How do we change our negative self talk?

The first step is to catch what we’re thinking about ourself by standing back a little, taking a meta position in order to watch and see what we’re creating with our thoughts. When we start to do this a little we make space for presence to arise. When we are able to catch and observe what we’re thinking we are making our thinking more conscious. And from here, we have the possibility of  consciously choosing to change our thoughts.

The next step is to start challenging the negative self talk. Initially it might be simply to stop the thought in it’s tracks. Being a “thought hunter” on safari, poised to catch any creepy crawleys lurking in the bushes. Noticing situations where those thoughts might come up, the environment in which they may start to make their presence felt.  Catching a thought and shining a spot light on it!  An, “Ah Ha! I’m not going to let you go there!”  Metaphorically pushing the thought out the door, or challenging it with a counter thought.

Where is Your Negative Self Talk Lurking?

One of the places that my negative self talk would appear for me was in social situations that required walking into a room full of people I didn’t know, like a party or a conference. I still feel a little nervous but not nearly as bad as the anxiety I felt in the past. This has slowly changed through catching the self talk and consistently challenging the beliefs embedded in it. Some of the negative self talk was: “no one will like you,” “people won’t be interested in you,” “you don’t have anything important to say.’

Rationally thinking, this is totally unfounded and untrue. Or perhaps,  at least it’s not 100% true. There may be people who may not like me, but there may equally be people who would like me and would find me interesting. Taking my focus off the possibility of not being liked and putting my energy and attention on what is positive, where I may find a smiling face or a hello and allowing that to grow.

And, something I didn’t think about because I was too busy putting myself down was that it works the other way too. It is equally true that there may be people at the party I may not like for find interesting. Just as there would probably be people that I would. That is part of being human and authentic. We may need to get help with challenging our thoughts. Sometimes we can have blindspots around our self talk, especially if we haven’t had any modelling of how to challenge this in our growing up. That’s when it’s useful to have someone we trust, someone who really cares about us and is skilled to help us challenge our  thinking. This could be a good friend, a partner or a counsellor or coach.

Finding the Tools that Help You

There are lots of tools and practical things we can do to change or challenge our thoughts and start feeling better about ourselves. These can be through a myriad of self help books, workshops, affirmations, visualisation. Meditation is a great tool in working with mindfulness, connecting to presence and developing a meta position around our thoughts.  Bringing our attention to what we’re noticing and not attaching to anything in particular.  From a  meta position we could say there’s no fail or success it’s just the great unfolding of life that we are all part of and learning through.  It simply is, what it is.

Going for an Immediate Positive Effect

So to conclude, my friends: I suggest that the most effective and immediate practice around negative self talk is to simply notice the thought. Notice what it is you’re noticing. That in that moment I may have identified with a particular thought. I may have mistakenly thought the thought was all of me, but it is simply part of me and even a small part of me. It’s made up in my mind and I can exercise choice around whether I want to believe it or simply watch it, acknowledge it’s there, but not buy into it. It’s  been part of the story I’ve carried about myself but isn’t my essence. My essence, is in fact far greater than any of the thoughts or stories I create through my mind. Furthermore, it is good to remember that we are such creative beings. We can start to impress on the mind, new and consistently more positive messages that reinforce a sense of self that is healthier, joyful and wholisitc.  Research has found that doing this consistently for 21 days creates new more positive neurologically pathways in our brains.

“As Presence arises, you don’t need self-esteem anymore, you don’t depend on that any more, because what dissolves is the mind-made-entity, with which you have a relationship.” Eckhart Tolle

Blessings to you and please contact me with your thoughts

Shushann x

Change starts with you! It’s as simple as that!

When we create greater inner peace and inner harmony our external world also starts to reflects this.

My upcoming Women’s Health and Healing Meditation Groups address the importance of coming into presence, bringing mindfulness into our thoughts and thinking and using energy breathing for greater balance and wellbeing. Here are my future dates:

Wednesday evenings, 4 weeks – January 18th – February 8th 2012 (closing date for early bird 16th December)

Tuesday evenings, 4 weeks – March 13th – April 3rd 2012 (closing date for early bird 14th February)

Betrayal is a breaking of trust and goodwill in a relationship that can take a long time to heal from and can leave us changed forever.  It has broken marriages, ended long term friendships and created rifts in families that can span generations.  It can happen suddenly and leave us feeling shocked, as in the case of an exposed affair. Or it can happen over time, involving a series of lies or indiscretions that deteriorate trust and respect.

Whether it’s our good friend, partner, work colleague, sibling or parent, many of us have experienced the specific wounding that is felt from betrayal.

How do we get betrayed?

Our betrayal could be caused through a broken promise, a breaking of confidentiality, not feeling loved or supported when we really needed family or friends, or someone else getting the long awaited pay-rise we felt we deserved.

These experiences can leave us feeling a mixture of emotions –hurt, bruised, angry, resentful, depressed and anxious. Some of the effects of a betrayal are:

• losing a partner or close friend,
• lowering self confidence or self esteem, questioning your ability to trust and feel close to others,
• fear around opening your heart to others
• affecting intimacy and closeness to others.

It is a common experience for people who’ve been betrayed to say that they saw some of the signs beforehand. It may have been a felt sense that something was wrong, a gut feeling.

We can often diminish these because part of us wants to believe they’re not true.  We want to give our trust to the other person. Knowing this doesn’t necessarily stop the shock and hurt that happens when we are betrayed, but it may be a wake up call to listen to our inner guidance.

Why does betrayal happen?

Given that we are all dealing with our own motivations, blindspots, woundedness, ego needs, reactions and impulses it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that people will fail us. Or, that we may also have failed others in our lives. No matter how sensitive we might want to be it is part of our humanness, our growth and maturation into whole adults. Taking ownership of hurt we’ve caused is an opportunity for us to know ourselves better and create healing from our own pasts.

Most of us don’t consciously set out to hurt someone when they feel betrayed by us. It is often something we’ve done out of our unconsciousness.  The betrayal or ‘let down’ can be a wake up call around consciously looking at and taking responsibility around our behaviour and changing it.

Being betrayed by someone close  – Steps towards Healing

I had been working with a client around her feeling of betrayal by her mother. It deeply affected her ability to trust or be close to her mother and her relationships with her women friends.  Growing up, she never felt acknowledged or protected by her mother around her father’s explosive, abusive behaviour.  Her mother always seemed to dismiss or diminish her hurt and take her father’s side, no matter how poorly she was treated. This, in some ways, was more painful for her than her father’s abuse towards her.   Despite repeatedly feeling betrayed by her mother my client still longed for a close relationship with her and felt very sad that this wasn’t so.

Step 1 – Healing the Hurt

The first step for healing to occur was for my client to stop expecting her mother to behave differently – given that this was consistently her mother’s behaviour. Every time she attempted to have a conversation with her mother about past hurts she would become defencive, dismiss her experience and my client would feel betrayed all over again. When we really looked at this together, it wasn’t surprising to see that her mother had deep, unresolved issues around intimacy.  She had lost her own mother as a young girl and grew up with a violent father.  Much of what my client was taking on board as being unlovable was not about her personally but her mother’s own woundedness. In starting to really see the mother she had, rather than the mother she kept longing for she could start to make changes for herself.

Step 2 – Grieving, Feeling the Disappointment

To stop expecting her mother to change also helped her get in touch with the deep disappointment and grief she held around her longing. A longing for the closeness and understanding that women share with their mothers.  Allowing herself to feel her grief and acknowledging its presence took the focus off her mother and back to herself.  As she did this, she started listening to and giving loving attention to her hurts. Rather than waiting for her mother to change, she started to give herself the tender, loving, self-mothering that she needed and deserved.

Step 3 – Validating and Loving Your Authentic Experience

Getting better at listening to and validating her own needs helped my client take care of them better. She also started to catch the times when she would diminish or dismiss her  experiences or internally criticise herself.  Through visualisation, she imagined herself listening closely to the needs of her inner child.  She connected to her inner child by going deeply into her heart, where she felt her hurt.  Her inner child would speak to her from her heart. She showed her how to keep her heart soft and open to love even though she’d been so hurt. She regularly journalled conversations with her inner child and would do things that were fun, pleasurable and playful with her. Over time, she started to acknowledge her needs with greater empathy and kindness, greater generosity and ease.  She started to give to herself the mothering she had longed for. As she became more practiced at this, her need for validation from her own mother diminished.

Step 4 Forgiving and Letting Go

In the process of letting go of the type of mothering she was wanting from her mother, my client started to see much more clearly the mother she had.  This allowed her to appreciate some of her mother’s specific strengths and positive qualities. She also started to practice stronger boundaries around their relationship that made life easier for her. Knowing there were limitations in where she could go around their intimacy and this took time and patience. She practiced listening to her feelings, trusting them and responding to them.

Is there recovery after betrayal?

Getting over hurt requires recovery time. It is unrealistic to expect yourself to get over feeling your grief and hurt quickly.  Recovery time means listening to your heart and allowing it to stay soft despite having been hurt. Listening to your heart and allowing it to guide you helps us recover our trust in our inner knowing. When we are hurt we can’t make the pain go away or change what happened. We can, however, reach out and get support and comfort from people we love – friends or family members. It can also be a good time to reach out for help from an experienced counsellor.

What do you do when you’ve been betrayed?

Here are some key questions to help assess things for yourself:

• Has the betrayal you’ve experienced been a shock, something out of the blue, or has there been an ongoing deterioration of goodwill, disrespect of boundaries, conflict, small lies.
• What, if anything, do you feel you need from the other person in order to gain some peace and closure.  If they are unable or unwilling to do this how can you seek this for yourself elsewhere? What support and guidance do you need for this to occur.
• Where might you be dismissing or diminishing your own feelings of hurt, anger, fear or caution?  In order to keep a balance between an open heart and a clear head. – Are you paying more attention to your feelings, thoughts and intuition?
• Who is around you that you can trust and speak to? Friends, family members or professional help through counselling, social work, naturopath or GP.

If you’ve recently felt betrayed by someone and want some help and support around your healing, it might be time to speak to someone professionally.  Click here to contact me for counselling support.

I hope this has been helpful. Please write to me with your thoughts and experiences.

Wishing you peace and happiness

Shushann xx

There is a quiet revolution happening in women’s self care.  Women are starting to take radical responsibility in their healing and regeneration. How do we do it? How do we:

• Consciously address our self care in the midst of busy lives, work and personal responsibilities?
• Refuel, regenerate and recharge on a deep soul level when  we are starting to feel depleted?
• Focus on ourselves and our own needs without feeling guilty or selfish?

Many of us don’t stop until we’ve given too much, there’s nothing left in the tank and we are starting to feel exhausted, resentful and  overwhelmed. We need support to receive. It doesn’t come easily for many of us.  Focusing on our self, being self-ish, doesn’t make us selfish. In fact in my experience it has the opposite effect. When we are giving to ourselves, enjoying pleasure, fun, feeling nourished – we feel much more able to give to others.

Do you know the ‘signals’ when your energy is reaching a low ebb and you need to take a break? Funnily enough my car is often a great mirror for me.  When I’ve been really busy I’ve started noticing that the fuel gauge in my car  has also been on a dangerously low level. This visual cue gives me an immediate nudge to take notice of my own low levels in energy.  It’s a reminder that it’s really time to stop and focus on myself. Not to jump to the next thing on my check list of things to do before taking a break.  Here are a few really simple suggestions that have helped me and they don’t necessarily take a lot of time:

1. Sitting away from the computer when you  have a cup of tea/coffee/water. Preferable sit somewhere where you can see trees, sky, flowers.
2. Before jumping out of bed in the morning sit up and take 10 slow deep breathes. This helps to slow you down before your mind fills up too quickly with the things that need doing that day. Close your eyes and  slowly inhale through your nose.  Gradually fill yourself up from your belly, to your ribs and right up to your upper chest and collar bone.  These are known as yoga breathes. Similarly as you exhale breathe out first from your collar bone, upper chest, down to your ribs and finally your belly.
3. Practice 10 slow breaths as above before you go to sleep at night.  Slowing down our breathing also has a slowing down effect on our minds.
4. Take a ‘awareness walk’ through your local park or around the block. It’s a wonderful opportunity to practice presence. As you’re walking really take in the trees, the houses, any birds that are around.
5. Lie down flat on the ground. Hands by your side and let your feet drop outwards. You might like to put a cushion under your knees if it is more comfortable for your lower back. Lie down for 5 – 10 minutes.
6. Put some music on that you really love and can move to. Dance/move to a couple of tracks. That’s usually for about 5 – 10 mins.  Consciously move every part of your body. Stretch, shake, shimmy, jump, roll. Whatever takes your fancy.

If you’ve enjoyed these tips you might want to consider taking the plunge of a retreat where you can really get away from it all and  time to really focus on where you’re at in life and what your needs are.  This could be a day or perhaps the sheer bliss of being away somewhere beautiful for a week! Women all over the world are being drawn together in retreat to be pampered, address their dreams and visions and  nourish feminine consciousness in themselves.

I am the co-founder of The Soulful Woman with my colleague Gemma Summers.  We regularly offer the most beautiful retreats for pampering and empowerment for women.  We have our one day  SoulSpa retreat in Sydney and our Essence of Lakshmi Bali Retreats in the beautiful artist town of Ubud. Hope to see you there one day!

Shushann x

We all need praise and appreciation on a daily basis – it’s nourishment for our souls. We may say we don’t need it but it is well known that kindness and genuine appreciation have an incredibly soothing effect on our central nervous system and  raises our serotonin levels. It can calm us and help us to keep going when the going gets tough.

Learning to acknowledge instead of making your partner wrong is one of the most powerful relationship survival tools available to you. John Gottman is a researcher and family therapist who has worked extensively in couple therapy.   He talks about the disintegration of respect and goodwill in a relationship when there is too much criticism and not enough praise. In my experience as a relationship counsellor I have found this applies to working with families as well. Where there is a deficit in praise and acknowledgment,  a relationship starts to break down, disappointment and resentment can set in. It is very hard to steer things to a better place if damage is long term.

What Creates Positive Change?

The ratio for keeping a relationship buoyant, for maintaining good will and respect is 5 acts of praise for every 1 criticism.

Praise, gratitude and acknowledgement keeps the relationship goodwill pistons rolling and is a strong foundation for happiness.  There is no doubt that children also flourish in a household where affection, acceptance and praise are part of the parental communication.

What Can Get In the Way?

Why can giving and receiving praise be so difficult? We know it works with puppies and babies why not with each other? Here are some thoughts

• Fear – people equate giving praise with being too ‘soft, too ‘touchy feely.’  It may even make us feel things we don’t want to feel, tap into our vulnerability.
• Being Big headed – If I give it, the other person will get a big head, If I receive it I’ll get a big head. It may sound like something from high school but this can still play havoc with us in our adulthood.
• Difficulty Just Receiving – there could be many reasons for this, too busy, don’t know how, it’s not something I grew up with, if I receive then I’m going to be in debt to that person.

Time To Challenge Outmoded Thinking and Get the Goodies

Here’s some things you can do today that will have an immediate positive effect on your partner:

1. It may take some detective work -but, a) notice and b) catch those small, somewhat fleeting moments when your partner does something you appreciate. And c) Tell them.
2. Giving praise and acknowledgment is like giving a gift. Make sure you’ve made time and space to give this gift. Not something you call out as you’re running out the door.
3. Make sure it is something that is true for you about your partner. The best way to know this is if it  bubbles up in your heart.
4. When you give your praise put a full stop after it!  Don’t add any ‘buts’, ‘except whens’ or other comments that may minimise or dismiss the gift of your appreciation.
5. Allow your partner time to take it in. When you give someone a gift it can take a while to unwrap it and really look at it.  If they are deflective – gently remind them to just receive.
6. Smile when you’re giving your praise. It helps.

Get As Good As You Give

If you’re on the receiving end of praise and acknowledgment:

1. Please take it in. Smile and take in a breath, pause.  Let their gift sink into your cells and flow through your nervous system.
2. Let your partner/friend/relative  know you appreciate it. Say ‘thanks’.
3. Notice and catch any tendency to minimise or dismiss what’s been said. Take time to suspend saying something back or throwing back a compliment. Speaking too soon can dilute what you’ve just received.
4. Contemplate the possibility of the praise and acknowledgment as being true about you. Watch out for any critical inner figure that calls you a ‘big head’ or says ‘this is mushy’

Remember the 5 to 1 ratio. Build on the love, goodwill and respect in your relationship with simple acts of kindness. They may seem insignificant at the time but they have a way of growing into a long term investment.