Would You Prefer to be Right or Happy?

I've been asked on occasions in my life whether I'd rather be right or happy and so I now ask this of you.  Would you prefer your world to make sense according to your beliefs even if those beliefs will lead to sadness and disharmony?  Many people would, although they might not recognise this fact.  These patterns run under the surface and are rarely completely conscious.

Or would you prefer to be happy even if this meant challenging the view you've created of the world?  Although it seems the obvious choice on paper, sometimes it can take real courage to accept this choice.

For example, imagine that you've been brought up to believe in the sanctity of marriage over everything else and yours is breaking down.  Do you stay in order to be a "good" person; responsible, reliable, someone who knows the meaning of a promise?  Or do you make the decision to go because it will give you and your spouse a better chance of finding happiness in the future in a way you'd never manage together?

There's no right or wrong choice here.  I'm just asking people to be aware of what they are choosing between.

We generally invest a lot of ourselves in our belief of how the world is.  The things we believe in strongly literally become our world.  These beliefs keep us feeling safe.  They keep a certain amount of order in a chaotic world.

When I was younger, I believed that in order to be cool, you had to have some kind of vice.  So when I initially decided to stop smoking, I had a massive contradiction going on.  I'd already stopped drinking alcohol, so smoking was my last "naughty"  habit.  I believed that by becoming sensible, I would become boring.  Luckily my desire for better health was stronger than this belief and I turned it around.  I changed my beliefs and I now feel my life is far more interesting than it was back then.

Some people believe they'll never get over an event that they experienced.   They may or may not be right but, by believing that and needing to be right, they are removing the possibility of any healing in that area.  I expect we all know someone who carries around the pain from a past event and we often wish on their behalf that they could let it go.  Carrying around pain like this weighs us down and can cloud our whole life.

On the other side, there have been instances where people's belief in their healing has helped them in getting over pain.  Sometimes our belief systems can work for us.

The key is to know when our beliefs are helping us be happy and when they are working against happiness.

Some it can be seen as a virtue to hold beliefs firm and never waver them.  However I'd like to put a contradictory view that it is often healthy to adjust our viewpoint as new information becomes available.

So, if you are the kind of person whose beliefs cause you to be weighed down, please ask yourself the question, "would you prefer to be right or happy?"

Don't Give Up

I went to a funeral last Friday.  Fortunately for me, it wasn't someone I was close to, but it touched me deeply and I was acutely aware of how much the family and close friends must be suffering to lose someone they loved in such a tragic way.  The woman, who wasn't much older than myself, committed suicide after a battle with bi-polar disorder.

As I said, I didn't know her well, and therefore wouldn't presume to talk about her case and her suffering, but it does raise the issue in general about how people suffer with these conditions and how often they, sadly, don't find the help they need to deal with them and embrace their lives again.

As well as the sadness and grief I felt today, I also felt anger.  I felt the tragedy that, in today's society, people still aren't aware enough of these issues to be able to help those that suffer.   But I realise that a part of the problem with mental illness is that it's very difficult to understand what someone is going through unless you've gone through a similar situation yourself.

How can you know how someone can reach the point where they wish to take their own life if you've never felt that low?  How can you understand the bleakness that overtakes everything?  How can you even begin to imagine how someone who is well loved would think that their family would be better off without them?  How can you believe that every bit of hope has gone from them, that they don't believe things will ever get better?

Luckily for me in my story, I never lost hope, even if at times it was only a small glimmer.   The vicar at the funeral today read out a quote from Anne Frank -"Where there's hope, there's life".  And I truly believe that hope is what keeps people alive when they are in the depths of their suffering.

But as well as hope there needs to be professional support.  I know that the help I provide isn't mainstream, and I would never profess to be able to cure people of anything.  However myself and other such health professionals can provide help to ease the emotional suffering people go through.  Kinesiology and homeopathy helped me when I was going through my depression and I wouldn't be where I am today without them.

I have no issue with people who prefer to go down the mainstream route of medication but, please know that if whatever you are doing isn't working, whether mainstream or alternative, there are other options.  There are many therapies and treatments out there.  If one therapist isn't helping, try another one.  If one modality doesn't resonate with you, please try a different one.  If what was helping, stops helping, it may be time to change to something else.  Whatever happens, please don't suffer alone and please don't ever lose hope.

I know what I went through with my own depression.  I know the emotional pain I suffered. I remember countless times when I phoned my homeopath in hysteria, not knowing what to do with myself.  I remember the times I’d lie in my bed in unbearable emotional agony, not being able to find any relief. 

Back then, I didn't feel I could talk about any of this.  At the time I felt that I was probably over-reacting, or I was being weak and crap.  Because I never received a proper diagnosis of my condition,  I often questioned whether I actually had one. 

So I did the opposite, I tried to hide it.  I tried to present a positive, together front for the world.  I tried to be OK.  And because I lived alone and I was OK for a lot of the time, it worked pretty well.  I expect very few people, know what I went through.

I still find it hard to talk about this now, but this isn't about me.  I’m sure many people have gone through what I went through and suffered alone too.  This is about encouraging people to get help.  This is about encouraging people not to give up when things seem so bleak you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.  This is about trying to prevent the suffering people go through when one person feels they have no alternative but to give up.

So please, if you or anyone you know is suffering from emotional pain of any kind, please seek help and know that you don't have to go through this alone.

The Importance of Our Relationship with Mum and Dad

The relationship we have (or had, if they have passed on) with our parents is the most important and fundamental one we'll ever have.  And I'm going to explain just why this is.

Love them or hate them, they are the people who will have influenced us the most in our life.  They are usually the first people we bond with. Or if, for whatever reason, they aren't, that is also significant.  They are the people who teach us about the world.  When we are born we have no frame of reference for how to survive on planet earth.  We scream when our needs aren't met and we sleep - that is it. Our parents teach us values and ways of behaving which they believe will stand us in good stead as we get older and have to survive on our own.

They do this with the best of intentions, but inevitably they will project their own stuff on to us.  They have to do this - it's not possible to explain to a 2 year old that there are "different ways of responding according to our personal truth".

Up until puberty, we tend to lap up our parents' teachings (unless there was some kind of abuse).  Once we hit puberty, we start to find our own individuality and this is where we push against our parents' rules.  This is necessary in order to become our own person, but it is also necessary for parents to hold the boundaries to keep us safe.  As with most things, it becomes about finding a balance and renegotiating this throughout the teenage years.

If this period of time goes smoothly (or as smoothly as anything can go when it's accompanied by buckets of hormones), we come out the other side as an adult and our relationship with our parents will have moved to become a more adult-adult relationship rather then the parent-child relationship or our younger years.

However, often things don't work out quite like that and we're left with relationship problems with our parents.  As adults, we start to see our parents' weaknesses - let's face it, none of us are perfect.  We start to identify our own values and realise how much they differ from those of our parents.  If we're still a teenager or only just out of those years, we can believe that we're right and they are wrong.  And this can continue until we resolve it.

The other thing that can happen is that we don't grow up from the parent-child relationship into the adult-adult relationship.  Sometimes this is down to the parents still treating us like a child and other times it's the child still playing out the same role because they don't know how to change or it feels unsafe to change.  Either way, this will have a massive impact on the way we see ourselves and how we behave in the rest of our life.

Regardless of how we see our relationship with our parents, that relationship will impact the way we relate to other people.  Broadly speaking, our relationship with Mum shapes our relationship with women and our relationship with Dad shapes our relationship with men.  The most obvious relationships it affects are those with a romantic partner and our children, but it will have an effect on other relationships too.

We tend to look for romantic partners who either have characteristics we liked in our parents or have the opposite characteristics of those we have issue with.  Note, I say "have issue" rather than dislike, as often we reject something which is only the symptom of an issue.  This is often what we see when young adults go out with "rebel" boyfriends or girlfriends.  If they are rebelling against the rules of their parents, a romantic partner who doesn't seem to live by rules can seem very attractive, even if deep down they like stability and predictability in their lives.

Then when we have children and we have to find a way to parent, out comes the first manual we have experience of - the manual of Mum and Dad.  On instinct, we behave the same way unless we've consciously made a decision to do something different.  The major things will be easy to change because they are the significant ones.  It's the little things we tend to do the same.  How often do you hear women say with a groan, "I'm turning into my Mum".  I'm sure men find the same thing with their Dads.

Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing if we've resolved any issues in our relationships with Mum and Dad.  If we can openly feel the love for our parents and appreciate them for all their good qualities, then turning into a version of them as we get older might not seem such a terrible thing.  But if we haven't resolve the relationships, then this might seem an awful thing.

The good news is that, like everything, our relationships can be healed.  Our parents were usually doing their best, even if we feel that the best wasn't very good.  Maybe they were coming from a dysfunctional relationship with their own parents, or were trying to adjust to society's rules of the time.  

By healing the relationships, we free us up to not only have a better relationship with Mum and Dad, but also to have better relationships with others.  Our self worth will rise and we will start to attract people on a more equal basis.   We will start to be more comfortable with who we are and we will present that to the world, rather than a mask of how we feel we ought to behave.  

And finally, we usually out-live our parents, so if you want to have a better relationship with them, start looking at healing it sooner rather than later, because once they have gone, although the relationship can still be healed, you may find you have regrets that you weren't able to share it with them.

Projection - What Picture Are We Creating?

I have been motivated to write about this by some comments on a Facebook status.  So often I find these discussions that show up really interesting food for thought.

The post started off with the following picture:

We often find ourselves in situations where we don't feel we're getting a great response from people. Sometimes that will happen, but how we respond to it makes a big difference.

So, firstly we need to acknowledge that we often have a desired outcome to our communication.  For example, if I said "hello" to someone, I would probably expect them to say "hello" back.  If they said "yellow" back, it would somewhat confuse me.

So the next stage would probably be for me to ask myself why they've said that.  They may be trying to be funny.  They may have misheard what I said and "yellow" might be a completely valid response to what they thought they heard.  They might have some kind of learning disability which causes them to respond in an unusual manner.  Or some other options.


So, what most people do in this situation, usually unconsciously, is ask themselves why they might have responded to a "hello" with "yellow".  This means we've missed the option of mishearing because we've already assumed the initial message got through.  We also may make other assumptions which continue to narrow down the options we get.

Maybe we decide that there is no way we'd respond in that way because to us it isn't funny, it isn't clever and it doesn't make sense.  Therefore if we were to respond that way, we would be being extremely rude.

We then project this onto the other person and deduce that they must have been being rude to us.

Then we have an area for possible conflict, especially if the other person projects back onto us their assumptions.  In a more serious example than the one above, it could escalate into a massive falling out.

People can often mis-hear of mis-understand us, or we can with them.  What might seem like a perfectly reasonable statement when it leaves the sender can be received in a very different way.

People have different values.  What might seem rude or offensive to one person, might not even register on the radar of etiquette for someone else.  This can be particularly relevant where there are cultural differences. but it's best not to assume that a similar culture means similar values.

I've found that people very rarely intend to offend.  We want harmonious relationships in our lives.  However, if we mistake our projected meaning for a correct interpretation, we are unlikely to give the other person the chance to explain or make amends.

So what is the solution to all this?  It comes down to awareness, as does so much in life.  If someone's response seems strange, consider there may be an alternative reason to the one that seems to be glaring us in the face.  The key is to catch yourself and break the unconscious pattern.  Once you realise you may be projecting, you can consider other possible reasons for their response.  The best way of resolving the situation is to ask the person what they meant by their response.  Clear, honest and open communication can go a long way to clear up misunderstandings.

So next time you feel uncomfortable, consider whether you are projecting your beliefs onto the situation.

What are you prepared to put up with?

This article is about boundaries.  I've been hearing lately about people who are in unhappy relationships, about those who feel put upon in some area of their lives and those who are just unhappy with their lot. Now, there may be many reasons why this is, but one that often comes up is poor boundaries.

And this comes down to what you are prepared to put up with.

And this is closely related to what you believe you deserve.

Let’s start with relationships.   Does he/she treat you in a way you dislike or take you for granted?  And do you grit your teeth and let it happen or do you stand your ground?

It’s never too late to break a pattern, but it’s easier to set your boundaries at the beginning of a relationship.  Early on in one of my relationships, a boyfriend told me to wear a certain outfit to an event.  Now, I’m sure he was just trying to be helpful and was indicating that he liked the outfit.  However I’m quite sensitive to being told what to do and I certainly didn't want a pattern of being told what to wear, so I deliberately wore something different.  Nothing was said – it wasn't an issue, but he never told me what to wear again.

I wonder, though, what would have happened if I’d decided that I’d wear the suggested outfit in order to “please” him.  I wonder if he’d somehow get a message that I liked this kind of behaviour from him and whether it would have encouraged him to do it again.  We’ll never know, but it can show how the simplest behaviours can set a precedent which creates a lifelong pattern.

I think it’s good to know someone else’s boundaries.  A different boyfriend was always obliging towards me; he always seemed to agree with me on everything.  Although it might seem lovely, it was tiresome.  I wanted to know where his boundaries lay.  My instinct was to push and push until I found them and I had to hold back and be very careful not to treat him harshly.  It was not a good situation.

Over the years, the level of behaviour I believe I deserve has increased and as such my boundaries have become clearer.  Back in the past when I had less self-esteem, I'd be happy to relax my boundaries if it meant I felt more wanted and popular. But, although I had friends, I don't think this behaviour was what attracted them to me.  

As my self-esteem was increasing and I was starting to assert my boundaries, I remember a situation with an acquaintance I didn't know very well. She felt I was causing trouble and had decided to “tell me off” like a naughty school kid but I stood up to her making it known that was not acceptable behaviour to me.  I hadn't done that kind of thing before and I must admit I worried about it all night.  I had to see quite a lot of her so it could have been awkward if there was any lingering bad feeling.  But to my amazement, she came up to me the following day and was very friendly, whereas we’d barely spoken before.  It seemed that something had shifted in her view of me.

Some people regularly stay late at work because they think it'll earn them more points with their boss.  Some people give all their time to their friends because they think they’ll appear a better person.  Some people become ever-pleasing to their boyfriend because they hope he’ll love them more.  These strategies are unlikely to work. 

There’s nothing wrong with giving of your time or your energy, but it’s important to only do it when you genuinely want to and not because you've created a condition to it.  Often these conditions come from a belief in how the world should work, but they may well not be the belief of the other person.

So, at the end of the day, it’s up to you alone to decide what you’re prepared to give and put up with.

Goals not Resolutions

Well, this is the time of year when everyone talks about making new year resolutions.  The changing of the calendar tends to focus the mind and brings the idea of fresh starts.  This is all very well, even though the beginning of the year might not be the best date for everyone, but resolutions tend to assume we're going to make one big change and then stick to it for ... ever, whereas goals tend to be more of a process with a purposeful end.

I'd like to challenge the idea that we are suddenly going to make sweeping changes just because it's January 1st.  I find that making changes is often a bit more complex than that.  

We can find that it takes us a while to start a new plan.  It can definitely take us a while to stick to a new plan.  And often we have to revise the plan along the way so it suits us better.

For example, if our 2014 resolution was to join a gym, we would go along, sign up, pay the money and then try and make ourselves go on a regular basis.  The success rate would be dependent on many things: our time available, our energy available and how much we really wanted to be going to a gym in the first place.  If we stop going, then we can feel we've failed.

If, however, we set a goal to be fitter by the summer (how you determine that is up to you), then we might start off by joining a gym, but quickly realise it's not for us.  We might try out a taster day instead of actually signing up.  Maybe we then hear about different types of exercise and try them out until  we find something that suits us.

If, along the way, other things come up, we can choose how we manage them with our fitness, knowing we can pick up again when they calm down.

But the main difference with goals is that until we get to the summer, we have no way of telling whether we've succeeded or failed as the process is ongoing.  But with the resolutions, we can often feel failure as soon as our plans slip.

So be kinder to yourselves and set goals rather then resolutions this year.

It's Christmas (oh heck!)

So December has arrived for its annual visit and the shops are full of festive cheer.  I've heard that people have started decorating their homes, although I leave mine a bit later than this, due to the fact that my Christmas tree is so large it takes up too much space for it to be there too long.

Now, I love the festive season.  I love the build up, the parties, the choosing presents for my loved ones, the singing of carols, and finally spending Christmas itself with my family.  But I realise from talking to other people that not everyone is so lucky.  So I thought I'd address this here and offer some help.

Christmas is a very significant time of the year.  Whether we like it or not, we're sold a fairy tale annually by the retail community.  As much as we may try to ignore it, it's very difficult not to compare your experience with this.  If, for whatever reason, your past Christmases weren't brilliant, you may have a sinking feeling each year.

If you are now the one responsible for "getting Christmas together", you may feel a lot of pressure to make it perfect for all your guests, which can leave you tired and time-starved before it even arrives.

If you are unfortunate to have had a sad occasion happen at a previous Christmas, the arrival of each year can trigger unresolved grief.

If you used to have great Christmases, but your situation has now changed and you've lost these, this annual holiday can bring up unresolved feelings of regret.

And finally, if you're unfortunate to have to spend Christmas with people in whose company you wouldn't normally choose to spend time, you may end up with conflict and maybe even arguments.

The good news is, that in all these situations, kinesiology can help clear the stress.  It gently removes the stress around the triggering events and changes the association we have linked to Christmas.  It will leave you feeling happier and less burdened and more able to enjoy the festive season in your own way.

So if you'd like to create the positive Christmas experience you'd really like, please do get in touch - 01635 581682 or roskitson@googlemail.com.

The Powerlessness of Rescue

I love creating the titles for all my blogs, but this has got to be one of my favourite.

Firstly, when I talk about rescue, I'm not referring to rescue from massive environmental disasters, or the sort of essential help we receive when we're ill.

What I'm talking about is the need some of us have to rescue people from their problems - the sort of problems they go round and round in circles with - the sort of problems that can impact on our lives by the very behaviour others exhibit - the sort of problems that the other person doesn't recognise as a problem.

The thing is, no-one can fix another person.  Their journey is just that - their journey.  As hard and as painful as it can be to see someone suffer, nagging them to change or rushing over to make everything as painless as you can is often not the best of most constructive help you can give.  I'm going to focus on some of the consequences of doing this.

Firstly, it can be very annoying.  I remember when I was struggling with various things in my life, people would offer "helpful advice" and then get annoyed with me when I explained why it wouldn't work.  The truth was that, although the advice was logically sound, I wasn't ready to make that step.  I needed to sort other stuff out first and no-one else but me could possibly know what order I needed to heal areas of my life in.

Secondly, it can be very dis-empowering.  If you're rescuing someone who laps up the help, it can lead to reliance on the helper.  Also it can lead to low self-esteem if the person feels they can't fix things his or herself and this can lead to a reluctance to even try.  This something I've been taught all the way through my professional training.  Do not encourage clients to become dependent on their therapist in the long term.

Thirdly, we need to be aware that rescue might be fulfilling a need in ourselves to be useful, to be appreciated, to be the one who's indispensable.  If these needs are left unchecked, what will happen if the person we are rescuing gets better.  Will we suddenly have a gap in our lives?  Does part of us need them not to on some level?  Or will we transfer our rescue on to someone else?  Some people have a pattern of helping good causes.  This is fine if it's in balance, but it can also mask a problem of not wanting to focus on ourselves.

If you find yourself in this situation, I invite you to think about the following questions.

Is the help you're offering life saving?  Obviously this is a no-brainer.  We're not suggesting leaving a loved one to die or have serious injury, but are you the best person to be dealing with it.  It might be more relevant to phone the emergency services and leave it to them if it happens repeatedly.

Are your worries for the future realistic or are you considering the worst case scenario?  Often our fears surpass what is likely to happen.  If you're not sure, reach out to someone else for an opinion that isn't clouded by the emotion of the situation.

What would you choose to do if your fear wasn't there?  Did you already have plans which the rescue would interfere with.  Maybe someone else go to help this time or maybe they could wait a bit until you're free to go.

What kind of help do you think is expected of you?   Is the person even asking for help or are they just letting you know what's happening with them?  If they are wanting help, do they mean they want you to drop everything and rush over to fix their whole life or do they want something a lot smaller from you?

Remember the best help is that which is given for our greatest and highest good.  Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.  Sometimes it's in the low points that we find the courage or the reason to change. I know that  I often have low points when I don't want to face something about my life, or I don't want to take some kind of action that would be beneficial.  No-one is a higher authority on our journey than ourselves, so be careful not to seem to be taking that authority away from another person.  The best thing we can do for another person is to support them in their journey with love, whilst focusing on our own needs.

Fear and Procrastination

How many of us put things off, which we know would be better if they were done now.  I know I have to put my hand up for that one.  For all those who scroll down to read the previous blog post, you'll see it was in August.  So for just over 2 months, I've procrastinated writing a new post.

I can come up with a thousand excuses; some of them sound very reasonable, some sound just plain ridiculous (even to me).  The truth is that I've procrastinated.  I've diverted myself onto other things because I haven't wanted to write.  I've wasted time because I haven't wanted to write.  I've even been ill for a little while, which gave me an excuse not to write.

But the truth of the matter is that there has been fear preventing me from writing.  Not the kind of easily identifiable fear.  I don't expect a big monster to come and eat me if I tap keys on my laptop.  No, this is the kind of hidden fear that lurks in the shadows and suggests that something bad might happen.  It doesn't quantify what, because then I could rationalise it away.  And it doesn't clearly explain to me what I'm frightened of; it persuades me I don't like writing, which is actually completely false, because I'm loving writing this.  It persuades me that I don't know what to write, which is also false, because I didn't know what I was going to write before I started writing this post and yet the words have come.

No, the truth is that I'm fearful of something deeper.  Maybe it's fear of failure, maybe fear of success, maybe fear of opening up, maybe fear of making a mistake. Maybe a bit of all of those.

The other important thing is that I'm completely normal.  It's take me a long while to come to that realisation, but it's true.  No matter how much I feel I'm alone with this, most people are fearful.  Some people are fearful of standing up in front of people, whether it's doing a presentation of being in a show.  Some people have a fear of making a phone call to someone they don't know.  Some people are fearful of asking for help and support.

Now, the thing with fear is that it can often come from events in our past.  If we had a bad experience in a school play, we might fear being on stage now.  However, sometimes the fear comes from doing something new, from stepping out of our comfort zone.  If you've always labelled yourself as someone who doesn't make phone calls, it's going to take you a little while to become comfortable with it.  I got into writing this blog over the spring and summer, but the longer I've left it unwritten, the harder it has been to reconnect with it.

The first step is literally taking the first step.  I've sat down at my laptop.  I invite you to stand up on stage, even if it's alongside someone else.  I invite you to pick up the phone and make one call on your list.  I invite you to ask one person for some help, even if it's the tiniest thing.  I invite you to take that first step and to realise that the monster doesn't actually come.  And when you've done that, congratulate yourself and plan step 2.

It's OK to feel fear while you're doing this.  We don't have to clear all the fear before we take action.  In fact, it is often not possible to do this.  We often have to take action in order to clear the fear.

So, I wish you courage to take the next step in to your power and I would love to hear how you get on.

Are you feeling down?

A couple of days ago, I met up with a friend, who was not feeling her normal positive self.  She had a couple of nerve-racking events coming up, but she seemed very flustered generally.  She said she felt heavy and seemed to lack her normal confidence.

So I thought I'd write a little article about why this happens and how we can get ourselves out of it.

Firstly, I'd like to say that this is a pretty normal reaction to the stresses and strains of every day life.  From time to time we're bound to slip off the positivity plateau that I'm sure all my readers frequent on a regular basis.  Oh, you don't?  Well read on...

There's a big difference between falling off this plateau and staying down.  The second state is one which hopefully you can avoid.

Our emotional state is one which will always fluctuate.  The word emotion can be broken down into e-motion.  The "e" stands for energy, so emotions are energy in motion.  Hence they are designed to move, ie fluctuate.  There is no problem with feeling anything in life.  The problems come when you get stuck there, as anything which is stuck can't move.

The other point to recognise is that this movement is in a vibratory pattern.  How fast or slow these emotions vibrate depends on how positive or negative they are to us.  In simple terms, the closer they are to love or fear - love being the most positive and fear being the most negative.  Try it out for yourself: what order would you put the following: contentment, anger, frustration, bliss?

The next thing is what to do about it.  Well there are a few options.   The easiest and quickest is to use your self-talk to boost your emotional vibration.  Your what, I hear you cry?  Your self-talk - the little voice inside your head which, if you're feeling negative, is probably saying ridiculously untrue things like "I'll never do it", "I'm not good enough" and often gets worse and worse as we spiral downwards.

For some reason us humans find this state quite sticky.  We can very easily get immersed in such a state, but we do ourselves great harm with negative self-talk.

So the obvious solution is to monitor what we're thinking and change it for the opposite.  So if we find ourselves saying "I'll never do it", immediately change this to "I'll easily do it".  You may not believe it straight away, but if you keep replacing the negative statements with positive ones, then you'll soon start to. You only believe the negative ones because you've repeated them so much.

This works very well for sudden emotion drops, when they are a temporary state.  For more long term states of low emotion, we often need to do a bit more.  It's still worth replacing your self-talk, but often we find it harder, or the results come more slowly, which can discourage us.  It might be worth interrogating the emotions (gently) to find out where they came from.  We might recognise them as the voice of a parent or teacher from when we were younger and that might be enough for us to disown them and replace them with a new positive voice of our own.

If we're still not getting the results we want, chatting to a friend can help.  Remember, it's great to talk to someone who can empathise with the fact you're having a hard time, but not someone who's going to agree with you that life sucks, unless you really want to remain stuck in a low vibration.

And if none of this is helping, it might be worth getting some professional help.  I can help you find the root cause of the negative emotions and help you transform them in to positive ones.  There's no need to stay down.

The Process of Process

Process is a word that comes up a lot in healing circles.  People talk about being in process or processing stuff, but what does it actually mean and how does it work?

When something changes in our life - circumstances, or our feelings about something - we go through a period of transformation.  Sometimes that's quite smooth and quick, but at other times it can be quite challenging.

Take, for example, moving house.  When moved from my last house to my present one, both of which I liked, there was a period where I felt uncomfortable in the new house.  I hadn't yet got to the point where I felt at home there, but I'd already left the last place, so I couldn't return there either.  Eventually I made the new place home and things became more comfortable, but the period of adjustment is what we know as the process.

One thing that can come up during a process is uncertainty.  That may be one of the reasons I found it hard to adjust my new home - it was all new and unfamiliar.

However process happens with other types of change too.  It might be that an organisation or group you're involved in wants to change something.  The tendency is often to resist the change or take it as a personal criticism, but it might be that the change will result in something even better.  We might want to resolve everything very quickly so we know where we stand, but we will probably have to go through a period of process.  If a large number of people are involved then they will need to have their views heard and they may change their views during the process.  The uncertainty can feel uncomfortable until a new equilibrium is found.

In the same way, when we go through therapeutic healing, whether we do this by ourselves or with a professional therapist, we are also going through a change. We're changing from the person we were to the person we are becoming.  Although this will be a positive change, the unknown element can make it feel a bit strange for a while.  As unresolved issues come to the surface, we can feel uncomfortable.  As we let go of the old, we can feel a bit empty.  As we take a new step into the unknown, we can feel vulnerable.

The key to all this is patience and trust.  An awareness of what process is can make it easier for us. Rather than panicking that we're somehow going mad or that a decision feels wrong, we can ride it out calmly.  It is also important to let others go through their own process.  By recognising this, we can give them space and respect until they have found their new balance.

So I wish you the best for your next process.  Enjoy.

Forgiveness Sets You Free

I first learnt about forgiveness when I was in school.  It's mentioned in the bible and in the Lord's Prayer, but I never really understood what it was all about.  I thought back then, that it was all about letting the other person off the hook; saying "I'm OK with what you did to me".  I thought it was all about setting the other person free.

So therefore, over the years, there have been many things that have happened that I have not wanted to forgive.  Being a person who used to hold onto stuff, this was probably even more of an issue to me than to some people.  I wanted people to understand what they'd done to me - although, interestingly, I rarely actually told them.  I wanted them to feel the pain that I felt.  However I doubt they ever did, when I couldn't tell them how I felt.  So instead, I carried around the pain and the inability to let the past go.

I've since found out that forgiveness has very little to do with the other person.  It's all do do with us - setting ourselves free of the past.  It is also often to do with reconciling ourselves with what we've experienced through our interaction with another person, but we do it for ourselves.  

It still can be difficult.  We have to understand that the other person may not have been able to do any better at that particular time in their lives.  This can be challenging if their behaviour contravenes our values.  However it's good to remember that we've all behaved less than impeccably at some point in our lives, even though we didn't intend to.

But that's not the hardest part.  That comes next when we have to forgive our part in it.  What do you mean? I hear you cry. It wasn't my fault.  I didn't ask for it to happen. No, I'm sure you didn't. People rarely do ask for unpleasant things to happen to them.  However there is usually emotional residue left around the fact that we let this stuff happen to us.  

We can have attachment to the fact we weren't stronger or wiser or more aware; that we didn't choose to walk away; that we didn't fight back.  Whatever it is, we need to forgive ourselves in order to complete the process and move on.  We are on our path, just like everyone else and it is pointless to beat ourselves up for not being far enough along before the event to have the insight that the event has given us.  After all, we learn and grow from the challenging experiences we have.

Once you've done all this, you will hopefully be able to see the event as just another experience of your life, that has positively made you into the person you are today.

Then you have set yourself free.

Go With the Flow

It's snowing here. I'm wrapped up in several jumpers and working from home.

But I had planned to have a singing lesson, do my shopping and then head over to see my boyfriend in Marlborough.

So what to do?  Well, the singing lesson was cancelled, so that decision was out of my hands. I've now been sitting here, listening to the radio and reading Facebook updates, both of which suggest the roads are getting worse.  The advice is very strongly "don't drive unless you have to".  So I'll probably survive without a trip to Sainsburys.

That leaves the 3rd trip. Obviously I want to see my boyfriend, but I have to put safety first.  I'll see how conditions progress, but it's not looking good.

Now, the point of this article is to talk about how I feel about these changes.  I have options; I could feel stressed and angry.  I could resent the weather for affecting my plans. I could feel hard done by.

Or, I could accept the situation and appreciate the beauty of the landscape covered in its blanket of white.  I could make the most of the extra time to get jobs done.  I could go out for a walk and enjoy the surroundings close up. And I can phone my boyfriend.

We all have a choice in how we respond to situations we find ourselves in.  And this goes for any situation. We have a choice as to whether we see ourselves as a victim or as someone in control of our lives.

So decide how you'd like to respond to the snow, and make the most of the circumstances you find yourself in.

The Storm Before the Lull

What I'm referring to is the way that things are often at their worst just before the pressure lifts and we find calm again.

I'm sure many of you can relate to a deadline, loitering in the distance, gradually approaching and finally looming up right in front of us.  And if we've left the task to the last moment, we'll probably experience a large amount of stress. So we rush around, plough through the stress, and finally reach the deadline. Hopefully the task will be finished and done well, but either way, the pressure will now be off, there will be a lull after the storm of stress we've just been through.  We may have lessons to learn from the experience - to be more organised in the future, that we are capable of things we didn't know we were before.  But we also get to have a rest before the next "storm" brews.

As with deadlines, so a similar thing happens with emotional challenges.  But often with them, we don't understand  it in the same way.  And also as with deadlines, we tend to have a series of emotional challenges or lessons throughout our lives, as this is the way we learn and grow.  So, as this is set to continue, it might be useful if we understood the process a bit better.

I started noticing this when I'd have huge periods of stress or feeling very low.  Sometimes things would feel at rock bottom. I'd feel down but not know why.  And I'd think "here we go again".  Then after it had got about as bad as it could get and I'd spent a day in tears, suddenly I'd wake up and feel normal again.  And although I was hugely relieved, I'd feel rather confused.

I've often thought that it would be far easier if I could just deal with my emotional challenges before they become that stressful, but somehow it doesn't seem to work like that.  And I believe this is because we tend to protect our past pain - rather too well.  This is quite understandable: if we were hurt badly in our past (and this could have been when we were a very small, vulnerable child) and we've hidden that pain away because it was too difficult to deal with at the time, then it's reasonable that we don't want to revisit it now.  Our memories of the pain are always stronger than our memories of the event.  That's our protection mechanism. So it can take a lot of discomfort before we access it and release it, which we finally do at the end of the storm.

So next time you feel a storm, take consolation from the likelihood that once you've resolved the current emotional challenge, you will find calm again.