Letting Your Past Experiences Rest in Peace

I was watching How I Met Your Mother tonight and one of the lines really hit me. One character, Ted, has a crush on another character, Robin, from the beginning of the show. Later in the series, Ted is forced to repress his feelings for her, and when they eventually resurface, someone suggests that the feelings had been 'buried in a shallow grave'.

Bare with me, the post ahead is rather abstract!

The line brought up images of our past feelings, thoughts and events living underground, buried in whichever way we choose to bury them. Whether it's in a shallow way through temporary means of burial, or deep underground, dispersed and digested to reduce their emotional blow.

Obviously the way we deal with our past experiences has a big effect on us. Traumas might be far from laid to rest. They could be buried so shallowly that their tentacles reach up above ground and affect our every decision.

Being deeply buried doesn't mean refusing to let it enter our lives. It might seem that saying things like 'no I don't care about that anymore. It means nothing to me' moves the experience so far away that it can't 'get you'. But really, in a traditional rom-com sense, 'I don't care', can mean the exact opposite. It's like trying to put a plaster on something that needs stitches.

So I've put together my thoughts on how a trauma we want to bury can be best put to rest:

• Feel the feelings.
  
  Sad? Try sitting with the sadness for an evening. Journal about it. Talk about it. Think about it. Cry about it. Drinking it away or eating food or sleeping a lot will only delay the feelings until later, when they inevitably resurface in perhaps in a more indirect way.
  
• Grieve.
  
  Bear with yourself. Grief is a long process which can take a long time. And your emotional needs don't just include grieving when someone passes away. Leaving your job is still a loss, even if you hated it! Changes require us to process them, and allowing yourself to do just that will stop the feelings being delayed or coming out sideways. See my post about grief here.
  
  It might take a long time, and going through the stages can feel never-ending, but when you get to the end and you are able to gently and acceptingly reflect on your experiences it is really rewarding.
  
• Be kind to yourself.
  
  There is no 'correct' way to deal with traumas, despite the things I've written here. It's different for everyone. On a wider scale, in some areas of the world grieving involves dancing and wailing. The only thing I think is 'right' is to be kind to yourself. Going on a night out and ending up crying to your friend at 1am eating chicken nuggets might not feel ideal, but try to be accepting of your behaviours. 

If you can keep yourself safe, be accepting of your feelings and sit with them, I believe that is the route to a deep burial of your difficult past experiences. The kind where they do not creep up on you and come out sideways. The peaceful kind.

Image from here

Tips for Guided Visualisations

In my last inner child blog post (here), I explored the benefits of making friends with your inner child. The first step was to connect with him or her. One of the ways I talked about was using visualisation to connect, which I will explore in more detail here.

A guided visualisation based around the inner child might sound a bit scary. Firstly, it is very safe. To exit a hypnosis or visualisation all you have to do is open your eyes. If you find it emotionally overwhelming it might be helpful to ground yourself if you find yourself needing to finish the visualisation suddenly (methods here).

Just like a guided meditation, guided visualisations can be found in great numbers to download online. They often start with the same grounding processes: finding a centre point such as the breath to work with, relaxing the body and listening to the guide's voice. They then differ by telling you to imagine a scene, e.g. walking through the woods.

Every visualisation is different, and every visualiser's vision is different. Some tips for visualisation:

• Try not to worry if you can't immediately imagine a place. If the guide says to imagine a wood and your vision of the woods keeps changing, go with the first image that comes to mind. The actual image is not wholly important, because it will develop and you will find that whatever image you chose will come to have meaning.

• Let your mind go deep into your imagination! If you're imagining a fire-breathing dragon swooping down from above, feel free to keep on imagining. There are no set rules to visualisation and the more you imagine the more you can find meaning from.

Here is a guided inner child meditation for you to have a go with. Please feel free to leave feedback as to how you found the visualising experience!

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Ways to Ground Yourself

What is grounding?

This website describes grounding as:

'a technique that helps keep someone in the present. They help reorient a person to the here-and-now and in reality. Grounding skills can be helpful in managing overhelming feelings or intense anxiety. They help someone to regain their mental focus from an often intensely emotional state.'

When your mind's getting carried off by your thoughts, you can spend whole minutes in your mind instead of where you actually are. A good way of coming back to the present moment is by grounding yourself. It is a form of mindfulness where textures, smells, sights, sounds and tastes can bring you back into the present fast. 

There are a number of techniques for grounding yourself. Some of my favourites:

• Rubbing your hands together.
• Taking a deep breath or several.
• Putting both of your feet on the floor.
• Rubbing your arms. 
• A sensory box (this website has some ideas).

Also popular is the 54321 game (see here):

1. Name 5 things you can see in the room.
2. Name 4 things you can feel (e.g. chair on my back).
3. Name 3 things you can hear right now.
4. Name 2 things you can smell right now (or things you like the smell of)
5. Name 1 good thing about yourself.

Grounding is less about clearing the mind and more about noticing when the mind is getting carried away and bringing it back to where you are. It is also a great way to connect with nature and as the word 'grounding' suggests, many people feel their most grounded when they are with nature - walking barefoot in grass or holding their arms around a tree. 

I'd encourage you to share your experiences in the comment section :)

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EFT: The Releasing of Feelings

EFT stands for emotional freedom technique. It is hard to explain how it works but it is useful to give it a go if you are experiencing strong feelings in your body. This is something I was introduced to over two years ago and honestly don't use all that often, but tonight I gave it a go and I think I may do more often. 

I am also an advocate for feeling our feelings, so I use EFT more as a mindfulness technique. To feel the feeling in my body, ground myself through the tapping itself and also to practice self-love because I enjoy the feeling of treating myself. However, I'd encourage you to give it a go and see what meaning you can find in it for yourself :)

Give the video a watch here!

Four Steps Towards Writing an Affirmation

I'm going to do a post about the usefulness of affirmations and some of my favourites tomorrow. For now, a good way to introduce yourself to affirmations is to jump in the deep end and make one up!

Steps towards writing an affirmation:

1. Decide on the subject of your affirmation.

Just as was explained in the universe post (here), if you think about the things you want in your life often, they are more likely to come to you. You can write an affirmation about anything. Some examples:

• Bringing money into your life.
• Having positive relationships.
• Fostering self love.

If after deciding the subject you decide you would rather have a ready-made affirmation, search on the internet for 'affirmations about relationships' etc and you can find some great ones. The world's largest online collection is here.

2. Decide the tense.

Affirmations work very well in the present tense. 'I am learning to accept myself' connects you to the present moment and empowers you in it. 

Future tense can also work really well, especially if you have a big event coming up or if you have a long term goal. It can inspire hope, faith and confidence in the present moment for the future.

3. Make it positive.

A positive affirmation works better than a negative one. For example, if your desire is to do well at a job interview and answer the questions well, you could phrase this in two ways:

- 'I find it easy to talk about myself at interviews'.

- 'I will not dry up during this interview'.

The second affirmation here brings to mind drying up, and focusing on that inspires fear rather than empowering you. This is why it's great to stay on the positive side of a situation in an affirmation.

4. Keep it snappy.

A short and snappy affirmation is easier to repeat to yourself (more to be covered in the future post about affirmations) and meditate on. 

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Making Friends with your Inner Child

I'm currently sitting in a cafe writing this blog post. I've just bought a couple of nice things for myself and am having my favourite drink. I love writing in cafes - I even have the atmosphere sounds of a cafe (coffee cups clinking, low level chatter) downloaded onto my iPod for when I need to do work. So you can imagine that right now I feel great. And yes I do.

But why am I doing this? And why do I feel so great when I do this? I believe it is because I am listening to my inner child who loves cafes and fizzy drinks, and nurturing her desires.

So what is an inner child?
Every adult has an inner child - the child part of them which they've brought to adulthood with them from young life. The inner child is the part of you which looks with curious excitement at the cakes in a shop window, or loves the idea of going on the swing in the kids park - it is full of excitement, hopes and dreams and is deeply linked to our creative selves.

The way adulthood differs from childhood is that we have learnt to parent that inner child ourselves. If you're on your way to a restaurant for dinner and you pass cakes in a shop window, your inner parent would kick in and stop you from buying the cakes in that moment.

The issue many adults face is that their inner parent is very controlling of their inner child. This could be as a result of having learnt inner parenting from a controlling parent. These people might ignore that creative longing, not listen to their fun and carefree side, or simply not even hear what their inner child needs.

How can I benefit from knowing this?
The good news is that this can be easily and rewardingly remedied simply by making friends with your inner child. The first step in this would be to connect with him/her. Ways to do this could include:

• Looking at photos of yourself as a child. 

• Talking with family about how you were as a child. 

• Do an inner child guided visualisation (download one here).

• Hold a favourite childhood object.

• Do things your childhood self would have enjoyed.

• Playing in the park (with an actual child or if it is empty!).

• Sucking your thumb. 

• Colouring in.

This can be a painful process, particularly if there were difficult aspects to your childhood. So give yourself time to do this and journal about the way you feel.

How can I really make friends with my inner child?
Then comes giving your inner child the nurturing he or she needs to flourish within your adult self and bring all their wonderful creative aspects to you. Dr Sandy has written about a method to nourish and nurture your inner child, using the acronym CALM:

C - Compassion
When you feel a feeling coming from your inner child, give yourself an affirmation, such as 'it's ok to feel this way' or 'I understand this feeling'.

A - Awareness
Dream big! Create a vision board of things your inner child likes and wants. Spend time discovering these things and congratulate yourself on finding them.

L - Laughter
That deep felt laughter, encourage it! Children love laughing and so do adults - go and see some comedy, watch some on Netflix, hang out with your funniest friend and let yourself laugh.

M - Marvel
Cultivate that childhood feeling of awe by using gratitude. Read more about it in The Magic (buy here). Be grateful for all the things your inner child brings you - your creativity, wisdom, hilarity and inner wisdom, and really feel the gratitude.

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Problems with the ‘don’t care’ attitude

Strolling through a local popular clothes shop recently I looked around the store to be confronted by a huge number of statement t shirts. The writing on each ranged from ‘not all those who wonder are lost’, to the more provoking quotes such as ‘be nice or be history’ and ‘nope still don’t care’.

The popularity of these harsh statement t shirts was shown to me by the large group of teenage girls gathered around the t shirts, laughing at their boldness. Yet for me, the idea of a young impressionable person wearing one of these shirts is accompanied by an uncomfortable sadness.

For me, this sadness stems from knowing the impression that one could want to give with the sentence ‘nope still don’t care’. A vibe that the wearer is bulletproof. They have inner contentment and they don’t put up with anyone who tries to get in the way of their happy vibes.

But people who are happy have acceptance. Firstly, of themselves, but also of others. They tolerate their own imperfections in order to love themselves, and to love others and have a great experience of the world they need to tolerate others’ imperfections as well. A lack of this tolerance implies that the wearer is not accepting, of others but probably of themselves also.

People who experience true happiness also feel negative feelings. When another person prompts angry or sad feelings in them, they sit through these hard feelings because it allows them to feel happiness properly too. Really, they don’t try and numb some feelings but not others – they feel and explore all in their fullness.

That’s not to say that they allow people to walk all over them. They put up firm boundaries to create healthy relationships, and they might give out a similar message to ‘nope, still don’t care’ in the format of ‘This isn’t something you should talk to me about, perhaps you could ask a therapist or another friend’ when the conversation feels inappropriate.

This way of communicating encourages the friend to seek help without impacting on the relationship and driving the friend away. Therefore, our healthy person keeps a healthy relationship with a, hopefully, healthy person. It takes away the drama from the friendship that would occur if they just said ‘no I don’t care’, and adds the much enjoyed authenticity of good relationships.

I suppose in a round-about way I’m trying to say that I think these t shirts encourage an attitude which is inauthentic and could be dangerous for an impressionable person. To have this attitude does not create true happiness, instead a false sense of security which on further inspection can be rocked quite easily. If you don’t want to put up with people treating you a certain way, deal with it maturely (for a further post) instead of putting up harsh barriers for yourself.