Archive for year: 2014

Did you really just say that?

Do you listen to what you say? Do you hear the tone of your voice? Are you aware of how others hear you? I guess if your answer to these questions were ‘no’ then you would not be reading this. However, becoming really aware of what is coming out of our mouths is an art and requires awareness and awake-ness.

You only need to stand in a bus queue or sit in a coffee lounge and listen the voices around you to realise where people hold their consciousness. Sadly you will discover that the majority of what people are saying is negative. There are many reasons for this but the bottom line is that for some people they live with negative images and beliefs about themselves and about others.

From being children we have learned all that we know from what we heard and what we saw. In the beginning this was from our mother and our father and that went on to siblings, teachers, cultures and nationalities and so on. And we have gone on repeating all that we have learned again and again and again.

The problem is that what you say is what you hear, and what you hear reinforces your basic beliefs. If you see negative things in other people and you verbalise your negative thought you will hear those negative thoughts and simply continue to have more negative thoughts.

You will never find happiness or contentment
while you have negative thoughts about other people

The two things can never go together. If you say anything negative about another person, and you hear what you have just said, you have simply added another little pebble to the negative mountain inside you. If on the other hand you have a positive thought about another person it is as though you have just taken a little pebble off the mountain. Many positive thoughts will rid you of the burden of negativity that you carry around with you.

You can always tell negative people because they find it hard to say anything that is positive. If it’s sunny they will be expecting rain, if it is raining they will be expecting a flood. They will suffer illnesses, bad luck and assume, in someway, that the universe is out to get them, they will feel that people don’t like them and become distrustful.

Thoughts become things

The magic of thoughts is that they precede words. When you think a thought you do not need to say it, to allow it to have its effect. If you have good thoughts you will take the pebbles away from the negative mountain and lighten your load. If on the other hand you spend your time ruminating on negative thoughts you will add to the mountain and the burden that you are carrying.

There are particular words that add greatly to the negative mountain. These will include most swear words and profanities. The word ‘can’t’ should be banned completely because if you say that you can’t, you hear it and it is a done deal. If someone says, “I can’t do that” they are right they can’t.

The other words that do not serve us well are ‘ought’, ‘should’ and ‘must’. The only reason we ever need to act is because we want or desire to do something. There is nothing that we ought to do, there is nothing that we should do and, there is nothing that we must do. The only relevant action is that of free choice.

Just as you hear what you say other people hear what you say. When you are negative with there people you simply are adding to the negative mountain within them. When you act with kindness and love you are lightening their load. In all forms of therapy and healing it is the acceptance by the therapist with unconditional positive regard of the person that they are working with that does the healing.

When we use thoughts and words that treat us with unconditional positive regard we feed our self with the highest positive emotions, we develop self-confidence, happiness and love. We allow our self to enjoy the magic of being alive.

But the world is full of choices. Listen to yourself. If what you are saying makes you feel good then, say more of it. If, on the other hand, it makes you feel not so good, then change your script.

Be happy and love what comes out of your mouth.

Sean x

At the start of everyday the universe gives you a cheque for time, that is 24 hours or 1440 minutes. The same happens everyday. That is 525,600 minutes per year or in a lifetime, if you live to ninety, and you probably will, a total of 47,304,000 minutes. What do you do with your time? Time can be invested well, producing great benefits (profits) or wasted creating negatives (losses) that then colour our experience and our wellbeing.

Time is the progression from what was, through what is, to what will be or, how we cope with past, present and future. However, time is a concept that does not really exist, or more accurately time is in the eye of the beholder. Our experience of time is relative. It depends on where we view it from.

The watched pot never boils

For most children time is a huge thing that lasts forever. It might be that feeling in school when we are waiting for the ‘home bell’ to sound the end of a seemingly endless day or the seemingly endless days of the summer vacation that were hot and sunny and went on forever. When we are children there seems to be so much to do and plenty of time to do it in. At this point the concepts of age and growing old are fantasies that belong to a future that we believe will never happen to us.

As we get into adolescence time pressures begin to occur. Perhaps we are warm in bed, having ‘wasted our time’ the night before, gone to bed late, and now we should be up and getting ready for school. Our mother is shouting up the stairs that we are late, will be late, miss the bus, no time for breakfast, and that we should have gone to bed earlier.

There does come a point when it feels that there are never enough hours in the day. The feeling is that the design is wrong; that twenty-four hours is never enough and thirty-six would have been a much better idea. Ask any busy mum trying to get the kids to school, the husband to work, do the washing, ironing, clean the house, all before the kids are back from school and then due at clubs and friends. The father juggling the needs of family, work, friends and so on. It appears that the day begins to shrink.

As we get older time flashes by faster and faster as “weeks turn into years, how quick the fly” (Bert Bacharach). It is always Monday and another week at work.

“Is it August already? It can’t be we’ve only just had `Christmas”

Every New Year is followed by another Christmas Eve and the years become decades as we transit from 20s to 30s to 40s. It is the ones with noughts on that now mark the passage of time. Sometimes the noughts are followed by depression as the experience of time passing becomes a fear that time will run out and it will be the end and a feeling of loss.

“What on earth have I done with my life?”

Actually it is not always true that time gets forever faster, there is a stop point. Many older people return to the experience of their childhood, not just in their memories but they begin to feel that everyday is lasting a life time. As a child this was an exciting experience that was full of things to learn and do, it was a world of discovery. In older life, for many, this expanse of time, rather than being a joy, becomes something to fear. Now it can feel that ‘it all’, time and life that is, now drag on forever. The elderly residential home can become like a waiting room full of people waiting wearily for their end.

It does not have to be this way

Here at Live In The Present we are forever banging on about things like ‘life time learning’. We live with the realisation that we will each only produce new brain cells in response to new learning and, at the point when we stop learning our system will fall into decline. The difference is that when we are learning we are occupied and when the mind is actively engaged time does not begin to drag or weigh on us, each moment is a joy of newness.

“Time is an illusion designed to explain the passages of history
History is an illusion designed to explain the passage of time”
Douglas Adams

Forget Einstein, the relativity of time is all in your head. Time is only ever the way that I experience it and your experience may/will be different to mine. Let’s say we go to a play at the theatre that you really, really want to see but I don’t. For you each minute of the performance will keep you engaged and the time will fly. For me, I don’t want to be here, I am hating every moment and the time drags painfully by. It can be the same on holidays and outings, Christmas and Easter, all these events are a joy or a curse depending on how we view them.

Living outside time

The present, the current moment, the now, is really all that there ever is. By the time you get to the end of this sentence the first word you read will be in the past, the full stop will be your present and, the next sentence will be the future. Your current breath is now, your last breath the past and the next breath your future. You current heart beat is the now, the last one your past and the next one your future.

Time is really a continual set of experiences of ‘now’ that when put together become our experience of past, present and future. There are many quantum scientists who would suggest that neither past nor future actually exist and that ‘Now’ is all that there is. It can all become a bit mind boggling.

Past and future

Those of us that do not live in the present moment are emotionally out of step with ourself. Those living in the negative past will be diagnosed with depression while those living in the negative future will be diagnosed with anxiety. Here come the happy pills.

Those able to live in the present will not be hampered by what was or be fearing what will be. Living in the present requires that we are in the ‘zone’. For some the zone will be something like meditation while for others it will be something more active like running. However, any task, even work, that we are fully engaged in, when we are truly present in the moment will, mean we are at our best, most efficient and potentially most happy and fulfilled.

Transcending time

When we transcend time we step out of time and space, this is known as a trance. We fall into a trance state when we are highly concentrated in the moment. Have you ever been reading a book and suddenly realised that time has passed by without you even realising it? Have you experienced your child watching TV who does not hear you when you shout out that their tea is ready? These are trance states. When we are highly concentrated in the moment, in the task, so that past and future are not impinging in the now, we are living in the present. In high states of concentration time, or the passage of time ceases to exist as we have moved into continuum of present.

This high concentration can be there when we are at work, at play, with our friends, family, making love, whatever, we are present to ourself in the moment, in the now.

Mindful meditation

To be the most effective and an efficient person you need to live in the present. Mindful meditation is the way I use to maintain my ability to be in my ‘now’. I use a ‘Vipassana’ style approach, which is also known as breath focus or body focus meditation taught under other names. Meditation is a process that allows you to let go of what was, also of what will be, and enter your present.

This involves:

Relaxation: a comfortable position in which you can relax your body without falling asleep
Contemplation: begin to focus your mind into breath/body awareness
Concentration: being able to hold single thought, focus or feeling without your mind wandering
Meditation: becoming so highly concentrated in the present that past and future no longer exist and in doing so all sense of yourself as a distinct individual ceases so that in this trance state you step out of time and space. This is also known as ‘self annihilation’.

Becoming a time lord

Dr Who was described as a time lord because he could travel through time. A real time lord is someone who is in control of their time world. When we are able to hold our concentration mindfully we are no longer controlled by time, we control it. As a time lord there is always enough time and time is never a burden and never drags.

The trick of being a time lord is to stay engaged in life, maintain life long learning, stay fit and healthy, have a positive attitude of gratitude and, live in the present.

Becoming a time lord is a choice. What will you choose to do with your 1440 minutes today?

Take care, be happy and, live you the present.

Sean x

The law of attraction would state that you need to be able to give in order to receive. This law is identifying that to receive requires a space for things to flow into. If, for example you give money to charity, you create a space in your financial energy that allows more energy, or money, to flow into. It is suggested that the universe abhors a vacuum, whenever one occurs energy will flow into it to fill the space and balance the energy. What we experience as wind is nothing other than air moving from areas of high pressure to balance an area of low pressure, it is the low pressure that creates the wind flow. It would seem that the universe prefers a balance of energy; this is true in all systems.

Are you a giver or a taker?

It is often said that people are one or the other, givers or takers, and that is often the way that it is. In my occupational health role in organisations I see the ‘minimalists’ who will take all that they can while doing as little as possible and the ‘maximalists’ who will do all that they can to ensure that the job gets done and customer needs are met. In society it is those that are doers, givers, and are proactive who are carrying those that are the done to, the takers who are inactive.

Just like all universe energies the system only works when the energy of giving and taking are in balance and by that I am not implying that there needs to be the takers so that the givers can give, I am suggesting that we should have within us a balance of both giving and taking. That means that the givers need to learn to receive and the takers need to learn to give.

What can I do for you?

President John F Kennedy talking to the German people when they were rebuilding their country after the second world war famously said “Don’t ask what can my country do for me, ask what can I do for my country’. In this he was stating the universal principle that equates to the idea that if we all give, all of our needs will be met.

The magic of giving

When we belong to any group, workplace or family and so on, if we all give, that is, look after each others needs, then everyone’s needs are met. If, on the other hand, we all sit back and expect our needs to be met by the rest of the group then no one’s needs will ever be met. This is true on all levels, in all situations, all of the time.

When we learn to give we realise that there is enough of everything for everybody. There is enough food, enough water, enough money, enough love and so on, all we need to do is to give it to each other. This is hard for most human beings who fear deprivation and loss and lack of things. That in turn can lead to greed and hoarding, ownership and meanness.

The crazy thing is that if we all learned to give we could have heaven on earth right now!

The magic of receiving

Well if the law of vacuums and the natural balance of energies is true then it is not enough to simply be able to give we also need to be able to receive. For some receiving can be difficult. How do you cope when people buy you presents? Perhaps it is Christmas or your birthday how do you feel about getting gifts? Are you able to open them in front of the giver and feel comfortable? Being able to receive something is both a gift in itself and a skill.

Love is all there is

When it comes right down to it all that we ever give is love. It may be in the form of charity as money, food or water aid or disaster relief. We may volunteer our time or resources. We may give gifts for birthdays, Christmas, weddings and so on. All we ever give is love, love is all there is.

The opposite of love may be defined as hate, though perhaps it is better to think of the giving as love and the opposite of giving as simply taking without giving anything in return. Many people that live in privileged positions in our society are those that have been the takers and have gained their wealth by taking from others. Money like all energies flows and there is enough for everyone if we share it and do not hoard it.

Enjoy your giving and remember that to receive you need to give.

Take care,
Sean x

Human beings, like most animals, live in groups. We have developed words to describe this. A shoal of fish, a flock of birds, a pride of lions, a herd of cows, a troop of apes and so on. Groups of people are called things like race, ethnicity, nationality, society, community, and family. We will even name our groups to give them an even more precise identity black, white, gay, straight, French, British, American. Within such groups there may be tribes and clans, regions and accents. When we get down to the level of the family we become the Smiths and the Jones, Steins and Khans. And the groups get even smaller as ‘our’ branch of the family has an identity that separates it from all others, “Oh you’re one the Hereford Smiths are you?”

What all these groupings tell us is that we belong, or that we do not.

As soon as the whole of humanity is divided into groups we introduce the concepts of ‘us’ and ‘them’ of ‘in’ and ‘out’ which means that either you belong or you do not.

Any group has a set of group norms, that is, the set of values or behaviours that are needed to be recognised as a member of the group. To belong to a union, religion, society, an order etc, requires that we all believe the same things and that we act in ways according to these beliefs. When these norms, or rules, are transgressed the individual may well be expelled from the group. We have developed words that describe individuals being thrown out of the group, expelled from school, defrocked by the church, court martialed by the army, disbarred, or dismembered.

In smaller social groups we may ‘turn our back’ on disgraced members. Someone may be ‘sent to Coventry’ meaning that we do not talk to them or someone may be separated and used by the group to be responsible for all the groups ills, we call this person the ‘scapegoat’.

Individual belonging

I guess the smallest group is a couple. One person says “I love you” the other person says “I love you too” and we have become ‘an item’, we are one. Whether or not this is formalised into a marriage the bonding has happened. Often we wear rings to signify that we are now a couple, in a relationship. Even on social media we will acknowledge our relationship status. The concept of this bonding, for most people in most groups is that this is now an exclusive partnership that has its own rules of fidelity and sharing.

Having worked with many couples over the years it is clear that these rules vary enormously, are never universal, so that all couples are different and have their own rules of engagement. Included in these smaller groupings I think we should include friendship that may be with one other person or with a tight intimate groups. Often in British society these would be termed ‘your mates’.

Breaking the norms

Once established the norms of the group or relationship have been established they can be transgressed or broken. When this happens the deal is broken, the belonging ceases to be, the relationship is over. This gives rise to concepts such as infidelity, being jilted or cheated on, stabbed in the back, cuckolded, thrown over, dumped, estrangement, divorced and separation.

In rejection you no longer belong

All groups offer some form of security, some form of safety, ‘there’s safety in numbers’. As one of ‘us’ the group offers us protection from ‘them’. It will come to our aid when we are threatened. Outside of this protection we are alone, isolated and vulnerable.

Broken elastic, hurt and anger

In my book “what Colour is your Knicker Elastic’ I describe the energy that connects us in relationships and an elastic bond. This elastic has energy so that if we move apart it pulls us back together. However if it is stretched to breaking point the snapping releases a huge amount of energy. Depending on the relationship and the nature of the ending this energy will be expressed as anger, hurt, loss, bereavement and so on.

The hurt of rejection

In most cases the feeling of rejection from a group, job, relationship, or whatever, is felt in terms of value ‘we were not good enough’. The rejection feels like a devaluation of who we are or who we felt our self to be. If we are being rejected in favour of another person it can lead to a confidence crisis. I am too fat or too thin, I am not sexy enough, I am boring, pathetic, ugly. No one will ever want me, I will be alone forever, I am a waste of space, who would ever want me, I might as well be dead.

Alternatively it might be, all men/women/families are all bastards I never want anything to do with any of them ever again, you can all sod off, I am done with the lot of you.

Dealing with rejection

When we feel devalued by rejection, beyond the normal feelings of adjustment that are loss and bereavement, it is because ‘we’ do not value our self enough. The feeling of rejection happens within us, it is not done to us we do it to our self. If you reject me, if you don’t want to be my friend, use me professionally or be my partner my thoughts may go one of three ways. The first is that I descend into a pit of despair and beat myself up for being such a waste of space. The second would be that I in turn reject you as being some sort of moron who doesn’t deserve me anyway and I am better off without you. Thirdly I stop and consider what has happened here, try to understand the why, and learn and grow from the experience.

We are not in the least affected by events.

We are affected by our response to those events

5000 years ago the Greek philospher Epicticus identied that it is us who are responsible for how we think, feel and act. Our world is full of choices. Either we have problems of opportunities.

In my world, I experience it to be full of ‘learning points’ where I have the choice to make decisions. In general one way will lead to a positive outcome and one to a negative out come. However, even a negative outcome is also a learning point and it will teach me and help me make decisions that serve me better in the future.

Confidence

As a last point, if you feel rejected and that feels bad, the chances are that you have some sort of confidence crisis. This is therapy time. Go and work it through with an experienced listener. I would say that you can only feel rejected if you, in someway, reject yourself, that you devalue, or undervalue yourself.

To the positive mind when one door closes another door opens, to have a beginning there needs to be an ending.

Give yourself value, be happy and confident.

Take care,
Sean x

What is a trauma?

Trauma, is a Greek word meaning “wound”. A wound can be physical, mental, emotional, financial and so on. The concept of trauma comes from the idea that the wound, or event that is being experienced, is greater than our resources to deal with it. In that sense we have been overwhelmed. However there is a difference between experiencing trauma and being traumatised.

Traumatised, or traumatisation is when the overwhelming experience/trauma creates an amount of stress that is so great that it exceeds our ability to deal with the emotions aroused. This is clearly an emotional issue. Trauma or traumatic disorders are always emotional.

Post trauma is the emotional fall out that stays with us after the experience has ended. It is our time to process the emotions and this may take days or weeks. In most cases the emotional effects of a trauma will be normalised in eight to ten weeks.

Repressed trauma can happen when an event is too difficult for us to deal with and we hide it in the recesses of the mind. When this happens we may have no direct memory of the event that caused the trauma though it may still effect who we are, how we experience the world and our behaviour.

Recovered memory may be delayed by weeks, years, or even decades. Though when it does emerge the original repressed emotions are released as though they have just happened. Therapeutically this release of emotion and memory is termed an abreaction and involves the re-experiencing of the trauma physically, emotionally and mentally.

Emotional responses Although in repression the memory is lost to the conscious mind it has a constant effect on everyday life and experience and may appear as irrational fears, anxiety, depression, phobia etc. This is described as something within us but outside of our control.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is when the emotional responses are not repressed but are also not processed. When the effects of the event remain active after six weeks it is given the PTSD diagnosis.

PTSD Symptoms will vary but will include finding it difficult to forget the incident or event that happened. There may be flashbacks, daymares or nightmares about it? Unstable and irrational emotional responses such as anger, tears, anxiety, depression, phobias, disturbed sleep/eating patterns, and so on.

Rumination is the symptom builder. We know that what we think about we bring about that thoughts become things. When we continually go over traumatic events and are unable to let them go they become more intensely embedded in our unconscious and conscious mind because we keep thinking about, and reinforcing them in our mind/brain.

The MindBrain This is where the software of the psychological mind and the hardware of the brain interface. The main aspect of the brain that affects our emotional self is the limbic system in the centre of the brain. Within the limbic system is a little organ called the amygdala. In this organ are templates of cells that relate to out emotional responses. Lets say that when I am young I watch my mother reacting phobic-ally to spiders, I then build a template of cells in my amygdala so that when I see spider the cells release chemistry and so I also react to the spiders as a phobia. Over time my spider template will become hotter and more embedded the more I visit it.

All emotional responses are like this, even the positive ones. So, that if I see the object of my love the love template of cells become hot and releases the chemistry that make me feel loving.
It normally takes about five repetitions of emotional experience to set up a template unless it is punched traumatically and then it is created immediately. Once a traumatic template has been established it will remain hot and active and become more embedded over time unless, or until, it is treated.

Treatment for trauma is a variable feast and will depend on where you live and the therapy that is fashionable at the time. Cognitive therapies such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) can be helpful however research shows is not that good at dealing with trauma in the long-term. It is an effective therapy for putting in place cognitive tools to begin to lift the repressed the emotion and start processing it.

EMDR or Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing is a therapy that mimics the rapid eye movements that happen during the dream cycle in the sleep pattern. The emotional trauma is encoded into the MindBrain using the same part of the system. EMDR is surprisingly effective in the majority of cases.

Rewinding is by far my best option as it uses the very same process to desensitise a template in the amygdala as was used to put it there in the first place, this is visualisation. When we revisit a trauma it is through the senses of sight, smell, tastes and touch, non of which are cognitive. During rewind therapy the emotional memories are address directly and desensitised.

Mindful meditation is becoming mainstream psychology. Mindfulness is the best prevention for all forms of stress and provides the resources needed at the point of trauma. The process of mindfulness is relaxation, contemplation, concentration and meditation, a process that is in itself therapeutic. Consistent meditators become their own therapists and counsellors and are able to overcome many things that overwhelm others.

Medication has to be the last on my list. I am not against medication on this basis, if I have a headache I will do all that I can to get rid of it, as a last resort I will take an aspirin. There are medications that can help with anxiety, depression, panic, high blood pressure and so on. There are also natural alternatives that maybe gentler on the system both psychologically and physiologically.

If you do suffer trauma never suffer alone psychotherapy is a good and powerful thing.

Take care and be happy.

Sean x