? When there aren’t those around us who believe we can reach for what inspires us, we live in an age where it’s easier than ever to reach out and read, hear or watch the stories of those who have overcome the odds and made a difference anyway. Will you?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Magic Happens When You Believe in People, Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down, Start From Where You Are, Now Go and Be Great, Mankind’s Great Summons: Turn Your Pain Into Medicine and Heal the World and Finding Your Purpose – the Magic of Those Who Believe in You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I know that might seems obvious, but the more personal work and development I do the more I realise just how often parts of my younger self take the reins by default.

There was a point this week in which I just felt utterly stuck and powerless. It was in relation to a reaction I’d had which, on the face of it, was an overreaction. It was in fact the perfect storm, an accumulation of slights and poor behaviour towards me which I had reaching breaking point on.

The reason I felt stuck and powerless in that moment wasn’t because there were no choices available to me, it was because I couldn’t see them clearly. I was in flight or fight mode, my prefrontal cortex (the thinking part of my brain) was closed for business, my nervous system was dysregulated.

And it wasn’t even that in itself that had made me feel so powerless. It was the knowledge that this was a pattern, a PTSD response to an ongoing toxic situation that is requiring a huge amount of time and persistence to extricate myself from, in tandem with the dearth in understanding among professionals and people generally about narcissistic abuse, which can leave me feeling very frustrated and isolated.

That is a topic for another day perhaps. This week’s lesson was more around the realisation that there is no quick fix in this situation. That making the shift within my nervous system and neurobiology will continue to require focus and practice.

The sympathetic nervous system controls “fight-or-flight” responses. In other words, this system prepares the body for strenuous physical activity. However, while this works well if I’m running from a tiger, it doesn’t help when the threat is more psychological or emotional in nature.

Whether it’s responding to something as chronic as the situation I’ve described, or it is some other threat (perceived or real), the real key is to get the parasympathetic nervous system back online. That is the part of my nervous system which regulates “rest and digest” functions and – more importantly – allows access to more the rational and creative thinking that can allow me to move forward more positively.

There are many ways to do this in the moment ranging from tapping to tension and trauma release exercises and everything in between. Guess what though? With the prefrontal cortex shut down it’s actually near impossible to remember what they are or even feel inspired to try them because every cell in my body is by then responding to what it believes is the equivalent of an immediate and urgent threat. Especially when caught up in the harried details of day to day life.

I was listening to a talk with Jodi Sternoff Cohen, founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, who describes smell as a great way to send a fast message to our brain to calm anxiety in the moment. Having lost her son in a car crash a few years ago, Jodi knows the value of having something that can help navigate life in the moment when our body or brain would otherwise be shutting down.

When she feels herself starting to spiral – or more accurately – become dysreguated, she sniffs an aromatherapy blend of clove and lime to help send a calming signal to her brain.

Of course that is not to say I am (or she is) advocating that I ignore what wants and needs to be processed, it’s simply recognizing that it’s not always possible or appropriate to do that in the moment. With so many mental and emotional pressures, the “threat” isn’t always as immediate or urgent as the body believes so it’s about how to take control and give myself the best opportunity of navigating these situations for the best outcomes.

Working with a client this week, I used a NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) technique that I described in What Resentment, Frustration and Pain Have to Do With Your Boundaries for making changes at a fundamental level. The pattern we were working with was one that many of us face when under stress, when we start becoming more withdrawn and less available not just to those around us, but also to opportunities and choices we just don’t see when we are closed off.

The exercise takes a look at what is showing up in the environment that isn’t wanted. I suspect many can relate to there being a constant tension between too much/not enough work when self employed and feeling a bit stuck. So we started to peel back the layers and look at what sort of behaviours and habits surface in this environment, what beliefs drive those, what are the values driving those beliefs, and therefore what part of the psyche is that person identified with.

Often in stressful situations it’s the survivor in us that takes the driving seat. But going through this process helped us to see exactly what part of their identity was taking the lead, and an opportunity to switch it out to something more positive, like the part of them that thrives on challenges.

With the thriver in the driving seat we then start to look at what the thriver values, what those beliefs look like and therefore what sorts of habits and behaviours show up – and what results - when that part of the psyche drives the outcomes instead.

I find it’s a good tool for creating a shift in both my thinking and energy and taking more control of my experiences rather than being a slave to them.

When I apply this logic to my own situation, and the accumulation of slights and poor behaviour towards me, I can see it sends me into rumination, defence, anger and grief. I become dysregulated and enraged, I believe that I have to respond now, and if I don’t stick up for myself who will? I believe no one understands and I can’t focus on anything else except getting this immediate threat sorted.

This is the reaction of my child-self, a warrior spirit that values justice, reasonable behaviour, rational argument, standing up for myself and quelling the threat. But the threat is – more often than not – not immediate.

Instead if I put my more mature feminine self in the driver’s seat, that part of me that values inner peace, flow and self integrity, things start to look and feel quite different. That part of me believes that what others think of me is their business, only the VIPs in my life get explanations. That part of me truly believes that – with my focus on positive outcomes – I can trust something much greater than myself to figure out the how, I take only inspired action.

And of course that shows up through more supportive habits and behaviours. I meditate, practice gratitude, actively regulate my nervous system, set positive intentions and focus my energy and attention on inner peace. It’s no surprise then that, when this part of me takes the driving seat, things go with more ease.

It’s an active practice, and I can justify both those parts of me being in the driving seat, but I know which one feels better, and which creates the kind of shifts I’m looking for in my life.

If there is an issue you’re stuck with in your life, what part of you is in the driving seat? And what is an alternative that would create an immediate shift and drive better outcomes?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, What Makes You So Afraid of Conflict?, How to Break Free of Addictive Relationship Patterns, What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances and Be Virtuous – Be Victorious. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay 

My daughter got me thinking this week when she exclaimed she doesn’t really know “what I do”. I realised it was time to get loud and proud about the aspects of introversion that are often hard to explain to the outer world and how this shows up in my life in terms of how I choose to spend my time.

In short, introversion is used to describe those of us who feel more comfortable and become more energised by focusing on our inner thoughts, feelings and ideas rather than what is happening externally.

In typical fashion, as I pondered how to explain this, a friend then asked me this weekend how I’d spent my day. I responded “Doing typical introvert type things: thinking, reading, writing and going for a beach walk”. It has been a big week, which in my terms translates to “lots of my energy has been focused outward”.

I figured if anyone is really interested they’d ask what I like to read, write and think about, though of course my friends know me well enough to get the general idea as (being friends) we share lots of common interests.

For my daughter though, the things I’m interested in aren’t particularly on her radar at her age. She sees all the visible things I do like grocery shopping, washing clothes, housekeeping, taking her and her sister to school, extracurricular activities, play dates and appointments and ensuring they are equipped for all those things.

What she won’t notice so much is the thought, planning and organising that goes into a lot of the parenting I do. Like trying to figure out what is good and healthy for the kids in this world of 24/7 online streaming, a smorgasbord of processed food and consumerist choices, and established systems of “norms” (in terms of healthcare, education etc) that get seeded in our psyche one way or another through media, advertising and social conditioning.

Then once those decisions are made it’s about holding those boundaries with persistence and patience and helping the kids regulate their emotional responses which requires a lot of “outward attention juice”, and can be pretty draining if I’m honest. Then constantly reassessing boundaries as the kids grow. That is aside of the specific personal growth and challenges the kids face at each stage, like learning to develop their will, or dealing with conflict healthily.

On one hand, it’s amazing to be able to apply all that I’m interested in (in terms of psychology, human potential, trauma and evolution and so on), but it can be exhausting.

Then of course there are things like: paying bills, taking care of finances and other paperwork such as insurances, taxes and so on; looking after the car, the cat, taking back library books, taking the kids for haircuts and dental appointments and many other details. Sickness, are they sick or just tired or avoidant? How sick are they? What treatment do they need?

This is all completely aside of the business coaching work I’ve started doing or the hours of preparation involved over the last year in responding to a constant stream of lawyer’s letters. Last week I attended a mediation that probably took around 25 hours of my time to prepare for.

This was mixed among a week where my kids were attending their first session of an 8-week course about managing big changes in their life (and one was very apprehensive and therefore required a lot of attention and focus to get there in a positive frame of mind) and two higher education open evenings that each lasted over two and half hours at a time. So at times we would normally be at home relaxing instead we were out among hundreds of people with our attention focused outward.

According to psychologist Jonathan Cheek introverts come in many types and have a blend of qualities from among the others:

• Social introverts - This type of introvert prefers small versus large groups of people. They prefer a quiet night at home over a night out.
  
• Thinking introverts - Introverts in this category tend to spend a lot of time thinking. They are introspective and creative.
  
• Anxious introverts - Anxious introverts often feel unsettled or nervous around people during social interactions.
  
• Inhibited introverts - This type of introvert tends to over think, spending a significant amount of time considering a decision before doing anything.
  

Of course people don’t always fit in neat boxes but, in general, I would agree that like most introverts: being around lots of people drains my energy, I enjoy solitude, I have a small circle of close friends, people might find it difficult to get to know me, too much stimulation leaves me feeling distracted and dissociated, I am very self aware, I like to learn by watching before doing and I have always been drawn to jobs that involve independence.  

Parenting, though, takes things to a whole new level as I am no longer thinking and doing just for myself, I am thinking and doing for three – to greater or lesser extents – throughout years of dependence to independence. And I have to admit in recent conversations with male friends of mine it came to my attention how much of this really is “unseen” to them.

All are what I would call hands-on dads, who actively look after their children and take them to various activities as well as actively helping in the household, one described it well when he told me his wife would say it’s a 70/30 split whereas he’d say more like 60/40. I asked whether he had considered all these “unseen” components of planning and organizing and he admitted that his wife probably does the lion’s share of those.

Given that a lot of this thought and then putting it into action is a real mix of introverted and extravert activity, I imagine it’s all draining in some way to most people. In most families (from what I’ve observed mixing with other parents through school and socially) it does seem like it’s women who still take on this less acknowledged role with their children, despite some also holding down other jobs when, in fact, it is a job in itself.

Some time ago I read that western society, in particular, not only encourages but assumes extraversion. Being productive is highly valued and that means visible effort and results – and those results generally need to be linked directly to money to hold any validity.

There are different estimates and, according to some, extroverts outnumber introverts by about three to one. Author Jonathan Rauch says “While introverts are often labelled as shy, aloof and arrogant, these perceptions often result from the failure of extroverts to understand how introverts function”.

He suggests that extroverts assume that company - especially their own – is always welcome. “They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood."

This is true. And I can assure you that never has it been so important to me as through the parenting years to ensure I focus on self care also. Writing these articles gives me focus, Annette Noontil says “If we have to do for others at least make sure we are learning from it”, that is great advice and taking the time each week to focus on and share what I’ve learned is healthy for me.

As are regular beach walks, doing my meditation, going for a swim and doing some yoga as well as making time for my close friends and deeper connection with others who share my interests.

All in all, given that every single thing we do starts with a thought and our state of being, I get the sense thought the power of taking this inward time is unseen and undervalued next to doing in our society, certainly that has been my experience – and yet it is key to our growth and evolution.

Where do you sit on the scale of introversion to extraversion? Do you have friends and family you could relate to in reading this? If you can relate to it yourself how did it help you? Are there any tips or insights you’d like to share on introversion?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Who You Are, Who Are You? Introduce the Remarkable Human Behind the Roles You Play, How My Kids Helped Me Find My Purpose and Say Yes to You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.