For the first time in my life I feel that I am ‘In one piece’. Like humpty, dumpty put back together again.
And I am amazed that with my focus on healing, that I have been fortunate to have it all come together intuitively for me. The key was for me to get out of my head, and start to listen to what my body was telling me. Continue reading “In one piece”
I am amazed that somehow I intuitively knew that I had some fragmented parts. I knew that there was a Benevolent Dictator who was holding it all together. I also knew that there were hurt parts that I was working so hard to deny. Until I no longer could.
It is interesting to me now, that it should have been glaringly clear but I missed it. I have worked my way to wholeness, developed my own methodology for doing so and maintaining it. I am a lucky one, but surely everyone was not doing this on their own.
Surely the Mental Health professionals were aware of and fixing Fragmented Selves. So I began my research, which turned up surprising results.
So many of us when we encounter challenges, automatically go to our ‘I am not enough’ belief system. ‘I am not enough’, ‘My work is not enough’, ‘People don’t love me enough’.
And our day spirals with the ‘not enough’ that we are feeding ourselves. It’s hard to catch ourselves when we are in this mode of action. But absolutely essential that we remember where it is coming from.
Feeling Triggered?
With all the uncertainty in the world, it is no doubt that many of us are struggling with our feelings. I know that the FEAR that has been a constant, is triggering my old wounds. I feel that I constantly have to revisit my coping strategies in order to deal with all that 2020 has to offer. It is surely the gift that just keeps giving.
FEAR for me is the big one. It is something that I personally find the hardest to tackle, as it triggers easily for me. But I am happy to say that I seem to be managing well through all the change. It feels as though all of the coping strategies that I have been clarifying, refining and developing for myself are being put to the test. Over, over and over again.
Been thinking of a special someone recently. You see I have been blessed to have a very best friend since early childhood. And I find myself thinking of her Father. He was a good and decent man. Very kindhearted and what I would call ‘a kind soul’.
He is the only man that truly felt like a father to me. He was not without problems. He had his vices, and the one that he struggled with was an ‘alcohol addiction’.
I know that for my friend, it was very troubling and somewhat embarrassing. We talked about it for sure, but I always saw the person underneath the problem. With him, I always saw them as separate things. Probably because he was kind enough to do the same for me.
Sometimes the only thing to do for sanity and to heal is to walk away from a relationship, until you can gather your feelings about whether it can continue.
It is easier with friends or acquaintances, but very difficult with family. Either your own family or your spouse’s family. It is typically met with judgement. But that is your parent, you cannot walk away!
As I have gotten older, I understand a little better how some families become so dysfunctional. And to me it usually centers around control. Watching some parents manage their relationships with their children as they get older is very interesting. Some parents have serious issues with allowing their offspring to develop minds, wishes, and desires of their own.
Sometimes Adulting can be hard! I have struggled with this concept for some time, and think that I am getting closer to understanding why it is important to meet Anger with an Open Heart. But believe me, it is not easy.
The world around us feels very Angry right now. And it is filled with FEAR. I realize however that a lot of this Anger and FEAR is manufactured for the purposes of individuals trying to garner a following, and push their own agendas. I also know that the Medicine for FEAR is love, and this neutralizes it’s affects. So I have been trying to keep my heart open, even when I feel the anger or FEAR building.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. Needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up.
Today is National Mental Health day! A very important day indeed. I believe that Maslow’s theory has a direct relationship to positive Mental Health.
As fall approaches and I watch the trees turn color, I am in awe at just how easy it is for them to transition from one season to the next. It seems effortless; they simply seem to know intuitively how to move from one way of being to the next. And it occurs to me, that we humans could learn valuable lessons from this.
I walked through the park, and was in awe of the trees. The season of change, and nature just adapting as it always seems to do so effortlessly. There is no planning, debate or discussion around what it is to do next. The season simply responds to the world around it, and adapts.
It made me think about my own journey of healing, and how I spent so much time trying to think my way through to resolution. Little did I know that healing does not happen in the head but in the heart.
Who knew, apparently there is something to the term “Take a Deep breath”.
I learned early on to suppress feelings that were too much for me to manage. We all do it through our Breath. I became a shallow breather, so that my emotions would not be felt. A lot of us quit breathing fully because we didn’t want to feel our feelings. We held our breath to hide from a lot of things we were taught not to do – like get angry, cry in public, or through traumatic or anxious situations. The only problem is that while holding our breath and breathing shallowly can effectively shut down our feelings, it can’t get rid of them. They just get locked somewhere in the muscles of our bodies.
I had never really paid attention to this, until a friend who was doing a massage on me asked “Do you even breathe?”. I had no idea what she meant until she said, your breathing is so shallow. Try to inhale a deep breathe, hold it and then release all of it.
Shallow breathing often accompanies fear, however subtly that fear might be felt. Deep, full breathing often accompanies confidence. When a full breather takes shallow breaths over a prolonged period, they begin to feel a hint of panic that a lack of oxygen can induce. The shallow breather can feel that all the time, without being aware of it.
