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.

I’m no stranger to being responsible and taking responsibility, perhaps because I’m the eldest in my family, or perhaps it’s just my nature or the way I was brought up. Regardless, if anything, I have an over developed sense of responsibility and often don’t even see the ways in which I am taking on responsibilities that might be better taken by others.

I did a brainstorming exercise with a stay-at-home parent who was feeling quite stuck, asking:

1. What responsibilities do you pick up within your family?
2. What do you do in the way of self care?
3. What lights you up?
4. What blocks you?

It was an interesting exercise, particularly because that first list was huge compared to the others and I recognised a lot of the things I do in there too. After listing all the stuff they had done just in the last day or so, then looking at which of those things they actually enjoy doing (which was a small proportion), it was evident as to why there was an overriding sense of feeling stuck.

It was also useful to start questioning whether:

• Are all the things you are doing necessary?
• Which of these things needs to be done by you?
• Which of these things would be better done by someone else in the family? Or outsourced?

One of the more challenging things I’ve found as a parent is the constant shifting capabilities and developmental needs of my kids. Frankly I’d be happier to just set boundaries as a one-time deal “This is the way we operate and this is what is expected of you” and never think about it again.

Of course that just doesn’t work because the ability of each child is always shifting through the ages and stages, just when I start to feel we have reached some solid ground there it goes shifting again.

I like to understand the broad principles of the way things work and, of all the useful resources I have ever read or heard on parenting, it was a talk on the ages and stages by a lady Mary Willow (who runs Plum Parenting) that has stuck with me.

Mary talked about the broad development categories of our kids:

• Ages 0-7 is about physical growth
• Ages 7-14 is about social/emotional development
• Ages 14-21 is about cognitive development

And she goes into the detail of what this looks like at each stage: the kinds of reasonable expectations we could have and the useful and healthy ways to parent our kids through all of it. Obviously none of these stages are exclusive, there are crossovers, but it’s broadly the age ranges where those capabilities take big growth spurts.

My own kids are in that middle band, still at an age where they need hands on managing and organising throughout their primary and intermediate years. Standing yelling at them from one end of the house to “tidy their room” or similar is as ineffectual as it is energy draining. It usually requires some hands on working alongside to begin, and calm, mindful face-to-face reminders as they get older.

Kids do gradually take more responsibility for planning, organising and logistics, but it requires active management by a parent until they are at least 14 or 15, and probably beyond for most teens today. This has become more noticeable to me as my kids are adjusting to a split living situation and they have to pack and plan ahead a lot more than they or I are used to. It’s a constant juggle of assessing:

• What they are capable of doing for themselves without prompting?
• What do I have to help them to do to help them towards independence?
• What do I just need to do for them at this stage?

That middle one is the challenge. With my tendencies towards over responsibility, perfectionism and efficacy, it can often seem easier just to “do it myself”. It certainly requires a lot of patience and persistence to help others in their independence. 

This isn’t exclusive to parenting though. I am reading Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, it examines – in a world where people are living a lot longer – what the quality of that life is like for those in their twilight years and whether the medical approach is working.

He also examines other circumstances, such as serious or terminal illness, where people become dependent on others. These conclusions, I feel, also apply to children:

• “Many of the things we want for those we care about are the things we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe on our sense of self”
• “We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main paradox and problem for the frail”
• “Safety and protection are not all we seek in life, we seek a life with worth and purpose and yet are routinely denied the conditions that might make it possible”

And while I might consider myself very independent, able bodied and sound of mind at this point in my life – and thus author of my own story to a greater degree – there is no denying my interdependence on others.

I was talking to the kids about respectful communication this week, and asking the reasons why they would want to communicate respectfully. Of course, as children who attend school and have been brought up in a society that uses contrived punishments as commonplace, their first thoughts were about the people and ways in which they would get punished.

It took a while, and a lot of prompting, to get them to think through the natural consequences of being disrespectful. Our inherent interconnection and interdependence can be ruptured so easily without this basic respect.

What I have come to a deeper appreciation of is, while it might be easier to get a young child or a frail elderly person dressed by doing it for them (rather than helping them to do it themselves), or to make my children’s beds (rather than patiently helping and reminding them and managing the process until it is routine), my energy is better invested towards helping others be as autonomous as they are able.

Otherwise, as Annette Noontil says, “When you do for others what they can learn to do for themselves you are taking away their opportunity to learn and grow and it makes them weak. They become dependent on you or others and will resent it.”

Not only that, I realised, it’s all energy that I could be redirecting into my own growth and learning and doing the things I love doing.

So in which ways do you do things for others that you could better serve them by helping do things for themselves?
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Ways to Reach for Growth Rather Than Reacting With Old Conditioned Constriction, Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go? Make the Invisible Visible - Celebrate the Gold in Your Emotional Reactions and Are You Overly Responsible? Actually Seeing Yourself Through Fresh Eyes. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Teal says “

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image by Ri Butov from Pixabay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen to that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image by AD_Images from Pixabay

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

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

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

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

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

I know that story as I have been that mother.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image by jplenio from Pixabay 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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