Avsnitt
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Millions of years ago we lived completely on our instincts. No watches, phones, Google maps or Siri, back then. In fact, if we didn’t have our instincts we would never have made it to the 21st century, and in our world, we were not the biggest or scariest creatures; just think back to the time of the dinosaurs! 😱 Wow, I sometimes wonder how did we come this far? Well, I believe it’s our fight or flight response that has been our saviour.
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My blog is taking you metaphorically down the rabbit hole, opening you to a whole new world of how we think, feel and operate at the deepest levels of ourselves. This blog will help you gain more understanding of your mind and for some of us, it will help to reduce the fears we have over our minds and what we store in them.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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The first step in any change is to come clean with yourself and stop living with the excuses and denial. I hear so many of these on a daily basis; “I will start tomorrow, I can’t do it, just the one, I lapsed so I just gave in, I am ok, I won’t do it again”. The list is endless, but I am sure we have all at one time or another said some of these things and convinced ourselves into thinking it’s ok to carry on.
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We can all probably admit to having the odd obsession or two, I think this is normal and won’t have a massive impact on our lives. For example, if we have to have the certain thing in our home in symmetry or we have to do things in a particular way, maybe we like the tins all in order in our pantry, or the bed made just so, or we can’t relax until the kid’s toys are packed away. This can be a never-ending task with children, as soon as it's packed away, even if they haven’t used it in ages, they seem compelled to want them out again! Maybe we all have this need for the things we haven’t got, and spend our lives craving for those things, instead of enjoying what we have got.
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The last blog on Superstition was looking at how superstitions can negatively impact our ability to be safe, secure and worry free. Today we are looking at rituals, which can develop from superstitions but can also be experienced on their own, even if you’re not superstitious. The word rituals can be seen as very religious in its meaning and also can be linked to witchcraft too, as many of our earliest rituals are imbedded in our ancient past. The word ritual means, 'a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions, performed according to a prescribed order'.
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Most us have a few superstitions, but it doesn’t have a negative impact on our lives, but if we have let these habits get out of control, it can affect our anxiety levels and also stop us from being our true selves. The key to life is balance, not too much or too little; it can be a bit of a tightrope at times, but once we find ourselves and are true to ourselves, it’s easy. Superstitious behaviour links back to our ritualistic heritage, religions, and stereotyped behaviour patterns from the people we lived around.
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Control is a confusing issue and for many of us we have got it in the wrong place in our head; if this is the case we can be causing ourselves lots of issues. Lots of people say to me that they don’t like being out of control - this can be situational, like being on a plane or in a meeting, it can be future based, for example, "Will I get the job?" or "Will I have enough money?", and it can be personal, "Do I have cancer or some deadly illness?", "Can I be myself in this situation, will I feel ok, can I cope?"
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Do you find yourself unable to sleep, as you are worrying about what’s been happening that day, or what’s coming tomorrow? Do you worry about the smallest things? Do you blow things out of proportion? Do you feel unable to concentrate and focus on things because you're anxious? Do you feel on edge if things don’t go as planned, teary and emotional from anxiety? Or do friends and family comment on how much you worry? If this sounds like you, maybe you are a serial worrier and you have let your worry habit spiral out of control.
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This is the next part. You may understand now that the learnt habits of worrying is something we are in control of and not a big scary issue out of our control. After decades of helping people to become anxiety free, one of the key factors is knowing that we can change and we don’t need to live this way forever. With your new-found knowledge, commitment to change and of course, like anything in life, a bit of work, you will start seeing a change in how you feel. -
If a stray cat came to your house and you fed it, it would come back, and the more you feed it, the more it comes back. This is just like the habit of worrying, the more you worry about something, the more the worries grow and the more they will come back. If you keep feeding the cat, it will grow bigger and scarier, taking over your garden; this is the same thing that can happen with your worries. The pleasure is though, once you know this, you can start the process of change. The simple answer is, if you don’t want the worries and the fears, don’t feed them, just like the cat; if you don’t feed it over time, it will go away.
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This is exactly how a habit grows. It starts with just a small thing, like feeding the cat. -
This is another one in the series about anxiety and how we can be doing things unknowingly that could be part of your anxiety issues. Anxiety has a massive pull on our inner mind and can easily distort our perception of things. We can then start to find that we delude ourselves a little by maybe saying, "We’re not that bothered about going out or going on that trip" and we may say to ourselves "I think we will leave it. We’re far too busy, we can’t commit to the time off work, we can’t afford it, we don’t really want to go," or whatever excuse we make and then we don’t go.
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We’ve all been around people that can
elevate us, and then we can also have people that hinder our ability to be the
best version of ourselves, just by the toxicity of the connections we have with
them. We can often be afraid to speak up and confront those who produce toxic
vibes, and this can then keep us in toxic relationships, friendships, or even jobs,
due to this toxicity and how we can get trapped in the cycles it brings. The
more we get upset and put down by these types of relationships, the more our
inner confidence and self-esteem can be negatively affected by this. Some people
are great at holding the illusion of being lovely, kind, and all-round nice and
friendly, but on the inside, they are very different. These types of toxic
relationships can be more subtle than the Mood
Hoovers and Debbie Downers we
have looked at already but can still have a massive impact on us. It's good to
just notice how we feel about the people in our lives, and if they are
impacting us, it’s time to look at who they are and of course how we are behaving
too. -
Often, we can get focused on everythingelse, but at times it is important to bring the focus back onto you. We have toalways be real with ourselves and not let denial or any level ofnon-acknowledgement of what we are doing or not doing get in our way. We needto see things clearly and if we’re not sure, we can just stop and think ofsomeone who isn’t suffering from our issues, and if they are not doing some ofthe things we find ourselves doing, then maybe we need to rethink this. We need that confidence to grow so that wecan help ourselves to be the best version of ourselves and liberate ourselvesfrom the restraints of these horrible, unwanted, bad habits and issues. Wecan of course get help, but the best person to help you will be yourself,committing time to change and supporting this new positive lifestyle isessential.
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Life
is like a game of tug of war, in most, if not all our relationships and
interactions, we all have our own agenda and hopefully, we all strive to be
fair too. Confidence is a learned and developed habit, with this being the
case it is super important that we create the right lines in every area of our
lives, and then we can just “hold the flag” over everyone we interact with. But there is a fine line between give and
take; one we need to uphold in balance for ourselves if we are striving to be more
confident. Overgiving is just as bad for ourselves as undergiving is bad
for others, neither way is the right way. If we overgive then it's a sign of
weakness to our primeval minds and this will cause us to lack confidence. Our
minds from the caveman days have all seen the importance of survival and that
we need to protect and take care of ourselves to survive. Don’t get me wrong, giving
selflessly is a great thing to do, but if this is something we do all the time
at the expense of ourselves, then this will be too much to sustain over long
periods. If we go on too long this way, we could run out of energy completely
so then we are no help to others or ourselves, which is not a great place to
end up. The people we are helping
wouldn't want us to break ourselves in the process of helping them, so it's
about finding the balance between give and take. -
Last week we looked at when anxiety is at
its worst, how it can immobilise us, and how the freeze response takes over how
we feel and often negatively impacts our nervous system as well. We used the
analogy of the rabbit, which is one of the best creatures we know to use the freeze
response to stay alive, and how we can’t just shake the rabbit awake. At this
point, their nervous system is shut down and is far too afraid to do anything
for the fear of dying. You might think that last statement is a bit dramatic,
but this isn't the case, our nervous system is so powerful and is directly
connected to our unconscious and primeval minds. The feelings it sends to
our bodies are so strong and overwhelming that at times we can feel paralysed
by them. So, if we can’t shake the rabbit
awake, what can we use as a carrot to entice them out of this frozen state? We
know, in nature, that leaving the rabbit alone will be the only way to change
this state of immobilisation, as with time, it will sense the danger is gone
and bounce back to life. We can do this too with people frozen in fear, but for
many of us wanting to help our loved ones and ourselves, we don’t just want to
wait it out until our nervous system feels safe again.
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Anxiety is bad enough at any age in our
lives, but when we should be living our lives to the full without the full
pressures of adult life, it is, I feel, an even harder situation to go through.
This week I had a young woman come in with her boyfriend, this young woman is
an inspiration to us all. She has been battling with her childhood issues, and
severe, demobilising, anxiety, for many years now. We have been having sessions
for a few months now and making great progress, which is fabulous, and I know
this will only continue to grow for her. When we have anxiety at any age, we can
often feel that people don’t understand what is happening inside us and that
our actions will be misunderstood. We can often feel at our worst, that we
can’t fully connect with our loved ones and the people around us and we feel
unable to let them in. Also, we can feel that people may take our actions
personally and that this is something they have done, rather than our anxiety
and how we are struggling in that moment. If someone hasn’t experienced anxiety,
how can we get them to understand how we are feeling inside? How can we explain
what is happening inside at those moments? How can we get our loved ones to
help us, when we can’t seem to even help ourselves? -
In the last blog, we were looking at the
British stiff upper lip, and how we, as British people, have grown up with
this. Now we need to explore this line of truth we have with ourselves, and how
if we don't have this, it can cause lots of anxiety within us. A client came
into my office today and we were talking about this, and I was explaining how
this can trigger an anxious outburst from our unconscious minds. For myself, I
always look at what we do and how this impacts our unconscious mind. This being
the case, it can at times cause us to feel confused about what we should or
shouldn't be doing. This issue of our own internalised truth is very clear in
our minds and we need to have this relationship with ourselves.
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Thedifference between a lie and the truth can be a very fine line. It is evenright or wrong, black or white, a truth or a lie. It's great to be open andauthentic but we all know in certain situations we can't always be this way.This is because we need to be diplomatic and considerate of others' feelings.We also have to hold back from the full truth and tell those white lies. Lifeis like this, and that is perfectly fine. I think for everyone we have had toapproach life in these ways many times over. We know at times, that sharingthe truth and our true feelings, could cause an issue for ourselves, hurtothers, jeopardise our relationships, our jobs, and our friendships. In theUK we have had what's called the British stiff upper lip. The phrase is mostcommonly heard as part of the idiom "keep a stiff upper lip", and hastraditionally been used to describe an attribute of British peoplein remaining resolute and unemotional when faced with adversity.
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I think it can be very hard to be our
true unique selves, as historically this has not often been possible, and we’re
maybe holding onto those old patterns and habits.
For many of us, our parents couldn't be who they wanted to be, and beyond that,
it got more and more difficult to be ourselves. We still had slavery in 1865 in
the UK, plus in many parts of our western world too, and before 1967 it was a
criminal offence to be gay in the UK. Sadly,
this is still illegal in parts of the world. A few years ago, Brunei brought
back being stoned to death as a penalty for being caught being gay. Just over
100 years ago, women got the chance to vote and before that, they were classed
as being the possession of the man. These are so close to who we are today on
certain levels, yet also a million miles away from us. - Visa fler