Emotions

There are the core emotions of fear, anger, joy, shame and sadness and there is a whole world of different feelings which stem from these energies. We can have a hard time being comfortable with our emotions, how they change and their intensity and yet we are emotional beings.

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

On Not Feeling Bad

Project Self

We often feel bad about ourselves, conflating how we can behave with who we are. We can also feel a dislike for who we are and also feel deep down, a sense that we lack worth as a human being. And so we tread heavily on the earth, comparing our weighty lack of substance to the seemingly Sorted & Successful Ariel figures around us. Welcome to the walk of shame. The walking dead. The human experience of walking around feeling like there’s a cloud, a shadow, hanging over you; a weight on your chest; a restriction in your throat or an emptiness…

On Living Lonely

Project Self

Alone and loneliness are one-ness. It is just us. And the rest of the world. Even though the rest of the world is made up of us; this pain of separation can become more defining of our sense of self than the concept of unity, universality, humanity and the experience of connection. A great paradox of living is being free and seeking to be tethered. By tethering I mean moored, secured, bonded to someone, something; to be with, in or part of other. To fit. To be known. We seek to be seen by others to see ourselves. We need…

On Sadness, Pain and Love

Project Self

It’s very rare that a client does not express a pain or sadness that they carry within them. Change Coaching for me is a balance between compassion and challenge. We all need to be met compassionately in our pain by another. The challenge is allowing ourselves and our pain to be seen and expressed. To not be fearful of experiencing our own sadness. To be compassionate towards that we cannot change. Life is not about being happy. Life is about feeling, being alive to and accepting all our emotions; the great spectrum and tide of the human experience; not editing…

On Frustration, Anger and Assertiveness

Project Self

Wanting To Tell The World and Everyone In It To Fuck Off Ever gone through one of those phases where you just want everyone and everything to piss off and leave you be? Where every little exchange with people seems to be a snipe, thoughtless? Other people just wind you up? You go into town and politely ask the woman parking at the end of the bay if she could move forward so you can park behind and her and she won’t, and you think you rude, selfish, cow to yourself, or you might even say something to her through…

On Managing ‘Creeping Death’ – Waiting your turn to introduce yourself

Project Self

Do you experience social anxiety? What happens to you when you have to introduce yourself in a group? “Oh God I’m going to have to speak. In front of all these people. I knew it. I don’t want to go first. Why do they make us do this? Oh no, I don’t want to go last. Say something about myself. Introduce myself. I don’t know what to say. I’ve got nothing interesting to say. I hate this bit. Listen to her she sounded great, looks good too. You can tell this a breeze for her. Everyone else is so confident.…

Emotions

On How We Learn To Not Be Ourself

On Relationship Dynamics

On Living in a Troubling Time

On Feeling Into Fear

On Finding Joy

On Not Feeling Bad

On Living Lonely

On Sadness, Pain and Love

On Frustration, Anger and Assertiveness

On Managing ‘Creeping Death’ – Waiting your turn to introduce yourself

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