Sep 6, 2022
What does the word Trauma mean to you?
I used to think of trauma in the context of refugees, war, assault, tragedy, the big life events that stop you in your tracks, leaving you with gaping wounds that you cannot see, and partly because they are invisible to your eye, cannot be truly healed.
And with that view of what trauma is, I definitely did not feel that I fell into that category of being traumatized.
It felt insulting to others who had suffered so much more, that I would use such a huge word about myself and my life.
However, as with so many things in LIFE, I now know, think and feel very differently about what trauma is, how it is created, and how ‘small’ the cause may have been, seen through our adult eyes, and yet how devastating the consequences of it are still in our today’s.
And once I accepted a different truth about trauma, I was able to intuitively create a process of deep healing that has changed my LIFE, and if you choose to follow it, my process will change your LIFE too.
And I say ‘intuitively’, because none of us are supposed to live in pain or distress, with hurt to your hearts that no-one else can see, but that bring you to your emotional knees.
You are designed to heal, to recover, to live in LOVE, you just don’t know the process of how, and fear the pain of trying and ‘failing’.
It is in your design to heal that your intutive knowing exists, waiting for you to access, accept, trust and act.
The truth about Trauma is, that it is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences.
And whilst there is no definitive ‘list’ of what causes trauma, some of the circumstances typically involve the loss of control, betrayal, abuse of power, helplessness, pain, confusion and/or loss.
And just in the awareness of those two paragraphs alone, I believe that you can, with gentle investigation, identify some of your LIFE trauma’s as well.
In this blog, I am talking about Childhood Trauma, and here’s ’s an example of trauma you may recognise, because so much of your pain, starts in your much younger years.
As a child you had less resources, less emotional resilience, less awareness of they ‘why’s’ of others words and actions.
You were vulnerable, a tender little shoot of life that expected (not hoped) to receive love, care and support, and sadly, far too often, didn’t receive some or all of those.
Not always because of deliberate neglect, not because you were not loved, but because your caregivers, peers, etc, also came into this life expecting the same, and it wasn’t delivered on.
Maybe you know the phrase, “Hurt people, hurt people”? It is never more true than in this context.
And because you didn’t know or understand the world around you, you blamed YOU for the neglects.
The natural assumption was that if someone didn’t seem to love or like you, YOU were the problem.
YOU were not good enough, and you could not see behind the veil of their words and actions to the truth, that they didn’t good enough, and it had nothing to do with you.
All so terribly sad.
My son’s young life was blighted by my lack of love for me, which filtered down into his heart as my lack of love for him. And my God, he was then and always will be my heartbeat, and he didn’t even know it.
Thankfully, my healing journey has become his, and together, we have worked through the mess I made of our lives to find a place of understanding, compassion and forgiveness.
My obvious to me traumas came from the breakdown of my parents marriage, the death of my mother, being isolated at school, and each one of these, overwhelmed my emotions and froze me in moments of time that stopped my personal growth.
Those events became part of me in that they resulted in me being fearful of relationships, of success, because I didn’t believe I was worthy of love, and of the potential pain of losses that I knew could hit me at any time.
My drinking wasn’t necessarily the result of my trauma, it was however the method of comfort I used through not healing myself. That is my truth.
I now know that trauma isn’t who I was, or who you are, and the scars of the wounds it creates, those frozen moments in time, can be healed, and does not have to be hard, or intrusive or to take years of talking to get the healing you deserve.
Here’s the healing process I created and use, please try it on YOU.
The HEALING Process
- Make the decision you are committed to healing – not thinking about or hoping to heal, committed to being Happy, Healthy, Healed & Whole again.
- Create space daily to heal. Put aside up to 20 minutes (that’s the first act of commitment you make), to do the gentle, self-loving ‘work’ of healing.
- Engage with YOU, about where you want to be, and what stops you from taking the steps.
- Every minute you spend on getting to know yourself with acceptance for a past you cannot change, with compassion and forgiveness for who / you at the time of your trauma, allows you to grow into who you truly were born to be, happy, healthy, healed and whole
- Get to know YOU at a deeper level, by asking non-judgmental questions, and giving yourself the time and grace to truly answer them.
- Every time an “I don’t know” comes up, know that you DO know, you just need to question gently further.
- Don’t stop at surface level answers….always go deeper….there is nothing in you that hurts you, only your denying yourself the healing only you can deliver.
- When you have found your deepest level answers, (and none of them will cause you pain, there is nothing in you, about you that hurts you)
- Ask yourself one question
“What do I now know, that if I had known it then, would allow me to let go of the feelings of hurt”
- Take your answers, feel into the truth of them, and go back to your younger wounded self, and comfort her with you new perspective.
And then LET GO with grace and peace.
I love RITUALS of letting go. These are the full stops of your trauma, the ‘physical’ emotional statements of letting go of hurt and letting in of love and healing.
- Write a letter to your younger self with your new learnings, or to the person that wounded you. Write your heart out, seal it with love, and (safely) burn it.
- Visualise putting your newly understood trauma in to the shape of a beautiful bird, held gently in your hands, and release it upwards with a prayer of gratitude for what you have learnt and forgiveness, as you watch it fly away.
And my ultimate top tip for true, deep, healing is to JOURNAL
Journaling in HEALING
Journaling is magical way of helping your unpack emtional truamas, because writing helps you process your feelings on a specific subject, keeping you on track so that your mind doesn’t ‘wander off’, and allowing you to express your painful thoughts and feelings honestly and privately.
It can be difficult for you to make sense and remember events in a way that doesn’t cause greater confusion, so writing out what you think and feel, brings clarity, and that alone makes you feel better.
Ultimately, journaling is a simple, process through which you can express and release thoughts and emotions.
When your brain becomes overwhelmed with attempting to process and store stress and other traumatic situations – it can take a huge toll on your emotional wellbeing.
It gives you a precious release, a space in which you can relieve your body and brain of carrying the weight of your heavy emotions and thoughts.
One of the most important aspects of journaling, for me, is the ability to be completely honest without judgment. I am then able to go back and reflect on some of the things I’ve written and process these events without the overload of stressful feelings taking over, with greater self-awareness that have allowed me to recognise and so let go of old patterns of painful thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
Here’s the science…..journaling is so powerful because it uses both your left and right hand brain.
This left hand or your brain is responsible for your rational and analytical thinking.
The right brain is creative, emotional, and intuitive.
So when the left side of your brain is occupied with the act of writing, the right side of your brain can access emotions and our intuitive thoughts. This is a recipe for beautiful and healing creativity.
The bottom line is that healing is a choice, a conscious choice you can make at any time, and so change your LIFE.
If you need support on your healing journey, please contact me (HERE), and let’s talk.
You can have the happy, healthy, HEALED and whole LIFE you deserve.
You can have the Joy and LOVE of LIFE
And there is a simple process, that will free you from everything you feel holds you back, it will heal your heart, it will take you back to LOVE.
Be kind and gentle with yourself
Sonia x
Jul 14, 2022
What are TRIGGERS to you?
Not what do you DO when you are triggered, you know that;
- You Drink, Eat,
- Hide your true feelings,
- Take on too much,
- Allow people to speak/behave in a way that hurts you more.
- Keep silent when you should speak
- Agree to ‘stuff’ you KNOW doesn’t serve you.
But what do triggers mean to you? And how do you deal with them?
I’m going to make a guess here, and say that you have come to learn to be afraid of triggers because each time you are triggered, you shrink inside, feeling fearful, hurt, unprotected and lost….always
And on the basis of the above truths, triggers are very, very bad, and the people, places, situations that ‘cause’ them need to be avoided at all times.
Except you can’t avoid anything for ever, and even if you could, it doesn’t serve you too.
To make any true, long lasting change in any area of your LIFE, you must stop looking at what you DO, and start identifying what you are feeling before you do it.
Here’s where triggers play a hugely valuable part in change.
Your Triggers are the clearest sign of not what you need to avoid and fear, but where healing needs to take place.
A healing that can only be offered to you, by YOU.
Regardless of the trigger, the person, the place, the situation, without the emotional attachment to the trigger, the emotional need to heal, they are just people, places and situations that you make not like, but don’t have an overwhelming response to.
Triggers can be the sudden plummet of feeling, out of seemingly nowhere, when you hear a voice, a sentence, here a song, that breaks over you like a tidal wave bringing you to your knees, tearful and breathless.
Or the heightened anxiety when you think of an upcoming event, or the thought of seeing a particular person, going to a specific place, are all powerful indications of where you are truly hurt.
Triggers are the signs of deep wounds, that have been left untended and unresolved, leading you to act (drink, eat, avoid, hide, break of otherwise healthy, loving relationships, and take many more actions you take in the moment, and later regret, because of the feelings your triggers throw up in you).
The key to all change is AWARENESS, and the first step to healing the wounds around your triggers is to be aware of this truth.
When you are triggered, you don’t need to act, you need to heal.
And healing doesn’t have to mean digging down, back and going through the pain of your wounds again to clean them out and stitch them up.
Healing can come easily simply by recognising the times when you are triggered, pausing, and asking yourself memory has been thrown up that triggers you?
What are you remembering (thinking) now is what causes painful feelings, and it is the painful feelings that you act on, to resolve.
Again, you don’t need to dig down, you simply need to be aware, in the moment of how you are thinking and feeling and to then comfort your hurt, your painful feelings, with new thoughts, with kinder, understanding, forgiving and compassionate thoughts.
With the awareness that the past is gone and cannot touch you. It cannot influence your day unless you allow it to by bringing it back into NOW.
Healing comes from Forgiveness, Compassion, and LOVE, first and foremost from YOU to YOU
By forgiving what / who hurt you – not for their sake – but for YOURS….and always remember, forgiveness is a gift to YOU.
By being compassionate first to YOU, for your reactions, and then for the wounds that those who hurt you must have suffered. Hurt people, hurt people. Again, compassion is a gift to YOU.
By reassuring yourself with love, by comforting yourself, and telling yourself with the kind understanding and gentleness you lavish on your life loves,
“I am safe now, I can choose now, I can decide now, and I’m letting these thoughts go with love and compassion”
Without the feelings (the emotions) attached to any thought, to any memory, your trigger no longer exists….it is that simple.
Own that truth and your LIFE will change.
From my own struggles with alcohol, and LIFE, I know that I felt constantly triggered.
For years I couldn’t hear a baby cry without immediately thinking back to my son’s younger years, when I wasn’t the mother he deserved, and an unknown baby’s cry became his, and my heart would break all over again…..That was probably my biggest trigger, and once I understood the meaning behind this trigger, the pain and hurt behind it, I healed each wound, for his sake and for mine.
Through my sober years of growth, searching for answers and passion for change, I have come to realise that we have become so used to trying to understand, to rationalize, to make sense of LIFE as we move through it, particularly of our past that is forever gone.
And we have become so used to trying to predict our future, to protect us, to adding layers of intellectual learning to our emotional selves, where it makes sense, but doesn’t heal, that we have lost sight of the fact that no matter how complicated LIFE might seem, how damaging our past was, how uncertain our future is, we are not complicated in our design and that the design of YOU is always and forever to take you back out of Pain and back into Peace.
I know now that triggers are a golden opportunity to recognize your pain, to comfort and offer self-love to your deepest wounds…..and it is love that heals every part of us, and self-love is the greatest love of all.
Please re-read this post as many times as you need to, because once you have let it settle, (and it can only settle in a good place), you will no longer fear any trigger.
You will no longer fear how you will cope with any person, place or situation.
You will no longer feel compelled to act in a way that hurts you more (with the intention of offering yourself comfort – think out of control eating, drinking, over committing, people pleasing and all the rest)
You will no longer try to emotionally run and hide, instead you will give thanks to YOU for allowing yourself the wonderful gift of knowing more about who you are, and what you need.
And then, if you choose too, to heal your wounds, to comfort the hurts, to love yourself well, and to see that your triggers are a gift to you.
Always and forever, be very kind and gentle with YOU.
Sonia x
If you would like to know more about my unique LIFE Recovery coaching processes, please reach out (HERE), for a complimentary conversation. And know that no matter what your LIFE struggle is, or how long you have felt alone and fearful, despairing of change, there IS powerful light at the end of your tunnel, taking you to the LIFE you of peace, joy, happiness and love you deserve, and I know the way to take you there.
Jun 13, 2022
Changing my drinking changed my LIFE, and that one sudden, seemingly miraculous, when I believed all hope was lost, profound, change has been the greatest source of true soul happiness, to both myself and my son.
But the truth is, changing my drinking was just the start of a journey that has transformed my LIFE.
It was the starting point of a magical path of self-discovery that finally took me It was the starting point of a magical path of self-discovery that finally took me out of the Pains of Fear, Stress, Exhaustion, and into the Peace that ONLY comes from being back at Home.
The only Home I had ever needed, the Home I had spent my life grieving over the loss of, without even knowing it, the Home that is ME.
This is the Home that is my heart centre, my centre of Connection, Peace, Balance and LOVE.
The Home where Acceptance, Forgiveness, Compassion and LOVE flourish unendingly, the place where I rest in Peace in this LIFE, regardless of the situations or circumstances such as loss, unkindness, personal injustice, the normal stuff we all go, though, comes my way.
I have found a new way of living, that is as old as time, that I didn’t even know it existed, yet is the truth of LIFE, and that was that I now recognize, and embrace, what I have learnt to call the ‘Gifts of Grace’.
To me, Grace is the ability to move through LIFE ‘smoothly’, in Flow.
Grace is having the quiet inner strength, the resilience to deal with LIFE without ‘toughness’, with no need to raise my voice, or to try to force anyone of any situation to fit into my world view.
Grace is honouring myself for who I am, and giving myself permission to forgive my mistakes and move on in LOVE and PEACE.
Grace offers Relief and Comfort and allows me to act with loving Self-Care.
And Grace has many elements to it. It is as multi-faceted gift as a beautiful diamond, and each element shines brightly on your soul, exactly when you need it most, offering support and Peace.
The Gifts of Grace that have changed my LIFE are of Acceptance, Forgiveness, Compassion and Love, first and foremost for myself, which naturally spills out into every area of my LIFE, and are showered on everyone who is precious to me.
These are the Gifts of Grace (among many others), through which I now see the world.
These are the Gifts of Grace that are my LIFE filters, and my decision makers.
These are the Gifts of Grace that I cherish, and that cherish me, and these have allowed me to make true Peace with my past and feel excitement for a future I cannot know.
I think the greatest Gifts of these Graces, is that they have allowed me to Let Go of all the things I had innocently learnt to believe about myself that hurt me, and held me back from making better choices, that stopped me finding the LOVE I deserve, from expressing my creativity, from living and breathing in my own, perfect for me, shape, and from living my one far too short, (no matter how many years I have), LIFE in the JOY that is my birth right.
I believe it is the same for you too.
You may not drink the way I did (I bloody hope you don’t, no-one should live the way I did, in pain every day, feeling lesser on every level), but the other pains I see clients struggling with, the Stress, Overwhelm, Anxiety and Fears all rob them of their Peace and Joy of LIFE, and they all come from the same place, the lack of connection with their Home space. It is the same for you too.
Living disconnected from who you truly are, the wonderous, miracle of you, is the greatest pain in LIFE.
To be lost and searching for something, anything, to make you feel better, often in the world of ‘stuff’, material stuff, clothes, cars, holidays, the big house, the big job, the success you think will make you ‘feel better’, can never create the Peace and Happiness you crave, because it isn’t found there.
And of course, the world of ‘stuff’ is wonderful. At times in my LIFE, I have been both financially desperate and privileged.
And of course being privileged brings a level of ease and comfort that I would be stupid to deny isn’t completely wonderful, but without the connection of myself I now have, it never, ever gave me what the Peace and Joy I treasure.
Stuff alone cannot bring JOY, maybe you know that in your own LIFE. Maybe you have a level of ease and comfort that others can only dream of, and still you feel empty.
That’s because Stuff does not, cannot, in any way truly compensate for the void within, the aching sense of something missing, that cannot be filled or dislodged, by any external experiences or factors, not even truly loving, supportive relationships, or the love of our children (external loves).
And on some level, you know that, because if ‘external love’ could change the way you felt and acted, my God it would.
The truth is, without the LOVE of you that comes only from YOU, without the Acceptance, Forgiveness and Compassion that comes from knowing you, supporting you and cherishing you, by YOU, you will often be bought to your emotional knees when LIFE hits you harder.
- Instead of making the BEST choices for YOU, you will often make poorer, sadder choices
- Instead of having HEALTHY, Loving Relationships, you will often accept behaviours that hurt you
- Instead of using your natural talents, listening to your SOUL and trusting the messages your INTUITION sends you, you will often not have the career, the health, the relationships of your dreams
- Instead of having healthy BOUNDARIES, that you express with confidence and ease, you will often try to do more than you can cope with
- Instead of living in your perfect-for-YOU emotional size and shape, you will often try to be different to who you truly are, to struggle to breathe and live in someone else’s shape, which can never fit you.
And you will always and forever feel the loss of your greatness, your wonder and the Joy and Peace of living the LIFE that you deserve.
Being back in your Home space is ALL that you need to change your LIFE.
Safe in that space of LOVE, everything is easier, everything flows naturally, you are no longer dashed against the cold, hard, unforgiving rocks of the Beliefs you hold about you and what you deserve, that hold you back, that hurt your heart, when you try to have more in LIFE.
Instead, from that place of LOVE, those Beliefs soften, they move, they dissolve, allowing you to take another step towards the LIFE you dream of and deserve.
This is my truth. It is your truth too.
Read this again if you have to. Let my words land and settle, they can only land in a good place. They can only bring your comfort and support.
If you are struggling with any area of LIFE, with what you Drink, Eat, Shop, or with Relationships, Health, Career of Money worried that keep you away at night, I can help you, you just need to reach out HERE.
And please, please remember, no matter where you are in Pain now, or how long you have felt trapped, freedom and Peace is within you all the time.
Your LIFE and the way you live it may well feel very complicated, but you are not complicated in design, and what works in one area of LIFE works in every area, you are simply not used to thinking that way, but it is the truth.
Finally, always, and forever, be kind and gentle with YOU.
Sonia x
PS. If you would like to know more more about my journey from 28 years of alcoholism, to peaceful freedom, take a look at my internationally acclaimed book, This Isn’t Me (click on the link HERE), reviewed by Ranvir Singh of Good Morning Britain as “Beautiful & devastating”, wrote it for my son, as an apology for his younger years, and as an attempt to explain the un-explainable.
Jun 9, 2022
How often to you take daily time out just for you?
Not a break in your day to put the washing on, clear the kitchen and all the other LIFE stuff that has to be done, time out for YOU.
Daily time for YOU, to sit, breathe, let your mind wander away from the Pain and tangle of your To Do lists, the worry over rising costs, your relationship concerns, the way you Drink / Eat / Shop, your Fears for your future, your sadness and regrets over your past, and back into Peace?
Do you even know how to switch off, to create a PAUSE, to still your mind, to calm your heart, to comfort YOU?
I am going to tell you something now about what I do daily, that I would have laughed at in my drinking years, in my struggle, my anxiety, my fears and shame, and yet it is one of the simplest spiritual practices that has had the most profound affect on my LIFE, on the Peace of my LIFE, on the CHOICES that I make, on the way I think and feel about every area of my LIFE, and that is that I MEDITATE.
I used to view Meditation as whoo whoo stuff, that I didn’t have time for. I had huge resistance to anything ‘spiritual’…..It didn’t make any sense to me.
I wanted to change my LIFE, to stop ‘doing’ the things that hurt me, that hurt my son, I wanted to change what I was ‘doing’, so focused more on trying to stop my ‘doing’, my areas of Pain, oblivious to the simple fact that I was looking in the wrong direction for Peace, that I needed to focus gently on how I was ‘Being’ and to change that….
I didn’t understand why anyone would Meditate, and I thought those that did, were already in a space of calm and Peace, that I could never step into.
When the truth is, Mediation creates that calm and Peace.
A calm and Peace that even on the most stressful of days, offers true comfort and support as well as the clarity to make better choices you simply cannot see in the darkness of your Pain.
I can’t tell you when I started to Meditate, or when it became part of my daily Morning Routine, it seems like it has been forever, but I can tell you why it works, and the reason even the simplest of Meditations can enable profound change, easily.
Taking the time so PAUSE, and to take the conscious decision to slow your breathing down, to take deep, long, slow breathes, instantly takes you out of stress, and into calm….if you don’t believe me, just try it right now. And before you think, “I don’t have time”, remember, you are going to breathe anyway, so consciously CHOOSE how you breathe.
Now in that state of calm, focus on a single thought that serves you, that makes you happy, that fills you with joy, if joy is what you want to feel, or peace, or relaxation, and notice how your whole being shifts out of the thoughts that haunt you in your struggle, and the feelings those thoughts create, this is called the Meditative State. This is the state of true relaxation and calm.
So, Meditation calms your mind, it quietens your critical voice, it loosens the knots of your thinking….it allows you to expand out of your contracted thoughts and feelings, the ones that cause you distress, and in the expansion, allows you to see and feel other possibilities, opportunities which do serve you better, in every area of your LIFE.
I now use guided Meditations, that I create myself, for when I am stuck in any area of LIFE.
I write a loving script, record it on my phone, and play it whilst I meditate.
I take myself into the space of calm, and ask a question about what do do next, and let the answer come to me.
It always does, sometimes a one word answer, sometimes, if its to do with my LIFE Recovery Coaching practice, I get an intuitive download. One thing is certain, when I ask anything in my meditation, I always get the answer that serves me best (often one I don’t ‘see’ outside of my Mediation), because I have quietened my critical mind chatter……it will be the same for you too.
If you took 5 minutes to meditate before you picked up your glass of wine in the evening, you will end your conflicting inner voices, and your feelings of cravings/need a drink will disappear.
It is exactly the same with food, with stress, with struggle, with overwhelm, with anxiety, with any worry you have that you are fighting with.
Why?
Because you act on how you feel in the moment, not in how you want to feel the next day…..please read that again and let it settle.
So, when you take the time to make yourself truly feel better in the moment, by simple Meditation, you act differently, effortlessly.
And of course Mediation cannot change the situation / circumstance, but it can and will change your thinking perspective of your distress, which changes the way you feel, which again, allows you to act differently. LIFE can actually be very simple.
Just 10 minutes at a time of day that works best for you (I prefer the morning as it resets me for my day, you may be different), of Meditation, will bring you Peace, it will release Stress, Anxiety and Overwhelm, it will change the way you Drink / Eat / Shop. and it will bring Clarity to whatever your struggle is, as well as different opportunities/possibilities as to the next best step for YOU.
You can’t get Meditation ‘wrong’. You don’t need a Yoga mat, a pose, any special clothing or candles, you simply need to be in a quiet space where you can sit, or lie, comfortably. I often now meditate as I walk, keeping my eyes open, I let my mind drift away.
And in the early days, thoughts may well pop into your mind, and all you have to do is view them as clouds that drift on by. That’s all your thoughts are anyway until you ‘buy’ in to them.
Don’t overthink your Mediation (not even the timing, simply set an alarm for up to 10 minutes on your phone), and enjoy the time and space you gift yourself, as well as the sense of Peace, expansion and relaxation that will flow over you, and then go about your day, safe in your knowledge that you can, at any time, take yourself out of whatever is causing you Pain, and go back into Peace
Be kind and gentle with yourself
Sonia
PS. I have created a beautiful FREE guided ANXIETY MEDIATION to support you in finding freedom from your Pain, and to take you back into Peace, if you would like a copy, contact me (HERE) and put YES in the Subject line x
Jun 6, 2022
How is LIFE for you right now? And yesterday, and last week, last month?
And how do you see your LIFE going forward to tomorrow, next week, next month?
- Do you feel at Peace with who you are and the Choices that you make?
- Do you even know what the next best step is for YOU, and have the confidence to take it?
- Or do you have no idea what to do, or where to start to take you to living your BEST LIFE?
The bottom line is, do you feel Stressed, Overwhelmed, Anxious and out of control of the situations LIFE throws at you?
And what do you DO to help yourself, to make yourself feel better able to cope?
Are you one of the good, kind, loving people who are finding yourself increasingly drawn to the non-comforts of Drinking too much, Eating too much, Spending too much, to give you some temporary relief, to give you some calm, some relaxation, some happiness?
Except the result is you feel LESS calm, less relaxed and more unhappy….sadly, as you know, what you do makes you feel worse, not better.
What you DO, makes you feel LESS of who you really are, and more of who you have started to fear/believe you always will be…
- The you who will always struggle daily to ‘deny’ yourself the evening wine you love to hate.
- The food you love in the moment and the weight gain you hate.
- The new clothes/shoes you have to have in the moment, and then never wear.
- The YOU who snaps, is irritable, exhausted, when you want to be loving, present and calm
I have said this many times, and I will repeat it forever, because it is the TRUTH for anyone who struggles to change what they DO that then causes immense Pain.
You ONLY Drink / Eat / Spend in a way that makes you so unhappy to make yourself feel better, (whatever ‘better’ is in the moment, even just to shut down your damn ‘I will/I won’t’ mind battle up!), and then you don’t feel better, you feel worse, sadder, weaker, a failure, and you have learnt to accept that version of you, as you.
But it is NOT YOU, and it never will be.
The you who never craves a Drink, who doesn’t over Eat rubbish, who never Spends (wastes) your much needed money, is within you all the time, she cannot leave you, she loves you too much and SHE is your truest YOU.
It is living in the Pain of NOT being your TRUE SELF that is your greatest pain in LIFE, and alcohol / food / spending….your know your ‘poison’, have become the sticking plaster that can never stick, that you have learnt to use, in your attempts to find Peace and Freedom from that PAIN.
You can never get enough of what you do not need.
You can never Drink / Eat / Buy anything that will take away your pain, stress, exhaustion, or that will comfort your lack of communication, comfort or LOVE, and on some levels you do know that…..otherwise you wouldn’t be fighting so hard and for so long……
And yet in your innocent lack of awareness of the true nature of your ‘problems’ with alcohol / food etc, in your lack of understanding your true cravings (never an external substance, always an inner lack), you focus on the fix that doesn’t fix and continue to Drink/ Eat / Spend in your state of loss.
There are literally NO mysteries around why you DO what you do, and NO mysteries as to how to change it, effortlessly, and it never starts with looking at what you DO (Drink/Eat/Shop/People Please, Take on too much, etc), but instead, who you are BEING to YOU.
To finally find peace and freedom from the LIFE you despair of, you must give up on the old tried and ‘failed’ methods of change that have failed you so far, and embrace an empowering new perspective and simple strategies that gift you back YOU, the essence of YOU that is your greatest ally, who knows instinctively how to care for you, because believe me when you are back in that safe, loving space, the way you Drink / Food / Treat yourself changes naturally, and that is why change this way is effortless.
So, the quickest and easiest way to regain your Peace and Freedom and to BE YOU, is through daily acts of Self-Care…to get you started, here’s my Top Tip for Self-Care.
Its very simple tip, and can be applied to every area of your LIFE where you are in Pain, in Struggle, Overwhelm, Anxiety or Stress
“When Life Speeds Up, You SLOW Down!”
And let me be clear here, slowing down doesn’t mean not getting things done.
Slowing Down means taking a PAUSE, even for just a few minutes, to breathe deeply, calibrate what is going on both in your inner and outer world (situations), and only then ‘doing’.
Your cravings for anything come from the disquiet within you, the nagging anxieties of being uncomfortable and unsure, both within and without, and just that simple PAUSE, gifts you the space to adjust, to see from LIFE from a different perspective, to allow opportunities and possibilities to show themselves which are ALWAYS hidden when you are in Pain, and for you to re-settle back into the balance and trust of you that brings real, long lasting Peace.
Keep your life simple, in every way, whenever life speeds up, slow YOU right down, just with a PAUSE and a few deep breathes, and you will notice that your Stress, Anxiety and Overwhelm, as well as your ‘desire’ for Alcohol / Food etc, diminishes as you do so.
Be kind and gentle with yourself.
Sonia x
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May 27, 2022
How are you feeling today? And yesterday, and for the past few weeks or months?
Are you feeling at Peace within yourself?
Happy and Relaxed about the Choices you easily make in LIFE?
Safe in Trusting yourself to stick with the choices you know will make your LIFE better?
Or, do you feel a quiet desperation building inside of you that knows you must make changes to your LIFE.
- Maybe you want to change the way you Drink, or Eat, or Spend….
- Maybe you want better Relationships, a Healthier Lifestyle, to earn more Money
- Or maybe you are sick of with feeling Stressed, Anxious or Overwhelmed.
Whatever your struggle is, you want to make changes and you want to make changes NOW, and often you know what to do, that you just need to make better Choices, but for some inexplicable reason you can’t.
Your rational mind tells you that you cannot carry on like this.
You wake in the night tangled in the stress and anxiety of your thinking about how to change.
You make decisions in the early hours of the morning that today will be different.
- Today you will not drown yourself in Food or Alcohol
- Today you will stand up for yourself and say “No”
- Today you will be better, take some time for you, delegate / ask for help, and that
TODAY is the day everything changes…..you have made your new, empowering, Choices and you are going to stick with them, ….except you don’t…..your day wears on, your ability to choose wanes and you go back to the same old, same old…….and so your cycle of exhaustion and despair goes on unbroken……
What on Earth is going on? Or rather, your usual thought is, “What on Earth is wrong with me?”
Here’s the TRUTH about CHOICE…..powerful new CHOICES are not just decisions you make in your thoughts, in fact thoughts, (your rational mind), don’t allow you to change, unless they are aligned with the FEELING (the Belief) that you do have a CHOICE…..
Let me explain….when I changed my drinking, seemingly miraculously after 28 years of painful struggle, and without any stress or struggle, I changed it through my CHOICE….a choice I had never felt I had before, and so a choice I was not able to make, or stick with before.
Of course I had known, intellectually what my drinking was doing to myself and my son.
I felt and saw the results of my drinking every day.
I used to go back to bed crying after he left for school, frightened that I wouldn’t be alive when he came back home, and certain that he had left in the morning with me a shell of the mother he deserved, anxious, stressed, impatient with my darling child, my gift from God, who I loved more than life itself.
And I didn’t’ feel I could change.
I didn’t feel I had it in me. Why?
Because I had (innocently) bought hook, line and sinker into the powerful social conditioning (Beliefs) around alcohol that changing my drinking wasn’t possible.
That I would struggle for life, that it would always be an uphill battle, and in those unseen, unknown but deeply felt Beliefs, I had (again, innocently) abdicated all my choices and responsibilities to my own negative, limiting Beliefs……
Now, 7 years happy, peaceful in myself years later, through my own experience, my learning’s and my clients easy successes, I believe that to be true of everyone that struggles to change their drinking, the way they eat, spend…..all of which come under the change paralysing umbrella term of ‘addiction’.
So, how do you know you hold those Beliefs?
That’s easy.
Beliefs show up as FEELINGS, and when you go into conflict between what you rationally know to be true, your THOUGHTS, and your Beliefs, your FEELINGS (anxious, fearful, deprived of not doing something), you are bumping up against the super power of YOU, your Unconscious Mind, which controls 98% of your behaviors (I kid you not).
And that is where your inner struggle truly lies.
Not with the ‘doing’, not with the behaviors of your Drinking/Eating, not speaking up, not having the Love, Health, Relationships or Money that you know you deserve, but with conflict between what you THINK to be true and what you FEEL is true…..do you recognise that?
I hope so, because that inner conflict is the point at which it is game over for you, and your cycles of the way you eat, drink, shop, the relationships you have, the money you can earn, the (lack) of lifestyle you currently have, the pain you live in continue, because you BELIEVE, (feel), you cannot change, that you cannot be different, that change will be hard and all the rest of the feelings you have when you want to make a CHOICE to act/live differently.
But when you THINK you have CHOICE and it is aligned with FEELING (Believing) you have CHOICE, then its game over again….and this time your battle is won!
You act differently easily, because there is no fear, no anxiety, no sense of deprivation. Instead, your worldview opens up, there is curiosity, awareness, excitement and with each new step, taken from each new CHOICE, your LIFE changes.
- YOU grow in confidence and strength
- Your LIFE grows, it flourishes
- You CAN have the Freedom you deserve, you can have the LOVE you deserve
- You can have the MONEY you dream of
- You can have everything you want, when you THINK and FEEL you have CHOICE.
It is that simple. I promise you.
If you are ready to make the most exciting and profound changes to your LIFE, contact me (HERE), TODAY.
And always and forever, be kind and gentle with yourself
Sonia xx
