My experiences of living with and working through Anxiety

Most people will experience a level of anxiety at some point. Most of us know this to be 'stress'. Whether you have an anxiety disorder or whether life has gotten the better of you and you are struggling with the feelings of stress and anxiety, it can be very hard to deal with.

I could come at this from a more clinical perspective and tell you that Anxiety is a fear based disorder classified as 'excessive worry' by the DSM-V (Diagnostic and statistical Manual used to categorize and label mental health illnesses). Instead I would like to talk about this in a more real, experiential way, sharing my experiences and how I have worked through and with my own anxiety. As with all illnesses, there are some common symptoms but every person is unique and will have their own experiences. I am no different. Hopefully this will help you to view anxiety a bit differently and approach your own stress in a slightly different frame of mind.

I have experienced 'stress' for as long as I can remember. I feel my anxiety in my body more than anything. Anxiety is a very physical disorder for many people due to the inability to relax and the high levels of worry that you may experience. Your body starts to react which I found increased my worry and made me feel trapped in this state of hypersensitivity. When I am anxious I tend to feel a great deal of pressure. The feelings of anxiety will latch on to relevant issues in my life that deserve a bit of stress but my reactions far outweigh the problem. Much of the time I manage this without people being aware. One of the worst mental pitfalls of anxiety that I experience is rumination. Thoughts that go round and round. Playing conversations in my head over and over. Having imaginary fights with people, even strangers, often based on me lashing out in defence to perceived threats or insults. None of this is warranted, none of it worthy of the amount of energy I expend. I end up mentally exhausted and angry. I become frustrated and angry with myself and often feel ashamed at my inability to control this. The negative, judgemental self talk starts. I feel defeated and want to escape, run away and start again. The light at the end of the anxiety attack seems very distant and at times I can't imagine it being there.

For me, mental exercises such as stopping thoughts and re-framing thoughts is difficult. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy works well for some people but for me, it added to my mental exhaustion and didn't fit. I never went to a CBT therapist, I did a group when in the UK and found the whole process to be a great learning opportunity (budding psychotherapist that I am) but in no way helpful or applicable. In fact one of the members was clearly grieving and had been lumped in this group without being fully assessed. The mental health system can be like this at times. We are so hell bent on finding a quick fix, evidence based solution that the government will fund that individual experiences and the acknowledgement of people having complex life experiences falls by the wayside.

Anxiety is often a product of emotional neglect in childhood. I have learnt a great deal in my own healing journey and would very much like to share this with you all. Emotional neglect is a bit different from emotional abuse, which we associate with emotionally manipulating people in order to control them or put them down. Childhood emotional neglect is a bit different and possibly one of the most damaging forms of abuse. It is often not deliberate at all and I hesitated calling it abuse. It occurs when parents or carers fail to effectively meet their child's emotional needs. Children are not attended to emotionally and they are not taught how to manage their emotions. Often this is because parents have not had their own emotional needs met. It is generational. Fear stems from instability and a lack of safety in the world. When needs are consistently not met in childhood this creates anxiety from an early age. Anxiety is a tough one to identify though as stress is such a common state. I remember being in a pharmacy looking for a vitamins and chose one that was good for stress. The pharmacist asked me if I was stressed and I replied 'Who isn't?' She said to me that she wasn't and looked taken aback by my response. I started to wonder if my stress was unusual.

I learn't in therapy and through my own personal growth and professional knowledge that instead of trying to change my thinking patterns, I needed to understand my emotions. I needed to understand what my child self went through on a feeling level. I had become so cut off from my felt sense, from how I experience things in my body. I was unable to connect to many of my feelings, I stayed in the realm of thinking and intellectualising. I inherently had to learn how to do this again. Meditation was key for me. I struggled a great deal at first. I find doing this whilst being open to exploring your true feelings and experiences in a safe and guided manner is the most helpful. I needed to work on some deep set beliefs I had been holding for most of my life. I have had a lot of shame and am still muddling through this aspect of myself.

The release for me has been confronting my anxiety and the reasons for it head on. I do not believe some people 'just develop it'. This is a myth and centred around our denial and resistance to looking at how we have been parented. This is not a criticism at all. I know first hand how guilty you can feel seeing the people who gave you so much as being the people who hurt you emotionally. Let me tell you though, once I worked through my attachment issues with my mother, I realised one day that my memories of her had changed for the better. The very memories that induced so much pain have been re-framed in my mind and I was seeing them more fondly. I understood her, I saw her for who she was and loved her more deeply than I was ever able to. In working on my childhood pain with a therapist that I trusted I was able to release the intense emotions attached to my trauma. I learnt how to be the parent to myself and identify my own needs and meet them for myself. This process is tough and so much comes to the surface before it can be released. This means the intensity heightens and you have to be aware of the process or you may just want to retreat back into your shell (believe me, that's normal). Should you persist, you WILL overcome it and come out so much stronger. Each challenge becomes that little bit easier. You find strength to work on yourself in ways which you never thought possible. You look at patterns in your life that no longer serve you. You start feeling a sense of self love you never thought was possible. This takes time but something I always felt was that although there is pain, it's NEW pain. It sure beats the same old ruminations and stress.

Not all therapist's believe in this. Working on your childhood attachment trauma when suffering from anxiety or any mental illness is the key. It allows you to release and purge this unwanted baggage and change in a way that you can't possibly go backwards from. You learn HOW to work on yourself and WHY you are feeling the way you do. You learn how to feel and trust your feelings. You learn about who you are. I no longer struggle in the same way. I get triggered at times but I allow those triggers to surface and I observe them, my behaviour and work through my emotions. Like I said, you learn how to work on yourself, on your shadow self.

Anxiety is not a life sentence and you don't need to stop your thoughts or change anything. On the contrary you need to observe them, accept them and reflect on them. Let them guide you. Focus on your feelings, really work hard at being in the present and with whatever you are experiencing. Be kind to yourself and hang in there!

Take care,
Paula X

How to Cope with Difficult Emotions

I have been wanting to put something I have recently discovered down for you all around coping with difficult emotions. I say recently because until recently, I have been a bit of an 'avoider'. Not deliberately and not completely. I have always been in touch with emotions in general. I have never been uncomfortable around other people's emotions (with the exception of anger at times). Today though, I am talking about those deep buried emotions that we try our best to avoid or ignore. Those emotions we deny because of the fear and negativity we experience when we feel them. The ones we think will swallow us up whole, never returning us to the light.

All emotions, including happiness, have the potential to be difficult. The reason for this is because of the experiences associated with the emotions and what these emotions mean to us. Fear is one of the big and uncomfortable ones. Fear is also something we enjoy in certain contexts such as watching a horror movie or going on a ghost tour. There is a huge market for spooky things for Halloween due to our love of getting thrills and chills. Why is this? Why can we invoke fear on one hand and build up massive defences against it on the other?

It is not the emotion we are fearing. It is not the emotion that gets us so to speak. As children, we are driven by emotions and our 'felt sense' or how we perceive the world outside of thoughts and logic. We have the strongest instincts when we are children because we are unable to understand other people's feelings outside of our own experience of them. We don't talk ourselves out of feelings. We don't anticipate what loss, anger, sadness etc. will feel like. We live in the present and take each experience as it comes. We don't fear emotions. What we are afraid of is the lack of understanding, the unknown.

This fear of emotions comes from childhood and feelings we have experienced that have not been made clear to us. We have not understood our emotions within a difficult experience and have had to find ways of making sense of them without the tools of logic, learning and reason. Many of us build up defences in order to cope with these tough emotional experiences. When we feel something that unconsciously (or consciously) reminds us of this difficult experience, we logically assume it is the emotion that makes us feel this way. That the unbearable nature of what we are feeling must be due to our anger or fear or pain or sadness etc. We build up walls against these particular emotions and feelings and attempt to move out of them as quickly as possible in various ways. I hope I am making sense?

Let me give you an example. My father was not a part of my life. Fundamentally I felt abandoned and rejected. I felt sadness and hurt that he 'didn't want me'. My mother did her best to compensate for this by believing in me and expressing how much I was wanted by her. She tried to explain to me all the reason why he couldn't be a father to me. As much as she tried to help me to see that it wasn't because of me as an individual that he wasn't around, I still felt abandoned by him. I still felt loss and sadness at the fact that my father was not around and didn't want to be. This sadness was not attended to, by my mother and then later on by me. The reason was due to it being misunderstood and it was not something she was aware of in terms of my emotional needs. Sadness and emotional pain has always been quite difficult for me on a fundamental level. The deep sadness. Even in my grief, I struggled with truly experiencing this on a full level. I shoved it down and moved on from it as quickly as possible. I built up a world of defence mechanisms to cope with feelings of sadness, rejection and abandonment. One of my biggest defences is anger (an associated emotion I developed). For years the feelings I have felt towards my father have been anger. Anger has been a much easier emotion to bare, it has protected me and given me a false sense of security and justice. I have also developed the habit of trying to 'fix' other people when they feel sad. I have always felt sadness and pain is something that needs to be fixed or something I need to help people to avoid. As a therapist I have had to work extremely hard at allowing people to be in these emotions without trying to move them out of it and give them solutions. People will heal from discovering their own solutions.

The truth is though, in order for you to feel relief, you need to fully experience your feelings. The pain comes in when we bury them or build these defences up against them. We take these defences on board and keep using them way beyond their necessity. In my case, the anger has been holding me back in so many ways. My lack of ability to experience sadness fully has also held me back from being who I really am. It made the significant loss I have experienced incredibly hard and drawn out. It effects my relationships (all of them). It prevents me from being true to my own needs and living in a way that is in alignment with who I really am and would like to be.

To overcome difficult emotions, you need to allow them to come up to the surface. Think of something at the bottom of your tea cup, it is much harder to reach inside the cup and dig it out than it is to scoop it out when floating on the surface. You may just burn your fingers trying. Your buried emotions are the same. You need to have patience and understanding as each emotion starts to float. It won't all come at once although it can often feel like it does. To reassure you, your higher self or unconscious is in tune with your needs far more than your conscious self. In the same way as our dreams, we will never be given more than we can bare. If you are experiencing a difficult emotion, know that you are strong enough to cope with it. It wont feel good. That is to be expected.

The minute you let go of your expectations around how you should be feeling, you will accept and work through how you really feel. If you can allow the emotion to come through and have your full presence, your organic, natural and instinctual self will integrate and work through it. Once you have worked through it, it will be released. It will not only be released but you will be much better for it. You will learn from it and grow from it. You will feel relief and you will no longer have to bare the weight of the heaviness that comes with holding it in. This can take some work, especially if you are like me and have a lot of resistance to your difficult emotions. Start with trying to identify how you feel in your body.Get to know how you experience emotions and be gentle with yourself. Find time to be by yourself to think, feel and behave in the ways you need to. I personally like to be by myself to grieve and cry. I play sad music, light a candle and look at photos. When I am angry I like to vent, play heavy rock music or to sing or write. I am starting to honour the complex nature of my emotions and feelings and I have taken control back. I make it a point to understand all of the emotions and appreciate the importance they have in my life. In all our lives. The key to happiness and relief is in you, in being true to who you are and what you honestly feel.
There is no such thing as a bad emotion! Only bad experiences associated with emotions.

Love and light XX
Paula

Shame on me, shame on you

Hi folks,

This was always going to be a tricky blog to write because of the vast impact the emotion SHAME has on pretty much all cultures and groups of people. And to be the bearer of bad news, the links to the negative impact of this emotion stem from childhood and how this emotion is misunderstood, under regulated or even inflicted by parents and/or guardians of the child. This topic can be triggering for people who have experienced trauma in the form of shame and I urge you to notice how you feel and pay attention to any resistances that emerge for you. Treat yourself with love and compassion when tackling shame.

Let me start off by explaining shame a bit as it can often be confused with 'guilt'. Guilt is when you feel you have done something wrong. Shame is when you feel that your being or who you are is fundamentally wrong. Still confused?
Shame basically makes you feel inadequate or lacking in some way (or all ways) on a deep, personality/character, fundamental level. People who feel this way spend their lives attempting to hide this from the world. It becomes so ingrained that you begin to hide your shame from yourself unconsciously. Like me, many of you will be completely unaware of your shame but well aware of your insecurities and fears. So many of us have insecurities it actually becomes unusual not to have them. Some cultures, like mine, celebrate a level of humility and look down on over confidence and high self esteem. A certain level of shame is almost expected and considered normal in some Western cultures.
Have a think about yourself and your levels of self esteem, I have described a few,what I call 'shame bombs' below:
Perhaps you hate getting in a swimming costume in front of others or have issues with you body or the way you look. Perhaps you get intimidated really easily and feel your opinion will be laughed at or put down. Perhaps you struggle to trust your significant other or friends. Perhaps you have a fiery temper and are unable to control it and your reactions. Perhaps you have an addiction of some sort or battle with substance abuse (Some of you may be familiar with the term 'Dutch courage',which is fondly used to describe how alcohol frees your inhibitions and makes you brave). Perhaps you have a phobia or suffer from a mental illness (eg depression, anxiety, bi-polar, borderline personality disorder, narcissism etc). Perhaps you are either the perpetrator or victim of domestic violence. Think of the impact of low self - esteem, what kinds of feelings associate with this way of being.What does shame FEEL like?

I have discovered my own shame in my journey of self discovery. Perhaps to ease the blow of your own shame being identified, it may help you to hear about mine.

I had no idea I was sitting on a bed of shame. What I knew is that I had something big inside that was unprocessed and frightened me. If you start to study psychology and counselling, you develop a theoretical knowledge about things like shame. You know that to work with shame therapeutically you work in a similar way to trauma, carefully and gently. Despite having a real interest in this emotion, I did not make the links to my own experiences and reactions. Those who have read my previous blog will know I lost my mother when I was 17. I always attributed my unexplored pain or what I called my 'vault' to unprocessed grief and some issues I had with my mother as a teenager that were not resolved when she was killed. I am a person who reflects and is not afraid to work on herself. I believe in this process and feel it is vital to understand my way of being and experiences in order to help other's understand theirs. I never ask anyone to go anywhere I wouldn't go myself.

The problem was, I had no idea what I was up against and despite numerous efforts to resolve my grief I was struggling with anxiety and feeling like I was losing myself more and more, the closer I moved into my profession. This was actually quite the opposite. I was starting to grow frustrated with how I was reacting to things. The more I worked with children and families, the more I started to burn out. It was my eventual burn out at the end of the year that pushed me into therapy with someone I chose specifically. My therapist is also my mentor and I absolutely love how he works and thinks. This is important.The relationship between you and your therapist is fundamental. Why you may ask, because this process requires trust and vulnerability. You need to work up to a level of trust to allow yourself to revisit your childhood or perhaps a better way of looking at this is 'inner child work'.

My mum was empathic, loving and warm. Not a day went by that she didn't tell me she loved me when she was alive. Anyone who knew her would be shocked to hear me speaking like this. I did not accept any of this easily either. Week after week I tried to resist this concept, this shame. In terms of attachment (relationship bond, critical to healthy childhood development) I am not secure. To be specific, I have an 'insecure preoccupied' attachment style from an 'anxious ambivalent attachment' [John Bowlby's attachment theory - for those wanting to know more]. What this means in non clinical terms is that my mum was inconsistent at times and I lacked boundaries. My mum struggled to say no and despite very early childhood discipline such as spanking and enforcing rules, I was often given far too much control and say in my upbringing as my childhood progressed. If my mum was unhappy about something, she placed the decision on my shoulders but made me feel guilty for 'wrong' decisions. I lacked guidance in the form of structure and routine. My mum lacked conviction and confidence in her rules. I ruled the roost. My attachment style means that my mum and I were very expressive and close but our emotions were far too entangled and volatile. I was always mature for my age, due to being given too much responsibility too early on, which encouraged the belief that I was able to hear things that were not always appropriate for my age. This was not limited to my mother, most adults forget my age and still do. The role of child and parent was often confused and not clearly defined. I have always been pretty good with my brain and learnt how to manipulate situations into my favour from very early on. We all create defence mechanisms and these are dependent on many things, namely our personality and family culture I believe.

Unfortunately this did not all begin in childhood. It started earlier than that. And this is difficult to convey because I do not have clear memories. My shame started as a baby. Shame may occur when needs are neglected. I want to stress that none of this was intentional in my case although I am aware that this is not true for everyone. I have discovered that I wasn't consistently attended to. I had to piece bits of memories together like a puzzle. I wont go into detail but will share a few. I remember my mother saying things like she was lucky if I slept 20 minutes at a time. I remember her suggesting to a young mum to leave her baby to'cry it out' at night. I have seen a photo of my extreme distress when having a bath. I have temperature issues now which suggest I was not attended to in terms of being too hot or too cold. My mother believed that babies don't feel the cold like adults do. So as you can see, there are little things, often based on beliefs from that era, that show neglect but not intentionally. I also needed to take into account the fact that my mum was a single parent, we struggled financially, my mum had her own past trauma's and had health issues (osteoporosis). I have a suspicion she may have suffered from Post Natal Depression, but not much was known back then and support certainly wouldn't have been free in South Africa.

I want to highlight the most important part in this - inconsistency. As a little baby, without thoughts or brain development outside of instincts and drives, I was completely dependent on my single mother to keep me alive. If I needed something, I would have cried or cooed and attempted to get attention. As a baby, my instinct would have been one of extreme fear and anxiety if my needs were not met. This is because on an instinctual level I knew I would literally die if not attended to or left alone in the world. Thus if you leave a baby to cry and cry and ignore them, this creates fear and anxiety due to survival needs. This can be true for children in their formative years too (under 4 or 5 years old). When the child is hungry but does not get fed, or feeling pain but does not get comforted and looked after, or is cold but does not get given something to keep them warm etc, the child becomes insecure. The world does not feel like a safe place. They are not able to understand the complex reasons for why the parent is not attending to them. When a baby is unable to see or sense their parent or an adult, they do not have the brain development to understand that the parent still exists and will come back. They learn that they are not worthy of this attention or the attention is conditional if parents are continuously inconsistent in meeting needs and this creates 'shame'. Even babies will start adapting their behaviour to attempt to get their needs met, thus learning they have to be something else in order to receive love. They live with a fundamental fear and as the years go on this fear and belief that they are unworthy becomes completely embedded and internalised. They learn that being who they are and acting on how they feel is not acceptable.

Each individual person will react differently to this and develop their own ways of coping. These coping mechanisms are often valuable in childhood but become maladaptive later on. For instance I developed a temper. If I felt someone was attacking me in some way, I fought back. I developed structures and things in my life to 'prove myself' and I like control.In fact I need control and even as a child I was extremely bossy and battled to share. I don't take to authority well. I become overly familiar with people quickly and my close friends are like family to me, yet I always feel this is conditional. Underneath I often feel like I have to give something in order to receive. I question people who love me for me and for years accepted that people like me for certain parts of me but would not like me if I expressed what I really felt or what I really needed. I wasn't dishonest, I just showed people parts of myself depending on what I thought they would respect and like. I am lucky because I am extremely good at reading people and have made this way of life something almost innate- but not quite. This, I believe, is the reason people say that you can feel lonely even though you have so many people in your life that love you. This sentence is another shame bomb. You feel lonely because you are alone. No one is seeing you. No one is hearing you. No one truly knows or understands you. You don't even know or understand yourself.

People with shame often feel an emptiness inside that cannot seem to be filled. It's that feeling of lacking, of not belonging. This is shame. Many of us have learnt to repress certain emotions such as anger or sadness. A good example is gender stereotypes where men are discouraged from the more 'feminine' emotions such as sadness and fear. Thus my culture is full of men who suffer in silence and are unable to even talk to their friends about their pain. Shame is a powerful emotion and is bigger that most people know. We use every trick in the book to avoid feeling it and often these include destructive or harmful behaviours.

Understanding what shame is and how it operates is extremely important for all people. Punishment is often our first port of call for pretty much most 'bad' behaviours. Punishment, without understanding and help for the person, exacerbates problems. Look at the prison system or issues with substance abuse for a good example of this. We need to be tackling shame and helping people find ways of healing this. Teaching people why they feel the way they do and helping them to find healthier ways to react. Bringing shame out to the surface releases it's power on you. Punishment creates more shame. This is why I am completely against spanking. This is one of the most shaming strategies a parent can use. If you have already done this, it is important to spend some time building on your child's self esteem and teaching them about emotions and how to better react to them. I know this is hard to hear, but spanking a child for a bad behaviour is like punishing them for your lack of ability to teach them the correct behaviour. I always find it ironic that parents will spank their child in order to teach them not to hit, or bite, or push etc. You are not modelling the correct behaviour when you do this, rather they can see that you hit, so the problem must not be the hitting,it must be them, they are the problem...shame bomb! Children are resilient, you can completely turn this around! Teach your children about emotions and give them appropriate ways to cope with how they are feeling.

All is not lost for adults too. The trick is to re-parent, soothe and nurture yourself. For those who struggle, my best suggestion is to make use of a therapist that understands and works with attachment trauma (most experienced practitioners do). Always be kind to yourself and notice when you are being your own abuser. Actively aim to stop this. Cut yourself some slack and start honestly asking yourself what you really need.

I wish you all luck and love XX
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Reflecting on Reflection

We all reflect. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it is a product of our human gift of higher level functioning. Reflection can come under many different terms and labels which is why we are not always aware of our own processes and abilities to reflect. You may call it 'analysing', 'musing' 'in hindsight', 'when I think about it', 'I realised' etc. Reflection happens when you think about something that has happened or is happening outside of the actual situation. Reflection can be deep and philosophical or it can be simple and seem like going over a memory. It can even be somewhere in between the deep and the simple. The questions I want to pose today are 'Why do we reflect?' and 'What are the benefits or downfalls of reflection?'

Reflection is a vital part of counselling and therapy, for both the client and the therapist. Without it the work that is being done is blind. One cannot recognize the changes made, patterns identified or how or what journey has been taken to end up where you are in the present without reflecting on it. This is important, not only in therapy, but in life. We all know the saying 'learning from your mistakes'. In order to learn we must understand and in order to understand we must reflect. It is not just true of mistakes. We also need to reflect and understand what we do well and on our strengths in order to continue achieving success and living in a way that satisfies us and keeps us safe. This begins to answer the question of 'why we reflect'.

The benefits of reflection can be vast. We all process information in different ways and in different speeds. Some people think on their feet, others need time to formulate their thoughts before sharing them. When we become emotional (positive or negative emotions), our thinking changes and we think and react differently. If we are angry we often say things and act impulsively. This can be true too when we are frightened, feeling stressed, panicked, excited or overjoyed etc. We also gain influence from others or from the values and culture instilled in us. We are a product of learning and much of our character and way of experiencing the world is due to what we have learnt and the environment we have been raised in. We are individuals living in a society with other individuals. We are not perfect, nor should we have that expectation of ourselves. We do, however, have values, morals, standards and beliefs that influence our thinking and behaviour as well as our reactions to experiences. Now add emotions. We can't nor shouldn't control the way we feel, nor should we be ashamed of how we feel. Feelings are natural and fundamentally serve to help us and alert us to how we 'feel' about something. Reflection, therefore, assists us in learning about ourselves and helps us to find 'meaning' in our lives. It also helps us to make sense of our reactions and helps us to find the words to explain our feelings, reactions and needs.

For example, you may have felt wronged by someone and feel angry with that person. You do not want to walk away from the situation but you do want the person to realise they have angered you and you want them to understand why. You may also want them to understand so that they do not wrong you again. Unfortunately, many people do not automatically see their role in the wrongdoing in the same way you do. You may not realise it but when you spend time thinking about the problem, formulating conversations and responses in your head and looking at why this happened in the first place, that is reflection. Looking at things in hindsight and upon reflection can give you the time and space you need to make sense of a situation without the emotional closeness that 'being in the moment' entails. It allows you to look at things with a fresh perspective, perhaps after talking to others or after a distraction from the problem due to other life demands. Sometimes 'sleeping on it' can clear things up for you as this gives your subconscious a chance to process events.

 To have healthy reflection and for the benefits to be the greatest the focus must be on YOU. It is easy to fall into the trap of blame and it is easy to look at the role others have in your life. It is less easy to look at your own contributions to a situation, positive and negative. This is one of the biggest downfalls of reflection in my opinion. We seem to struggle to acknowledge our strengths in a situation, particularly if the situation has not been easy or does not have the outcome we had hoped for. We also seem to struggle to see our contributions when the situation is relational and someone else has hurt or angered us. It is so easy to blame someone and picture them as a villain with bad intentions. Sometimes they are villains and sometimes they deserve blame. The catch is though, that assigning blame and holding onto anger without reflecting on your own processes, expectations, strengths or values can be poisonous.  It is important to learn from experiences that effect you so that you may grow and let go of the negative thinking and self doubt. Reflecting in a way that focusses on YOU enables you to find confidence in your life and in how you react. It gives you the clarity to ask for what you need and protect against things and people that cause you harm.

When you focus on others and external things you can easily fall into the trap of getting stuck in a thinking pattern that causes stress and anxiety. Other people and external things in your life are often uncontrollable. No matter how much you try, you cannot change someone that does not want to be changed. You cannot change your past (recent or historical). You can riddle yourself in guilt, anger or shame until you are crippled with it, it wont change what happened. Reflecting on what should have been is only beneficial if you look at the past in a way that encompasses questions and curiosity without blame. So you blew up at your friend for something small, it happened. Look at why it happened first. What was going on for you at the time, why did you feel so angry, was it about the friend or something else? Once you have established the 'why' look at the present. What can you do about it NOW. What do you feel would be the best outcome for YOU? What do you need? Perhaps that friend has let you down in a way that really hurt you. Do you want to save the friendship? If so, what needs to change so that you feel better about it? How could you handle things better in the past so that you have more control over your reactions? The answers are there and it takes courage and reflection to listen to yourself and listen to your needs. You have choices and in order to make them you need to understand the context of the situation and your role in it. Most importantly though, you need to understand yourself in the situation and this is never easy. The harder you are on yourself, the harder it will be to gain the truth and listen to your needs.

Being conscious of how you think,
react and behave is the best place to start. Give yourself time and space to do this and open yourself up to healthy reflection. You are worth the trouble!

Be kind to yourself
XXX
Paula

The Power of Memories

There are a few ideas that have been milling around my head lately and it has been hard to channel some of them under a neat heading. I wanted to talk about happiness, regret, meaning, identity and other very interesting and relevant topics. It dawned on me how memories embrace all those topics and many more. Instead of spending time talking about why and how we create memories, I thought I would talk about the impact and influence they have in all of our lives in different ways.

When I say the word 'memory', what comes to mind? Do you think of some memories that you have? Have you recalled positive or negative memories? Does thinking about memories make you feel a certain way like happy or sad or nostalgic? Are the memories happy but the feeling you have looking back at them leave you with a sense of loss or longing?

I would make an educated guess that this will depend on the mood you are in when reading this as well as what you are needing or going through in the present. The reason I infer this is because memories are a tool we unconsciously use to inform us and help us find and create meaning in our lives. At times we use our memories consciously, esp when making decisions or working out whether to trust someone or something. If you are like me, you might store a few things in the memory bank to bring up later (this is an important aspect of counselling too). Unfortunately, however, we often tend to remember things in a limited way, mainly based on our feelings at the time of the memory. For instance you could be on the most amazing holiday with all the trimmings but look back on the whole experience negatively because of a single fight you had with your travelling partner. This, to me, is what makes this topic one of great curiosity and interest.

So many of us are trying to put things behind us. How many times have we heard the phrases 'what's done is done' or 'better left in the past' etc. In the Western way of being, we have a nasty habit of sweeping so much under the rug, refusing to sit with uncomfortable feelings and pushing one another to move on and move up so to speak. The problem with this is that the memory may have been stored away, conversations surrounding it may now be limited if not non-existent and there may seem to be a belief of 'out of sight, out of mind'; but lets face it, if it were that simple we would all be very well-adjusted, fearless and perhaps even reckless. We may even learn how to forgive ourselves a bit more readily.

I have never, in all my days, met a problem that someone is very emotionally connected to, that is easy to forget and move on from. You may be thinking that I am crazy to say this so absolutely, that there are people who don't let things get to them and of whom don't seem to dwell on their issues much at all. This is something that is very misleading I believe and it tends to create unrealistic expectations of ourselves and of others. If there is one thing I have learnt it's that people are complex and unpredictable. Try as you may, block a memory from your life that has been extremely influential and powerful in defining who you are, you will start to find it creeping in to other areas of your life. Perhaps some people have heard of a term 'dissociation'? Loosely, this is when we mentally distance ourselves from a problem. We all do it to some degree, daydreaming is a common example, where you get lost in thought and are not in touch with your surroundings for a brief time. Dissociation can be a defence mechanism, particularly in situations of abuse or extreme distress. Often our minds work out a way to compartmentalise information in order for us to protect ourselves. Something like recalling abuse is something that can be intensely overwhelming for people and if safety is not created in some way - even in our minds - there is the potential to become re-traumatised. Many adults have no memories at all about their abuse as children, particularly sexual abuse. When small memories start to emerge, often in the form of nightmares and flashbacks, it can be incredibly distressing and confusing.
It also begs the question, how much information has been stored out of our awareness as we have journey'd through life's challenges? I also start to think of transference and how certain things can get triggered off in our lives without us even realising it (due to associations we are continuously making - linking the past to the present). How many of our stored memories are important and still need to be processed in some way? I am sure there are many, big and small. This is what makes us complex and unpredictable, this is one of the elements that make us human.

But memories are not all negative. The problem is though that we seem to remember the negative ones with a lot more clarity and willingness to understand. My best guess: Regret. I will admit, I put regret up there with guilt and remorse and spend a lot of time trying to avoid these emotions. Unfortunately, just the conscious avoidance of them gives them power over my life. Regret is a tricky one because no matter how hard we try, we cannot have the gift of hindsight until, well, in hindsight. All we have power over is our reactions but even then, if we are not in sync with our experiences and not accepting of ourselves, controlling our reactions may feel like a pipe dream.

Understanding yourself better really is the key here. Not in a 'magic formula' kind of way but rather as a realistic tool to find acceptance and compassion for all things 'you'. Memories shape and define us. We learn from mistakes, whether we repeat the mistakes or not. At times, we pick and choose elements from our past experiences to ground us, to remind us that we belong, to validate us as members of something greater than ourselves. Even immediate memories such as calling a friend in a time of need can help you to remember that you are not alone. Alternatively the memory of trying to get help and not receiving it can make you feel even more alone. Scientists are probably more comfortable with the terms 'cause and effect'. As we navigate through our lives and accumulate experiences, we have the choice to learn and grow. The first step is to look at yourself, with all your flaws, weaknesses and mistakes, and see someone who is not so unlike everyone else. Even if you were to be perfect, perfect means different things to different people.

You cannot change the past. I often say to people who are caught in a spiral of regret: Look back at this time, what you knew, how old you were, what you were feeling, faced with and the time in your life when the experience occurred...Given the place you were in and the ability you had at the time, would you have been able to do things much differently? Sure, you would most likely react better if given this problem now, esp after time and hindsight to think about it, but it is important to remember that we do the best we can given the circumstances. Beating yourself up is a punishment not fitting of the crime. Emotions such as regret, guilt and remorse are guides to us, helping us to be conscientious and loving towards others. Fixating on negative emotions prevents us from learning and maturing.

Remember this: there are just as many good memories as there are bad, we just need to open ourselves up to embracing them.

XXX
Paula

Overreacting? Perhaps it may be transference.

Do you ever have one of those days where you feel as if you may explode with anger, frustration and emotion all at the same time? I have recently experienced this and have managed to figure out a few things which I thought would inspire a blog on the topic of transference.

Anyone who has studied any field in the mental health profession will be good friends with this term. Transference has been around in my industry since the days of Freud and I will attempt to give a brief explanation of what it is before I go on. In simplistic terms transference happens when you react to something in your life based not on the incident itself but on things that are being triggered off for you from your past. This is not a conscious process and the emotion you feel towards the current situation can feel very relevant to that particular situation. I may not be making much sense so here is an example I have made up:
Say you get into a fight with your partner because they have not been approving of your choice of outfit. For someone with no emotional connection it may not be a big deal at all, in fact some may even laugh it off. But imagine that as a child your mother would criticise everything you wore and call you fat and ugly. You spend your life trying to gain your mother's approval, trying to better yourself and become preoccupied with how you look. So when your partner says that outfit doesn't look great, you absolutely explode. After the rage you find yourself feeling extremely upset and hurt and can't seem to let it go.

At the time it may feel like a completely valid reaction, the anger is there and so is the hurt. Y
ou value your partners' opinion and feel horrible about the situation. In time however you may start to question why it all feels so intense and wonder why you are unable to move on from it. As I mentioned the past with your mother, it is easy to make the connection that this is stemming from the experiences you had with her and your partner has triggered the past hurt and anger you previously experienced.

Life is not all neat and tidy and transparent however, and it is not always easy to recognise transference (even as therapists - with ourselves and for our clients). I want to share a valuable lesson I learnt whilst doing my placement. I had a very wise supervisor and this is one of my most treasured and most used lessons:

We all react in one way or another to situations. Even the feeling of not caring is a reaction. To be moved or influenced by someone is normal. I will often feel things for my clients such as sadness for their situation, pain for them, anger towards people who have wronged them, compassion, intrigue, frustration etc. A certain amount of these emotions are good and are what make me empathic and human. It is when we have extreme reactions that we need to start paying attention to our own transference and processes. Extremes on both sides, either we react really strongly and are more than moved by something, it effects us; or conversely we are not moved at all and may be bored, complacent, numb or such the like. My supervisor pointed out to me that these extreme reactions are often not about the other person at all but rather about something being triggered off within me - transference. Thus by paying attention to the level of reaction towards something we experience, we are able to recognise our own triggers and start to think about where they are coming from.

Why am I telling you this you may wonder? 

You may just find yourself in a situation where you feel almost combustive with emotion and instead of being able to calm down, you just get more and more worked up. It is in these moments where I urge you to start looking within and asking yourself some questions. In my own situation, after a day of what felt like extreme anxiety and negativity, it took recognising that this was a case of transference but having to sleep on it and perhaps dream (I suspect that is what happened although I do not recall the dream at all) or reflect on it, for the answers to come. Often when the answer feels right there is a sense of relief. Many people, myself included, experience this in a very physical and real way, even if it is fleeting. As counsellors we are taught in certain therapy frameworks to look out for this sign of relief and help the client to recognise that they have tapped into something meaningful. In my own situation I felt as if a giant weight had been lifted and as I told my partner about the experience and the tears and emotion was able to flow freely, I was able to find relief and understanding and move on from my extreme reaction.

Unfortunately recognising and exploring transference can be difficult and even painful. It is important to be patient and kind to yourself. I find it is really helpful to explore with someone else, muse out loud or write things down. Move out of your head and into your experiencing and body so to speak. Pay attention to how you are feeling and look at yourself with curiosity and compassion. We all have our demons and skeletons and need to navigate through them sometimes. Awareness brings about more control and understanding.

Happy sailing :)
XX
Paula