When I was thirteen, my mother died suddenly. The next day, two things happened to make life normal again.
- My four siblings and I returned to school.
- My December Teen Magazine arrived in the mail.
We know our lives can change instantly, yet when sudden change occurs, we experience shock and confusion, not believing something like that could happen to us. To distract ourselves, to make life ok, we intuitively reach for the feeling of normalcy, tried-and-true familiarity - our routines.
We want to be at home involved in the same things and people we know and love. We want to go home, to our lives of yesterday.
Have you ever heard someone say we are trying to
keep things as normal as possible, especially for the children?
The value of, and the desire for, normalcy is a part of the brain's healing process and it is miraculous really. Let me explain.
First, the brain's primary job is to keep us alive.
The brain and body adapt to crises by making instant internal changes, ones designed to keep us alive and protect us in the aftermath. We might pass out, hear an explosion but not see it, forget pain, or find the help we need.
We don't question ourselves enough.
When we regress to feeling 'small', are feeling emotional, or are stuck, we don't realize that the experience could be the result of a decision we made years ago. To illustrate this point, read about M.
When a top attorney sought services, she (M.) emotionally related that she was on the verge of losing her position with a prestigious firm because she 'couldn't argue.'
Even after hours of preparation, when she went to court to 'fight' for a client, she stuttered, stammered, and lost her train of thought.
As a result, she felt highly stressed, anger, shame, and hopeless, which made her communication skills deteriorate even more. Although this fear seemed to lurk in the background of her mind, she noticed that the fear and resistance to fighting increased as her work stress increased.
Here is what she discovered in the first session with me:
Do you ever feel like you can't do or be enough?
You're a getter-done person who has to-do it all and is involved in everything to make it perfect so everyone can be happy.
Maybe you feel compelled to care for someone, anyone, who is ailing.
In hurting families, the elephant in the room is the silent shifting of parent-child roles, and some children catapult into hero status. When parents lose control, are distracted, or weaken, children rise and take charge, not only of themselves but for the parents.
The parents weaken, and child gets bigger and more potent believing they know better for the parents' life.
The child hero archetype is a creative fantasy within the child. It can be an image of omnipotence along with a driving need to rescue.
Heroes are born in families where parents are abusive, addicted to substances or activities, have mental illness, or live highly stressed. They are frequently absent, or chronically ill.
Belonging is not a simple thing to feel.
The first law of order in family constellation work (@BertHellinger) is that everyone belongs to the family. Without exception, we all belong to our families, culture, country, and world-at-large.
The desire to belong remains one of our deepest needs, and it is not an option. We believe we make it an option.
You can belong if,,,
When,,,
Where you allow me to,,,
If you give me,,,
You can't belong if...
You do not,,,
If you do,,,
This law of order can be tough to reckon with, causing conflicts in the family.
A reader wrote:
"As a former practicing physician, I am dismayed that the dialogue on many important medical and health-related issues has become restrictive, full of misinformation, and threatening. I've been making decisions based entirely on fear, How can I take charge of my emotions and responses?" R.P., NY
Following Part One, How Influence Priming Causes Us to Lose Ourselves, or How We Are Manipulated to Have Increased Anxiety During Covid, now, we can recover our personal authority and stop unhealthy media coverage from increasing anxieties. (READ PART One HERE!)
While writing Part Two, I stumbled onto a personal dilemma. Do I make a bulleted list of ways to increase awareness of media manipulation and recovery of personal charge? It seemed to me that these qualities and actions that define our well-being warranted more discussion, for my sake too!
In upcoming newsletters, I intend to explore the issue more deeply and intermix helpful strategies. First, let's define personal power.
What is Personal Power?
Through months of quarantine, you might have fallen into ruts, felt emotionally frazzled, and confused. In this newsletter, I share thoughts about 'new' normal conditioning and the tactics used by those in media and authority to raise stress and anxiety; in already difficult circumstances intentionally.
There's a difference between education, where the process of learning involves uncertainty and the effort towards mastery, and the deliberate confusion that media creates designed to trigger submission, fear, and loss of self.
This article is not about whether you should wear a mask or not wear a mask and does not speak for or against recommendations and mandates from any authorities. I write to awaken you to the relationship between deliberate installation of fear and anxiety-related emotions, and the effect of media manipulations on your emotional and physical health.
When I was five, my family moved from a small town to a slightly larger small town in Ohio, where my mom's Italian parents lived. At the insistence of my maternal grandmother, my parents physically relocated the home they purchased to a new site, less than a block down the street from its original location, and to my grandmothers' back yard.
From that moment on, my parents' tension, and smoldering words between my father and grandmother shifted to a climate and feelings I did not understand but felt. However, I imagine the undercurrent of anger over my grandmother's control over her daughter is what shook the foundation on which we lived.
It's a melancholy morning as I watch the snowflakes fall and sip hot coffee. A white Christmas has always been the most exciting gift for me since childhood. Our first and last Christmas in this home was white.
This year our home is quiet and less twinkly due to the residential move in three days, but joy fills my heart as I recall the years gone by,. These memories reside here energetically, but all the love and happiness will go with me.
With our daughter in Europe and other family members at a distance, love cannot be pigeon-holed into only time spent together or a place. There is also love when we respect the need for distance for safety and health. We miss people we love and experiences of laughter, love, conflict, and togetherness.
The holidays are roaring in regardless of lockdowns, health issues, financial status, stress, and trauma.
But what do you really want?
I had a conversation with someone recently who emphatically stated that she wants the holidays to be the same as in previous years. "I want it so badly, I could cry," were her words.
She believed this was the only way she could have a Merry Christmas and celebrate New Years'. What do you think will happen?
She is setting herself up for a fall because she will be very sensitive and reactive to whatever occurs outside the norm of previous years. If she holds on tightly to these beliefs, she risks missing any semblance of past traditions. She may blind herself to witnessing and participating in a tradition as a means of self-preservation.
Every person has a story to tell about family life: holiday traditions, parents' funny habits, stresses, abuse, successes, and failures, including traumatic events. Whether communicated or kept secret, whether good or bad, the experiences pass from generation to generation in not-so-obvious ways.
As we get close to the holidays, perhaps you've noticed more commercials of people tracing their ancestral roots. One of my favorites is a father showing pictures to his daughter of her great grandmother. The daughter beams when she sees that her cheeks and nose are identical to her great grandmothers'. This exchange is a happy reminder that we share the genetic makeup of previous generations.
On the other hand ...
How are you really?
Do you feel afraid because you have factors that predispose you to Covid?
Maybe you present an I-Am-Ok appearance socially, but inside, you feel deeply worried and negative about pandemic circumstances.
Perhaps a distant relative died unexpectedly from Covid, and you fear that if you contract it, you could die too.
Do 'fear-based thoughts' produce stress? Yes!
"Thought' initiated stress is often dismissed as producing stress. It's nothing, we say, just a thought?
We have an obstacle in front of us right now - Covid-19. Of those who caught the virus, some
people died, and most people lived.
I don't want to catch the virus (who does!), and I believe the touted recommendations are not the only line of defense against it.
I chose to be proactive and as responsible as possible for my health. Care to join me?
The Covid recommendations have been confusing and unclear over previous months, with
experts arguing about wearing a mask, using a ventilator, or if lockdown of major metropolitan
areas is necessary. It’s a —
Ball of confusion, that's what the world is today. (Temptations)
If you experienced energy psychology, its effectiveness may have surprised you. Reducing the angst and symptoms of stress or trauma, including PTSD, is common when using the Emotional Freedom Technique, whether seeking professional assistance or applying it yourself.
Do you know that there are over 400 therapy approaches, most of which have no research demonstrating their effectiveness? I am thrilled to inform you that energy psychology is in the top 10% because of the consistent results in studies.
Wanting to save the world is admirable. On every level and on all four corners, the earth and its inhabitants need assistance. While some are resourced and are interdependent, for others, work might require millions of minds, dollars, and people-hours.
Without balance, efforts to create change often lead to exhaustion, burnout, and self-sacrifice for
those involved. Without support or a clear plan, depression and suicide rates of those who work tirelessly in the field of nonprofits and health care are a rising concern.
Early in my career, I lived in Florida where our tri-state area was ranked as number one for child sexual assault in the country. As an outspoken child advocate, studying the overwhelming data that
identified this painful existence for children and their families, I had to
do something, and so I did.
Over the years, hundreds of people have asked me the same three questions about the healing journey. At times, answers delayed them from getting the help they needed until the pain worsened.
I had the same three question too - and the wrong answers!
The answers I conjured up in my head added another layer of distress over the problems I had, leading me to believe that healing was a rocky road that I did not want to travel.
Real or imagined, these fears sabotage you from taking the first step to resolve old hurts, trauma, or to change your life. In this newsletter, I would like to clear up these myths that could be preventing you from participating in a transformative process.
Have you noticed that some people fall ill with a cold for weeks, while others bounce back overnight? Is it immune strength? Could your vitamin D level be lower than standard daily values?
Would it surprise you to find out that reducing the probability of catching a cold may require changing your mind?
The proverbial gut-punch takes our breath away and stops us dead in our tracks. And boy, can it hurt!
As startling and painful as a social gut-punch can be, the experience offers a powerful opportunity to increase inner resources and self-esteem, rather than how one might commonly handle these punches, which is by avoidance.
When kids feel scared or have pain, they can be taught to use the imagination to sooth anxieties, to reduce stress, and to feel calmer.
While some problems, require additional help, when children fall and get scraped, have to have a medical procedure, or feel scared, teaching them to use their mind power is an empowering way to teach them self-mastery.
A scheduled surgery or medical procedure can trigger anxiety and stress of all kinds, from worry about dying to fear of anticipated pain.
Adding to existing stress are the current visitor restrictions due to COVID-19.
Imagine having to bid farewell to your parent in the hospital parking lot and going into the hospital alone for triple bypass surgery.
Although certain heart surgeries are touted as routine, all surgery presents an inherent risk to life, and you want the security of a loving person to be near you.
Imagine that a physician hands you a prescription recommending “1000 healings a day.”
You might think, “ahh, all-right,” but what if she is on to something!
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that stress accounts for 80% of visits to a primary care physician. If stress hurts our health, is it possible that love, joy, happiness, and connection may be the antidote to improve our health, immunity, and life, in general?
Yes!
We are all capable of feeling grateful but we do not hold the benefits. If this is true, what makes it hard for some people to feel grateful or appreciation when someone does something kind or thoughtful for us. As we explore the value of gratitude, its benefits, and why it can be difficult, you can discover how to make the experiences that bring you joy truly memorable and cellular.
What makes the practice of gratefulness something I should do?
A healthy relationship requires the space to be yourself, to maintain your personal integrity. Most people will respect your boundaries when you explain what they are and will expect that you will do the same for them; it’s a two-way street. Not so with people who don’t understand where you end and they begin.
Have you ever wondered why you slip back into the sulky, sassy nine-year-old when you go home to visit with the family? You can’t prevent this younger self from emerging no matter how much thinking and planning you do.
As the holidays approach you vow that this year you will return home as your funny and sensitive adult self, and not get sucked into the family drama and tensions. And then...
An hour after walking through the front door, your clear intentions to be ‘yourself’ are overcome by powerful, eerily familiar emotions, and suddenly, you find yourself being sucked into a spinning vortex. No one is interested in your kettlebell workout, the rare art exhibit you attended, your ‘green’ politics, or any strides you made in your work — and you suddenly feel small. You are not yourself — or are you?
