When people come to see me about the difficulties in their lives I teach them to be more aware of their own thoughts, emotions, reactions and body sensations that occur when they encounter difficulties.
There is a reason for this.
Many years ago, John Bradshaw wrote that you cannot heal what you cannot feel.
Many have sought to debunk this statement, but the reality is that pushing the difficult feelings down so you think you aren’t aware of feeling them, does not allow healing.
The difficult feelings are still there, even when you can’t consciously feel them. And those difficult feelings have a massive impact on your behaviour and reaction to things.
DO YOU WANT TO BE FREE OF THESE REACTIONS TO THINGS THAT YOU CAN’T CONTROL?
Here is what I teach you to do. It is based on the RAIN meditation as taught by Tara Brach.
- Recognise or become aware of your emotions. This includes being aware of what is happening in your body. a. What sensations can you feel? b. Where do you feel them? c. What do they feel like? d. What are the thoughts in your mind?
- Acknowledge and name what you are feeling. This is important as you cannot address the emotions if you aren’t able to identify them. Also, naming your emotions helps you to separate them from you personally.
- Investigate or explore those feelings. This is important to understand where they come from. It is helpful to consider how old the one expressing the thoughts is. Reactions to things come from past events when a difficult incident has become embedded unresolved in your memory. When incidents occur that are similar to the original incident you react according to that unresolved memory.
- Nurture yourself. Offer yourself compassion and kind words of comfort.
Let me share this in a more expanded form.
PROTEST OR TRANSFORM?
Becoming aware of your emotions is important. So often you may feel upset, uncomfortable, angry and not know why. Your rational brain may be telling yourself you are being silly. You may feel alarm because in the past these feelings have led you to behave in ways that have damaged relationships.
I have been taught that when I face difficulties in life there are two choices:
• Protest and push through
• Transform and stop to explore what I am feeling.
Protesting means you just push forward and push the emotions down. You may react in ways you wish you hadn’t. You just push forward and keep going. And this situation repeats and repeats until you do something to get help.
RAIN
Transforming means you stop. You allow yourself time to explore what is happening for you.
You follow the path of RAIN.
RECOGNISE WHAT YOU ARE FEELING
You seek to become aware of what you are feeling. You become aware of the sensations in your body, their location, the type of sensation they are, the words or phrases running through your mind. All these are valuable for you to understand what is happening.
If you take the time, you will realise what you are actually feeling.
Don’t be afraid of those feelings. All feelings are okay. They are vital clues to what is happening for you. They are clues to unresolved issues from the past. Issues that continue to influence the way you react to things.
ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR FEELINGS
Now you have taken the time to identify your feelings you can name them.
This naming is not a shameful or condemning thing to do. It is about recognising without judgement that perfectly understandable feelings you are experiencing.
You may be feeling angry, hurt, confused, shame, fear and so on.
INVESTIGATE YOUR FEELINGS
You have named your feelings, now you are going to investigate them further.
• Where did those feelings come from?
• Are there any memories that come to mind when you investigate those feelings?
• What do those phrases in your head say?
You have found a memory – now it is time to go deeper and explore more of that memory.
• How old were you?
• What was happening for you?
• What were you feeling then?
• Is it reasonable to judge yourself at that age, circumstance?
AN EXPLORATION INTO THE PAST
Often when you explore the source of feelings you find their source is an incident from your childhood.
Looking back now you can realise the child’s feelings and experience were normal for a child of that age and developmental stage. You can see the child you were as a small child who needed support and understanding. You can see that you can’t judge them from an adult perspective, because they were a child. You can recognise that the thoughts the child had are based on the child’s limited understanding of the world. As an adult you can give a different interpretation to the situation and not judge the child for what happened.
NOW YOU UNDERSTAND YOU CAN COMFORT
The natural thing to do now is the offer comfort to that small child. You are the adult looking back at an incident in your childhood. You can recognise that truth of the situation and that the child needed an adult to offer support and love.
You are the adult. It is time for you to comfort the child.
So offer them words of love and support.
“My darling that was so scary.”
“you were so confused.”
“it’s okay now. I am here. I’ve got this.”
THERE ARE MANY WAYS YOU CAN CALM YOURSELF
Comforting yourself as I described above is a really great way to calm yourself.
Mediation can really help to. Guided ones are great ways to start.
Learning Mindfulness is important to help you be able to recognise what is going on in your body. You can also meditate using Mindfulness. At the end of this post I have a link to sign up for my newsletter. Signing up gives you access to a quick mindfulness meditation you may like to try.
You can also try painting. I don’t mean painting some masterpiece. I just mean putting your feelings on to paper. You can swirl paint around. You can paint lines, dots, circles, squiggles, cover the page with paint, mix it all together into a muddy clump. You can use your fingers. Just allow yourself to put on the page what you need to let go of. Remember, if you feel like painting figures, stick figures are fantastic.
Journalling can be another outlet as well.
EXERCISE AND FUN ARE IMPORTANT TOO
You may find taking a walk calming, especially if you walk amongst the trees or on a beach.
Swimming, any form of exercise, yoga, stretches. There are myriad ways you can move.
Remember the importance of just having fun. Laughing with friends or family, throwing a ball around, trying to ride a unicycle!, anything that is fun. Just being able to forget your worries and responsibilities and have fun with others.
WATCHING YOUR DIET
Making sure you eat foods low in sugar is important. As is avoiding too many take aways. Add lots of vegetables into your diet. The healthier your diet, the better you feel.
Restricting sugary drinks and not drinking excessive amounts of alcohol are also helpful.
When your body is trying to cope with excess amount of sugar, too much alcohol for your liver to comfortably process and foods that your body struggles to process and dispose of the waste from, you will not feel well.
Increasingly research is demonstrating a link between your bowel and your brain. The quality of your diet has a massive impact on how you are feeling emotionally.
HOW COUNSELLING CAN HELP
When things in your life have been overwhelming and leave you struggling, it can be hard to recover without specialised help.
Seeing a counsellor specialised in treating these difficulties, which are all referred to as trauma, is important. Do check that the person you want to see is trained in treating trauma. You can’t just repeat sentences every day and hope the trauma can go away.
You don’t have faulty schemas in your head that need correcting. You have painful memories that need to be allowed to be expressed and healed. This does not mean you have to revisit painful memories, just that you need to be able to access the memories stored in your body and release them.
A properly trained counsellor can help you to learn how to calm yourself and feel safe.
When you are able to feel safe you can then learn how to safely heal those difficult memories.
BLUE KNOT FOUNDATION
The Blue Knot Foundation in Australia is the peak body on childhood trauma and runs training for mental health practitioners. Their training and the practice guidelines they have written are internationally renowned.
I have completed many years of Blue Knot Training and follow their practice guidelines in my work.
CAN I HELP?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your trauma, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz