I Seek Sanctuary

As a society have we become guilty of medicating human-ness?

As a coach I’m regularly asked to work with people when they get to a point in life where they feel they can no longer cope.  For some reason, it seems to be mostly women that I’ve worked with over the last few years and the similarities between their stories is striking.

Something significant happens in their life’s and they fall to pieces.  Unsure what to do in a world where emotions have been labelled “wrong”  or “weak”, they turn to their doctor for help.  And, though this might seem like I’m slagging doctors off, I promise you I’m not.  There are many amazing doctors out there capable of miraculous things and what I discuss here is symptomatic of our society and how we operate when it comes to health, and not the “fault” of individuals doctors.

Unfortunately what happens next is common place within a society where there is a pill for every ill.

People are prescribed medication to tackle the symptoms of dealing with the pressures of every day life.  anti-depressant are issued to those who are finding the burden of emotions too difficult to deal with and Anti-Anxiety for those stressed and worried about the future.  On rare occasions, counselling is offered but with the wait being anything from a month to a year, depending on the area, medication is all too often issued while they wait. And, many of the counsellors that are available on the NHS are still using talking therapies, which for many prove to be in-effective and can even result in people feeling worse than before.

Along with the tablets comes the labels.  “I am depressed”, “I am anxious” and depending on the individual symptoms a multitude of other labels can potentially be added too. Why this is so important is clear to us that are aware of the power of the I Am, statement but maybe not so much for those who don’t know how powerful the words “I AM” really are.  As the labels are added, it is like an acknowledgement that there’s nothing we can do about the symptoms, that they just happened to us and we become stuck in a pattern of behaviour that can impact our whole lives.

In our culture we have developed ways of dealing with emotion that aren’t particularly healthy.  The British stiff upper lip attitude has resulted in many people pushing their emotions under the surface and now even has its own label as British Stiff Upper Lip Syndrome within the psychological field.  Throughout our lives many of us carry the burden of emotional hurts from our past from relationship to relationship and any associated anger or fear usually comes along for the ride too.  In a nation dominated by the Catholic religion, guilt is a predominant feature too and most of us have started accumulating this from the day we were born with the “original sin” we ae brainwashed into believing in.

In a male dominated world, emotions have been classified as weak and as a result we have never taken the time to understand fully how to process them, preferring instead to pretend everything’s fine when internally we feel like we’re falling to bits.  We put a face on to the outside world and for many people, the mask doesn’t even slip with those closest to us.  Leaving  much unresolved negative emotions draining our energy levels and leaving us feeling unable to cope.  As our energy levels become depleted it becomes increasingly challenging to shake it off or to just get on with it, as those around us seem to think we should, giving us something else to feel bad about, which further drains us.

All in all it’s a lot for our bodies to deal with and with the added pressures that come with living in the modern, fast-paced world of ours, it can easily become too much of a burden to bear.

What if…we simply were using ineffective strategies and pills weren’t the wonderful solution we thought they were?

What if…there was a healthier, freer, more empowering way to deal with our emotional response to life?

What if…the times we found so hard to deal with were really periods of great growth and transformation and all we needed was a little patience, acceptance and authenticity?

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

Richard Bach

We all know how a little caterpillar cocoons itself and transforms itself to a beautiful, butterfly.  imagine for one minute you are that little caterpillar.  Do you think that it is an easy transformation?  Do you think the caterpillar knows whats hapening?  Do you think it suffers during the transformation?  I imagine it isn’t the easiest process for the caterpillar but the result is astounding.  Grace and beauty abounds as the caterpillar finally emerges from the cocoon to fly and break free from its once limited life and the same thing can happen to us if we have beliefs that support our evolution.

Negative emotions are not called negative because they are bad, but because the impact on the energy levels of your body is draining.  Just like positive emotions boost your energy levels, negative emotions deplete them.  Every emotional response you have is perfect.  Yes, it is!  Look at the wondrous nature of this beautiful planet.  How it all works perfectly together.  The sun, the moon, the stars, the oceans, the animals and plants,  what makes you think the universe could have got it so wrong with us? It is our judgement of the negative emotions and our inability to deal with them that causes the problems, not the emotions themselves.  As a culture we have developed the behaviour of carrying our negative emotions around with us wherever we go, hidden somewhere below the surface and the impact on our energy levels and our ability to enjoy lives is huge.  But what if there was a better way?

What if negative emotions were actually a signal from the universe that “something” wasn’t working for us and if we changed that something we could let the emotion go rather than carrying it around for the rest of our life?  How do you think your life would be better then?

What could that elusive “something” be?

Well here’s a few things it could be and its likely that at different times we’re all impacted by some of them.

Beliefs – One of the first things worth examining when we find ourselves in the midst of an emotional response, is what beliefs are we running that are contributing to us feeling this way.  Beliefs can also present themselves as judgements, and what we begin to notice is that when we are in judgement, we are not in love. And as love is the ultimate power source, when we separate ourself from love we feel the effects.  The funny thing about beliefs is that as we come to examine them, we discover many are in fact untrue, many we have picked up along the way through life mostly in childhood and when examined we can simply ask one question to decide if we wish to hold on to them.  Ask yourself, how is it serving me to believe this?  Does it make me feel empowered (in-power) or weakened? What I have discovered is that the “truth” always empowers and beLIEfs dis-empower!  Give yourself permission now to let go of any beliefs that dis-empower you, and get busy on the clear out.

Life Metaphors – Like beliefs most of us are operating with life metaphors in place and if we’re lucky they’ll be playing a role in our live that works for us, things like “There are money trees everywhere” can be useful, whereas most are unfortunately not!  And like all beliefs your life will be unconsciously impacted by your life metaphors as your unconscious mind likes to make you right so will filter out by the processes of deletion, distortion and generalisation anything that falls out-with your metaphors.  We can also unconsciously self-sabotage ourself in favour of our life metaphors, so for example if we believe “Money is the root of all evil.” then guess what we’re unlikely to see the opportunities that exist to break us free from the poverty cycle.  So again, its worth clearing them out.  Here’s a few ideas to get you started.  “All men are…”, “All women are….”, “Life is….”  That’s it, and if they are not serving you, change them.  My own personal life metaphors since clearing mine out are “All people are divine, magnificent expressions of the Universe”, “I live in a world of possibilities and potential.”

Values Conflicts – One of the most draining things that happens unconsciously is that we have a values conflicts running, and most of us are unaware of this inner battle going on, values conflicts can also lead to self sabotaging behaviour.  Think of the mother who has to return to work when her baby is still really young.  She doesn’t really want to leave her baby, and she certainly doesn’t want to pay a stranger to look after her most treasured bundle BUT she must return to work to maintain a quality of live she has come to value.  She does what she thinks is for the best, but under the surface there is a battle being played out, a battle that can leave her feeling exhausted, wrought with emotions and unable to actually fulfill her role in her job well, and also impacts on her ability to be the best mother she can be.  When was the last time you checked your values were serving you?  Have you ever even thought about it?

Environment – At times the things that are draining our lives are in our outer environment but its always from the inner environment the changes must occur to change things.  For example, the lady who excuses her partners behaviour time and again when he is abusive or doesn’t consider her a priority in his life.  The impact is her own power/energy is giving away, leaving her once again depleted.  the friends who take, take, take and we give, give, give, leaving us depleted.  The people who systematically moan and whine about everything but never do anything to change it, they all play a role in draining our life force from us, and we ALLOW them to.  You see, how it’s not about them, but always about us.  We can make a new decision at any time, to remove these outward drains on our energy supply, but usually theres some belief running as to why we don’t.  He promised he’ll change, they need me, whatever it is, we choose to believe it, and in doing so allow the depletion of our power to continue.  Change the beliefs, and the environmental changes are easy.  From what I’ve seen the most common believes that get it in the way here is the belief that we are not worthy, or that we are not deserving.  Practice the affirmation daily…I AM WORTHY, I AM DESERVING to help you move through any blocks in this area.  When faced with making changes, ask yourself “What would Love do now?” and remember its love of yourself.

BEING YOU – The biggest most draining way, we allow ourselves to be depleted is by our resistance and repression of the emotions we are experiencing.  as we resist and repress the emotions, or the energy in motion, we allow it to become trapped in our bodies, either in our physical body or in our energetic body.  When we do this systematically over a culmination of years, the result can be over-whelming and can often result in dis-ease. Now, I’m not saying when you feel angry, you’ve to shout and scream it out.  Not for a minute, but using all the tools I’ve gave you here examine it, change any beliefs that are creating it, if your values are being conflicted, do something different, that works for you.  Speak to friends who’ll help you get back to a more loving state, and then figure out what action you need to take and do it.  Strong emotions are there to teach us something, when we learn from them it becomes easy to let them go.  In the case of grief, we need to begin to see it as a natural process and allow its expression in a healthy way in our life.  et go of your idea that its not good to be vulnerable, its out-dated and untrue.  There is great strength in vulnerability, and by giving the gift of your authentic self you allow others to be strong and give you the love you need to evolve into new ways of being that can only come from making peace with loss.

We judge life so harshly at times, especially when we find it difficult to deal with.  We are happy to accept the good times yet resist the things that are more challenging, what if we changed how we looked at these things instead.  What if one of the beliefs that were running your life was this “Everything that happens is an opportunity for my growth and evolution.” Do you think we would experience more freedom and more peace with this belief in place?

Life isn’t always easy, sometimes it’s just damn difficult, and there will be times you probably feel like you just can’t cope any more, In those times it really is good to remember that sometimes things break down for the purpose of being re-built stronger than ever.  Look inside, and allow those around you to be there for you by being honest about what’s going on for you.  If there’s no-one around, reach out there are many organisations out there offering support like Breathing Space, The Samaritans and many more. Maybe, just maybe it will save you from a life time of pill-popping. If you’re ready to start examining your beliefs and judgements a great place to start would be the Presuppositions of NLP, that have evolved from many of the traditional views of Huna.  Click here to find out more.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Love and blessings,

Rashelle x