So many people struggle with thoughts that go around and around in their heads. Not nice thoughts, but ones that bother you and destroy your enjoyment of activities during waking hours. Thoughts the keep you aware at 1am, 2am, 3am and so on.
If you are going to be thinking in circles about something then why not turn your thoughts to seeing if you can resolve the issue that is bothering.
Here are the questions to ask:
Am I Aware How Long I Have Been Having This Thought?
Have you actually been thinking about this thing for a long time, or does it just feel like it. Maybe it is a thought that keeps repeating and it just seems to be going round in your head.
The next question to ask yourself is”
2. Is now a good time to be thinking about this?
If the thought is bothering you the answer is probably no.
Then you need to ask yourself the next question:
3. Is There Something I Am Avoiding?
So often something that is bothering you spins around in your mind but you don’t explore it. This is often because the thought is so overwhelming that you don’t feel you can manage what comes next.
The reality is, exploring this thought further can help you resolve it.
When those distressing thoughts revolve in your mind they are often indicators of something deeper that needs processing. This is why you ask the question.
When you ask the question be prepared to sit with the question and wait for the answer to arise.
When the answer comes to you, allow yourself to explore it further:
• Where in your body is the thought?
• How long has it been there in your body?
• What is the thought about? There is often something that you have not processed that is bugging you until you process it.
• Is now a good time to work through this thought? You might be at work, or it may be the middle of the night and you feel you can’t attend to it. If that is so then set a time to attend to it. Visualise yourself putting the thought on that time and tell yourself that is when it will be dealt with.
When Exploring A Question Doesn’t Bring Relief Try Something Else
Sometimes recurring thoughts are too difficult to resolve, and you may need help. It is unlikely you will get help immediately. In the interim you may need to put that thought aside until you can attend to it.
If this recurring thought is during the day then change what you are doing and do something that will occupy your mind.
Maybe you want to do something that requires your full attention.
Maybe you want to talk to someone.
A change of scenery can dislodge that thought. Try changing where you are working. If you can, go for a walk.
Observation using your senses can also be useful.
• Look around you.
• Name 5 things you can see.
• Now name 5 things you touch. Name what they feel like to touch.
• Now name 5 things you can smell. Name them.
• Name 5 things you can hear and describe what you are hearing.
If it is the early hours of the morning, rather than tossing and turning, unable to get back to sleep and those thoughts just going on and on then get up and do something else for a little while.
Maybe you have a good book to read. Maybe you can listen to music. Just choose something that will not wake you up too much and so that thing until you feel able to go back to sleep.
Most people find it takes half an hour or so before they have cleared their mind enough to go back to sleep. If you can’t, allow yourself to accept that and find something enjoyable and restful to do. Yes you may be tired the next morning, but you will be less stressed. Maybe you will sleep better the next night.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your incessant thoughts or attending to the underlying issues, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful 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
One of the biggest worries that is presented to me in sessions is the feeling of having reacted to something the wrong way.
This is so common I thought I would write about it today.
Have you had this happen to you?
Something happens and you feel strong emotions and respond based on those emotions. But then others judge you because they don’t agree with your response. And you feel you were wrong and judge your feelings as being irrational and incorrect.
It is always important in these moments to remember that you are hearing another person’s individual response. It is unique to them and is obviously different to your response.
Even if the other person is backed up in judging your response, it does not make you wrong.
Who you are, and your view of the world, is based on what you have experienced in life. Your authentic reaction to something is correct for you. No two people will react to an event in the same way.
Some people are frightened when people react to things differently to them. They may feel frightened and want to dampen their response. If you don’t do that their fear may drive them to judge you and tell you that you were wrong. That is fear talking, not a judgement on you.
All reactions to events are valid.
Obviously, some reactions are morally wrong and even may be illegal. Assaulting someone is not the right thing. But being angry at them can be valid.
Allow those events where you feel you reacted differently to others to be opportunities for reflection. You can reflect on your feelings and how you reacted. If you were angry with someone you can congratulate yourself on not hitting them but reacting in a more productive way. Just because another person chose to retreat and avoid addressing the situation does not make you wrong. All it does is make you different and unique.
Remember to not take on board other people’s issues. If someone judges you for the way you respond to a situation, don’t take that on board. Don’t own their stuff. It is theirs, give it back to them. Own your stuff because it does belong to you.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with understanding yourself and being okay with yourself, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful 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
A big problem for many people I see is unprocessed emotional pain. A large volume of unprocessed emotional pain.
It is not surprising given the belief in our society that you should just push those “bad” feelings down and ignore them.
If you didn’t grow up in a family that supported you experiencing that pain and learning how to process it, then you will be unlikely to know how to process it.
Emotional Pain Is Not Bad
Some mental health approaches pathologise the experiencing of emotional pain. As a result they teach the suppression of emotional pain.
This belief and teaching fails to understand the roots of some pain. Unprocessed emotional pain that has been with you for a long time will continue to be with you until it is processed.
You will not be able to process emotional pain until you have developed the courage, strength and skills to stay with those overwhelming emotions until they are fully processed.
Emotional Pain As The Monster Under The Bed
A lot of people tell me they fear those emotions. I can understand that. A lot of these unprocessed emotions relate to childhood.
A child needs to be taught how to process emotions. If they aren’t taught then those frightening emotions are impossible to process. The child learns to fear those emotions because they seem insurmountable.
If you add to that difficulty a family that actively encourages the suppression of emotions, even punishes family members for feeling emotions, then that fear becomes terrifying and deep seated.
The Pain Body
In his book “A New Earth” Eckhart Tolle describes the ‘pain body’. This is the “energy of old but still very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being.”
The pain of old traumas is often described as energy because of the way this pain crops up again and again. The pain is actually stress or trauma that has never been processed so remains in the body. When that stress or trauma was initially experienced the nervous system became dysregulated and the emotions felt at the time became trapped in the body. Things can trigger the memories around this stress or trauma and you are again feeling the old pain.
Not Feeling Into The Body
Unprocessed pain can cause you to fear emotions and their associated feelings. To avoid experiencing what is feared you stop feeling into your body at all. The body becomes a scary place where emotional monsters lurk.
If you can’t feel into your body, you can’t release the pain and you can’t feel safe and relaxed. In order to relax you need to be able to feel your inner body. That means you have to be prepared to feel the feelings there.
Actions Are Trapped In Your Body
Many somatic therapists talk about the actions trapped in our bodies.
Peter A Levine, the developer of Somatic Experiencing and author of many books including ‘Waking the Tiger’, speaks of the experience of animals chased by predators and escaping. After the animal has escaped the predator it shakes its body to release the energy still in the body that allowed it to escape. He likens it to our need to release that excess energy after a fight/flight event. This allows the energy to be released from our bodies.
Eckhart Tolle also talks about releasing energy from stress. He tells the story of two ducks getting into a fight. After they are finished they move away from each other and flap their wings several times. Then they continue on as though nothing has happened. The ducks are also releasing the excess energy.
The Problem Of Holding On To Experiences Instead Of Releasing Them
We humans tend to hold on to these experiences. Instead of the release actions of the animal that has escaped a predator or the duck that has just finished a fight, we hold on to the fight or the escape.
Humans create narratives of events and the escape and fight get woven into our narratives. If the opportunity to process the events and release them does not happen, the events are kept alive and ongoing by continuing to tell the story, even to ourselves.
Remembering Events But Releasing The Energy
We need to remember events. This is how our brain keeps us safe by remembering dangerous situations and alerting us to similarities in situations. The problem arises when we continue to think of the events as ongoing, instead of past events.
The way forward is to learn how to regulate emotions.
Learn not to fear experiencing the emotions. That you can do this and actually those monster emotions are not massive, overwhelming giants, but mild little critters that are quite manageable.
Once you learn how to regulate and that those emotions are not as scary as you thought they were, you can then learn to be kind to your body. You can learn to be present and have confidence in your strength and ability to process painful feelings and emotions.
You can also learn that difficult emotions can be temporarily destabilising. That they may need attention to work through them. But they can be worked through and you can emerge stronger in the knowledge that you have the skills to process your emotions.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you learn not to fear your emotions and to process them, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful 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
Experiencing a traumatic event has a major impact on your emotional, physical and psychological health.
Trauma may be long term, such as being in a relationship with a narcissist or an abusive person. Trauma may be a single event, such as something painful or shocking that happens.
Trauma challenges your sense of safety in the world and the reliability of the world.
Trauma challenges your sense of self, of who you are.
Gabor Mate, a Canadian doctor and expert on trauma in his book “The Myth of Normal” writes that “trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you”.
In this quote he is talking about the impact of a traumatic event being individual. Some may walk away from an event relatively unscathed whereas others may be deeply impacted.
The age you are when you experience a trauma has an impact on how you are affected. Trauma occurring in childhood, while the child is still developing their sense of identity as well as developing their brain, has the potential to cause more damage than trauma affecting an adult.
The 24 most common signs of unhealed trauma include:
1. Being chronically exhausted
2. Finding it difficult to trust others
3. Compulsive behaviours and addictions, all about avoiding unpleasant feelings
4. Not feeling safe anywhere, at home, out of the home, inside your body
5. Experiencing emotional numbness
6. Experiencing difficulty concentrating
7. Having a heightened startle response
8. Finding it difficult to sleep or having nightmares.
9. Feeling numb and dissociated from what is going on around you
10. Skin issues such as rashes and other irritations.
11. Upset stomach, diarrhoea, bloating, nausea and so on
12. Constantly apologising
13. Constantly thinking about things
14. Gaining or losing weight.
15. Feeling emotionally dysregulated and struggling to contain feelings of rage or anger
16. Feeling Depressed
17. Self-isolating from others
18. Uncontrollably crying
19. Experiencing difficulties relating to others
20. Being frightened of being alone
21. Struggling with memory and processing information
22. Having unrealistic beliefs about other people.
23. Feeling guilty, and experiencing shame.
24. Being hypervigilant.
As you can imagine, experiencing even some of these signs is distressing and challenging to your sense of who you are.
How Do I Recover?
The biggest impact of trauma is your sense of who you are.
The good news is that you can rebuild your sense of who you are.
You can also learn how to trust the world. Part of that learning is identifying what safety for you is, right now.
You also need to allow yourself time to grieve for what you have lost. Without that healing is not possible.
This recovery will not happen overnight. It takes time. Don’t rush. Don’t think you are failing because you are not “over it” quickly. Cut yourself some slack and be patient.
What Do I Need To Do To Recover?
Sometimes, if the trauma had a smaller impact on you, you can recover with the help of supportive people. Other times you need a trauma trained counsellor to help you.
The first thing you need to do is to understand what safety looks like for you.
Once you understand what that is, you can work at rebuilding your sense of safety.
Rebuilding Your Sense of Safety
To feel safe, you need to feel safe within your body. When you suffer a trauma you may want to run away from the unpleasant feelings. You experience these feelings in your body. A major part of coping with the unpleasant feelings is ignoring what your body is experiencing.
To rebuild your sense of safety you need to learn to feel what is happening in your body. You also need to learn to be comfortable with those feelings.
For someone who experienced trauma as a child, there may never have been learning about feeling into the body. For those who learned already, it will be more about learning to feel into the body again.
Regulation Is A Major Part of Feeling Safe
When you experience uncomfortable feelings in your body you need to be able to cope with those feelings.
Many people learn unhealthy ways to do this. Addictions and compulsive behaviours are about dulling feelings. Emotional numbing is also an unhealthy strategy.
What you may need to learn is how to calm your body. Being able to calm yourself down allows you to feel you have control over the feelings in your body as well as the emotions and memories that come up. That is very empowering. When you have control and feel you have power then you can feel safe.
Internal Safety Leads Outward
Once you feel safe in yourself, you can feel more confident to start trusting those closest to you, then those less close and finally strangers and situations you encounter day to day.
When you feel safe in yourself you also can experience greater clarity around the people in your life and can make decisions about what relationship you have that are unhealthy and set boundaries around those relationships.
Boundaries may look like ending the relationship, limiting when you see the other person, or even limiting the type of contact you will have with them and the type of behaviour you will tolerate from them.
Allow Space For Grieving
When you experience trauma, whether it is recent or in the past, you have lost things that are important. The loss of sense of self and sense of safety. What way you saw the world and those around you is lost. You have also lost the life you had. There may be other losses as well.
All these losses need to be recognised and grieved over.
Grief isn’t pleasant. It hurts. You may even feel angry. The pain is deep.
It is important to learn to be okay with those unpleasant feelings. Don’t try to avoid the feelings by getting busy with activities, be they work, social life, hobbies or relationships. Those avoidance activities will only prolong the grief, they won’t solve it.
A lot of the signs of trauma are caused by trying to avoid the pain.
Counselling is helpful here too in learning how to process this grief.
Building Your Connection Back To Self
When you have grieved the losses and rebuilt your sense of safety in the world you can work on establishing a connection to yourself so you can get to know Who You Are again.
This is a wonderful opportunity to explore the things in life that help you feel who you are. The things that feed you.
This is where you learn to listen to your body as it tells you it is comfortable.
This is where you may find that trying new things will help you discover aspects of yourself you didn’t know existed.
Here is your opportunity to learn how to live in the post trauma world.
Space and Time
As you rebuild your sense of self and safety, as well as grieving for what was lost, give yourself the space to grow.
Ensuring you sleep enough hours is important. Take yourself out to the beach of the bush. Sit and feel the waves at your feet, sit under a tree and listen to the sound of wind through the leaves. See a trauma trained counsellor.
Surround yourself with people who support you and will encourage you to grow and try new things.
Most importantly give yourself time. See this as a journey that is best enjoyed and taken at a slow enjoyable pace.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with healing from 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 helpful 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
In the current world there is a general belief that if an emotion is too hard you just suppress it. Force it under.
One of the main styles of therapy that is presented as “the correct way” to be and to operate tells you that these uncomfortable thoughts and emotions are faulty and wrong. You just have to work harder. You have to will harder. You can over come this.
But the truth is all the will in the world will not heal those uncomfortable thoughts and emotions.
I Failed Magic Wand Class
I see a lot of people who come to me for that style of therapy. They think it will be like a magic wand that I wave and in a few sessions they will be all fixed.
If only it were so.
The Myth Of Instant Gratification
We all want things to be achieved instantly.
Instead of working hard at following a correct diet and activity regime, we want to take a pill to lose weight.
Instead of working through those uncomfortable emotions. Instead of allowing time for those emotions to heal. Instead of allowing time for our brains to make the necessary changes to heal. Instead of doing all this we want it to be better instantly.
Having to work at something is hard and in this modern world with instant everything working at something is not what we have been taught to expect or have to do.
So maybe you come to me expecting instant results.
The Reality Of Healing
Sometimes the difficulty you are experiencing can be resolved with one or two counselling sessions.
Other times the difficulty will need longer.
Maybe your expectations have been raised by the passion for “the correct way”. You expect I will tell you what is wrong with you and you will do some homework and exercises and keep them up and you will be all better.
After all, it is so much easier to push things down and pretend they don’t exist than deal with them.
Isn’t it?
The Lure Of Running From Those Uncomfortable Feelings
So you run from those uncomfortable feelings. But they come after you.
So you run from them with alcohol, or cigarettes, or drugs or other addictions.
That works for a while, until the effects wear off. Then what do you do?
Running Is Like The Scab Over A Cut
As a former Registered Nurse, I liken the suppressing of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings to a scab that has formed over a cut.
You cut yourself, it hurts and it bleeds. Your body starts work immediately, defending from infection and commencing healing. First you will see a scab form. Ah! Its getting better.
But is it?
If all goes well, the scab forms, healing occurs underneath and the scab eventually falls off to reveal healed skin underneath.
But it doesn’t always go well.
Under that scab there is an infection. Pus forms and is trapped underneath the scab. That cut hurts. That cut is not healing as you thought it should.
The pus builds up. The cut hurts more.
I watched a colleague once remove the scab on a man’s leg. Her comment is so relevant here.
“I never trust a scab. It hides things that shouldn’t be there.”
She had noticed the signs of infection under the scab.
Scab removed, the cut was able to be cleaned and the infection cleared up. Not overnight, but over a matter of days with continued cleansing until the infection was cleared.
Counselling is like that.
Healing Requires Work and Time
If you want to resolve those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings you need to work at them.
I am not going to tell you that your thoughts are “faulty”. They aren’t.
I am not going to instruct you to not think about them. I will help you examine them to find what lies underneath them.
I may not seem to be “working” with you, but I am.
I Trust You To Be Able To Heal, Maybe With Help
I trust you as a person to have the ability to heal those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings with my assistance.
By assistance I mean that I will help you identify what is actually going on. I will tell you that what you are experiencing is a normal way for your brain to respond to your circumstances. Then I will help you work with your brain as it heals.
I will help you understand the unconscious parts of your brain that you cannot control consciously. I will help you heal those, which will often involve feeling into your body as well as allowing your brain to express itself through art, sand play, movement or other expressive methods.
I will tell you that things take time. Because your brain can’t rebuild new neural circuits overnight. Expect a few months at least.
I Don’t Use A Magic Wand
Whatever you do, don’t be like the people who come expecting me to wave my magic wand and make you all better in one session. See the start of progress, no matter how slight, as the wonderful evidence that healing has started.
And don’t tell your children they just need some “strategies” to cope with those painful thoughts and emotions when what they actually need is compassion and understanding that what is happening in their life hurts and it is okay to hurt.
Soldiering On Doesn’t Work
Wanting to be able to just “soldier on” was a wonderful marketing ploy for a drug company selling cold and flu tablets. We apply solider on to everything, including emotional pain. But there is no instant fix and even the “soldier on” message has been shown to be the worst treatment for those colds and flu.
Allow time. If you need to see a counsellor expect it to not be instant and be very wary of someone who tells you your thoughts are “faulty”.
In The Next Blog
I mentioned the pain of dealing with painful thoughts and emotions.
In the past few weeks I have seen a lot of people who have struggled with other people inadvertently causing them pain through their questions.
How are you? To the person struggling to cope with the death of their partner.
What is your job? To the person just made redundant.
What do your parents do? To the teenager who is grieving the death of their father.
These seemingly innocent comments can cause a lot of pain. So what can you do to avoid those foot in mouth blunders?
I will talk more about this in my next blog.t
Can I Help?
In the meantime, if you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with managing your thoughts and feelings, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful 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
Grief is a natural part of life. Ever since humankind was capable of feeling love, we have grieved for the loss of that love.
It is natural for us to cry and reach out to others for comfort. That is considered the way grief has happened for millennia. Part of grief is to allow the putting into the past of our grief.
Shame is a big emotion that causes other emotions, mainly sad ones, to be stuck. When Shame complicates grief you are unable to put grief in the past and it just keeps on in the present.
Grief and Shame Often Appear Together
When I work with people who are grieving I have noticed that grief is often experienced alongside shame.
Grief is designed to help us loosen, release and reach out. Shame has the opposite effect. It causes us to freeze and isolate from others.
Shame leads to endless loops of worry and rehashing the shameful episode. This keeps it in the present instead of the past where you fervently wish it would go.
Grief involves crying and grieving for what has happened and putting that grief in the past.
Grief needs to be worked with in a different way to shame.
Complicated Emotions
Complicated emotions are difficult. They require different approaches and sometimes need to be separated in order to work through them.
This complication is probably why most people dislike complex emotions in themselves or in others.
Interestingly, children have no difficulty managing complicated emotions. It is as if that maturing, and learning to identify our emotions, stops us from being able to work with the different emotions we are likely to feel at any time.
Accepting Complicated Emotions
One of the best approaches to working with complicated emotions is to accept they are there. To accept that they just are.
Shame is one of the emotions we fear the most. One of those reasons is that when shame is present, we can’t process our emotions as we are supposed to. Instead of being processed and moved on quickly, they remain stuck by shame. Emotions are manageable when they are processed quickly, but when they remain unresolved, they become difficult to manage.
Shame does have a purpose. Its purpose is to keep us safe by lowering the intensity of other emotions. This allows us to curb our reactions to emotions such as anger. That is fine if we then later attend to these emotions. But what happens more often is that shame binds with those emotions and they remain.
All those bound emotions makes for one crowded mind. And a mind that struggles to process emotions. And shame creates an endless loop of being trapped in emotions.
Working Through Grief and Shame
Most people who come to see me about their grief have shame caught up in the grief as well. When I work with you, it is important to identify all the emotions you are working through and then separate them all out to deal with them.
If I don’t attend to your shame and help you work through it you will be stuck in your grief. Usually that stuckness is what brings you to me.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief and shame, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful 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
So many people come to see me because, in the wake of their grief, they can’t handle the swirl of emotions.
It is not just the emotions that they struggle with. It is the belief that there is something wrong with them for having those emotions.
It is heart breaking to see people feeling they can’t express their emotions. Either because someone tells them it is bad to do so, or because other people immediately seek to shut them down.
Like it or not, grieving involves a swinging from the emotions of protest at the death of the one you love and despair that they are not there anymore.
Things that Complicate Grief
Complicating grieving are the security of the relationship you had with the person, and any unresolved issues within that relationship.
By this I mean how secure your relationship felt. Did you feel safe and secure with this person? Or were you constantly battling to feel reassured of the security of the relationship? Were there hurts that you had never had a chance to resolve with that person? It will be hard to grieve for that person while those hurts remain unresolved.
Also relevant is anything that has happened in the past that impacts on the current grief.
Factors that Impact How You Cope With the Emotions Around Grief
A major factor in how you will cope with the emotions is your history of how you regulate emotions. If you find it hard to express your emotions then expressing those around grief are going to be difficult.
If you can’t express your emotions then it is impossible to be able to sit with those emotions, face them and work your way through them.
How Rituals Can Help
Rituals around death can also be helpful. What were you raised to do when someone died?
Some are taught to not show emotions, not talk about the death and feel intense shame if you cry.
Others are taught to cry as part of the ritual around the death of a loved one.
Then there are the rituals where the person is commemorated, maybe you will have “sorry business”, or you may light a candle every day for a prescribed number of days in honour of the person.
The above are just some of the ways rituals are used to mark a person’s death.
All, with the exception of the one where you suppress emotions, are very helpful to those who are grieving.
Learning to Manage the Overwhelming Emotions
When I see a grieving person I look for ways to manage the overwhelming emotions. Ways to process what has happened.
I never look for pathology. Although, if you come to see me and it has been 6 months since your loved one died I will ask you to fill in a questionnaire as an aid to measure your progress while seeing me.
Often all you need in your grief is a companion to walk beside you. Having that companion a grief trained counsellor is really helpful. I won’t pathologise your experience. I will help you to express what is so hard to express. I will ensure you realise how normal your reaction is.
Questions to Consider
As we walk together I will ask you to tell me about the one you lost. Tell me about your relationship. What about the history of their death? How did they die? Did you have to make a decision to turn off life support? Did they choose a medically assisted death? Was their death long and painful? Was their death peaceful?
What was the experience of their death like for you?
Were you present in the moment, or did you push your own feelings aside to support your dying loved one, or other family members.
It can be very easy to get stuck, unable to express your own feelings, when you are in a situation of supporting other people.
Were you isolated at the time of death and its aftermath? Being isolated is very traumatising.
Did you feel unsafe in the situation, with all your emotions swirling around and no one there to support you?
The Goal of Therapy
When you work with me the goal we work to is to help you see the strengths that have carried you this far.
Additionally, when you had to support others at the time, I give you the space and support to make that emotional contact with your own feelings so that you can support yourself now.
Together we can be curious and open to explore your experience and the places you are frightened of visiting. My aim is to help you make contact with yourself again. To give you the chance now you are out of survival mode to experience your feelings.
Visiting that experience will most likely involve a lot of reminiscence about your relationship with your loved one. Reminiscing about the things you did together and the events of the end of their life is also important. It allows you to experience the things you may have pushed aside to support others.
What about the present?
An important aspect of grieving is learning to live in the present.
The one you love still exists in your mind. That is something that needs to be explored. How do they exist to you? In what ways do you still rely on them? Do you have a sense of their presence? Do you imagine they help you when you feel lost and not sure how to proceed?
All this is known as continuing bonds. This is an important part of grief. Forming these bonds is how you form the new relationship with your loved one.
“I have a new life. Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some final resolution, some clear meaning, which it perhaps never finds.” ~ Robert Anderson
Grief is not something you ever “get over”. It lasts for the rest of your life. It just gets easier over time to think about the person. You learn to forge a new relationship that is based on them being dead.
That Can Impact How You Grieve
There are many things that impact on how you grieve.
Grief you have experienced in the past, and the way it was managed, has a deep impact on how you are grieving now.
Trauma in your past will also impact on how you perceive grief and how you are able to regulate your emotions and access support.
Having previously learned to suppress your emotions will make it hard for your to experience them now.
One thing I like to do is to take your back to those final moments for you to experience the feelings you had then. It is helpful for you to experience those feelings in a more receptive way. At the time you would have been barely surviving. Now you are better able to be aware of the experience.
Working on that Moment
Sitting with what you were feeling at those crucial moments in the death of your loved one allows you to experience emotions you had to suppress in order to get through these moments.
Many people will realise they felt great sadness, anger, sadness and longing.
One man told me that at the moment in his life when he was in the worst situation he had ever been in, losing the one he loved, the person he could count on to support him wasn’t there because they were dying.
The person is dying or dead and you don’t want to let them go.
Learning to accept the pain
In time most people are able to live with the horror of their grief. They can learn to accept the pain rather than avoid it. They give themselves permission to cry and not try to hide what they are feeling.
Most people learn to continue a relationship with the one who has died. They may still have conversations with them. Some even write a journal for their loved one of all the things they want to tell them.
It becomes possible to be reminded of the one you lost. You no longer avoid the places that strongly remind you of them. You can remember the good and bad times.
Most importantly, you can accept that you are a different person now. And being that different person is not bad. It is okay.
Can I 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
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful 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
I often write about the impacts of trauma in childhood. I also write about the way our society teaches us to avoid uncomfortable feelings.
Today I want to talk about some behaviours people engage in that are designed to cover up deeply upsetting feelings.
These are: • Excessive use of social media and compulsive mindless scrolling.
I am not referring to people looking on social media to catch up on what friends have posted. I am referring to people who search and search social media pretty much all the time, even when there is nothing to read. I know we can all do that to a certain extent, but when it becomes every day, all day, then it is a problem and most likely to be a trauma blocking behaviour.
• Drinking alcohol to excess, including binge drinking.
Taking drugs of any type, smoking, vaping are also trauma blocking behaviours. In fact experts in addiction agree that the addictions are caused by trauma.
• Excessive and mindless eating, even when not hungry.
Like alcohol, drugs and smoking this is a behaviour that helps to block trauma.
• Compulsive exercising to reach an unattainable goal. Or just exercising compulsively.
As with other addictions, this behaviour blocks uncomfortable feelings so it is compulsively adopted.
• Being frightened of being alone so you stay in toxic relationships, even when you are unhappy or in danger.
It is the idea of it being better to be in any relationship than none at all. But is it better to be in a terrifying and potentially deadly relationship?
• Being frightened of being alone so you constantly surround yourself with people and activities to stop you ever being alone.
This can also involve manipulative behaviours to ensure you have people around you. And when you are alone, you may well use alcohol, drugs or self harm to suppress the fear.
• Feeling unsafe if you have nothing do you so you keep yourself busy with constant projects.
• Compulsive shopping, especially online, for things you don’t need and going into debt
• Being a workaholic with poor work boundaries so that you end up being available 24/7
I am sure you could add others to that list.
Do you find yourself adopting these behaviours?
If you do, you are not alone.
Do you want to stop using these behaviours, or others like them?
This is where a counsellor can help you learn how to face and heal deeply upsetting feelings.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your trauma blocking behaviour, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful 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
Anger is feared in our society. From an early-age children are taught that Anger is bad and they are taught to suppress it.
Children are rarely taught how to manage anger effectively. Consequently, many adults run from or push away an angry person instead of taking the time to calm the other person and respectfully seek to understand what the problem is.
An important thing to remember in this is that when confronted by an angry person, if you want to stay calm you will be able to. Anger is only contagious if you allow it to. But if you want to feel angry you will get angry at their behaviour. So managing a situation of anger is very possible.
When anger is approached that way, it is frequently permanently defused and a win win resolution is achieved for both you and the angry person.
What anger isn’t.
The following things are what anger is not:
• Aggression
• Bad
• To be avoided at all costs
• Frightening
• Negative
• Controllable (behaviour can often controlled but not emotion)
What anger is.
If anger isn’t something frightening, negative, bad, aggressive, controllable or to be avoided at all costs then what is it?
Anger is:
• Doubt,
• Guilt,
• Tiredness,
• Confusion,
• Fear,
• Frustration,
• Embarrassment,
• Due to being in pain,
• Feeling overwhelmed,
• Feeling rejected,
• Anxiety,
• Loneliness,
• Disconnection,
• Feeling threatened/unsafe,
• Jealousy,
• Grief,
• Unfairness,
• Helplessness,
• Disappointment,
• Stress.
Emotions are divided into two different types. The first is primary emotions. The second is secondary emotions. Secondary emotions arise from other emotions.
You have probably already guessed from the “anger is” list that anger is a secondary emotion. It arises from other emotions that happen.
If you look at the “anger is” list you will see that all these underlying emotions and feelings are ones that the brain perceives as danger. This activates the body’s defence mechanisms. Anger is part of the body’s defence mechanism of fight or flight. Anger gives the body the push it needs to run away or stand and fight.
(It is important to note that abuse is not anger. It is abuse and needs to be dealt with differently.)
Something to try
Here is something you can try.
Next time you find yourself starting to feel angry be curious. Examine that anger. Where has it come from? What thoughts are you having around that anger? Those thoughts will give you important clues to the source of the anger.
If you can’t identify the thoughts then ask the anger what it needs. The anger will want something, which may be to vent that anger so don’t ask it what it wants. The anger will be needing something, it may be to be understood, or to get out of a situation that feels overwhelming, or to be able to take time out for rest.
Would you like to know more?
If you go to PLC Blog – Plentiful Life Counselling Blog (https://plentifullifecounselling.com.au/wp) And click on the category Anger (in the left hand column) you will see a number of blogs on the subject.
If anger is something that you fear and you feel you need help with it, then seeking help from a Registered Counsellor is a good idea.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your anger, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful 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
Do you need other people to validate the things you do?
Do you need the approval of others?
Do you find it hard making decisions for yourself?
Do you find it hard feeling self-reliant?
Do you find it hard to regulate your emotions?
Are you really hard on yourself?
Do you feel you have little or no worth?
Do you do things to numb your emotional pain?
Are you frightened of rejection and abandonment?
Do you feel you are stuck in angry mode?
Do you find it hard to feel joy or peace?
Do you find it hard to get close to other people?
Do you feel lonely and seek out others to compensate for your loneliness?
Do you feel lost, misunderstood or that you don’t fit in and others are judging you for that?
Do you frequently feel anxious or depressed?
Are you frightened of social situations and fear being rejected.
Do you feel others judge you as not being good enough?
Do you feel empowered in your life?
How childhood experiences can impact you as an adult
Did you know that trauma in childhood has a significant impact on your self-worth?
If your sense of safety and belonging in childhood was damaged you are likely to have developed skills to keep you safe in that situation. As you grew up you may never have unlearned those skills, so they trap you in patterns that don’t serve you in adulthood.
Also, poor attachment between your parents and you puts you at risk of suffering from loneliness in adulthood.
Traumatic experiences in your childhood disrupt how you see your self as a person and affect your ability to regulate your emotions. All this impacts on the quality of the interpersonal relationships you have later in life.
My parents didn’t physically or sexually abuse me. I can’t have suffered trauma.
It can be hard to understand you have been traumatised in childhood. The usual picture of trauma is that of being hit or sexually abused. But trauma covers much more than just that. In fact, the worst traumas are emotional and psychological.
Neglect
Neglect is a trauma that is often overlooked. With neglect the child’s physical and emotional needs are frequently overlooked. It may involve not receiving regular meals, not having clean clothes to wear, not having your emotional needs for comfort and support met. A parent who rarely interacts or shows an interest in you is also neglectful.
Neglectful parents are also unlikely to be there to teach you skills of emotional regulation. They may not teach you how to wash yourself, how often to change your clothes.
It is unlikely a neglectful parent will see you and spend time connecting to you. This is known as attunement. A child who is not seen is a child who is not safe. Not being safe is extremely traumatic.
The clear message in this situation is that you have no worth or value. After all, you are not worth having any time or attention given to you.
Narcissistic Parent
Narcissistic parents are also very destructive of a child’s sense of self-worth.
Such a parent depends on the child to make them feel good. The child gets positive attention when they do things that serve the parent. The trouble is, there are no clear guidelines as to what the child needs to do to serve the parent. Consequently, the child lives life second guessing the parent in order to feel that the parent will care for them and they will be safe.
Narcissistic parents will also often shame their children in front of others. They will expect their child to meet their needs, to do things to make them proud. They will never teach their child any skills that will equip them for adulthood and self-reliance.
Narcissistic parents will often hold the child close to serve their needs. They want the child to stay dependent on them because the child is there to serve their needs and that is why they had them.
One classic example is of a woman who would take her child to school. The child would happily run into the classroom and greet her friends. The mother would call her back and make a fuss of her, stating it was okay for mummy to leave now and she would be okay. The child would go back to her friends and be happily talking with them. Again, the mother would call her back. This would continue until the child’s resolve was broken and she would wail and beg her mother not to leave her.
A narcissistic parent is one of the most destructive types of parent and sentence their children to mental poor health and a dependence on validation from others in adulthood.
Complex PTSD and Borderline personality disorder
These conditions develop because of chronic trauma experienced in childhood. The type of trauma most associated with these conditions is emotional abuse and invalidation. It can happen if you are neglected or have a narcissistic parent. It can also happen from other types of abuse and invalidation.
Sometimes parents are not aware that their behaviour towards their children is invalidating and can be surprised when their child develops this disorder in adulthood.
When a parent is emotionally abusive or invalidating during a child’s early years it impacts on the child’s sense of self and the child can struggle to have a strong sense of self.
You may develop self-defeating attitudes and beliefs around yourself and the trustworthiness of the world.
When raised in such an environment it is also difficult to learn to regulate your emotions. This is often due to your parents being unable to regulate their emotions. How can you teach another person how to regulate their emotions if you can’t do it yourself.
For this reason, I encourage people who had difficult childhoods to seek counselling from a trauma trained professional before having children. Many parents who were emotionally abused as children are determined their own children will never have to go through that. But sometimes things your children do can trigger reactions in you that you can’t control and don’t like doing. If you find raising your children triggers behaviours you struggle to control then seek counselling. Seeking help makes you a good parent.
Unstable and intense relationships
If you find that any type of relationship you have with others tends to be intense and over time unstable then you may be experiencing the impacts of chronic trauma in childhood. Sometimes these relationships happen because you are uncomfortable being alone and seek out anyone who looks willing to be in a relationship with you. This can result in you unconsciously choosing the wrong type of person to have a relationship with.
Sometimes when you are in a relationship you can sabotage it by clinging to the person and unwittingly pushing them away.
I think you are the best, I hate you patterns
Another impact of childhood trauma can be seen in meeting someone new and idealising them. This continues for some time then you start devaluing them and finding things wrong with them.
You are too hard on yourself
One of the saddest impacts of childhood trauma is the lack of self-worth and lack of self-compassion.
It is not surprising that children develop these beliefs. When a parent is abusive, or expects you to jump over hoops to gain their approval, the natural response is to believe this is because you are a bad person. If your parent constantly tells you that you are bad then this belief is reinforced.
The reality is that a child is just a child learning how to live life. There is no inherent badness in a child. Sadly a child doesn’t know that. Shame becomes a big part of the life of an abused child.
Ways to dull the pain
If you never learned how to regulate your emotions, and you believe you are a bad person, then you feel great pain that you don’t know how to soothe.
Many people turn to behaviours that numb the pain. These behaviours may be dangerous. A good example of this is children who steal cars then drive them dangerously at high speed. The risk and dangers inherent in this activity help to suppress their pain.
Other things people do include addictions such as substance abuse, smoking or vaping, gambling, compulsive shopping, sex addiction, exercise addiction and eating disorders.
I am lonely
If you don’t feel you are worth anything then you may not feel you are likeable. The result is that you may avoid getting close to others so that they can’t reject you.
Getting close to another person means exposing yourself to the rejection of your parents. If they rejected you, then other people will too.
When you do form relationships with others you may be frightened of expressing your needs or asking for help because your parents failed to meet those needs when you were a child. So you may feel even lonelier because you can’t turn to someone for help.
Many people who suffered trauma in childhood report feeling lonely.
Depression and Anxiety
It is very common for someone traumatised as a child to be anxious. Your childhood was an anxious time of never being sure when you would receive support, or whether you may be abused. Abusers are rarely predictable so hypervigilance was an essential part of childhood.
Hypervigilance leads to anxiety. There is the need to be constantly on your guard because you never know what is going to happen in the next minute. You never know when things will suddenly become dangerous and frightening.
When you grow up and things become safer the fear doesn’t go away because your brain has developed neural pathways that constantly scan for danger. This is why anxiety is a constant companion of the traumatised child.
Depression is another consequence of this type of childhood. Many people report feeling depressed from childhood. The sense of not being good enough, the lack of self-worth, being emotionally worn down with anxiety and fear, the rejection and abandonment of parents and the sense of never being safe all contribute to feeling overwhelmed and hopeless and lead into depression.
I constantly feel on edge
The environment of neglect and emotional abuse is a highly stressful environment. Children in this situation are being impacted regularly by the release of stress hormones in the body. This has an impact on the developing brain and will often result in an adult who is highly sensitive to stress hormones.
The result is that your brain is in a constant state of defending yourself. In other words the fight/flight/freeze response.
It is very difficult to cope with life if your brain is constantly seeing danger and you spend a lot of time with your brain taking over your life and deciding whether you are to fight, run away, or freeze.
When this defence mechanism takes over, your thinking brain switches off. You can’t control your reactions. Sadly, very few people understand this and you may find yourself judged when you get stuck in this defence response.
It is for this reason that it is important to seek counselling from a qualified trauma counsellor.
Can I Help?
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 helpful 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
