With all Change comes Loss!

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Loss is a part of Change

Something that has been very prominent for me in my own healing journey has been the amount of loss I have experienced whilst making the necessary changes I have been making in my life. I have been reflecting on how change occurs in our lives and how painful this part of life can be. Most people know all about change and how it can turn your life upside down and make you feel unsure of yourself. What most people don’t bank on, however, is the grief that accompanies even the smallest change.

Grief and Change:

In order for new experiences to enter into your life, you need to make some space for them. The very nature of change means that the old ways you have grown accustomed to, are found to be no longer applicable to you anymore. Unfortunately, this can happen with people too. Similarly with decision making, in order to invite in something new or make a decision to change, you have to sever, let go or abandon something old. A quick example would be that you may decide to change your breakfast cereal to toast. In order to have toast in the morning instead, you must STOP having cereal.

This ‘letting go’ can bring about feelings of loss and grief, especially if the changes you have made have included people or places that have significant meaning in your life. You will need to go through a process, a grieving process, in order to accept these changes and make them a part of your current life. For some people, this can take time. The changes do not always have to be difficult changes, in fact they can be very exciting and joyful. So many people get caught in this trap, the ‘I should be feeling happy…’ trap. What isn’t taken into account, however, is how difficult the process of change is, regardless of how good or exciting the change is by nature.

With every new beginning comes an ending:

We are built to mourn the endings we face in order for us to process the changes in our lives, in how we see ourselves, our environment and the world in general. We feel loss at all the feelings of what could have been and the regrets we may hold. We feel loss at the ending of any future plans we may have held. We feel loss at the changes within us and how we used to think, used to feel or even how we used to react. We may not have liked the way we reacted or behaved but it was familiar. It was a part of us and for us to move forward, we need to create closures and endings and find a way to let certain things go.

Sadness and Loss:

The core emotion of loss is sadness. Sadness is a heavy emotion and can often make us feel as if we want to withdraw and wallow. It is a very low energy emotion and I look at it as if it deliberately slows you down in order to allow you to take time away from your everyday life and process what has happened. We may feel longing and sorrow, which can lead to feelings of remorse and regret. We may feel untrusting of ourselves and the decisions we have made. We may feel alone and unsure of ourselves. We may feel angry and frustrated. We may even feel anxious and panicked. Mostly we feel as if we are all over the place when we are going through change. It can all feel a bit ‘unknown’ and that can be very frightening for many people.

Sadness requires gentle self-soothing:

When working with sadness as an emotion you are experiencing (or your child may be experiencing), you want to aim for soothing and comforting forms of attending to yourself or loved one. Think of a child who is crying and sad, what would you want to do for that child? If you were emotionally regulating a child with their sadness, you would want to start by helping the child to understand what they are going through. You would want to help them feel ok with their feelings of sadness (validation) and help them to understand that everyone feels sad sometimes (normalising). You would do this by acknowledging how much they have gone through and how normal it is to feel sad when people go through something like this. You would use your voice to show the child you are there for them and a calm and comforting presence for them. You would use physical affection such as hugging or holding them, holding their hand, stroking hair, rubbing shoulders, sitting next to them etc. You would also allow them to cry and support them while they do. You would NOT call them names like ‘you are being an idiot’ or ‘what the hell is wrong with you!’ You would also try to resist cheering the child up and would allow your child to feel sadness and work through it with your help.

This is what your own inner child needs too. When you are going through a big change and find yourself struggling and feeling a bit down or overwhelmed with it all, think about the loss and grief that accompanies change. Think about how loss has a core emotion of sadness and attend to your inner child who may need some help with these feelings of sadness. Nurture yourself and question your feelings in a non-judgemental way. Comfort yourself, be gentle with yourself and stop placing unrealistic expectations on yourself. Change is tough!

The light at the end of the tunnel:

The dust will settle! Often we rebuild ourselves in bigger and better ways when we take the leap of faith and make changes in our lives. Sometimes the changes are imposed on us and we feel we have no choice. That does not mean we will not rebuild in better ways, it just means that we will likely experience more loss and difficulty as we may not have felt ready for the change.

Either way, loss is a part of change and change is a part of life. We are designed to cope with loss and grief for this very reason. What makes both change and loss hard and tricky is our aversion to painful experiences and emotions. We have it in our head that anything difficult is NOT meant to be happening to us. This is a false perception as there is not one person in this world who has an ‘easy’ life. We are aiming for the impossible if we are aiming for easy.

The freedom comes when we find acceptance. When we accept that we have everything we need inside us to get through anything that gets thrown our way. We may lose people along the way and people may decide that your changes are not suited to them and their lives. It can be tempting to live your life the way other people expect you too in order to avoid losing the people you love (I get that). The truth is though, you are the most important person in your life. You have to be. This is how you will find happiness and this is how you will find out who you really are. People may just surprise you or you may find that the people you lose have made way for people who will love you through your changes to enter your life. As long as you are following your heart and doing what is best for you, it will all start to fall into place!

All the best with those new beginnings

XX Paula

Burn out! The hidden epidemic.

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What is burn out?

Most of us know this term and have a basic understanding of the impact 'burning out' from work can have. I want to create some awareness today based on my own experiences of this predicament. I also want to highlight that burn out can occur in any situation, not just at work. You don't need to be a therapist or paramedic to experience it. You don't even need to be doing anything society would deem as high risk work. Burn out is more about you than your environment. 

Burn out occurs when you become triggered and overwhelmed consistently. I believe it creeps in gradually and grows as you continue to brush aside the warning signs. The less support you receive, the worse it becomes. The more toxic your environment, the worse it seems to impact you. 

Imagine a Pressure Cooker:

The way I would describe it would be to imagine a pressure cooker. All the ingredients inside the cooker are representative of your responsibilities and stress. They are all added as separate ingredients. You start off with control, cutting, peeling, preparing, tasting, seasoning and adding as you go along. You have an idea of what you would like this stew to turn into. You have an idea of what you like, what you don't like and take other stews you have made before into account. You also aspire to create a stew you have experienced someone else make before. You may even be following a recipe. Similarly to your life stresses, responsibilities and experiences, you can identify each part and it feels manageable as you add it into the pot of your life. You make an educated guess as to how much you can fit into the pot and you keep adding, keep adding, until you have cram packed as much as you can into the pot. You attempt to give it a stir to blend it but feel satisfied that if you leave it simmering, it will reduce and become cohesive. You secure on a lid and leave it simmering below the surface. 

This is a metaphor for what so many of us do with all the little stresses, problems, emotions and pressures in our own lives. We are all so busy and the world expects us to put one foot in front of the other at a growing pace. I hear the saying 'I can't afford to dwell on this' over and over again. We take on board so much information. We repress emotion after emotion. We get angry but hold it in. We 'can't afford to' get angry with our manager/boss/colleague. We feel tired but we 'can't afford to' rest, the kids need feeding, I have to do the shopping, I'm running out of clean underwear, my friends want to see me, I am behind at work... The list goes on. We push down our resentments, our hurt feelings, our fears, our irritations, our jealousy, our annoyance, our grief, our pride. We ignore our gut feelings and opt for things that we think we 'should' be doing. We criticise ourselves when we don't meet our own expectations or those of other people. We berate ourselves for how we look, mistakes we make and just about anything that we feel is 'not good enough. These are all ingredients we unknowingly add to the pressure cooker.

The steam starts to whistle:

The pressure is on, the lid is sealed and the heat starts rising. The pot is like our bodies and the lid is like the walls we put up to lock all our internal pressure inside us. It starts to feel explosive. The pot starts to feel too small, too constricting. The biggest indicator of burn out is a feeling of pressure. This pressure becomes harder and harder to bare. Steam is released violently through the tiniest hole and keeps the pot from exploding. 

When we are starting to burn out, we also release small amounts of pressure each time we reach exploding point. This can come out in many different ways. We may snap at our loved ones, scream at the TV, burst into tears over the smallest thing or throw something against the wall. We may find we feel certain emotions at the drop of a hat and feel really sensitive, taking so much personally. We may start finding tasks that once seemed easy have started to feel like a hike up Everest. We may start losing interest in things we once considered fun and don't feel much like socialising. We may feel drained and fatigued, even at the thought of doing things.We may struggle to sleep at night or find ourselves restless and waking up regularly. The pressure feels so overwhelming, the best way I can describe it is a 'feeling of wanting to run away, avoid it or escape in some way'. People who aren't able to literally run away may find escape in substances and addictions. It is ALL consuming, this pressure sits with you day and night.

Why does it get so bad?

This is easy to answer but not so easy to do. We are scared to take the lid off the pressure cooker. We fear an internal explosion as much as we fear the rush of burning steam in our face if we take the lid off when it feels this way. It feels like a lose lose situation. You want relief but you don't feel the release will be a relief. You feel trapped, desperately clinging to keep the lid on. The best way to keep the lid on but reduce the pressure...stop adding anything more in. You seem to come to this conclusion unconsciously while you consciously beat yourself up for not being able to handle the pressure. Your body, mind and emotional experiences SLOW DOWN. You are simply unable to cope with too many tasks. Many people have no choice but to stop working altogether. This is not a choice, it is a necessity. Your body and mind go into a state of survival. Your physical and mental presentation forces you into respite whether you like it or not. Your emotions are in control, emotions you don't understand and feel at the mercy of.

Survival = Fear

When you look more deeply at this survival reaction and state of being, you can see the core emotion 'fear' at the heart of it. Overwhelm, worry, stress, anxiety, jealousy, pressure, insecurity etc, are all associated emotions of fear. The heart of burn out must therefore have a base line of fear. The one associated emotion I didn't mention, that is not as obvious, is safety. Emotional safety. When I said burn out is more about you than your environment, that is what I meant. It is about safety. People who have had fear regulated in childhood will cope better with external stress. Whether it means resigning from a toxic job, asking for help, standing up for yourself, or taking care of yourself better, those people who have a healthy relationship with the emotional experience of fear will open that pressure cooker lid and release the steam and pressure. They will find a way to lower the heat. They will be able to find a way to see the situation as separate from who they fundamentally are. The only thing standing between you and the release is a fear of fear itself. Go figure!

Put your needs first, always!

Many people will cringe at this heading and think I have lost my marbles. I am talking about emotional needs. These should never be compromised. Emotional needs are not the same as your expectations on other people to make you feel good. No, emotional needs are from your childhood. They come from your inner child who has been emotionally neglected in some areas. You have unprocessed emotional trauma's and these come out in the form of triggers and reactions. When something in your current environment triggers you emotionally, your child self reacts to that original trauma. As you are unconscious of this, it feels too large, you want to bury it back inside. Put it back in the pot and hope it boils away on it's own.

Burn out happens when you can no longer hold in all the pressure.  It takes so long to recuperate from because you are dealing with layers of trauma, past and present. The more you stay in a place of external blame (as a victim), the longer it will take. The more you ignore your reactions to the pressure and continue to plough ahead anyway, the more of an impact it will have on you. To identify your needs you have to get real with yourself. You have to ask yourself some difficult questions. You need to be willing to feel the burn of the steam. You need to find a way to trust your own inner resources to cope with your own difficult emotions. You are stronger than you may think. The fact that you think you will crumble is a lie you have told yourself because no-one has told you otherwise in your childhood. Fear is not your enemy. No emotion is harmful.

Stop the stigma, Burn out is MASSIVE!

Burn out affects you on just about all levels. Not just in your body, mind and emotions but it gets into your relationships, your ability to function, your health, your self perception, your parenting, your focus and your dreams. It is a serious condition and is minimised in many work situations and circles. People who have not experienced it do not understand how bad it can get. It almost wears a label of 'weakness'. I believe this occurs in the same way triggers do. It is seen as an overreaction and this is seen in a negative way. People are judged because of their inability to cope with otherwise 'easy' or manageable tasks. This further compounds the problem.

When I experienced burn out, I was working at an organisation that understood the risk of burn out on paper. As an individual, however, I was treated as the problem. I was making mistakes and failing to keep up with tasks I would normally be able to do. I was not met with support. I was met with criticism. At one point I was being called into my manager's office once or twice a week to be reprimanded. I would have walked out and run a mile if it hadn't been for my client's. I didn't listen to my gut and pushed through extreme levels of anxiety in order to complete tasks and close my cases (I worked right up until the end of my contract). That is probably why people in my industry or any industry that works with vulnerable people experience higher levels of burn out. We find it hard to walk away or put our own needs first. 

Looking back:

Looking back, I needed to leave and heal my own trauma. I was being triggered every single day. I was unable to process what was going on for me and was using all my energy on my clients and the families I was supporting. I was becoming a shell of myself. I was extremely angry, especially when I was being criticised for something I was unable to help. I was angry at the lack of support, compassion and understanding I received. I was, and needed to be for a time, seeing myself as a victim.

As I healed, I learn't a lot about my own responsibilities. I realised I was cut off from myself. I placed the job ahead of my health. I didn't look after myself enough and I judged myself more than anyone was judging me. I had fast become my own abuser. It took me a long time to heal and I have made a number of changes because of this. I no longer see this as a bad experience, rather I see it as a very powerful learning experience. I will never allow myself to reach this point of burn out again and you guys don't have to either. Put your needs first, always! Life is too short to put yourself at risk in this way. The earlier you recognize the signs, the more time you have to get yourself out safely and with minimal impact. 

Take Care,

Paula XX  

My Evolving Relationship with 'Fear'

Please check out my video's on my Youtube channel or like my Facebook Page for parenting support and information XX 

I have felt a need to share some of my own experiences with the emotion 'Fear' today. It has been something that I have been actively processing, working on and making sense of for a number of months now. There are many experiences and variations of this emotion in my own life and in the lives of those closest to me and it is certainly not an easy emotion to get my head around. That said, which ones are!

We struggle to admit to our deep set fears:

One common theme I am starting to see more of is a fear of fear itself. Anyone who has read some of my earlier writing will know that I have lived with Anxiety for most of my life. I am pleased to say that I have healed from this in so many ways and I am at a point in my life where I am able to use my own experiences to conceptualise how I would like to work as a psychotherapist and practitioner but also in my personal life. 

Anxiety is a fear based disorder. I have unpacked so many of my deep set fears and this has been a gradual and difficult process. Fear comes out in the form of instability, insecurity and worry amongst other things. We do not live in a world that accepts these traits, let alone help you with them. Many of you, like me, will have shame attached to your fear. This is because we were shamed for feeling fear as children. We were either dismissed, ignored, left to soothe ourselves or our emotions were unintentionally unattended to.

We may have had parents that tried to change how we were feeling and would say things like 'you have nothing to be afraid of' or would distract us from our emotional experience. The very act of our fear being stomped out and not processed often creates shame. The way the world seems to repress emotions shows me that unless something changes, we will continue down this path without realising it. This is shown to me time and time again. Unfortunately we seldom get our needs met by other people when we are feeling scared, insecure or unstable. We often don't meet other people's needs when they feel that way too. The shame associated with our fear means that we often feel like fear is a weakness or embarrassing. We feel that we are going to be seen in a negative light for admitting to our vulnerability and insecurity. The truth is though, this often is the case! So many of us have an unhealthy and avoidant relationship with fear. This stems from childhood.

My personal discovery:

Throughout my healing journey I have been piecing things together. I have been trying to make sense of my patterns, behaviours, feelings, reactions, memories and triggers. I have been exploring and re-experiencing my emotions predominantly through inner child work processes. I have had to admit that I, like most people, have fallen prey to childhood emotional neglect. This is something that has run through many generations in my family. Emotional regulation continues to be a rather foreign concept and was certainly not known in my childhood growing up in South Africa. My mother had much of her own emotional trauma, so did my grandparents. No one taught any of us how to cope with difficult emotions such as fear. Strength and courage were applauded traits in my family, which is not a bad thing in the slightest. The problem comes in when the interpretation of strength comes to mean an 'absence' of fear. This is a false belief and one many people hold. This belief, in my opinion, is one of the most destructive forms of thinking we have. It creates an unhealthy relationship with this emotion and people develop a deep set shame because fear is unavoidable. It is one of our core emotions, we all experience it!

Fear builds up and is experienced in many different ways!

Well intentioned deception: 

I personally had a mother who liked to tell me that everything was OK and I had nothing to worry about. Looking back, I knew full well that this was not the case. I have been remembering many occasions where I have picked up on the stress and hardship in the home. I knew we had financial struggles. I knew my mother found it difficult to cope. I knew that my mother felt bad about herself. I knew that my uncle had gone missing on a sailing trip to Portugal and that my mother was staying up all hours of the night calling the Red Cross in various parts of the world. I could hear my mother and grandmother cry. I knew something was horribly wrong. I knew so much more then my mother could possibly have imagined. If I tried to express my worry, I was 'reassured' that everything was OK and there was nothing to worry about. This seemed to be a trend.

This continued throughout my childhood and into my teenage years. My mother continued to deteriorate under a pressure she refused to acknowledge to me. Our financial situation was dire and it was extremely obvious. There is nothing like no petrol in the car to drive this point home (excuse the pun). My mother was unemployed and shutting herself off from the world. Instead of attending to my fears and providing reassurance, validation and inclusion, she hid from the world. She taught me how to do the same in so many ways. This was her shame. She was frightened and was too embarrassed to ask for help, especially from my grandparents.  My grandmother refused acknowledge how bad things were for us and tried to motivate my mother by being critical. Thus my mothers' fears were punished due to my grandmothers fears. No one had any control, least of all me. It was no wonder I developed an Anxiety disorder that manifested in the form of needing to control my environment and struggling to trust other people. My environment was riddled in a survival based fear from the get go. I was never taught how to process my fear, I carried it inside me and it started to grow and permeate all aspects of my being as the years went on.

I learnt that the only person I could rely on was myself:

I developed a severe and unconscious problem with trust. I over compensated for this in ways that made me out to be overly trusting. This was such a good deception I even had myself fooled. It was a coping mechanism for my shame as we seem to do everything in our power to hide the truth when coming from a place of not feeling worthy or as if we are different from everyone else. The truth was though, I was let down again and again, particularly in my personal relationships. The love I experienced always felt extremely conditional. In many ways it was but this was partly due to the fact that I was not being true to myself. The self love I had was almost non existent. What love I did feel towards myself was the most conditional of all.

I let people down too. I valued honesty on the surface but deep down my inner child laughed at this concept. The world is unsafe she said to me. People will abandon you, they will dismiss you, you need to act a certain way in order to keep people in your life and on your side. Due to this childhood trauma around my fear, I developed the belief that people only liked me for what I could do for them in their lives. I had no money or nice things. I did, however, have a real knack for helping people with their personal problems. I was an excellent shoulder to cry on and ear to listen. I became the resident Agony Aunt. Good thing I love this role, in fact I chose to make this my profession. The problem was though, I never felt as if people liked me for me. In certain friendships and many romantic relationships, this was certainly the case. This was one of the hardest realisations I have had to face up to. The more I learn about myself,the more I realise that people couldn't have liked me for me because the real me was very lost. I didn't even know who I was outside of my practical identity (student, daughter, female, loves cats, has a sense of humour etc). The fear was so ingrained and I was so conditioned to act a certain way or I feared I would be ostracised or lose my sense of belonging in the world. It felt like the only person I could truly rely on in the world was myself. I struggled to trust anyone and still do if I am to be honest. I find it very hard to let people truly help me, especially emotionally. 

Fear is not and has never been the enemy:

I have called this blog 'My Evolving Relationship with Fear' because my understanding of my fear is continuously evolving and transforming. If I had to go into all my childhood issues we would be here for a year. From fear of the dark to fear of snakes to fear of being alone...I had many. We all do. Children are experiencing the world for the first time and fear is a natural part of this. Fear is not a bad emotion at all. Our reactions and resistances to fear are what cause us hardship and struggle. It is our experience in the world that determines what we find threatening and frightening. The less we are attended to emotionally, the more we will struggle to feel safe in the world. The more our emotional needs are not met, the less skills we will have to cope with life's challenges and the less self esteem and self trust we will have.

One thing I have recently thought about is my fear around very real danger. Living in South Africa with an extremely high crime rate means that safety is a very physical reality to this day. My house was not very safe and we didn't have much security in place. My mother had a responsibility to keep me physically safe and in this area she was unable to, predominantly for financial reasons. I lived with a high level of genuine and relevant Anxiety on a daily basis and in the end, my worst fear came true and my mother was murdered in our home. One could argue that the fact that my mother dismissed my fears and ignored her own had tragic consequences. Fear is often there to alert us to harm and danger. That is how it has been designed. As a child we are powerless to gain control in terms of our living environment. This feeling of powerlessness is where the link to shame comes in.

Emotions are here to benefit us, not make us suffer!

We become so cut off from our difficult emotions that we lose touch with the benefits of them. We turn off our internal guidance system that is really the basis of our authenticity. We cannot be our true selves without having a relationship with our emotions. We can't pick and choose what emotions we feel, this creates a mask that will end up making us sick and impacting our relationships. Most importantly though, we cannot have a positive relationship with ourselves and who we genuinely are without having a relationship with our emotions.

Most of the time we are really fearing the shadows from our past!

Lots of love

XX Paula

What is your 'Inner Child'?

Please check out my video's on my Youtube channel or like my Facebook Page for parenting support and information XX 

Understanding why we all have an Inner Child:

What is an Inner Child?

We are very complex creatures us humans. Many theorists will talk about the concept of 'plural selves' or multiple aspects to us that make up our whole being. Gestalt therapy will teach you that we are the sum of all our parts - Gestalt means 'whole'. The term 'inner child' is a psychological way of labelling that 'part' of you that is your younger self. This part of you is the part that carries all your unprocessed childhood experiences, particularly the difficult ones. This is also the part of you that holds your imagination, playfulness, innocence and some would argue, your true identity before you were socialised (your authenticity).

Your inner child is often a very neglected part of you and is usually the part of you that you repress and is thus situated largely in your unconscious. That is because many of the memories you have as a child are still in a feeling state rather than an intellectual or cognitive (thinking) state. As actual children, our cognitions or thoughts are one of the last areas of our brains to develop. We are guided by our emotions and felt sense of the world. When experiences happen that we fail to understand and make sense of, we have no place to put them. We need someone to teach us about our emotions and what they mean in order for us to process what has happened to us. We know this now to be called 'emotional regulation'. 

Each time we experience something difficult and have no understanding of it or how to integrate it into our reality, we develop an emotional trauma. We then have a part of our childhood self that gets 'locked' or stuck in this point and time, unable to move forward from this. As we grow older, we develop many of these trauma's and as they are unconscious to us on a cognitive level, particularly the very early trauma's, they make up a part of us we have come to label 'The Inner Child'.

How does our Inner Child affect us?

Most of us have a basic knowledge of the unconscious. Freud coined this term and identified that we have drives, wishes, reactions and motivations that come from a place outside of our awareness. Our dreams are a good example of how our unconscious works. It is not something we understand. The minute we do, it has become conscious and within our control. Our unconscious may feel like that part of you that you feel 'at the mercy of'. Those feelings and reactions that appear to come out of nowhere. We call those 'triggers' (please read my blog on 'Emotional Triggers' to learn more). Triggers are like overreactions to put it simply. Everyone has triggers because everyone has unprocessed emotional baggage. Unprocessed emotional baggage is another way of looking at our Inner Child. Dreams and triggers, therefore, are an attempt to bring our unconscious into our awareness, particularly if this is something that has been at the foreground of our reactions. Our bodies are actually designed to heal not suffer. Most things we have termed suffering is actually our trauma re-emerging in order to alert us to areas that need healing. Unfortunately we often have to re-experience those difficult emotions such as shame, fear, anger, disgust and sadness in order for us to release them and heal these wounds. This is not easy and many of us develop many defence and coping mechanisms to resist this process. Most of the time we do this unconsciously.

These emotions come back up when we have been triggered by something in our present lives and therefore, as the trigger is often unconscious, we assume the experience has made us feel this way. We react to the experience in the present and repress what is really going on (without even knowing it most of the time). We then add the new experience to the trauma which reaffirms our false belief about ourselves and carry on until the next trigger emerges. There is no escape. Our triggers will continue to emerge and occur until we address the core experience and heal the wounds of the inner child. Most people are forced into finding help as life becomes more and more difficult. This is where you see mental illness developing, escapism such as substance abuse and addictions, broken relationships, inability to feel happiness and patterns that seem to repeat in cycles.

We are all unique

Everyone is unique and will be affected in different ways. This is due to a number of factors such as your level of emotional regulation and how you were attended to as a child on an emotional level. The level of 'attachment' you had with your parents or parent (the person looking after you) is also very important. This is the bond between you and your parent and the level of emotional safety and unconditional love and nurturing within this relationship you received. Your environment and stability in the home comes into play. Other traumatic experiences outside of your family may impact you as a child. Your personality and gender, your extended support and interactions, exposure to certain stimuli (TV, games, cultural practices, pets, activities etc) may also effect you. We are all made up of many layers, experiences and social influences/conditioning. Thus the more difficult your upbringing and personal experiences of situations, the more emotional trauma you will develop. The more experiences that have been left unprocessed, the more triggers you will have and the more wounded your inner child will be. That is why child abuse and neglect have such long term, harmful affects.

Childhood Emotional Neglect

Certain theorists and practitioners such as Dr Jonice Webb (author of 'Running on Empty: Overcome your childhood emotional neglect') will tell you that you can have childhood emotional neglect without child abuse but you cannot have child abuse without childhood emotional neglect. Basically it is possible to have childhood trauma without coming from what most people would term an 'abusive' family life. The reason for this comes from a 'lack' of emotional regulation where emotional needs have not been met to some degree. For most parents, this is not deliberate and it appears to be a cyclic process where parenting is generational and influenced by how people were parented. The emotional neglect transfers from generation to generation and people are largely unaware of this even occurring. Think about it, you can't know what you need if you have never experienced it and have no conscious awareness of how it 'should' be. With other forms of abuse, even emotional abuse, something is 'done' to you. You have something tangible to identify, to explore, to question. If you are unaware of emotional needs, you are unaware of the areas of struggle you may be faced with. Your coping mechanisms ensure that you are in resistance to your difficult and traumatic emotions and your emotional needs start to play out in present day experiences. You start to believe it is the present day experiences and your current relationships that are the problem and don't identify the root causes. Thus your triggers persist and patterns are formed and repeated.

Understanding your Inner Child is key for deeper healing and positive change

To end off I will leave you with these thoughts. Your inner child is not only made up of emotional trauma from childhood. This is also the part of you that is able to feel joy, happiness and freedom. This is the centre of your creativity and authenticity. To shut out and repress your pain is to shut out and repress these other parts of yourself too. The more cut off from yourself you are emotionally, the more unhappy and uninspired you will thus become. Some, like myself, believe that there are links between physical illness and unprocessed emotional trauma. There is growing research on the links between the mind, body and spirit (emotions); these parts of us are all connected.

Think of your inner child like an actual child. Children are free from social stress and pressure. They want to play and have fun. Children tell it like it is and react to their needs without talking themselves out of them. They honour their true feelings and do not see all the systems and categories we have constructed in our societies such as race, class, gender etc. They are pure of heart and innocent with a fundamental drive to trust and love. This is something inherent in each and every one of us. Many of us suppress this part of ourselves because of the trauma we have endured and the pain we experience when allowing this trauma to surface for healing. We are built to heal and in order to heal we need to work with our wounds. The more we run from ourselves, the more suffering we will endure. Often we become our greatest abusers and would never treat a child in the same way that we treat our inner child. The judgement, dismissal, ridicule, punishment and avoidance that we put our inner child through is often larger than we even realise. 

Always treat yourself with kindness, there are very relevant reasons why you behave and think in the way that you do. Give your Inner Child a voice and start getting to know this part of yourself. You may be surprised at just how beautiful and special you are inside! 

Much Love
XX Paula

Understanding why people Self Harm

Please check out my video's on my Youtube channel or like my Facebook Page for parenting support and information XX 

What is Self Harm?

Self harm is an act of deliberately hurting oneself either physically or emotionally. 

When we think of self harm, many of us think of cutting. The image that pops into my head is one of razor blades and bandaged wrists. This is certainly a large part of self harm and there are many forms of physical harm people inflict on themselves purposefully and often ritualistically that can be mild to severe. Self harm is common amongst teenagers and there is a great deal of concern and fear amongst people (professionals included) around the dangers this form of coping creates. There are often a great deal of misconceptions about 'why' people do this as well as around the risk and dangers. A common misconception is that people who self harm are suicidal. This is often not the case. Self harm is a coping mechanism that people who are hurting emotionally adopt. It is done to create a sense of relief, regardless of what that relief may be to each individual person. 

Why choose self harm?

The reason I am writing about self harm today is largely due to this question. Why hurt yourself MORE when you are already hurting? I feel it is this mentality that creates a big divide between people who self harm and those trying to understand why. To help someone who self harms or to help yourself if you are self harming, this is a very important question to gain answers to and seek to understand.

I mentioned before that the intention of self harm is to create a sense of relief. For a person who is self harming, the goal is to hurt less, not more. To understand how physical pain or discomfort makes a person hurt less, you need to understand how emotional pain can hurt. Many people find this concept so difficult to comprehend as we live in a world that has mastered the art of repressing painful emotions. Many of us are very cut off from our difficult emotions and wear many masks in our daily lives to hide how we really feel. People who self harm are struggling to keep these masks on. They are finding their emotions difficult to live with, to bare, to keep in. They are in pain. Inherently,they have lost a sense of control and feel powerless to their emotional pain.

Self harm is a controlled act. It gives the person control over their pain. They are able to choose their pain and where to place it. They are able to distract from the emotional pain by redirecting their senses to their self inflicted physical pain. They have taken ownership of their bodies. They have pushed through numbness and reconnected with something tangible, something real and something that they can feel and manage the feelings of. Many people feel so awful inside that this form of punishment mirrors what they feel they deserve. It reflects what they are feeling inside. The outside wound helps to highlight the inside wound in a way that is outside of the 'unknown'. We all fear the unknown to some extent. Many of us fear our internal pain. The more emotional trauma we have, the greater the internal pain and the more enormous and frightening this 'unknown' part of us becomes. Self harm is a coping mechanism, it is done to create relief and ultimately 'help' the person. This is not the mentality of suicide, this is not giving up. In fact, this is a fight for life, for connection, for relief.

The Emotions behind Self Harm:

This is not a black and white answer because each person is unique and there will be many different core emotions. Some people, depending on their past childhood experiences and trauma, may have more than one core emotion. I would say that people who reach this point of coping will have an accumulated range of trauma ranging from mild to severe. Childhood sexual abuse is a common example to give for trauma leading to self harm as a coping mechanism. Chronic neglect (physical and/or emotional), physical abuse, unprocessed grief, chronic emotional abuse and disability are also good examples. There are also situations such as bullying, medical trauma and other external stresses and hardship that may come into play. Thus the core emotions can be fear, anger, disgust, shame or sadness; it all depends on the experiences and individuals involved. The key factor to understand, however, is that these core emotions have not been regulated or processed by the individual. These feelings have been repressed and the trauma has not been integrated.

The act of self harm and actively harming oneself in order to gain relief is done from a place of shame and/or disgust. Self harm is the opposite of self love and self care. As this act is a reflection of what the person feels inside themselves, it reflects a self hatred and loathing. Self harm thus comes from these negative feelings inside that are, for want of a better word, 'dark'. The act of self harm is a form of self punishment and the person consciously or unconsciously believes that they deserve this pain. Internally they are punishing themselves through negative thinking, low self esteem and judgement. The physical act is a reflection of this. They are not placing value on their physical bodies and have become detached from who they really are (their authentic selves) underneath all their internal pain and suffering. Shame is linked to powerlessness. As mentioned above, self harm is a controlled act which invariably brings about a renewed sense of power (however short lived). For people who feel powerless, self harm may relieve this feeling of powerlessness and the sense of control and power understandably can become addictive. 

Self Harm and connectedness:

The physical pain or discomfort also brings about a connectedness between the mind and body. For those who have endured physical and sexual abuse, this connectedness is a way to combat dissociation. Dissociation is a splitting of the mind from the body in order to cope with the physical trauma the body is enduring. This becomes a coping mechanism for many survivors of abuse, particularly sexual abuse. Survivors of this form of abuse develop many emotional triggers and will dissociate regularly when faced with reminders and triggers of their past abuse. Self harm is a way to feel, to connect to the body and to ground oneself back into reality or the present.

Self Harm is not always black and white:

Self harm is not always about cutting or burning or other visible methods. Many people harm themselves in other less overt ways. Eating disorders are a good example of this. Not all eating disorders require hospitalisation, starvation and obesity. Many people over or under eat and do this from a place of shame or disgust (self-loathing). I personally used to emotionally eat when struggling and at times still do. How many people eat food which they know is bad for them? How many people need caffeine to get by, a chocolate fix, a sugary reward for a tough day? Where is the line between treat and self harm? You just need to look at the number of people struggling with weight issues, body image issues and addictions to see that self harm is not a black and white issue. It is an emotional issue. Unprocessed emotions and trauma that have led to a place of shame and disgust.

How do you tackle Self Harm in terms of healing and awareness?

The first point I would like to make is that this is not a simple issue of 'attention seeking'. I find those 2 words extremely hindering in our modern world as I see them minimise and deflect very real and important issues going on for people. I often say to people, in any attention seeking context: If the person is going to this extreme to gain attention, it is a clear indicator of something being wrong. Our society likes to blame the victim. I feel this stems from fear and a lack of understanding and resources to deal with what they are being faced with. Seeking to understand, growing in awareness and finding compassion is vital.

We need to stop burying our heads in the sand. People who self harm are hurting and internally wounded. They need help not judgement. They are doing this from a place of shame, your judgement will increase this shame and place them more at risk. Ignoring them and pretending everything is fine is also shaming them as this translates into: I am not worthy of help, I disgust and repel people, I am not cared about, I am unlovable. This is when the self harm may start moving into a destructive path of suicidal ideation.

Shame is at the root of low self esteem

Self Harm is a cry for help. To help someone is to look past the behaviour and focus on their feelings. Listen, care, support and refrain from judgement. You can't remove someone's coping mechanism without giving them new ways to cope. The solution starts within, emotionally, through a positive relationship without judgement. Helping people to learn how to build up their self esteem and access self love. This is not an over night process and will often require professional support as well as support from loved ones. In a nutshell, the more support and care the person receives, the better!

Lets change the focus from 'what' the behaviour is to 'why' are people hurting so much internally? Why are people coping in this way? What do they need emotionally? Learn about the emotion 'shame'. The solutions lie within compassion, love and empathy. 

Lets not turn our back on those most in need of help.

Be kind to yourselves

XX

Paula

 

Emotional Triggers: What are they and how do they affect us?

Please check out my video's on my Youtube channel or like my Facebook Page for parenting support and information XX 

Most people will have heard of the term 'being triggered'. How many of us actual understand what that really means? This blog is for everyone as we ALL have emotional triggers to varying degrees. It is especially important for parents to understand what these are as they will influence how you parent. The number one area triggers seem to emerge for us is within our relationships, particularly our romantic relationships. Today I am going to explain what triggers are, how they work, the impact they have on our lives and how we can recognise them so that we can gain control back.

What are 'triggers'?

Triggers can also be called 'overreactions'. This has a negative connotation though and doesn't do any justice to the impact these triggers can have on us. This goes a lot deeper than simply 'being dramatic' or'seeking attention'.  We have an overreaction to something in the present, absolutely, but the reason for this overreaction or trigger is very much in proportion to the feelings and associations in our unconscious that have been brought about by past emotional trauma. In other words: Something in the present that we have become upset about is unconsciously reminding us of an emotional trauma in our past. Rather than seeking attention,we are seeking to get our emotional needs met that have otherwise not been met in childhood.

Childhood Emotional Trauma:

Childhood emotional trauma is actually unavoidable, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. This is because children do not have the brain development to make sense of their worlds outside of feelings and emotions. The thinking part of their brain develops later on. If children do not understand certain emotions and are not taught how to handle difficult emotional experiences, they are unable to understand and work through what they are going through. This means that they have not been able to get their emotional needs met and the experience becomes traumatic. When our emotional needs are not met we unconsciously develop ways to cope with this difficult emotional experience. As children we are not equipped to find healthy ways to do this for ourselves so the behaviours and unconscious strategies we adopt to cope with our difficult feelings will often become hindering and even harmful to our well-being later on. We bury these experiences deep down in our psyche and are often completely unaware of the impact they are having on our lives. Things go wrong, relationships break down, we develop low-self esteem, become very hard on ourselves etc. and will often ask ourselves: What is wrong with me or why do I keep doing this?

Most parents do their best to meet their children's needs but it is impossible to fully meet every need as the child does not have words to explain what is wrong or what they want. Emotional needs are often far more difficult to identify as they are not commonly known. Most people know about physical needs and do a great job with these. It is. however, very important for parents to understand the concept of emotional needs too as this will determine how we see ourselves, the world and other people. Many people find it very difficult to view their parents in a negative light and I was one of those people too. It is one of the hardest things to admit this to yourself, that your emotional needs may not always have been met. By being an adult who makes mistakes it is actually unreasonable to presume your parents did not make some mistakes too. That is normal and human. That doesn't mean you have not been affected by them though and to turn things around and gain back control you will need to honestly look at yourself, how you react and behave and where this all began.

An example of an emotional trauma:

As a baby you were scared in your cot at night by yourself. You did not have the brain development to understand that your parents were in the next room and you started screaming and crying because you were afraid that you were all alone. Your parents may have believed in the technique of leaving a baby to 'cry it out'and self soothe - this was and still is a popular strategy and is seldom done with the intent to create harm. In fact parents often struggle with it but persist as they believe it is the right thing to do.
Babies run on survival instinct and they will instinctively know that they need someone to keep them alive. If no-one attends to their fear by coming into the room and comforting them, anxiety will be created. If parents are inconsistent and the child is not regularly attended to, this may create an emotional trauma around fear and their sense of safety in the world.

The Impact: If inconsistency persists in the home and fear is not properly regulated, the impact of this early experience will be greater. People are all unique and how this under regulated fear will present and become triggered later on will be dependent on many factors. These factors are likely to include things like: Your personality, gender, other past experiences, your home life and environment, your insight and awareness and many more.
Perhaps the person will become either extremely clingy and dependent or become so used to self-soothing that they become emotionally distant and unable to rely on other people. This baby may grow up to realise that she 'overreacts' when her boyfriend does not come home when he said he would. This original fear will often come out in the form of other emotions such as anger, frustration, jealousy etc. The reaction is actually happening because the unconscious mind is making an association between the fear from childhood and the triggered fear of her boyfriend not coming home (fear of abandonment). Regardless of how each individual reacts, deep down they do not feel not secure and trust was therefore not developed between child and parent around emotional and/or physical safety. Thus a deep set anxiety or avoidance is developed within us unconsciously.

 Triggers and abuse:

I have clearly stated that we all have triggers and will have struggles from time to time in certain areas. It is up to each individual to decide whether they are happy with how they feel, regardless of the hiccups along the way, or whether these patterns and reactions are creating problems and require change. Awareness of what triggers are and that they are linked to deeper set beliefs and experiences may be enough for some people to create some changes if desired.

There are many people who are very affected by their triggers and are at the mercy of their reactions. Often this comes in the form of blame. This can be to the point where their triggers are having a negative impact on their life and their ability to function and be happy and healthy,particularly within relationships. In other words these triggers may be causing harm or have become destructive. This is when we need to look a little deeper as this often comes from a place of  child abuse and/or childhood emotional neglect. The impact of emotional trauma is much greater when their are other forms of abuse and neglect occurring. This is often cyclic and parents who have been abused and have unmet emotional needs parent children based on their capabilities and what they have been taught.

Triggers play a large role in this as people who have abusive pasts will be triggered by their own trauma more regularly and extensively. This is due to the lack of trust in their past caregivers, the world and inherently themselves later on. The world becomes a frightening place deep down and life seems to be all about survival. Becoming a parent increases the risk of being triggered for many people and there will be regular reminders of their own emotional needs and childhood trauma.You will often find this with a reaction of anger and physical aggression. The child may bring on a sense of powerlessness and overwhelm to the parent. This trigger's the parents shame and in order to regain that sense of power, the parent lashes out in anger. This is one of many examples. Parents who have not been taught love will have a hard time showing love. Parents who have been shamed or put down or violated will  often have a hard time creating boundaries and structure. They may also have a hard time being fully present. Some parents create too much structure and become almost Draconian in their parenting styles out of fear of losing control.
Often triggers and the pain and discomfort they arouse will become too much for people and they will find a way to escape or self-medicate (substance abuse, addictions, dissociation etc.). It is not hard to see why people who have been abused often go on to abuse later on. Some children bully other children for the same reasons, they are desperately trying to gain back a sense of power and control.

How do we recognise a trigger?

We are all different and the best way to recognise a trigger is to look at your reactions in relation to the situation. I have put together a few key points to assist you with this (there are many more and these are some guidelines to get you started):

• Look at how upset you have become and honestly ask yourself if this is proportionate.
• Look at who or what has made you upset and ask yourself if this has happened before in a similar situation
• Are you having physical reactions, if so, what are they and what emotion are they associated with
• Are you under-reacting or feeling 'numb' or apathetic when you feel you 'should' be upset
• Are you unable to let this go
• Are you thinking negatively about yourself or other people
• Are you feeling emotional or fragile
• Do you want to withdraw or hide away from the world
• Are you so angry you can think of nothing else
• Are you struggling to calm down
• Do you feel resentment towards someone for 'making you feel a certain way'
• Are you feeling threatened despite no immediate threat
• Do you feel as if this reaction is 'taking over'
• Do you feel panic when thinking of a potential outcome
• Do you feel disgust to the point of feeling sick in the stomach
• Do you feel you need to fight hard to get your point across and be right
• Are you worried about what people think of you

Making changes:

The best way to tackle a trigger is to recognize when it is happening and be brave enough to explore your feelings around this. The key to change lies in understanding where it has come from and how it is impacting you. Some people don't like the idea of looking back into the past and that is ok too. It will mean that although you will not be attending to the trigger and meeting those emotional needs (healing), you can still gain back a sense of control through recognition and awareness. 

Ask yourself: When have I felt this way before. Go as far back as you can remember. Learn about the emotions behind your triggers and make a point of meeting your own emotional needs. Allow the emotions to come. Soothe yourself instead of beating yourself up. If fear is at the heart of it, deliberately create safety and comfort yourself. If you are angry, find healthy ways to release this emotion (creatively or physically). If you feel shame and disgust towards yourself, be mindful or how you are thinking and treating yourself. Focus on your strengths and do things that make you feel good. If you are feeling sadness and sorrow or even despair, comfort yourself and be gentle and loving towards yourself. Take active and deliberate steps to attend to your own needs. Sometimes this means asking for help. Work on your communication skills. Be honest with yourself about what you need and start making plans to achieve this. Get some therapeutic support if you need to. You have the power to take the power back without causing destruction or harm to yourself or others.  

Remind yourself that when you are being triggered it is about YOU and your needs, not the situation. Therefore you will not find comfort in 'fixing' the situation, the answers to feeling better lie within XX

Take care,

Paula

You deserve peace of mind! 

    

Depression! The core emotion 'Sadness' sits at the heart of it.

Please check out my video's on my Youtube channel or like my Facebook Page for parenting support and information XX 

The Experience of Depression:

Depression is one of the most known about mental health issues yet one of the least understood in my opinion. We have certainly grown in understanding in the Western world and have moved into acknowledging this as an illness that has serious consequences for people and their ability to function. The problem, however, is the ability for people to recognize it in both themselves and in other people. People suffering from Depression (whether it be a depressive disorder, situational Depression or a depressed mood or state) are often met with a lack of support and a pressure to 'cheer up' or rejoin society.

Every person is unique and will have a unique experience of Depression or any mental illness. The reason a blanket label such as 'Depression' is helpful is to enable people to separate the illness and it's symptoms from who they are as people. Depression, like many mental illnesses, is all consuming and seeps into the core of a person's being.
There are many websites and resources as well as research which outline common symptoms of Depression. Depression is assessed according to the duration of these symptoms and how frequently they occur. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has been revised a number of times due to the growing research and knowledge that we continue to gain in the mental health industry. As it stands, Depression is characterized by symptoms such as:

• Feelings of Guilt and Shame
• Loss of motivation and energy 
• Helplessness
• Hopelessness
• Loss of enjoyment in the things that were previously felt as enjoyable
• Loss of self-worth and increased self-loathing
• Suicidal ideation (thoughts of suicide)
• Sleeping disturbances (either too much or too little)
• Appetite changes (over or under eating)
• Anger or irritability
• Tasks become more difficult when once experienced as manageable
• Inability to control negative thinking

It hits you physically in the form of lethargy, chronic fatigue, heaviness, headaches chronic pain, stomach issues...the list goes on and will vary from person to person. Depression often goes hand in hand with other disorders, both mental and physical. There are many different forms of Depression and they can all range from mild, moderate to severe. These symptoms are a guideline and the way I see it, they are only helpful if they are used as a tool to shed light on a very real and all consuming experience someone is facing.

What is really going on for a person?

Depression is an incredibly difficult condition to be faced with and unlike a physical illness, it all goes on within a person on a very personal and isolated level. Many people put on a big mask and battle their way through daily life, existing rather than living. As Depression saps energy and motivation, it makes tasks other people find easy seem like Mount Everest and very little energy is left for things that are not a priority for our survival in this world. The days may be experienced as dragging on, each one the same, each one exhausting and as uninspiring as the next. Watching other people enjoy themselves can heighten the feelings of hopelessness and shame as the contrast between how the person with Depression is living seems so out of touch with the rest of the world. This fuels self-loathing and low self worth. It creates a pressure that further exacerbates the lethargy and depleted energy. People suffering from Depression are often incredibly hard on themselves and seem to get caught in a negative spiral which can feel very difficult to pull themselves out of. Those with Chronic Depression often lean towards the idea of suicide as it is seen as a release from the pain and turmoil that they are living with every day. As there is no motivation to make changes, however badly they may want to,coupled with a severe lack of hope, suicide provides a way out, a ray of hope for many people living with this condition. There are many variations to this, as I said, each person is unique. It may also come in waves and in this case people often fear the next round of Depression creating Anxiety in the process. I believe it is very difficult for people to separate the illness of Depression from who they are outside of this condition. Depression becomes 'who you are' rather than something you can heal from. Depression seems to steal people's sense of self along with their hopes, dreams and joy.

What is the core emotion behind Depression?

This is not as easy to identify as something like Anxiety which has a core emotion of Fear. Anxiety is experienced as excessive worry and this makes Fear a more obvious core emotion to identify. Depression is not as straight forward, even for the person experiencing it. Even mental health professionals may struggle to identify it at times. A practitioner may be able to identify a 'flat affect' which is basically the absence of emotional expression and a very low and flat way of coming across. The eyes don't seem to connect to the words if that makes sense. Many people who are in a relationship with someone who suffers from Depression will often complain of an emotional disconnect or distancing (It's like they don't care about me or what I have to say). A flat affect will often help to highlight a lack of energy or motivation to a practitioner. The rest of the assessment will be determined in how much or little the person is willing to share with you. 

People can come across as angry and aggressive or just plain irritable and sceptical or cynical. They can come across as apathetic and unfeeling or even lacking empathy. Some people may be emotional and tearful. This all depends on the person, their experiences and their personality. The reason for these different expressions of Depression is due to layers of emotions we develop around the core emotion as a way to cope with this unprocessed core emotion. Think of it like an onion, with it's layers around a core. When looking at the core emotion you need to strip away the different expressions and behaviours shown outwardly and look at the fundamental symptoms and associated emotions as well as the physical experiences of Depression that are common in people. You also look at some of the causes and dual diagnoses that have been identified with Depression such as unprocessed Grief, Eating Disorders, Chronic pain and physical illness, life changes, genetics etc. They all have something in common...Loss. One could even argue that the genetic component may in fact be caused by the environment, where the child is affected by the lack of presence and emotional disconnection from their parent and thus go on to have increased risk of this themselves. Whatever the cause, I believe the core emotion most associated with Depression is 'sadness'.

A deeper look at Sadness and how it fits into the illness of Depression:

Sadness is a valuable emotion that helps us integrate loss and emotional pain from this loss. Grief is not limited to losing a person or pet or even item that you hold dear. We experience many internal losses throughout our lives. Sadness as a core emotion, or original emotion, will slow us down and force us to withdraw in some way in order for our whole beings to process this change and make sense of our lives without the thing we have lost. If this is not done and we repress our loss and the feelings of sadness, they don't go anywhere, we internalise them and they sit outside our awareness and way of viewing the world. We have not allowed ourselves to mourn our loss and the feelings and impact of this will not be released. Thus begins the internal struggle that we are not likely to be consciously aware of. It starts coming out in other ways. We develop other emotions around this core emotion of sadness in order to cope with the discomfort we are experiencing. Think of the onion again.

We may live in a society that does not embrace sadness for more than a short period of time (Most people in the Western cultures will be in this predicament, myself included). I don't know many people who are able to be around someone who is crying let alone sobbing from a painful loss. Most of us have been under regulated as children with this emotion and would have had well-meaning parents who attempted to cheer us up, dismiss our feelings or even reprimand us when we became sad and upset. Many parents will tell their children that they have nothing to cry about or attempt to cheer them up by distracting them. Very seldom do parents react by saying 'It's alright sweetheart, you cry for as long as you need to, let it all out' and then proceed to stay by their child's side, holding them and comforting them while they do indeed work through this sadness and 'let it all out'. Without meaning to, parents often shame their children for expressing sadness. Many families hold 'strength' and 'being tough' in high regard. I remember when Princess Diana died and watching her funeral on TV. All the news presenters and papers spoke about how brave Prince William and Harry were for NOT crying at their own mother's funeral! 

When we have no where to place our sadness and feel shame for feeling sadness, this creates a great deal of suffering and internal pain. This loss becomes separate to our sense of self and continues to grow. Life continues to go on and we collect loss after loss. The more trauma we experience in our lives and the less we form a relationship with sadness and other emotions, the more we split off from our emotional selves, our very spirit. I believe Depression is what occurs when this unprocessed loss and sadness becomes too much of a burden to bare. It takes over. You start to experience loss in many inner areas such as self-esteem, motivation, energy, enjoyment, appetite,sleep, relationships etc. You also feel a deep sense of shame and guilt around not being 'tough', not being able to separate from these inner feelings. You lose your connection to life in a way as you lose your connection to your emotions. This is when things become 'hopeless' and you feel 'helpless' and at the mercy of this darkness (unprocessed loss).

Where to from here?

This is a lot of information and could leave you with more questions than you have answers. That is a good thing! Depression is treatable and I would go on to say curable! There are many evidence based approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which help you retrain your brain via your negative thinking and beliefs and these approaches can be extremely successful. I am always a believer in giving you the power and choice to find something that works for you. That is the key ingredient.

I want to add my own suggestion to those who are still at a loss as to where to go from here. This is true for all depressed states and not just disorders and chronic Depression. You need to go back to basics. Your emotions. When you carry something as heavy and as painful as sadness and loss, you will often shut yourself off from other emotions too. Emotions become something to be feared. You may feel a sense of shame at your lack of control when you tap into these emotions such as sadness or fear and this gives you a sense of powerlessness. This state of being may feel incredibly overwhelming and you go back into your default coping mechanisms that you were likely taught in childhood. You may have even adopted some of your own such as anger (which gives people a sense of power, the opposite to the feeling of powerlessness). You may retreat into your own world and isolate yourself to avoid being triggered by things or people in the outside world. Your shame may make you feel embarrassed or 'lacking' around other people. Your negative thinking may make you believe your ARE worthless and unworthy of the same things other people have such as joy and security.

The good news (or difficult to hear news), these are perceptions. Your fear is a part of your outdated coping mechanism and is not serving you any more. Emotions are not the things to fear, they will not cause you harm. It is quite the opposite. It is the very act of repressing your emotions,especially your sadness, that is causing you harm. Your negative thinking around how you are coping in the world because of your Depression, not who you are, is what is doing you harm. We end up shaming ourselves, placing pressure and expectations on ourselves and beating ourselves up for something  that is actually a very normal reaction to unprocessed emotions such as sadness. The place to start is to learn about this and re-parent yourself around emotions and how to manage them. Seek support in this if you are able to and in a way that feels right to you. Often we become unaware of 'how' we experience our emotions, let alone why. Don't question the 'why' of your feelings until you are able to do this without judgement. Focus on the 'how'. Where do you feel this in your body? Look at the circumstances around your feelings. Learn as much as you can about each of the emotions and why they benefit us. Seek to identify what is Depression in your life and what isn't. Be kind to yourself, you are coming from a place of sadness, not deficiency. I love inner child work. I also love exploring memories and adapting them into my adult brain. It is painful but it brings about such awareness and relief once I have experienced the feelings and released them. Work at your own pace and seek to understand.

The decision for change is yours for the taking!

When starting out on a healing journey, especially within therapy, it often feels worse before it feels better. Go into your healing being aware of this. Your emotions are finally being given the green light to surface and they need to surface in order to be released. Make the decision to change. Not for anyone else, but for you. Take back the control and arm yourself with knowledge and resources that fit for you. You are the best expert in your life and you have everything you need inside you to turn this around. Every day is a struggle, change the struggle and do something different. You are 100% worth it!

Much Love and Healing
XX Paula