nanc – Page 16 – PLC Blog

Finding the Gold in Dark Places

There is a metaphor about dark places and the gold you find there.

It is true. Mines are where precious metals and stones are found.

Mines are also dark places. They are dangerous. There is the risk of flooding, cave-ins, getting lost in the dark, falling down a shaft, being overcome by poisonous gases.

But for all the dangers there is also treasure to be found. Gold, diamonds, opals, metals like tin and copper, coal. All these treasures have a value that make working in those dark places worth it.

For the multitudes who came to Australia during the Gold Rush of the 1850s, gold was the prize they searched for in those dark places.

WHEN YOU ARE IN THAT DARK PLACE

You can find yourself in a dark place. There is no light, no easy way to find your way out, the risk of flooding emotions, being buried under overwhelming feelings and helplessness, fear and other emotions so powerful you can barely breathe.

THE TIME OF PANIC

It is so easy to panic. To run screaming through the darkness. To run into walls, fall over obstructions you cannot see and find yourself falling deeper into those hidden shafts.

Maybe for a while you do panic.

AFTER THE PANIC

Eventually you may find yourself lying on the floor of this dark place. You may be feeling terrified, too terrified to move anymore. You may be totally exhausted, unable to do anything, unable to get up or even think.

There may come a time when you realise no one is coming to help you. You can stay and die in this mine, or you can calmly evaluate your situation and find a way out.

TIME TO JUST BE

So you get up and sit against a wall.

WHAT YOU FIND IN THE DARKNESS

As you sit, thinking of what to do, you may notice something glowing in the darkness. As you look closer you may see the gold there. It may be a few small specks, or it may be a huge nugget.

Whatever it is, there is enough value in this gold to benefit you.

This gold is your way out of this dark place.

So you take it and leave your dark place.

FINDING THE LIGHT AGAIN

You may have to clamber up piles of rocks, balance precariously along narrow bridges, cling to the wall as you edge your way along shallow ledges.

Eventually you will see the light and emerge into the day with its brightness, and sunshine, and warmth.

HOW THE GOLD HELPS YOU

As you embrace this wonderful world of light and safety, you may notice the gold you found.

This is the gold that empowered you and allowed you to find your way out of the darkness.

This is the gold that has changed you.

This is the gold that has enhanced your life here and now. The gold that you will take with you into the rest of your life. The gold that has allowed you to grow.

That gold you found in the dark place is precious. It has enhanced your life. It has made the your that faces the future richer than the you that was lost in that dark place.

FIRST THE DARK THEN THE GOLD

It is important to remember you would never have found the gold without being in that dark place. You would never have found the gold without the panic that left you running terrified into the dark. You would never have found the gold if you hadn’t stopped and waited. If you hadn’t allowed time to calm down and wait.

You may not enjoy being in the dark places. They are scary and damp and dangerous. But they are also places where you can learn beneficial things. Places where you can grow.

If you allow yourself time, you can emerge from the dark place with new treasures that will benefit you in your life.

LIFE IS DIFFERENT FROM THE MINE

One important thing to remember that is different from being on your own in a mine is that in life people can walk beside you. If you allow them to.

If you can’t find someone who can walk beside you and not get lost themselves then counselling is really beneficial for you. I can walk beside you. I can give you the space to sit and wait. I can help you find that gold and walk beside you as you take your gold into the open air. Then I can help you learn how to use that gold in your life.

Are you willing to get out of the mine?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with getting out of the mine, 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

We Need To Stop Rushing And Respect The Time Healing Takes

There was an advertisement I remember seeing when I was younger. It was about people rushing to work in wet weather and looking sick. The jingle ran the slogan “soldier on” and showed the people taking some cold and flu tablet and continuing on with normal activities.

That is what we have been taught for years. To not stop. To soldier on.

EUROPEAN ATTITUDES TO HEALING

15 years ago I was living in Europe. I got pneumonia. I couldn’t “soldier on” because I was too sick to get out of bed, let alone consider going anywhere.

After I recovered, one of my European friends told me to rest for 3 weeks. She was surprised that it had never occurred to me to rest for 3 weeks. That was what you did in Europe. It was generally accepted pneumonia took that long to recover from. In fact it was generally accepted all illnesses took time to recover from.

THE RUSH TO BE OVER THINGS

The incident with the pneumonia made me think about our society and how we rush to be over things. We even feel guilty taking extra time to rest until we are fully better, instead rushing to get back into things as soon as we feel just a little better.

This not only applies to our physical health. It also applies to our mental health; to the traumas and losses we experience.

We apply the same “soldier on” mentality to grief. There is no allowance made for the time it takes to process and recover from a loss event.

RECOVERY IS REHABILITATION

I read an article lately in which the writer described the recovery time as rehabilitation. Rehabilitation’s Latin roots mean to stand, make or be firm again. This means recovery is about being able to stand again.

That is the aim of counselling. To be able to stand firm again.

When you have a physical injury, you usually seek medical help. When you are struggling with grief you may seek mental health help and you may feel you are failing because you aren’t “over it” yet.

RECOVERY TAKES TIME AND EFFORT

If you are recovering from a physical injury, there is an understanding that recovery takes time and effort.

There needs to be an awareness that a mental injury, like grief, requires time and effort to recover and be able to stand firm again.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…

It is important to remember that physical injury recovery does not necessarily involve a complete return to past normal. What happens instead is a return to a new normal.

This is the same process with grief. How can you lose someone you love and not be changed by that? The recovery process in grief involves a return to a new normal.

Recovery is often an improvement in the current circumstances rather than a return to past normal.

PUSHING AT THE LIMITS

With a physical illness, the rehabilitation regime encourages people to push gently at the limits of what they are able to do. This prevents the person being trapped in a shrinking range of movement. What happens when those limits are tested is that the person expands their range of movement.

How do you test the limits of grief? What can you do to gently push at the limits of what you are able to do?

THE BALANCE OF RECOVERY FROM GRIEF

Recovering from grief is a tricky balance. Initially you need to allow yourself time to just be. To allow yourself to catch up with the pace of events.

You need to sit with what has happened. You need to allow yourself the space to absorb the reality of what has happened.

You also need to allow yourself time to cry, experience a range of emotions, push back against what has happened, wonder how you will ever be able to stand firm again.

PUTTING YOUR GRIEF IN PLASTER

If you picture grief as an injury, this is the healing time. It is the time when your grief is “in plaster” and the broken pieces are knitted together.

Notice that broken bones heal because the bone heals itself. The plaster is merely there to hold the bone together in a good position to allow it to heal.

Allowing yourself time to just be is like the plaster around a broken bone. You do the healing, the time to just be gives you support to heal.

BEING LEFT IN PEACE

Hildegard of Bingen, a famous healer of the middle ages, described healing as greening. She believed that to be healed is to be reinvigorated by the same force that gives life to everything, from trees to human beings.

Gavin Frances, a GP who specialises in recovery, describes healing as being like growing a plant. We need the right nutrients, environment and attitude and to be left in peace.

That last phrase is really important. To Be Left In Peace.

PLASTER OFF, NOW THE ACTIVE RECOVERY

At some stage the plaster comes off.

You are now in active recovery time. The time when you undergo rehabilitation.

This is the time of testing limits, of increasing your range of movement.

This is the time when you slowly increase your range of activity. When you step out in the world again.

THE CLASH WITH THE MEDICAL MODEL

The medical model approach to mental health is an extension of the physical health model. It works on the assumption that all treatments should be measurable and reproducible. This leads to one size fits all models for treating mental health issues. It even pathologises grief!

The medical model doesn’t work well with all physical illnesses. It overlooks the fact that human beings are individuals so one size fits all does not work. It also overlooks the part our emotions play in healing.

If the medical model doesn’t work with all physical illnesses why do we think it will work with mental health challenges? Why do we think overlooking emotions is going to lead to healing?

ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR SUFFERING

It is always important to acknowledge your suffering. And, if you come to see me, I will also acknowledge your suffering. Because you need the validation of others recognising that you are suffering.

Just as with a physical injury, sometimes you need outside help to assist with healing. For a physical injury it might be a physiotherapist.

If grief gets overwhelming a grief trained counsellor is important to see.

It is important to give yourself the opportunity to express all those jumbled emotions around grief. To express the

• “what ifs”,

• the “if onlys”,

• the “I should haves”,

• the guilt at what you did or didn’t do,

• the harsh judgements of your behaviour,

• the anger at yourself, your loved one, the world.

• The utter desolation at losing this important person from your life.

It is important to allow yourself to be human. To allow yourself time to gently try your limits. To accept that recovery is about being able to stand again, not returning to what once was.

Then we can see your grief as “possibilitation”. This is the opportunity to work towards the best possible version of your life.

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief recovery and learning to stand firm again, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

The Truth About Mental Health and Pills

When Freud published his ground breaking work on mental health over a century ago, mental health treatment moved from the dark ages of asylums to recovery. But over the past 30-40 years, mental health treatment has been pushed aside and relegated to something only people with money can afford.

HERE ARE SOME STATISTICS.

In 1986, people diagnosed with depression were sent to therapy. Less than half of those diagnosed with depression were given some form of medication. The go to treatment for depression was therapy.

Now, almost 40 years later, you are more likely to be prescribed a medication for depression. Four times as likely.

Being referred to therapy is rare.

The reason for this was the marketing of the SSRI and SNRI drugs such as Prozac.

THE CHEMICAL IMBALANCE MYTH

In the marketing speak of the pharmaceutical companies you had to take pills. With the lack of ways of examining the brains of living people it was easy to insert the idea that depression was caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain.

In our modern culture people prefer instant fixes. When we get a cold, we buy a cold and flu tablet to help us get over it quickly. When we have depression, instead of taking the time to find the root cause and treat it, so we are less likely to get depression again, we head for the quick fix of a medication.

These days, the idea of a “chemical imbalance” is widely believed to be the truth.

THE TRUTH

The fact is, there is no “chemical imbalance” causing depression. Depression is caused by unresolved issues.

The belief that a tablet will “change” your brain where therapy won’t is widespread.

The truth is, therapy does change your brain and those changes will occur without harming your brain.

The truth is, the SSRIs and SNRIs damage the brain when used long term. What was only intended to be used for a short period of a few months maximum is now used year after year after year.

I see a lot of people who want to get off these drugs that they have been on for years. We can try and we can hope the damage done to their brains is repairable. The sad truth is increasing evidence shows long term use of these drugs causes damage. Like tobacco in past decades, there has been no court case to set a legal precedent to establish the damage caused. But like tobacco, that day will come.

THE FACTS

Here are some facts:
• Researchers can find no evidence of chemical imbalances in the brains of depressed people.
• Multiple research studies have failed to find any evidence of chemical imbalances in the brains of depressed people.
• Some people can be helped by these drugs, but so can people given placebos. Actually there is no significant difference in the effectiveness of the drugs compared to placebos.
• Exercise helps significantly more people with depression than drugs.

Here are some other facts:
• researchers discovered an overwhelmingly strong link between childhood trauma and depression in adulthood in the 1980s
• A stronger link to suicidality and childhood trauma was also discovered
• These findings have been replicated in multiple research studies.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS?

The facts demonstrate:
• Bipolar disorder is caused by emotional dysregulation that occurs as a result of childhood trauma.
• If you have childhood trauma you are 3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia than those without a trauma history. Increase the number of traumatic events and the likelihood increases exponentially.
• If you have autism you are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia due to misinterpretation of your autism symptoms.
• People with schizophrenia have multiple traumas that make emotional regulation, the organising of thoughts and connecting with reality incredibly difficult.

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BRAIN OF A CHILD EXPOSED TO TRAUMA?

Research has shown children living in traumatic environments are constantly in fight-flight-freeze mode. Their bodies respond by releasing cortisol and adrenaline into their systems. These effects are frequent and can last for hours.

The brains of these children are activated by the fight-flight-freeze mode. This happens so often their brains are primed to react quickly to danger and take longer to go back to normal.

These defence systems in the body fire again and again and again.

The child is flooded with emotions like fear, anger, shame, guilt and sadness. This flooding of emotions prevents the parts of the brain that plan and control emotions from developing fully.

The protective lining on brain cells does not form properly. Research has shown that even DNA is altered. If this happens severely enough genes in the DNA can be switched off.

There is often no adult available to help that child calm down and regulate. As the child grows they may well use cigarettes, alcohol or drugs to soothe themselves.

WHAT IS THE COST OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA?

If you have childhood trauma you are:
• 2 times more likely to smoke
• 5 times more likely to use illegal drugs
• 7.5 times more likely to abuse alcohol
• 10 times more likely to inject drugs
• 30% more likely to be sedentary
• 60% more likely to be severely obese.

You can see where this is going. If you smoke, take drugs, abuse alcohol, are obese and sedentary or any one of those things you are at higher risk of 7 of the leading causes of death. That is heart disease, cancer, lung diseases, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease and suicide.

IF PILLS DON’T WORK WHAT DOES?

Therapy by a trained therapist works to heal the psychological injuries and to help you learn the skills necessary to cope with the stress of life and be able to regulate your emotions.

It may be that you might need pills for short periods of time during crisis periods, but the real healing will come from properly targeted therapy.

Research has shown that DNA recovers with therapy. This does not happen with pills where the DNA damage remains.

Other research has shown that after therapy 80% of people who took pills will suffer another depressive episode compared to 30% of people who received therapy.

IF YOU WANT TO HEAL, CHOOSE A TRAUMA TRAINED THERAPIST.

I am a trauma trained therapist with over a decade of experience treating trauma. 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

Losing Someone Is and Isn’t Like Losing My Phone

Have you ever lost something important, like your purse or phone, and raced back to find it, only to have it never be found again?

What was that like to experience that?

Most people asked that question will say they felt panic and disbelief. Panic at how they would manage without it and disbelief that it could be lost.

Then they started to berate themselves at losing it.

Up came the “if only I had been more careful”. “If only I had checked to make sure I had it at such and such a place.”

Many people report feeling sick at the thought of losing this item. They may feel disoriented and very vulnerable. Then they start to wonder what will happen. How will they manage without their phone, credit cards, money.

We form attachments to objects and people

When we lose things we are often devastated. We have a strong attachment to the things we own, particularly those that matter to us.

It is similar with people we are attached to. The people who matter in our lives.

Neurologically that attachment can be seen in the brain. We have neuronal pathways in our brains that allow us to experience what others are feeling. When we see another person performing an activity our mirror neurons respond. When we see another person hurt themselves we can understand their pain. More recently neuroscientists have identified the role of mirror neurons in human attachment. The attachments we form with the people we are closest to.

What’s it like losing someone you love?

If you can imagine being so upset at the loss of a phone or purse, what would it be like to lose the person you love deeply?

Many words come to mind:

Devastated, deprived, destitute, stripped, bereft, bereaved.

These words are synonyms of each other.

Other synonyms are disbelief, disorientation, vulnerable.

Similar reactions to losing your phone but much more extreme.

When I was looking for synonyms for bereaved I not only came across the above words, but I also came across other phrases.

One “to be robbed” was a surprise. But when I thought about it I realised it made sense. This important person in your life is gone. You search for them. You don’t believe you could possibly have lost them. You berate yourself for being so careless. You start on the what ifs and progress to the how will I manage?

You search, even hunt for the person, for evidence of their continued existence. You feel disbelief. You bargain to keep them here. You start on the what ifs. You are anxious, fearful, sad, disbelieving, terrified and feeling guilty.

You have a strong sense of how unfair this all is. You may even think you don’t deserve this. Worse, you may feel that is your lot in life, to have everyone leave you.

Putting off the inevitable until it catches you

Although death is inevitable, we all push that knowledge aside and don’t think about it. We don’t think about our own death and we don’t think about the death of those we love. So unless we know someone is dying, we don’t prepare for that time.

Despite your strongest desire to not be here, here you are.

Life is suddenly hard. So, so hard.

You are struggling and experiencing many things: Here is a list of some of the things you may be experiencing:

• Insomnia
• Physical exhaustion
• Loss of time
• Confusion
• Sadness
• Anger
• Clumsiness
• Sleeping all the time
• Anxiety
• Nightmares
• Intense dreams
• Loss of appetite
• Loss of interest
• Feeling like you don’t belong
• Eating everything
• Frustration
• Sense of unreality
• Loneliness
• Memory loss
• Physical sensations including chest pain and stomach pain
• Unable to concentrate
• Difficult to focus on reading
• Short attention span
• Restlessness
• Hypersensitivity to anything and everything
• Phantom aches and pains
• Interpersonal challenges
• Feeling that nothing has meaning
• Feeling that everything has meaning
• Inability to cry
• Inability to stop crying, you may even cry so much you gag or vomit.
• Numbness
• Mood swings
• Everyday tasks seem confusing
• Dark sense of humour
• Screaming in the car, out walking, in your bedroom, in the shower.
• Crying silently
• Feeling different from everyone else
• Feeling short tempered
• Unable to complete tasks, such as shopping, putting things away. You may find you walk away in the middle of doing something.
• Feeling immense love for everything around you.

The list is extensive. And this is only some of the list. What you may be experiencing may not even be on the list. That doesn’t make it abnormal, it just means I haven’t listed it.

Grief involves your entire body

It is important to know that grief is a full body experience.

There are good reasons why you are tired.

There are good reasons why your stamina seems to have evaporated.

There are valid reasons for your lack of focus and that you find even simple tasks impossible to do.

Your brain is trying to make sense of an event that doesn’t make sense. It is trying to dismantle neural pathways and build new ones. This is in addition all the usual daily requirements of your brain. No wonder then that it has trouble functioning.

Your body is trying to hold the impossible reality of this even within itself. That doesn’t leave a lot of capacity for normal daily tasks of living.

All of you is working hard to just get through each day.

You don’t “get over” grief

Remember that there is no getting over grief. You will most likely reach a point where you can learn to live with what has happened but you will not get over it.

Closure is a word that is used a lot but is something that does not happen. You may find a sense of “meaning” in what has happened, but you will never reach closure.

Remember that grief is often described as love after death. It is so true.

Grief is hard

Grief is really hard. It will impact you physically, emotionally, cognitively and spiritually.

There are no stages in death. These 5 stages devised by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross were used to describe the process of a person dying, not the experience of those who are left behind. It was never intended to be a description of anything else but dying.

Death is the end of a person’s life. However, the relationship we have with the person still continues.

Grief is inevitable

Grief is inevitable. We will all die and we will all lose someone we love.

Grief is part of the way our brains work. It is a function of our brains to form strong connections to the people we love. It is also part of the function of our brains to grieve.

Importantly, it is also part of the function of our brains to heal.

It is said that healing begins when we reach a point of understanding our loss was not something we wanted or deserved. It is just something we have.

When we can understand and accept that then we can start to grieve.

Trust your brain

I always tell people to trust what their brains are doing and to be kind to themselves. I remind them they are the one who needs support and understanding and to allow time for that.

I remind them that at the funeral they are not required to flit around being sociable and attending to the needs of others.

You are required to cry if you need to. To remove yourself from the company of others if that is what you need. To allow yourself to be looked after if you need it. To walk away from attending to the needs of others, unless they are your children. You will attend to your children’s needs and then your own, always your own. To not have unrealistic expectations of how much you can achieve. To accept that you are doing your best.

It’s your right to grieve

These words by Thich Nhat Hanh (How to live when a loved one dies) are a lovely affirmation of your right to grieve.

“When we lose a loved one, our heart is filled with a deep suffering that we cannot express. But we can express our pain in tears. We can cry. When you cry, you feel better.

“Men can cry too. I wanted to cry when I saw someone else crying. It is human nature to cry. To be able to cry brings comfort, relief and healing.

“if you want to cry, please cry.

And know that I will cry with you.

The tears you shed will heal us both

Your tears are mine.”

Prolonged Grief

It is vital to remember that you are hard-wired to heal from grief. However, the wound can become infected and you may need more specialist assistance from a therapist trained in working with Prolonged Grief Disorder.

Getting Help

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

I am also trained in working with Prolonged Grief Disorder and can help you if that is your experience in grief.

Are you frightened by silence?

For many people silence is unpleasant.

You may be someone who, when there is a quiet lull in the conversation, rushes to fill the silence with sound.

In the silence you can hear sounds you try to ignore. In particular you can hear your body talking to you. You can hear your intuition urgently telling you to listen.

Silence is intense, deep and powerful.

If you don’t want to hear what your body has to tell you.

If you are frightened of what your intuition is trying to impart to you.

If the idea of confronting the you that you hear in the silence fills you with fear.

Then silence is scary.

In the silence you hear the parts of you that you find frightening.

In the silence you meet the real you.

In the movie Never Ending Story Atreyu encounters a mirror that shows who he is inside. It is said that many have encountered this mirror and run away screaming. Atreyu sees the mirror and realises he is the boy Bastian who is reading the story. He is terrified.

Atreyu and Bastian stand their ground and continue, realising the knowledge they now hold is not terrifying at all.

Many people, confronted by their real selves, run. It takes strength to stay and face your true self.

Blocking out the real self

Many people are so terrified of the self they find in the silence that they fill their lives with sound. These are the people who constantly have to have music playing. Who can’t even go on a bush picnic without loud music. Who are lost without music drowning out their self within.

But if you stop and listen to the silence you will discover immense strength and power in it. You will experience the great weight and quality of silence.

You will discover that all sound emanates from silence and returns to it. It is in silence that sound is able to exist.

Allowing the silence

If you allow silence in, you will discover a place where your mind is calmed and your body rejuvenated.

Try sitting in silence. Early in the morning is a good time to do this. Just sit still and listen.

Allow yourself to relax into the silence and sit with the discomfort of thoughts and feelings you usually try to avoid.

Allow yourself to notice the thoughts are there without engaging with them. You will usually find that allowing the discomfort is never as terrifying as you imagined it might be.

Allow yourself to experience the self you try to ignore.

Allow yourself to feel the vastness and potency of silence.

Allow the silence to cleanse you

In silence, in connection to self, you find a vast well of creativity.

Memories in the silence

If the silence awakens terrifying memories, then you can be helped by seeing a trauma trained counsellor.

Do be sure the counsellor you see is trauma trained. Many claim to be able to work with trauma but have no understanding of it.

I am trauma trained and follow the Blue Knot Foundation guidelines in treating trauma.

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your terrifying thoughts, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

Is There Meaning In Loss?

Victor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor, wrote that we human beings are meaning making. He wrote this after witnessing people dying in the concentration camps.

When you think about it, it is true.

Making Meaning Is Difficult

That said, Making meaning out of the death of a loved one is really difficult. So many losses feel meaningless and unfair.

I see many people who struggle with this.

My Role In Your Grief Journey

My role as a counsellor is not to “fix” your grief and give you meaning for it.

My role as your counsellor is to walk alongside you as you experience the intense pain and confusion of your loss. To be present while you deal with the desperate fight/flight response in your body.

My role is to be a witness to your story and help you feel empowered to share it with others if you wish to do so. Your story is important but often the opportunities for your story to be heard are few.

I can also help you express the parts of your story that cannot be told in words by giving you the opportunity to use art and movement.

Handling The Questions

I can help you as your struggle with the many questions you have.

Working with you in your grief is a privilege. It is a time of tenderness, sadness and poignancy.

Why I Care

I have experienced personally how hard it is to grieve in a society that seeks to shut down grief.

As a nurse I witnessed the pain of grieving families and felt frustrated at the ways their grief was shut down by others.

My desire is to give you the support I wish I had received.

I hate the fact you may have been shut down and told you are mad, or need medications because you are still in pain.

How I Want To Help You

I want to sit with you and tell you that you are perfectly normal.

I want to tell you that you can cry as much as you need to.

I want you to find a place of sanctuary where you can experience you grief and find a way to hold your hurt, heal and grow.

I want to remind you to have compassion for yourself. The journey is hard and you need to cut yourself some slack as you negotiate this new reality.

I want you to learn to honour your feelings and honour your needs.

I want to teach you how to use your self compassion to move through your deep suffering without giving in to despair or self blame.

I want to teach you how you can use touch to soothe yourself when things are overwhelming.

My Own Experiences

Over the years I have learned to share, when appropriate, my own experiences. I am not ashamed at how hard it has been to grieve. I am proud of the way I survived and grew through the experience. I am proud of the way I continue to manage that grief.

I may tell you, if it seems appropriate, that I have been there too and have experienced that disorientation. I too have thought I was going mad. I too have found no one to support me.

Being Present For You

I don’t have good answers for you. I can’t tell you why your loved one died.

However I can be present for you. I can provide a space of care and safety where you can share your pain and be supported. A space where you can feel life isn’t as crazy as you thought.

Finding Meaning … Or Not

As for the search for meaning. I don’t think the meaning is necessarily about finding meaning in the death of your loved one. I think the meaning is often in you finding the meaning of that loss in your life.

The meaning you may find in the loss of your loved one is very personal. It may also take time to find. I have seen people who decided to try a new venture because they realise life is too precious to waste time in being frightened to try new things. That is the meaning they found in their loved one’s death.

This person you loved. The one who is now gone. They existed. They were part of your life. An important part of your life. They laughed and cried. You looked into their face. You heard their voice. You have so many memories of them, all with emotions attached. Now all you have are memories that appear to be fading.

Being Prepared Never Happens

Rarely is someone’s death something you are ready for.

There are always questions, what ifs, if onlys.

You are in pain and you can’t see an end to it.

I Give You Permission

You have permission to be affected by this death. You have permission to be sad. You have permission to be angry. You have permission to find that every time you remember this person there is now pain attached to that memory. You have permission to feel overwhelmed and unable to cope.

You are allowed to grieve as long as you need. You also have permission to decide one day you are going to move on to a different stage in your life. You are going to change your relationship with your grief.

You do reach a point where you realise that it is important to honour the person you have lost and to honour what their presence in your life was. Part of that honouring is acknowledging how much it hurt to lose them. Another harder part is imagining a future that they are not in.

Amber

Let me tell you the story of Amber*.

Amber told me that she realised one day that the love she felt for her loved one was forever, not just while they were both on this earth together. That she will always be able to love her lost loved one.

Amber was able to look at the future and think about what her lost loved one might have wanted for her for the future, whether they were in it or not.

Once she realised this, she was able to feel okay to remember. To see the memories as precious moments to smile about and remember fondly.

Strolling To The “Finish Line”

It is possible to find meaning, but not immediately. Grief is not a rush to reach that finish line, but instead a series of steps, halting at first, that may gain momentum as time goes on or may always be slow and hesitant.

Finding meaning is something that may come later, much later when the acute pain of grief has begun to settle. And if you are never aware of finding that meaning. That is okay too. Not everyone does.

Remember, everyone grieves differently.

*not her real name – in fact any identifying information including possibly gender has been removed to protect their confidentiality

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with finding meaning in your loss or more importantly with your grief journey, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

I want to feel stronger and feel better about myself

You had a childhood much like others seemed to have. Maybe you were bullied. Maybe your father was impossible to please. Maybe you always seemed to be the one singled out when someone needed blaming for things that went wrong. Maybe you never felt understood.

There was nothing obvious about your childhood.

But you have grown up and there are people you find yourself unable to set boundaries with and you don’t understand why.

Here are some of the people you may be struggling with.

The manipulator

You know the one. Ultra friendly but they always talk talked negatively about another person you barely know. They may say one things in this relentless narrative that is true, so that must mean everything else they say is true as well, right?

So you believe her and avoid the person she is targeting. Maybe you tell others about what a horrible person they are.

Then you discover the woman was telling you lies. You discover the other person is actually a lovely person who hasn’t done anything they’ve been accused of doing.

You feel so ashamed.

You still feel ashamed at how easily you believed the lies.

It reminds you that you have lived your life believing lies told to you by other people.

Your mother telling you that you were useless.

The bullies at school.

The bullies in adulthood.

You feel so ashamed at your fawning behaviour.

But this behaviour was how you learned to survive as a child.

Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time.

The power grabber

You are with a friend. She is a very dominating person and she wants both of you to do something you are not comfortable with. You don’t feel confident enough to say no. You go along with what she has said. You are not happy with what you have done.

You feel ashamed.

You gave away your power and did not stand up for your values.

As a child other people could do things, but not you.

You learned that you had no power and no right to say no.

Forgive yourself for giving away your power.

Going along with the bullying

You are at work and a workmate is being bullied. You have the opportunity to defend them, but you are afraid, so you remain quiet and say nothing.

Later the workmate is diagnosed with a trauma related condition due to the bullying.

You feel ashamed and weak for not supporting the person.

Forgive yourself for past behaviours.

What you do to survive

You learned in your childhood how to survive.

You learned behaviours such as:

• Fawning

• Going along with the bullies

• Not defending your friends

• Sacrificing your values and participating in behaviour you felt was wrong

• Not setting boundaries

Those behaviours helped you to survive.

Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring the difficult and unfair moments of childhood.

Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be to survive.

Do these behaviours trouble you?

Do you want to change them?

I am trained in working with these behaviours.

I know how to help you break the patterns of the past.

I am committed to walking alongside you as you learn new, more fulfilling ways of being.

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you feel stronger, set boundaries and feel better about yourself, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

Grief: How to cope with the bad days.

Losing someone you love is devastating. Even if the loss was anticipated it doesn’t lessen the shock of what has happened.

My world has stopped

You go outside and there is the world going on as if nothing has happened. All you want to do is scream at it to stop. Don’t these people realise you have just lost someone you love? That your world has stopped?

After that you are likely to be surrounded by support. People want to comfort, provide meals, come to the funeral. But over time, that tapers off and other people get on with their lives.

Bad days continue

During the aftermath of your loved one’s death you will have good days. Days when you feel light hearted and can laugh.

But there will be other days when you don’t feel so light hearted. You may even experience a storm of emotions around your grief.

These bad days can occur for many years.

What to do if you dread these days

Some people accept that there will be bad days. But other people dread these bad days.

Some of the bad days are ones you can expect, such as birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, special days.

For those days you can prepare for in advance. You may decide to do something special to mark the day.

Not all bad days are ones you have warning about. Those days happen when you don’t expect them, or want them.

Making a hug box

When I run grief groups one of the activities we do is to prepare a hug box.

The idea of the box is to have to hand items you can use to give yourself comfort and hug on those bad days.

The box is a gift of self-love. Its intention is to give you a feeling of comfort and self love when you bring it out.

What is in a hug box?

You can put anything in a hug box that is special and brings you comfort.

Some of the things people have put in the box are:
• Candles
• Bath oils
• Art supplies
• Soft toys
• Lists of special things to do.

What are hug box lists?

There are many lists that you can put in your hug box.

You may want to list
• A playlist of special songs you find uplifting.
• Friends you can reach out to for support
• Ideas to get out and moving such as gardening, taking a walk, dancing around the house.
• Things that make you feel good such as funny movies, inspiring books, comfort food, people to see, activities to do.
• Ways to get out into nature.
• Places you can go.
• Words or affirmations that you find helpful. Some ideas are “it’s ok to feel sad”, “you can get through this”.

What other things can you do?

• You can keep a gratitude journal. Listing 10 things a day you are grateful for. On the bad days you can read back over the journal to remind yourself about the good things that have happened.
• You can participate in a grief group in person or online. This provides you with a support network who can give you understanding and support on those bad days.
• You can reach out for help from a counsellor.

Practical solutions

It is never easy grieving for someone you have loved, but a little planning with practical things you can do is an important way to survive the bad days.

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief and surviving the bad days, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

10 things you can do right now to help with grief

We humans love to be doing. Fortunately for us, some form of doing is often what will help us during difficult times.

So many people walk into my consulting room asking for something to do to help with their grief. After exploring what they normally do to cope with life’s ups and downs we arrive at a suggested activity they love doing. In future sessions we review how that action helped. Today I am writing a blog on the ten things people tell me help most with their grief.

Take a Walk

Life is often referred to as a “journey”. That may seem annoying at times, but it is true that we are constantly moving forward through time from birth to death.

Grief is part of that moving forward through time. So the grief “journey” is one of movement, both symbolically and physically. Many people in the early stages of grief will report a need to keep moving and I have observed many people over the years who paced backwards and forwards and sat and fidgeted constantly. This is a normal body reaction to the trauma of grief. The movement actually helps you to regulate your feelings.

Emotional movement is also part of that moving forward in grief. In the early days it seems to be a constant moving from devastation one moment, disbelief and numbness the next and then a need to just get on with the practical aspects of life. It is like being on a see-saw with emotions constantly moving.

Taking a walk is a really helpful thing both from a physical, symbolic and emotional perspective.

So take that walk. As you walk think about the loved one you have lost. Cry if you need to (sunglasses are handy if you don’t want people to notice). Look around you. Notice the structures, the trees and plants, the birds, the insects, the sky. Touch surfaces. Smell the air. Feel the breeze on your cheek. All these things help to satisfy your need to move as well as give your space to be in the present moment.

If you can walk every day, even for a short time. You may want to walk alone or walk with another person.

Note what you do in a positive way

As your grief consumes you and you attempt to complete all the many tasks that confront you after the death of a loved one, it can seem that you have not achieved anything in a day. The truth is, you achieve far more than you realise.

At the end of the day, before you go to sleep, write down three things you did today. You are allowed to say you got out of bed. That of itself is an achievement. Note those things and feel good at being able to do them.

As time goes on you will notice what you achieve in a day will get bigger. That is great too, but never put down the simple actions you complete in those early days. Keeping these things written down is a great way to see how you have progressed over time. Wonderful encouragement for those days when you feel overwhelmed by your grief.

Engage in the world around you

There are many ways to engage in the world around you. It may be something as simple as reading your local newsletter, or watching the news on television. Hard as it is to see the world continuing it is helpful in the long term to remember there is a world out there. It might not feel like it in the early days of your grief, but later on it will help you to reconnect to life.

Try doing these activities for as long as you can cope up to 30 minutes a day.

Send Love to the one you love.

Yes, the person you love is dead, but your love for them is not and they died still loving you. So tell your loved one you love them. It may be what you do last thing at night, or first thing in the morning. You may say it when you come home from work. One person told me they would say “I love you so much and am sending you all my love.” Another person told me they would tell their loved one they were “sending them love and surrounding them with love”. They repeat these words throughout the day, especially when they were feeling overwhelmed at the enormity of their loss. They found switching that overwhelm to expressions of love helped them cope.

For those who were frightened they would forget their loved one, this practice was a great way for them to demonstrate they were not and would not forget them.

Distract Yourself

Much as you may want to, life goes on after the one you love is dead. And part of life going on is that you have to do the mundane things of life. These are often referred to as the “tasks of living”. Your grief is a combination of experiencing the loss of your loved one and engaging in the tasks of living.

There are also times when you are overwhelmed with feeling that grief. When you just want a break from it. At those times many people distract themselves from their grief. It doesn’t mean you don’t love the one you lost, it just means your brain needs space to rest and recuperate. So if you want to watch a movie, or a television series, or read a book, or engage in an activity that takes your mind off them for a while then do it. You will come back to being okay to be with your grief once you have had the rest you need.

Share Your Story with others

It can be hard to do this because not everyone is willing to listen, but see if you can find those friends who will be willing to listen. If you can’t find friends then a support group can be helpful. Sometimes people tell me the support group does not allow them to completely share because they need to be mindful of others in the group. At those times you can speak to a counsellor about your grief.

Let people hear about your pain. Let them know you just want them to listen and not try to solve their problem. Your story needs to be heard. Having your pain witnessed by at least one other person is crucial to your loss journey.

Find and Acknowledge the things in your life that are continuing

After the loss of your love one it can seem that everything has stopped, but there will always be things in your life that are not stopped by your loved one’s death. This continuing thing may be your job, or the continued growth of your children. Even such basic things as your hair and fingernails growing are proof that things continue. Another thing many people realise continues is their love for the person they lost. The biggest revelation often comes when a person will tell me they realised their life is continuing! These are things you can acknowledge as proof that life goes one and can help you to ground yourself in the continuation of your life when so much seems to have ended.

Do Something Nice for Yourself

It is important to remember to stop and give yourself a treat every so often. It might be something as simple as ordering a take away meal. It might involve a walk on the beach. You may go and get your hair styled, or visit the beautician. Maybe you will go to see a favourite game. Maybe you will go out with special friends.

Whatever you decide to do, do not neglect your own self care during this difficult time.

Think of three things you wanted to do in your life before your loved one died

These things may have had nothing to do with your loved one. They may be your own bucket list items, or they may be something you planned to do together. Write a list of those things, at least three. The things don’t have to be hard. It may be that you had planned to go on a particular walk, or visit a particular place. You may have dreamed of taking up Salsa Dancing.

These things help to remind you that life goes on and that you can honour your loved one with the things you do as your life progresses. In all your grief do not forget about you. When you first lose someone you love, your loss can feel so overwhelming you forget about yourself for a while. You can also wonder who you are without that person to help define you. Now is the time to remember who you are and do that things that allow you to be you. Reminding yourself of the plans and wishes you had is a really good way to reconnect with yourself and honour the one you loved.

Do Something for Someone Else

Most of the people who do this one have been bereaved for a long time. In the first year or so of your grief it is a struggle to just get through and having the ability or capacity to do something for someone else is just not there. And that is absolutely okay.

Doing something for someone else may be as simple as holding the door open for another person, helping a woman with a pram up some stairs, saying hello to an elderly neighbour who can’t get out much, giving a donation to a charity. You may find you are able to reach other to someone else who is struggling with life. This is the part of your grief where you find you are able to commit to the world again.

My clients tell me these 10 things are really helpful. They feel like they are doing something when they often feel so weighed down with grief and unable to do anything. Being able to do these simple things feels like they are able to at least do something. In a place of such disempowerment, doing something feels empowering.

They also feel they are able to honour their loved one by doing these things.

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

10 ways childhood trauma affects you.

There is a lot of talk about the impacts of childhood trauma, the triggers, impact on emotional regulation and hyper and hypo arousal. I have recently talked about the impact on your ability to set boundaries.

Today I am going to talk about ten ways childhood trauma impacts you that you may not realise is caused by this.

A lot of what I am talking about is described as a loss and I use this term with a qualification. If you experience trauma in adulthood you will lose many of these things, however as a traumatized child you never get to develop these things. Much of therapy is about getting to know who you are and learning these things. So the loss you experience is often a loss of potential rather than losing something you already have.

Loss of safety.

When you are a child and bad things happen to you regularly you come to think that is normal. You learn that the world is a place where anything can happen to you. The world is not a safe place and you are not safe. How do you know that is not the way things should be?

Loss of danger cues.

When you are a child the person who trusts you hurts you physically and emotionally, even sexually. When that happens, how can you know that those things are not okay to be done to you? How do you know that it is not okay for another person to abuse you, or hit you, or take what belongs to you? Think of the adult who was treated like that all the time. There is an incident in her life where someone physically attacks her. She thinks she has done something wrong and is ashamed to tell people about it, expecting them to chastise her for doing something wrong. But when she tentatively tells another person she is surprised that the other person is horrified she was treated that way and considers the attacker to be in the wrong. This is the loss of danger cues.

Loss of trust.

If you are abused by a parent, relative, sibling, a trusted adult, how do you learn to trust? How can you know it is possible to trust when those that you should be able to trust are not trustworthy?

Shame.

When you are abused as a child it is normal for you to think you are the bad person for being abused. Think of the child who thinks she is a terrible person because she is always getting into trouble and bad people get into trouble. She decides to work really hard to be good. Her measure of being good is that she will not get yelled at. She tries really hard all day, then her father gets home and he yells abuse at her, telling her how defective she is. She is crushed. She thought she was being so good, instead she was all wrong. Then she goes to school and gets a wrong answer in her homework and she is filled with shame for being so defective. And she grows up and continues to be crushed by everything she does wrong, all proof of how defective and shameful she is.

Loss of intimacy.

When a child’s sexual boundaries are violated by another person, particularly if it remains hidden, sexual relationships can either become something to avoid as being shameful or something done to get approval. When a child is groomed by a perpetrator, they can learn that sexual abuse is a way to get the attention they crave. Then the child’s trauma is exacerbated by being labelled “promiscuous”. Note this is most likely to happen to a girl, not a boy. Our society allows only boys to have multiple sexual partners.

Dissociation.

When a child is overwhelmed by the horror of their situation and the emotions they are feeling but unable to control, they often cope by disconnecting their consciousness from what is happening to them. Once this becomes an effective strategy for coping with overwhelming emotions, especially fear, then the child/adult will dissociate when feeling overwhelmed. Dissociation comes in many forms, from just “not being there” to the other end of the scale where a person develops different “identities” of dissociation.

Loss of physical connection to your body.

It is really confusing being a child and being aware of your own feelings. Then an adult tells you that you are not to feel that way. You are being silly to feel frightened, or being weak, or you shouldn’t be angry at this person and so on. Small wonder that the majority of people in our society are not aware of their own feelings. Most children are taught not to listen to their feelings.

Add on to that the unpleasant sensations associated with physical or sexual abuse and you have many reasons not to feel what your body is physically or emotionally feeling.

Losing that physical connection makes it very hard for you to identify unsafe situations, or understand what you are feeling. Your body will develop aches and pains that have come about because of normal sensations in your body associated with your feelings. But these feelings are denied so the aches and pains can build up. It is considered a lot of chronic pain is caused by unresolved feelings.

Reconnecting to your body can be very scary and difficult and therapies that are known to aid trauma recovery, such a yoga and meditation, can be very difficult because of the unregulated feelings that are released. Any activities to reconnect to the body must be carefully handled by experienced trauma therapists.

Loss of sense of self.

Your sense of self is the core of your spirituality. Spirituality is first and foremost your connection to your self, to “Who am I”. Trauma, whether in childhood or adulthood causes deep spiritual wounding.

As a child your parents are the ones who teach you about your emotions, how to regulate them and help you discover who you are. A lot of that is done by reflecting back to you who you are. What if your parent feeds back to you that you are useless, or unloved, or unwanted? That is not who you really are. That can leave you with a sense that you are a fake or somehow unacceptable.

Loss of self worth.

You have survived a traumatic childhood. If we judge your learning by modern standards you have earned a PhD in survival. So congratulate yourself on the amazing job you did surviving childhood.

Your parents were there to teach you your value and you can see it in their eyes when they look at you with love, in the positive interest they show in what you are talking about and doing, in their words of support and encouragement and in the many ways they physically support you.

But what if the looks they gave your were of hatred and contempt, and the interest they showed in what you were doing was to put down, punish or ridicule, and there were only words of dismissal and put downs, and you were ridiculed rather than being supported and encouraged?

You may swing between feeling special or dirty and bad. Part of your PhD has been learning to build yourself up as a defense against the overwhelming feeling of being the outsider who is unworthy of love In your imaginary world you are special and loved, whereas in the real world that you have to keep returning to, you are dirty and bad and worth nothing.

Reenactment

The final effect of trauma is the efforts you make to repair the fractured and dysfunctional relationships of your family of origin. You unconsciously recreate the same dynamics in your adult relationships with the hoped for result of everything turning out better this time. You may unconsciously choose a partner who is abusive in the hope that you can somehow fix the relationship of your childhood. Sadly all that happens is that you are abused again and your trauma just gets worse.

You may also find yourself in a relationship that seems good but you unconsciously sabotage it because you are expecting abuse in every relationship. You may find yourself hyper alert for “evidence” of the other person’s betrayal of you and see abuse where there is none.

The truth is you cannot heal the past in the present. You need to work on your past to heal it, not try to fix it with current relationships.

These ten impacts of trauma are often overlooked in therapy. But attending to them is vital if you are to recover from your trauma and discover “Who Am I?”

The trauma of childhood is complex and you need to see someone who is qualified to treat trauma. I have extensively trained in trauma recovery and treatment and follow the Blue Knot Foundation Guidelines in working with trauma clients.

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your childhood 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