Ever feel you’re Just Not Good Enough?

I am currently studying addiction and how Shamanism can support Addicts to wellness.  During the course we re-visited a particular teaching that really touched me the first time I heard it when I started my Shamanic journey.  I would like to share these with you so that next time you feel unworthy you can recall the beliefs and perhaps change your perspective.

Firstly, it is important to recognize that we all feel unworthy at times.  This feeling stems mostly from our childhood when we experienced a loss of innocence.  Loss of innocence comes in many forms.   An example could be that you are the apple of your parent’s eye and you can do nothing wrong.  Then you start school and perhaps you don’t do very well and for the first time ever your parents show their displeasure.  That simple act of telling you that you didn’t meet their expectations could be the catalyst for some of these core beliefs.

I want to add that there is NO BLAME to be placed on loved ones.  This blog is not about awakening the story of how you were not supported or loved.  It is simply to identify where some of these feelings may stem from and your story begins.  Remember that your parents did the best they could with the tools available to them.   We may not be the ones who initiated the trauma but all our experiences are what we signed up for in the evolution of our Spirit and it is our responsibility to heal it.

Core Belief #1:  I am basically a bad and unworthy person:

Cast your mind back to the first time someone scolded you and told you “You are a bad child”.  Can you recall that feeling?  They may even have added “Go to your room” or “Get out of my sight”.  Many times from our perspective we were not necessarily being “bad” but rather learning and experimenting.  That was your first encounter with conditional love.  There is usually two reactions to this trauma, you act out and become “bad” or you do everything in your power to become worthy of the others love. 

Loss of innocence

Core Belief #2:  No-one would or could love me as I really am:

It becomes clear to us that we are bad and unworthy so we armour and start to wear masks in order to project what we want others to see.  We even have different masks for different people like a chameleon forever matching the colour of the person we are engaging with.  Depending on our personalities we might start telling stories to make ourselves important.   The other side of the coin is self-pity where our story becomes who we are and we tell it to all that will listen in order to feel acknowledged. 

Loss of authenticity

Core Belief #3:  My needs will never be met by others:

As we grow we start to realize that we can’t depend on anyone but ourselves.  We all have experiences where we trusted someone only to be disappointed.  The hurt that strikes the deepest are those around our romantic relationships.  We start to believe that people will always let us down or betray us.  Often we will isolate ourselves.  Sometimes we will create “tests” for people to see if they will abandon us if we push them hard enough, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It becomes a rinse and repeat cycle where our past continually influences our future.

Loss of trust

Core Belief #4: My Addiction is all I need:
Feeding your addiction becomes your most important need to be met.  This doesn't always mean  drugs.  It could even be things that would under normal circumstances be good for us i.e. exercise or food.  As the trigger hits so I need to feed myself with that which makes me feel better.  The stimulant removes the feeling of being worthless temporarily so I continue to return to it.
Loss of connection to Spirit

Core Belief #5:  Sex=Love=Pain

As a Human the greatest gift that we have to offer is Love.  Yet everything in our human experience feels as if that is the one thing we can’t find.  When all these beliefs come together we believe in our core that we are unlovable and worse still that we don’t deserve love.  When we fall in love something triggers the feeling that we will be punished for loving and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.   We hold back or shut down and do everything in our power to avoid feeling.  Better to feel numb or be callous than to be vulnerable.

Loss of Love

With Shamanism these core beliefs are dismantled and re-written.  You heal every trauma and story until you are finally able to find your way back to Self-Love.  Once you realize that your ability to love yourself heals all these core beliefs you can step back into innocence, authenticity, trust and LOVE... 

Love & Light

Trust… Fragile or Flexible?

I have been cautiously working with Trust.  Sometimes Trust is broken in big ways; infidelity, lying, stealing and abuse, and there is no doubt that when that happens most of us will walk away doesn’t matter what the other party has to say.  However most of the time trust is just slowly eroded until the thing that you trusted someone to do is just a shadow of the original agreement.

Anyone that knows me knows that broken trust has always been the one area where I have built walls around my heart.  Seems I can forgive almost anything but betrayal of trust.  There are a couple of really good reasons for that; the fact that people have often not lived up to their word and my perception, and therein lays the biggest issue, my PERCEPTION of their word and their intent.

How often have you thought that you had an agreement on a particular issue, only to find out that the other party didn’t see it as an agreement even though you gave them your bottom line, which they agreed to?  How many times have you been surprised by someone’s bending of the rules based on historical information that you might not even be privy to?  Interesting isn’t it?

Now, what is typically your response to broken trust when the rules are just bent or an agreement is “tweaked”? I know mine is to reassess and decide if my bottom line should move and if I can give a little based on the historical information I might now have etc. etc.  Either way what I am allowing for is the erosion of my trust and the sacrifice my integrity.   It is a clear message that my bottom line and any that follow is only a suggestion, not a bottom line at all and can be violated at any time with no consequences.  Pretty back and white… right?  Did you feel good in your body when you read that paragraph?  Probably not; because it comes across as angry, self-righteous, rigid and you most likely held your breath subconsciously.

What I know is that in my experience the world is not black or white but shades of grey.  Was the agreement really broken or was my perception of the agreement broken?  I promise you it will always be your perception that was broken.  Bending of a bottom line could be a price worth paying but the decision needs to be made on a case by case basis.  The consequences of all this “broken” trust becomes quite a stressor on all your relationships.

So, what to do?  Perhaps we should lighten up and look at agreements and trust in a different way:

The first thing to recognize is that you have a unique relationship with the concept of trust because it is based on your perception.  Your perception of the world is based on your moral values and beliefs, and these are created by your upbringing, experiences and the way you handle stress.  When you see it in that light it is obvious that no-one else will see things the way you do.  It is therefore illogical that you hold them to your standards and draw immovable lines.  What you can do is discuss the grey area.  Negotiate the terms that can move and the ones that can’t.   For me a bottom line that is unbendable is abuse, emotional or otherwise – if that trust is broken I walk away.  All other matters of trust I am prepared to negotiate, give a little, take a little to create a win-win.  If it becomes a lose-win for either party boundaries have been violated in which case it may be time to re-evaluate the relationship as a whole.

The second thing to recognize is that you can’t make people see or do things the way you do.  Take a romantic relationship as an example, often the reason you fell in love in the first place is because the person is different from you and gives you an opportunity to see the world through a different filter. The biggest and most dangerous phenomenon in today’s society in my opinion is that people are no longer allowed to disagree.  Disagreement is seen as “you don’t love me” which is nonsense.  Allow people to be themselves.  Don’t try to change them, change your perception of who they ought to be to who they are.  If they have habits that worry or annoy you, learn to hold space for yourself.  If no harm is being done adjust.  Being rigid and seeing only your way as the good or right way puts one person in control and causes huge stress for both parties, it is a lose-lose.  The person trying to live up to the rigid standards feel their self-worth being stripped away and the person holding the other to those standards feels anger and stress.  Both of these reactions lead to depression, anxiety and acting out; the oppressed in pushing boundaries and the oppressor in explosive anger and volatility. 

Change your relationship with integrity.  To be clear negotiating doesn’t mean you are sacrificing your integrity.  Integrity is not attached to trust as so many believe it to be.  Integrity is your personal bottom line and once again unique.  It is your values and belief systems that YOU won’t violate and has nothing what so ever to do with anything or anyone external.  You can’t force your values and beliefs (integrity) down someone else’s throat.

Lastly change trust to faith.  If you have made agreements have faith that the other person will keep those agreements to the best of their ability.  As people change and grow when feeling supported and loved so will their ability to hold agreements.  Give them and yourself the necessary space to breathe and grow into new ways of being.   Let go of expectations and relax, most of the things we get hung up on aren’t as important as we think anyway…

Love & Light

What Are You Thinking?

Today I am speaking to you about something you already know. However knowing and practicing is two different things.

Your Thoughts Are Your Most Powerful Tool!

We all know that we need to watch out thoughts for they become our reality but many of us have problems with keeping our focus. With awareness I have found that I hear my thoughts clearly now, and sometimes they are still disturbing.  

Have you ever done something seemingly and innocently silly, like go to the bank when you know it is probably going to be busy, say a Friday afternoon at four o'clock?  Of course you have.  I did that just the other day. I became aware that I was berating myself in my mind for being stupid for going to the bank at that time.  I was literally lashing out at myself.   Whoa... what was that about?

In my case it goes back to that feeling that I am constantly under pressure to get things done fast and efficiently.  What a load of BS!  At some stage I even convinced myself that taking lunch was a waste of time and you can imagine what that has done to my self-care over the years. Even though I am so aware of the problem I still struggle daily with this pressure that I put on myself.  Yes - there is the crux of the matter, what I do to myself! 

Here are a few tips that I use to keep working at it:

Second Attention:  I am always aware of my thoughts by placing my second attention on them.

Listening to my body: I stop what I am doing as soon as I feel tension in my body because it means that I am starting to put pressure on myself.

Gentleness: I treat myself gently and remind myself all day that I just need to be present. There is no rush.

Patience: I must have patience. I built this backbreaking thought pattern and habit over many years and it can't be broken in one day.  

Compassion: I must have compassion for me when I don't get it right.  Healing is a process.

So, this year I will continue to break down and through this thought barrier.  I do everything with second attention on my thoughts.  I remind myself over and over in a day that what I am currently doing is important and that I have all the time in the world to complete it. 

The ultimate goal you ask?  To walk in beauty with neutrality, strength and an open heart...

Love & Light

Change...

Change is something we all fear yet it is all around us every day.  We only have to look to nature to see that it is constant.  The seasons go about their business quietly and calmly. 

Observe a tree for one year… Every cycle it gives up everything it has and goes inside itself.  It appears to be dead during the cold months of winter, there are no stirrings of life.   Then spring hits and the sap begins to flow unseen by the naked eye however if you lay your hand on the tree you can sense a quickening.  Before you know it the green buds appear and as if overnight the tree is in full bloom with flowers and leaves.  Then the summer stage with the fruit of its growth and labour with the final stage the slow decay as it once again goes within.

Our lives mirror this cycle.  There are times when we are at the top of the world and others when we feel as if the Universe has turned against us.  The interesting thing is that this is a cycle but it may not be recognizable.  With awareness of the twenty seven year Karmic wheel you will see how your life organically changes as you move through this wheel.

What is important here is to realize how you engaged in your life in each of these areas.  As an example if you didn’t heal unresolved issues in the completion of your fist Karmic walk at age 27 then you could have dragged that with you into the next cycle.  Or if between the ages of 15-18 you became unprincipled and ungoverned you could have built up a lot of patterns that require healing and so forth.  When studying this wheel you slowly start to realize where you might have created maladaptive patterns in order to deal with the traumas of your life.

If I pay attention to where I am right now, in my 3^rd Karmic cycle I am once again calibrating my Life Force.   I made the tough decisions in my final year, healed what I believed needed to be healed and now it is time to regroup.  However I am regrouping with a purpose and refuse to fall into self-pity because things have not gone my way, also staying clear of self-importance by not blaming anyone else and taking responsibility for my own choices. 

Sure change is tough but it happens every day, either in small measure or overwhelming.  We can’t fight it and sometimes the harder we hang on, the more misery we visit upon ourselves.  The best we can do is negotiate change with a positive attitude, healing and hope…

Love & Light

Staying Connected...

I had a wonderful time in Hawaii.  As predicted I was feeling healed by the time I left.  When I reflect back on the experience I remember that the day I arrived I was talking fast and completely wrapped up in my story of work and all the balls I am juggling every day.  One of the Sisters looked at me and said “BREATHE”.  I heard her but I stopped only for a split second to take a breath and continue my story of how tough things have been.  It was as if words were tumbling from my mouth without any control and my mind was racing a mile a minute.

After the first night I was feeling a little better.  My energy settled down and I started to speak slower with more thought.  Slowly I started to unwind and let go of all those things that fill my mind with confusion and doubt.  As the week progressed things became clearer and I was able to feel what was actually going on in my life rather than my perception of it.  I learned that I still have an issue with attachment and justification, something that I am now actively addressing…daily.  Any of my clients reading this will have a small smile right now because they know how much effort it takes to be aware and take action every time you are triggered and not to act out in your pattern.  My healing like everyone else’s is a journey.  

I digress, but the end of the week I was calm, grounded, centered and feeling strong, standing in my power soaking up the sun and heat, eating well and sleeping even better.  Then the week was over and I was on my way home….

I was so determined to hang onto this wonderful feeling of being grounded and balanced that I promised myself that I would put forward a strong intent to hold it but life happens.  Our flight was delayed by two and a half hours, still I was good…” it is what it is” I said to myself and held my ground.  For a week and two days I held it, nothing shook my ability to stay centered not even the unrelenting cold that never seemed to lift.  Then real challenges were thrown at me and my center shifted.  Lucky for me I was able to bring it back, so all is not lost and I am speaking clearly with the people who are pushing my buttons. 

It did make me question the sense of sanctuary a spiritual retreat gives you.  It is easy to be one with yourself and others when you are secluded and not really engaged in the day to day realism of your life.  By definition isn't that exactly what retreat means, to withdraw or hideaway?  It takes a lot more will to stay engaged and balanced when you are dealing with everyday chaos and the people who drive you crazy.  I won't  give up, I'll keep at it!

Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful for the opportunity to go on the retreat, without it I think I would be a bumbling idiot or a raging maniac by the time spring arrives.  The trick is going to be in staying in a state of grace….

Love & Light

Relationships... the eternal challenge!

People have problems every day; at work, home and even socially and when you peel away the layers it all boils down to relationships. Many people are unable to negotiate relationships. We would like to think that love is enough to make a relationship survive but it takes more than that for it to be healthy. When the heady feeling of love and lust has ended the hard work begins to keep the relationship strong. The first thing you should know is that all your relationships are about you. If the relationship doesn't feed you on every level there will always be a gap in your life. What are the biggest triggers for relationships you ask? Here are ten examples that I see on a regular basis in personal relationships:

1. The people in the relationship think as individuals.
If you are not dreaming a common future and do not have the same dreams and goals nothing will save the relationship as you want different things. Therefore if there are too many “I’s” and not enough “We’s” it is probably best to let it go.

2. Fear of asking for what you need.
Most people know in their gut that the relationship is not what it is supposed to be. Not only do they ignore all the signs they are too afraid to speak up and ask for what they need from the other person. This fear is often driven by a feeling that should they ask for what they need the relationship would most likely dissolve. The strange thing is that if they eventually gather up the courage and ask, the result if usually favourable.

3. Not asking the hard questions.
It is amazing how many of us figure out too late that the other person doesn't share our values i.e. want to get married, or have kids, or how they feel about looking after aging parents or even how to blend two families, raising children . When these issues arise, and they will, it can cause an eruption in the relationship. Granted, some relationships survive the bump in the road but depending on the importance of the matter some don’t.

4. Think they can change the other person.
The fact is people change all the time however we are not talking about those changes. We are talking about traits that you don’t like in your partner right from the beginning. Thinking that you can change the person into your vision of what and ideal partner should be is a recipe for disaster. Love is warts and all, if you can’t deal with the character trait… move on.

5. The relationship is out of balance.
The relationship is out of balance when one of the people in the relationship gives far too much and the other takes without giving much in return. Two things happen in this situation. Firstly the person giving starts to feel resentful and used. The other feels guilty for accepting and frequently manipulated and emotionally blackmailed.  

6. Lack of mutual respect.
This is where one partner feels spoken down to and the other is always in control. It is a slippery slope where eventually one of the partners feels like nothing they do is ever right. Sometimes this is a mirror for the other person to see that there are control issues at work but mostly it results in one person feeling minimized. If this lack of respect is left unchecked it can spiral down into mental abuse.

7. Interests in and outside the relationship.
It is important to have shared interests however it is equally important to have interests outside the relationship in order for each person to retain their own sense of identity.

8. Not being present.
When you are together you need to be present in the moment. When one partner is distracted and not engaged with the other or the relationship it will eventually end.

9. Neediness.
Although some people actively seek out people who are needy, I call it the “Knight in Shining Armour Syndrome,” the game quickly wears thin. In the end the Knight will tire of all the saving and when that happens, the other person will end up feeling abandoned. It seldom ends well.

10. Jealousy.
Jealousy is a death knell to most relationships. The jealous person is suffering from low self-esteem and has much work to do to heal while the other person is often victimized within the relationship, blamed for things he or she has not done and left feeling anxious and fearful. There is a good possibility that jealousy will spiral downward into physical abuse.

Don’t worry… normally we don’t have to deal with all of these in every relationship and some of them never present. The key to dealing with all of the above is communication! It is essential to face your fear and speak your truth from a neutral position and take responsibility for your part in the relationship.

Love & Light