We talk to ourselves all the time, but have you ever paid attention to how much of that self-talk is self-criticism, self-loathing, judgement or just generally beating yourself up? Our brains are hard-wired for negativity through our protective survival instincts, and sometimes this can backfire, when we experience setbacks or difficulties, or we lack resilience and the skills to cope with life. We can get into a cycle of negative self-talk, which exacerbates a state of low self-worth, leaving us feeling anxious, down or depressed. As part of taking care of ourselves, it is really important that we build a positive relationship with ourselves; looking after you, so that you can be who you want to be in the world. It all starts with loving yourself a little more each day. And I’m not talking about the ego-centred “Oh, I love myself!” type of declaration, but the daily respect and kindness that you might show to others, which is something that we should all practise giving to ourselves. Try this exercise:
Some of my clients find this exercise very difficult to do. If you are one of those people that feel a real resistance to doing this task, or you have an emotional reaction to the “I am” statements, it means that more likely than not, you are holding onto a negative belief, that is stopping you from making these statements true for yourself. In therapy, we can identify and look at where the negative belief has come from, so that you can resolve and let go of any unprocessed emotions that have been holding you back. When we begin to clear the underlying causes of low self-worth, it means that you can stop feeling anxious. Your mind will quieten, the self-criticism will diminish and because your inner voice can now be kinder to you, the peace that comes with that is truly wonderful. Give this a go and let me know how you get on in the comments. If you need any help, you know where I am.
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If you are anything like me, then perhaps you might be familiar with the pain of social awkwardness that accompanies trying to make new friends? I remember being astonished as a pre-teen child on family holidays, on arrival at a new campsite, how within twenty minutes of setting up the tent, my little sister had already acquired a gathering of small friends, somewhat akin to the Pied Piper. I could never understand how she did that! By contrast I was cripplingly shy. I found every interaction with a new person painful as I tried to navigate my way through the usual small talk to see what I could and couldn’t say to my new acquaintance. If they spoke about animals, those non-verbal companions that make no judgment, then I might stand a chance, but ask me my opinion on a pop song, who was my favourite group or indeed my favourite anything, then no way, I would shrink into my shell; I was not going to risk the rejection! Even today, after the work I have done to heal, when asked for my viewpoint, there is still a tiny echo of that awkwardness, a twinge of distant anxiety as I ask myself “what is the right answer to that question? What answer can I give that will help me to belong to the crowd?” And only then, do I remember that I no longer have to be that way. I can relax, which is truly refreshing. A sense of belonging is something that we all need to have to feel safe and secure, an ancient part of our hard-wired survival mechanism that compels us to belong to the tribe for the purposes of protection. When we feel like we don’t fit, or are too shy to speak, then belonging and making those social connections that we crave, becomes even harder. What I discovered, with the guidance of my therapist, is that “shy” is not a personality, it is a program, and what I mean is that I learnt that way of being when I was very young. Many of us are walking around without consciously realising that we are the way we are as a result of the learning that we picked up from our parents, teachers and other significant adults - all programmed into us before the age of seven. Perhaps you can still hear the familial sayings that you grew up around - “children should be seen, not heard”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, “do as you are told”; or you can remember some of the negative things that were said to you as a child – “you’ll never amount to anything”; or the way that you felt when a teacher singled you out in class – contracted and small, making yourself invisible as you hid from their gaze? All of these experiences shape the way that you behave as an adult today, and even with the best of adult role models there are very few of us that come away unscathed, without a few wonky programs in place - negative beliefs about ourselves, or behavioural quirks that we believe are ‘just who we are’, but in fact have come from an earlier time and place that lacked in safety and trust. It is how you perceived your emotional needs being met as a child that counts, not how wonderful (or not) your parents were. As Dr Tara Swart writes, ‘We all grow up with models for how to relate to other people, express ourselves, give and receive love and handle disagreements. As we move through life, these ‘imprints’ we have tend to get projected onto other situations and relationships in our lives. This powerful unconscious process is one that’s worth exploring as it can have a profound influence on the relationships we choose, the way we view ourselves and the way we think and behave.’ If you feel like making new friends is really difficult, then I want you to know that there are ways to heal that particular pain. I wonder if you could get curious about what creates that feeling of social awkwardness? Because I know that when you do, there is a treasure trove of rewards just the other side; a feeling of freedom and relaxed calm, that you have never before experienced. Today, I take great joy in working as a QCH therapist, helping people to navigate through their anxiety, to heal the underlying causes at source, which is easier than you might think. So, if you are finding it difficult to make friends or maintain relationships then there is usually a very good reason for that, often stored as a protection response within your subconscious mind as a result of earlier, poor or unhelpful experiences. Now that we have developed our understanding of how the brain works through psychology and neuroscience, it means we can change the patterns in your brain, by coaching you through processes that help you to release trapped negative emotions and resolve disturbing memories, so that you can stop being anxious. At The Quest Institute we have been trained to work with you as an individual, so that you are never a label or diagnosis, because we know that each person is doing their anxiety in a different way to the next. It may be the same symptom, but it’s not the same story. We will work with you in whatever ways make it possible for you to heal. If you are not ready for therapy, then here are a few tips for making friends that you might like to try: Be genuinely curious about others – everyone is different in fascinating ways, so be interested and practise active listening, which means don’t jump in or ‘listen to talk’. Instead, reflect back what you have heard using the speaker’s own words. Nod your head, affirm, empathise. Use the power of questions – asking your new acquaintance questions takes the pressure off you. Ask a few open, ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘when’ questions. “That’s interesting, how did you do that?”, “what happened after he said that?” Stop mind-reading – the whole world is not looking at you. No, really they are not, much as your mind would like to tell you that they are! Also, you really can’t hear what other people are thinking inside their heads; that’s just you, thinking inside your head. Remember, you don’t have to believe your thoughts. Positive self-talk – negative thought cycles create anxiety as you predict the future turning out badly. Can you catch the negative thoughts? You might like to begin to practise, flipping those thoughts into the positive. “I’m really worried I’m going to make a fool of myself with this new guy” becomes “I have an opportunity to meet this new person and I’m just going to have fun.” Notice your physiology – mind reading aside, that said your body language can communicate so much. So, if you are hiding or huddled in the corner, you may be unconsciously projecting a message to stay away. Think about opening your body, vulnerable I know, but practise is key so that you can become more and more comfortable with your new posture. Allow your shoulders to move down and back, imagine a thread attached to the top of your head, pulling you gently upwards so that you stand taller, open your arms and relax, by taking a few deep breaths right down into your tummy. Notice the other person’s physiology too – can you mirror it and notice how they/you feel? It might be revealing. Be present – often our mind is remembering what happened in the past or is predicting what is going to happen in the future. The best way to stay present is to check-in with your body and engage in an activity. Can you walk and talk with your new friend or engage your hands in tapping alternate knees (or padding alternate feet) gently as you sit with them? The bi-lateral physical movement will help to keep you body present and anchor your mind to something that feels safe and comforting. Imagine your ‘Future You’ – run some positive mental films. Rehearse and practise how you would love your social interactions to be, not how you don’t want them to turn out. You might be surprised at just how well that works. Friendships can sustain us through thick and thin, so they are worth cultivating. Give these tips a go and let me know how you get on. If I can conquer anxiety and reprogramme myself from ‘cripplingly shy’ to ‘quietly confident’, then I know you can too! If any of this has resonated with you and you would like to free yourself from anxiety, I have a programme of personalised coaching that can help you. You can get in touch with me on this website. This article is also published here at www.qchpa.com/quest-hub/navigating-social-anxiety-on-friendship-day/ References & Further Reading:
‘Our Polyvagal World – How Safety and Trauma Change Us’, Stephen & Seth Porges ‘Daring Greatly’, Brene Brown ‘The Source – Open Your Mind, Change Your Life’, Dr. Tara Swart AMDR stands for Applied Memory Deconsolidation and Reconsolidation and is a technique born out of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing). AMDR is ‘based on a clear understanding of the neuroscience underpinning the EMDR process’ and is highly effective in treating trauma, as it combines Somatic Psychotherapy, Cognitive Hypnotherapy, Mindfulness and EMDR in a neuroscience-based approach which is safe, gentle, flexible and adaptive to the needs of each client. AMDR was created by Joshua Issac Smith (Psychotherapist & Former Assistant Director of the London EMDR Centre) and Gill Wood (Quest Cognitive Hypnotherapist, NLP Coach and EMDR Supervisor). What is trauma?People can suffer from ‘Big T’ traumas, life changing events like loss of limb, or car accidents, rape or loss of a loved one. This may result in what has been known as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Small ‘t’ traumas, such as being bullied at work or as a child, being cheated on by a partner, being humiliated in public or having a near miss as a truck passes you by as a pedestrian, can still elicit the same response in the body; the activation of fight/flight/freeze. It is therefore not the size or awfulness off the event that creates the trauma response, but the meaning that you give to it in that moment. Trauma is simply a Significant Emotional Event (SEE) which has big meaning to you and therefore big impact. So, if you thought to yourself as that truck only just missed you, “OMG, I’m going to die! My kids will be without a mother!” that moment, perceived as a threat to life as you know it, can result in a part of you being split off into a ‘trauma self’ where it continually plays out the worst-case scenario, stuck in a closed loop, where no new information can get in. When we are traumatised by an event, part of the rational thinking brain is shut down and can no longer process the event as a memory that happened in the past. The trauma memory or ‘trauma self’ essentially becomes frozen in time and can be emotionally triggered by events in the present, so it feels as if it is happening all over again. Sometimes the trauma can lie dormant for long periods of time, only to be triggered when something that the brain perceives as being vaguely similar, occurs in the present. When a pattern match is made, this triggers the body into the fight, flight, freeze response and the memory replays as if it is real and happening in the now. Sometimes, because the mind has dissociated and disconnected from the body to protect you, the unconscious mind will not allow you to remember the trauma and instead you re-live the memory through the often, intense feelings and sensations in the body. How does AMDR work?AMDR works to re-process the trauma memory and bring the rational brain (pre-frontal cortex) back online, so that the part that was shut down during the SEE can receive new information (“this is no longer happening, I am safe now”) and everything can re-integrate. The emotion discharges and is no longer held in the body, which means you can relieve the physical symptoms of intense stress, and the memory can pass into long-term storage, as if it was like any other memory. AMDR puts great emphasis on resourcing and stabilising the client before any re-processing work takes place, which is what makes this an effective and safe treatment for trauma. Bi-Lateral Stimulation (BLS) through eye movements or tapping may then be used to help the brain re-process the memory through the left and right hemispheres. After which, new positive resources and belief statements are installed. AMDR sits within the Quest Cognitive Hypnotherapy model as just one of the many tools that a QCH therapist can utilise to provide a bespoke treatment plan for sufferers of trauma. Further information, resources and help to cope with trauma can be found on my website. If you have some difficult experiences that you need to process, please get in touch for a free chat. References & Resources Quotes in the first paragraph of this article are taken from the AMDR Module One Workbook by Gill Wood & Joshua Issac Smith.
Further information on AMDR can be found at https://www.amdr.info/ Appointments for treatment can booked through the Back in Tune Coaching website. https://www.facebook.com/backintunecoaching/ https://www.instagram.com/backintunecoaching I hear clients say so often “I just want to be normal” but the question is, what is that? What is ‘normal’ for one person is not the same ‘normal’ as for another. The myth of normal is that we all experience the world in the same way as other people, and this is simply not true. This is because our perception of normal is processed through our own neurology and what I mean by that, is that everything is filtered through our own bygone experiences, through the association our brains have made with what has happened to us, in similar circumstances, in the past, which then informs our response in the present. Allow me to give you an example; let’s say your boss is shouting at you for something that s/he thinks you have done. And whether you have done what you have been accused of or not, your brain, in a matter of milliseconds, whizzes back through your past experiences and finds all the memory files relating to “shouty wo/man” + “accusation” + “threatening body language”. When your brain finds a pattern match to any of those experiences, which have been stored from way back in the past, probably between the age of 0 – 10, from some teacher that shouted at you at school or a parent telling you off for some misdemeanour, then the body sends up an emotion that leads you to behave in a certain way; behaviour that is coming from outside of your conscious awareness. Now, if the past experiences I have spoken about are stored as a negative memory with negative emotion still attached to that memory, then your unconscious mind, which is always there to protect you, instructs you to respond in a particular way; you feel the negative emotion, which is the same emotion that you had with the original experience and then the fight/flight/freeze kicks-in to protect you, which means that you will either yell right back at your boss in anger, you’ll run away and hide at your desk in fear hoping no one will notice you, or you’ll stand there dumbfounded in shock! Now, for you, that response is completely ‘normal’ because the negative emotion that you are feeling is still reverberating from the past, making you behave in ways that you wish you didn’t. The pattern of behaviour keeps on repeating in every similar situation and you can never understand why, but it is a ‘normal’ response in the context of your life learnings and circumstances. There may be many reasons why you are still holding onto that negative emotion in your unconscious and the essential purpose of it is always protection, to avoid being hurt. So, if you think about anyone who is acting out of protection, (someone who is terrified of spiders and runs screaming from the room for example), then you may conclude that the behaviour they exhibit in that moment is anything but ‘normal’. The thing is, what you observe in others as being normal is often not normal at all. All this activity of pattern-matching to past experiences is going on in each and every individual, all behind the scenes in the unconscious mind, filtering through deletion, distortion and generalisation[i], producing personalities that appear normal from the outside, but which are in fact being motivated by the fight/flight/freeze response. I would guesstimate that a good 85% of the population are walking around in the world, completely unaware of how their normal can be different and so much better than it is right now. Let’s compare the above to another person who is having that same present experience as you; their boss is shouting at them. The only difference between you and this person is, that when their brain fires off their memory banks, they find other occasions of being shouted at, but there is little or no negative emotion attached to the experience. This is because this person has a certain number of resources that they have learned through their experiences growing up. They can pattern match to other memories of being shouted at that have had neutral or even positive outcomes. They know that when another individual shouts and displays anger, that the anger is not to be taken personally, because that negative emotion says more about that other individual than it does them. They know that they can take a breath before responding and that if they use a calm voice tone and give the other individual space to come back to a calmer state before saying anything, then the situation can be resolved in a more rational way. This person knows from past experience that these techniques work and perhaps they even love the challenge, so their ‘normal’ response is to allow the person to blow off steam, knowing that “strong emotions make us stupid”[ii] and they will only attempt a rational counterstatement when that other individual has returned to a state of homeostasis. Meanwhile, you watch this other person receiving the same treatment as you, make the comparison that they are better and more normal than you, and wonder why you are not able to respond normally (behaviour) or worse, you wonder why you are not normal (identity). [i] Refers to how the mind filters information, taken from the NLP Model of Communication [ii] Quote from Joe Griffin As a therapist, I teach my clients how to break out of the normal that they experience, through re-processing and letting go of the negative emotions that are keeping them stuck in the past. Once you can let go of the negative feeling it allows us to give new meaning to the past event, because the brain is no longer being hijacked by strong emotion. This means the pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking brain can come back online, which enables you to access more resourceful states of thinking, producing new solutions and responses. The scenarios that once triggered you into fight/flight/freeze no longer do so, which means you can change your behaviour and be more of the new normal that you want.
So, my question to you is, what are you doing that is ‘normal’ but that gives you a negative twinge every time it happens? If you can identify that, then you can get to work on changing it. And what would happen if you stopped asking to be other people’s normal and instead you could embrace being uncomfortable with normal, get uncomfortable with your protective personality, so you could be more of who you truly are? How much better would that be? If you would love to experience a life where you can stop being reactive and instead feel the freedom to respond in the way that you would like, I can support you with everything you need to help navigate that new pathway. Please get in touch at www.backintunecoaching.com https://www.facebook.com/backintunecoaching/ https://www.instagram.com/backintunecoaching |
AuthorMichelle Falcon is an experienced teacher, QCH therapist and personal development coach, who uses the tools of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) to help people to make positive changes and get the best out of their lives. Archives
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