antonia@projectself.co.uk
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Project Self Life Coaching

How to Be Ok With What Is

When things are difficult, we can feel threatened and unsafe, which creates fear and anxiety. Our negative thinking and our inner critic can escalate as we try to manage our vulnerability.

When we are outside of our comfort zone or being asked to change, we may feel stuck, feel resistance and then procrastinate. It is hard for us to lean into discomfort in any experience and find acceptance in what we can and can’t influence in our situation. And yet acceptance is an empowering choice with which to meet and move forwards in a world outside of our control.

On Struggling - Project Self Life Coaching

On Struggling

Project Self
It’s often said we don’t know what someone is struggling with, or battling with and that everyone has their own personal struggle of some kind. Clients often bring something, an issue or problem they are ‘struggling’ with. What do we mean when we say we are struggling with something? That something is hard, challenging or difficult to resolve? That we are coping with a sense of inability to do something ‘well’? That we are trying to make something happen and it’s not? That we are tangled in something and can’t find a way through because we don’t know what to…
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On How We Learn To Not Be Ourself - Project Self Life Coaching

On How We Learn To Not Be Ourself

Project Self
Much of what we think of as our personality is in fact a collection of strategies we developed as a child for managing everyday life. Many of these become traits we identify with and aren’t really who we are, but a role we took on. Our inner child is a strategist (a strategy being a method to achieve an outcome). As children we learn to behave in certain ways to get our needs met by the caregiver. We learn to comply with their messages about right and wrong, along with cultural and social messages about how we need to be,…
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On Not Thinking Negatively - Project Self Life Coaching

On Not Thinking Negatively

Project Self
Many people are feeling various low and negative moods at the moment. We can’t do much about how we feel in response to difficult circumstances but we can be aware of how our thinking may be affecting us. The brain has a negativity bias. As Rick Hanson describes it, teflon for good news, velcro for bad news. This is because our system is wired to look for and hook into any perceived risk and threat. Our brains tend to scan for bad news, overly focus on it, overly react to it, over remember it, and become sensitised to it over…
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On Relationship Dynamics - Project Self Life Coaching

On Relationship Dynamics

Project Self
We are relational beings. Our nervous system has a biological imperative to co-regulate itself in the presence of another which provides the feeling of safety. So relationships of course, in theory should feel like safe harbours or solid ground. And yet many experience less harbour and more the sensation of being in a sinking rowing boat, frantically paddling, bailing out water, and bobbing without a rudder in the backwash of a vast honking cruise liner. Frightening, unfathomable and difficult to stay afloat in, So why do relationships so often feel unsafe or unstable? Why do we seem so poorly quipped…
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ON LIVING IN A TROUBLING TIME - Project Self Life Coaching

On Living in a Troubling Time

Project Self
We all feel the uncertainty; we are living within something that is unpredictable and indefinite in terms of the impact on our lives. It’s important that we take care of ourselves by acknowledging how we are affected by the culture that surrounds us. As we approach the season of drawing into the home, we are already challenged with our world perhaps feeling smaller or limited. Of life feeling flat. We are living through a period of constriction and lack of connection and isolation which has altered the felt experience of everyday life.  Not just in restricted freedom of movement and…
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ON BEING KIND TO YOURSELF - Project Self Life Coaching

On Being Kind to Yourself

Project Self
Our innate human quality is compassion and kindness. In our natural, relaxed state we are warm and caring. Our self is inclusive and allowing. Such qualities expand us towards consideration, generosity and understanding, trust and forgiveness. We have sympathy for suffering.  We like. We are kind. We are love. When we are unhappy or upset we can become tight and sometimes ‘mean’ spirited. Our capacity towards generosity and openness diminishes. We shrink in as our heart suffers; we may close off, down and up. We contract our care as we take on negative or challenging thoughts and feelings. We may…
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On Feeling Into Fear - Project Self Life Coaching

On Feeling Into Fear

Project Self
Fear, I believe, is our most predominant emotion as it’s driven from our survival instinct. We are navigated through life by our threat detection mechanism; our nervous system, our primeval brain, our mammalian nature; checking experience (or future experience) out as either physically and emotionally safe, not safe or potentially not safe. Our need for safety drives our personality and behaviour towards being self-protective; dominating our natural capacity to respond from an open place of calm and compassion towards others (and self). Fear is a fundamental disallowing of ourselves to be available for connection or totally open to the present moment. Fear is live…
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On Blowing Things Out - Project Self Life Coaching

On Blowing Things Out

Project Self
What do you when you don’t want to follow up on a plan or arrangement because you no longer feel like it? Do you feel like a flaky and non committal person? How do you feel about pre-existing commitments when you find you’re in a low energy, low mood?  When you don’t feel up to, or for, the things you thought you would? When you feel contracted, collapsed, strung out, miserable or maybe triggered or upset by someone or something and so feel disinterest, resistance or resentment towards the things you were going to do? Plans you made when you…
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WHEN THINGS SEEM TO STAY THE SAME - Project Self Life Coaching

When Things Seem To Stay The Same

Project Self
Many of us seem to aspire to an alternative life, almost without our current self, as we are, within it. We have an idea of how it could look If Only we aren’t the way we are.  The life we’ll have When we’ve done all the work on ourselves. When we’ve addressed all the habits we want to change and When we’ve created new ones. When we’ve found the right thing. A different life Without sabotaging ourselves, reacting to others or getting triggered. Without criticising ourselves, thinking about what’s wrong with us or ruminating on what we should have done…
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On Finding Joy - Project Self Life Coaching

On Finding Joy

Project Self
Negative feelings may sometimes feel more pervasive to us than positive ones in our daily life, and happiness a tad evasive. Why is this?  Could it be we give negative feelings more significance than positive ones; more weight? That we think there must be something wrong so ruminate, scrutinise and analyse these feelings, taking them into our thinking and so make them worse? Could it be that negative feelings feel deeper, bigger or heavier than lighter ones, so we notice them more as they are more predominant in our consciousness, more concentrated in our physiology? Essentially our brain and so our…
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