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 The very nature of change means that the old ways you have grown accustomed to, are found to be no longer applicable to you anymore.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.

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

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  

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! 

    

Tackling MY feelings Before MY Behaviour

Wow, it's been a while since I took finger to keypad and typed out a blog! Where do I begin...

It has been a journey, I'll tell you that. The kind of journey where you thought you had most big things figured out. Then BAM you learn the harsh reality of the term 'false belief system'. I was running blind, swallowed up by my own rules and nonsense. Riddled in defence mechanisms and holding on for dear life to people and things that made me feel some semblance of safe. I mean, where the hell did all this anxiety in the big wide world come from?

LOOKING BACK...

I remember thinking certain things when in my early teens and struggling my way through hormones and heartache. I remember noticing that some days I felt on top of the world and others I felt as if no one liked me and the world was against me. I managed though. I more than managed, I wore the biggest mask around. So big was my mask that even those closest to me had no idea what I really went through. The shame, humiliation, embarrassment, fear, insecurity and anger that stewed inside me and had no healthy outlet. I am a loud, extroverted presence and I was never invisible physically (I made sure of that). Love me or hate me, you notice me. This mask bit me in the ass because people were so busy seeing the loud, falsely confident Paula, they had no idea that a scared, insecure little girl was crying out for help.

This damn defence mechanism got misread to my disadvantage again and again. I was seen as a bully because I was always the spokesperson for the group, or I was acting out. To me it was a get them or they will get me thing. I was seen as strong. I was seen as someone who didn't feel very much. I was seen as happy and cheerful. I was seen as whatever mask I chose to wear really. Most teenagers go through this in some way, it's a time when difference is feared more than anything else. It got so bad that I didn't know any other way to be.I desperately wanted to be liked, desperately wanted to be helped and blocked the very things I needed with my behaviour.  I became a people pleaser. I suppressed my needs and found it easier to do the things my friends enjoyed. This got out of hand too and I found myself in crowds I didn't fit into, at places I couldn't afford, wearing clothes I had had to borrow. I gave in to peer pressure and had so much freedom and zero structure. I got drunk, walked the streets at night, smoked cigarettes, hooked up with boys, got into verbal fights etc. During the day I captained the tennis team, sang in choir, visited my grandparents, turned pages for my piano teacher at charity concerts, spent time with friends, worked hard in school etc. I changed like the tides, trying to find myself, trying to fit in, trying to be accepted and feel loved. My shame was growing. Shame in myself, in my mum and her lack of control in the situation (I have learnt that she did it really tough and there were so many reasons for this). The real shame though, is the shame I turned inward. The shame I had in myself. To be honest this is still a work in progress.

I WAS NEVER A STRANGER TO EMOTIONS...

I am highly empathic and understand emotional experiencing better than I do any other sense or system. I am able to read shifts in people, the mood and atmosphere, people's deeper pain. Other people have always been easy, what I could never master was my own emotional experiencing. I felt like my control over my emotions was paper thin and the hard ones were deeper than I could conceive. As I delved into psychology and counselling I developed a name for this part of myself that held all my deeper emotions and pain. I called this my vault or squishy middle. I spent a lot of energy and time fearing this unknown entity inside me. So much went into the vault that I lost sight of what had gone in there. It became overwhelming. But I ploughed on.

I ploughed through incredible adversity, grief and trauma. I have always recognized my teenage years as difficult. My mother struggled and I became more of a parent then a child. I had no idea what my mother was growing through, I had no words, no support and no one to talk to. I was programmed to hide things from my grandmother and the world. I think my mum always wanted my Granny to be proud of her. My lovely Granny loved us more then anything but love was not expressed verbally. She was very critical but meant it in love. Needless to say I kept my mums secret, it became my secret, we were drowning. Financial, physical, emotional...you name it, we were in strife. I started to resent my mum and rebel in a way. At the time I would never have seen it as rebellion. Awful part of my rebellion, I was always guilt ridden and overly sensitive to my mum's feelings. I could never bare to hurt her, or worry her. I confessed almost all sins. I soon learnt that I was unguided. I was so convincing that I was in control that my own mother did not see how out of my depth I was. How much I needed her to take over and let me be a child. This way of life may have been what saved me in years to come...or the very thing that undid me.

On 3 December, 2002, I went off to celebrate the end of the school year with an old friend. I said my goodbyes to my mother and said our usual 'I love you'. That was the last time I saw my mum. That night some adolescent boys broke in and gagged her too tightly. They never meant to kill her, only to rob us blind. They came through my bedroom window. It was a blur. I learnt this from my friend the next morning, her mum got a call. My whole world stopped turning. It was like a dream, a horrible,sick dream. No one seemed to be able to comprehend my level of loss. On the second or third night after she died I was still staying at my friend's house (I wasn't ready to face my Gran's pain). I was crying in the middle of the night once again. Every time I shut my eyes I saw my mum's face and my heart broke again. I was terrified. I had no idea what would happen to me,where I belonged, where I wanted to be outside of my own home. I had all this emotion and no where to put it. My tears were gut wrenching, my soul was shattered. It was as if someone had severed off a limb. My friend, who had her own grief, cracked under the pressure and blurted out a conversation she and her mother had planned to have with me the following day. At midnight she told me that she thought I needed to find somewhere else to stay, it was too much for her. My pain was too much for her.

I didn't think I could sink any lower. I was wrong. I learnt some very hard lessons that night. I learnt that I had been 'right', people wont want to be around you if you are yourself. Even if you lose your mother, people will not cut you slack, allow you to sob, allow you to grieve. If only I had known then what I know now. These childhood masks, defences, they keep coming back to bite you. Long after they have been rendered useless. People cant be there for you because they don't know how to be there for themselves. So many of us are running blind.

I PUT A LOT OF EMPHASIS ON MY GRIEF...

I thought it was the reason for pretty much most of my problems. My anxiety namely. I was well known for being stressed. I suffered from bad back pain my whole life which was never diagnosed or treated adequately. I was used to chronic pain and tension (I still am). My energy levels are often a struggle. I couldn't tell where my back began and the anxiety ended. As the years went on my struggles with anxiety, esp the physical tension side of anxiety increased. It started to effect my work. Working with children became my thing but it kept bringing up memories and emotions I had no idea how to process. I moved to Australia and studied Masters in Counselling. This level of training forces you to unpack yourself quite heavily and confront how you tick. I confronted the edge of my inner vault time and time again. After uni I started to work with families. My clients had an array of issues with high levels of risk and trauma. Slowly but surely I became more and more impacted. It was becoming clear, families and child abuse were more than upsetting to me, this was traumatic for me and triggering a trauma I had no idea I had. I burnt out.

IT DIDN'T MAKE SENSE...

The theories didn't fit me. My mum and I were so close. She never ever forgot to tell me she loved me. She would have taken a bullet for me. She did so much for me, encouraged me, watched my tennis games, talked to me about school, always listened. Why, oh why are the signs pointing to neglect? EMOTIONAL NEGLECT!!! It didn't make sense. I started seeing a therapist who was my teacher. I would trust no-one else (I have been through many therapists, I am a tough cookie to counsel). I admire my therapist so much, professionally and personally, and listen when he talks. He identified attachment trauma. I wont go into that here if attachment is a bit foreign (I urge everyone to look it up though). My issues stem from my early childhood - my formative years. My mum, my beautiful childhood, my entire world view...aaahhhh! It was a very very difficult pill to swallow and took many sessions of revisiting this to get my head around it. I finally made peace with it when I allowed myself to start looking back at well known memories. These memories were often the fond ones. That is why I could never see this. My happy memories were still happy, they just held some vital clues to opening my vault. They helped me to finally see the roots of my problems.

CHILDHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT...

It was never what she did to me. What she did to me was nothing but loving. Everything she did was intended to give me love and life lessons. The problems were in what she didn't do. Dr Jonice Webb identifies this as C.E.N - Childhood Emotional Neglect. She feels all abuse has CEN with it but not all CEN accompanies abuse. In fact most families have some degree of this because it is a generational problem. It travels from generation to generation unknown and powerful. We couple this with so many passed down and outdated parenting beliefs and systems and have become so far removed from the reasons why we do things and if they are in line with our intentions.

My mother believed with all her heart that the best way to parent was to give strong discipline like spanking etc in the early years. I remember her telling me that she hit me very early and this is why I am a good girl now. She saw my incessant guilt and obligation that was way beyond what a child my age should have felt as me being special, good and with a good head on my shoulders. I saw it the same way too. I didn't see this as being a problem. I didn't know any other way to be. Hitting me early would have translated to me that I am being punished for trying to communicate my needs. I have had these patterns with people in my life again and again because I gravitate to what I know, mistaking that for what is safe. I have recently discovered that it is not my feelings that are the problem, it is my behaviour. I am so busy trying to be a certain way, to feel in a certain way, I have lost sight of how I actually feel. I have started a new relationship with the real me and have had to confront many demons and unhealthy dynamics in the process. This has been so painful but so necessary.

I REALISED THAT I HAVE A GIFT...

I have a deeper understanding of emotional experience through personality, academia and life experience. I am passionate about parenting and helping children through helping parents. I believe that parents are the very best people to help their children. Trauma, attachment, emotional regulation and strength based work should not be elitist knowledge for the educated and professional. It is not as fancy and complicated as it sounds. It is a way of seeing the world. It is about understanding emotions and how powerful they are. It is about understanding the role parents need to play to tackle these growing societal problems, mental health issues, bullying, youth substance abuse, suicide, crime etc. It is ridiculous that this is something only certain people have access to for various reasons. I want to give this gift out for free. I want to create awareness and empower parents. Break the cycles, end the bad patterns and give people something better and healthier to try. I want the world to 'Tackle the feelings before the Behaviour'. Stop blaming children as if they are not a part of a system. No child is born evil. Some have challenges and disabilities. Some struggle with biological challenges. This does not make them evil. Lets take control back. Have the courage to see your own parents and grandparents as human. Love them through their faults so that you may see them as real and learn how to be real with your own kids.

I hope there is something in my story that is helpful :) I am proposing a parenting approach but I am not a mother. My challenge was always a tricky one. I am not coming from the side of a parent though. I am giving your children a voice because I have built a very strong relationship with and deeper understanding of my own inner child. I am also pretty trained up in this area and am not the type to stop learning. This is me, warts and all. Thank you for reading XXX

I am now helping parents to understand the importance of emotional regulation! Lets work together to prevent C.E.N.