In nature, creatures never try to be something else, but live simply, fully themselves. If there’s actual danger, they react with legitimate fear, but once it has passed, they relax. How would it be if we could rediscover what has been taken from us and live this freely? Continue reading Habitual Fear
Category Archives: Relating to Yourself
Revisiting Our Childhood Fears
Most of our childhood fears were learned from our parents. Today, we can explore past assumptions and embrace the gift of healthy fear.
We learned to fear as children
A baby is born with only two fears: that of falling and of loud noises, but all of us now carry many different fears in our bodies. These we’ve learnt from others as they tried to shape our behaviour, but which more often just hampered our natural learning. Continue reading Revisiting Our Childhood Fears
I Am Your Anger
I am the engine inside of you. I am here to help you get through life, but you have never looked after me. You try to put me down and to get rid of me, but you can’t for I am integral to who you are. You neglect and ignore my warnings, but I break through your consciousness. I hide in your circumstances and I get you. I have to change things. I have to fix things. If you don’t manage me appropriately, you can’t blame me. You never engage with me, never befriend me. You sometimes use me so you can hurt others and frighten them. Continue reading I Am Your Anger
Befriending Depression
Learning to play all the keys of our heart’s piano
We all have times of feeling low. It helps to understand what these are saying. Since we haven’t listened to and resolved our little depressions, we don’t know how to process our big ones. As we learn to love ourselves more fully, we need to do for ourselves what wasn’t done for us. We are empowered as we come to accept who we really are.
We all know from our own (and others’) depression, that there is no magical ‘quick fix’. Continue reading Befriending Depression
Feel the Fear and Give it Containment
Often we identify with the feelings we have and make them so part of our identity that we can’t separate from them. We say, for example, ‘I am angry,’ or ‘I am fearful,’ instead of, ‘Sometimes I experience anger or fear.’ We shape our thoughts, and receive them from others, but we are not our thoughts and feelings. We need to take responsibility for every feeling. They should not be our masters, but be our servants.
We often associate with having fear negatively. We see it as something that we need to control and get rid of. But all our feelings, including fear, are important messengers. Continue reading Feel the Fear and Give it Containment
Anxiety From Assumptions
We have each developed patterns of behaviour in order to ensure our feeling of belonging. Rejection is what we fear the most, but we compromise ourselves a lot in order to avoid this. If we wait for others to validate and define us, we disempower ourselves and lose our sense of who we are. No one can do for us what we need to do for ourselves, for if we struggle to love ourselves, how can anyone else?
The emotional landscape we experienced as children profoundly affected us. Continue reading Anxiety From Assumptions
Being Seen in Full Measure
Our fundamental need as people is to be seen. From the start we were fed our identity through others’ eyes. If we were seen, we came alive. If we were not seen, or were seen critically, we were damaged or wounded and felt like we were a shadow and didn’t exist. As we grew, the receptivity in another’s eyes was so important, as it launched us, shaped us, gave us a sense of who we were. Continue reading Being Seen in Full Measure
Our Quest to have Needs Met
Longing for unconditional love and acceptance
Our core need as humans is to love and be loved. Since we need this so much, we may find ourselves going about it in a roundabout way, manipulating relationships in order to get our needs met. We may, for example, give to another, simply because we hope to get back from them what we are longing for. We may try to have our hunger met in undercover ways by saying something obtuse, but often people don’t think to give it back to us. Continue reading Our Quest to have Needs Met
Needs Draw Us to Life
To be human is to have needs and the place where they’re nourished and restored is in relationships. However, if we’ve been hurt or disappointed, we may shut down and try the route of independence, saying, “I don’t need you.” Life and growth are always a risk and always involve an opening of ourselves to parts we might not yet be familiar with. But if we choose not to take this path, we will deaden and stagnate, our inner reality will shrink. Continue reading Needs Draw Us to Life
Right Needs, Wrong Means
Our needs change through our different life stages as we grow and mature. The needs we have as children or teens should develop with us as we get older. Our awareness of our different needs will help us not to go to the wrong places to have them fulfilled. For example, when we think we can satisfy our real hunger for good food with just snacks, we’ve gone to the wrong place. In the same way, we must see in what ways we may be going to inappropriate places to satisfy our real need for love and touch. Continue reading Right Needs, Wrong Means