Happy Thanksgiving 2018
Have a wonderful and peaceful day.
You deserve it.
Nov22
Thoughtful Thursday #236 – Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving 2018
Have a wonderful and peaceful day.
You deserve it.
Category Archives: purelysimplewords
Oct18
Thoughtful Thursday #232 Grief
It is not easy to feel grief, we avoid it at all costs with distractions galore.
Allowing yourself to feel grief and cry and rage and weep are very healing actions to take you forward.
Grief that is not felt is invisible and holds you back. Clues that you are not feeling grief is lots of unfounded fear, perhaps you feel numb, anxious.
How can you get to a point where you can organically feel grief? Writing, talking to someone you trust, exercise, getting educated on recognizing grief, find a support group, being really good to yourself because you are hurting.
Grief work is a very personal journey, there is no timeframe, no right and wrong to process grief and your coping strategy will belong only to you. Only you have to validate this.
Is grief work easy, no it is not. It’s uncomfortable, the good news is that every opportunity you have to process and express grief the quicker it goes away.
Sep27
Thoughtful Thursday #229 – Step Away From The Mess
Step away from generational family dysfunction.
Step away from emotionally dangerous and perverted people.
Step away from escaping the way you feel.
Step away from codependency.
Step away from tolerating the unacceptable.
Step away from self-doubt and sabotage.
Step Towards Yourself, Your Recovery, Your Self Acceptance, Your Wholeness, Your Healing, Your Opportunities, Your Wonderful Life.
Celebrate your success and know you have come very far already.
Aug16
Thoughtful Thursday #223 – Hanging In There
I have a recurring theme in my life, when things don’t go the way I want them to go because of distractions or obstacles I try to remember to hang in there. For a long time I did not do that I just gave up.
I can’t give up anymore. If I am distracted I refocus my attention. If there is an obstacle I handle it and begin again. Each time I begin again is a step forward and that is all that matters.
One step at a time.
Jul19
Thoughtful Thursday – #220 – Finding The Truth
When I was sixteen years old it occurred to me that something was terribly wrong with my family interactions. This was the beginning of my long journey, or should I say my lifelong journey of finding the truth. This journey has been very hard at times but the more truth that was uncovered the healthier and happier I became.
Finding the truth unveiled lots of information that helped me understand the dysfunctional dynamics that were going on and where I was placed within that strange puzzle.
I am still unraveling the trauma all these years later. And I am not at all disturbed by this. As hard as it is to know the sick truths of the horrible treatment I incurred, I will never stop looking for the truth.
On the bright side, the more I know about me the more I know about others. The side effect of finding the truth of human behavior is the ability to know others and that is priceless.
Jun28
Thoughtful Thursday #218 Processing Feelings
This is a hard one. Childhood Emotional Neglect blog has a realistic answer. 10 Rules Emotions Follow:
# 9 Sitting with a powerful emotion and letting yourself feel it while thinking about it to understand why you’re having it, what it means, and what it’s telling you, is called “processing it.”
#10 Your feelings are valuable messages from your deepest self. When you follow Rule 9, you are listening to the messages, honoring yourself, and making use of this valuable resource from within.
We all have feelings and some are unexplainable and that is OK because your feelings come from your subconscious. When strong feelings come up, follow rule #9 and #10.
It won’t be easy to sit with uncomfortable feelings but you will come out on the other side feeling quite different knowing there was a shift in your mind and that is all you need to facilitate healing.
Jun21
Thoughtful Thursday #217 – Bullying
No one wants to be bullied and as we know the objective is to oppress, torment, intimidate and browbeat someone into submission.
Bullying is easily recognized if we are observing it in real-time. But do we recognize bullying when we do it to ourselves? Probably not, here are some signals you are bullying yourself.
- your inner critic has a field day beating you up by noticing everything that you do wrong.
- your inner critic says unkind, mean things to you.
- some believe that the inner critic is a motivator to do better, this is completely false.
- anxiety, image issues, social anxiety can be the inner critic hounding you with negativity.
- watching TV shows that are violent and traumatize you with fear. (I binge watch crime shows.)
You can’t completely get rid of the inner critic however you can arrest its relentlessness and power with a these few tips.
- pay attention to your thoughts.
- don’t beat yourself up about these thoughts.
- notice what your triggers are.
- respond to yourself with kindness.
- speak to yourself with compassion.
- turn off your TV for a while and limit the shows that are violent. (I’m watching more happy programs.)
- redirect your thoughts and actions to something happy.
Being mindful, kind and compassionate to yourself is an important skill to learn and takes some time.
Instead, you want caring, reassuring, encouraging and supportive words and actions towards yourself.
You are so worth the time and effort.
Jun16
Understand This
Here’s a quote from Yolo Akili’s book: Dear Universe; Letters of Affirmation and Empowerment – For All Of Us –
Principles of Human Communication:
#5 Understand that everyone interprets the world through their own ideas, past experience, psychological framework, social location and pain. You see the world based on where you have been. You see the world based on who you are, based on how you are perceived and how you perceive others. Those perceptions are not absolute. They are not the only truth, and they are not the only way of knowing things. Understand this.
The author is pointing out that in order to have effective communication with other humans we must put aside our own beliefs. By putting aside our own beliefs we will better understand where the other human is coming from. As a result you will have a clearer, more truthful communication.
Jun10
Solitude Is Great Until It Turns To Isolation.
I cherish alone time, lots of it, but I can take it to the extreme until it becomes isolation.
We are social creatures by nature and without being social we can lose self-esteem, and self-confidence.
Isolation has a way of creeping up on us and separating us from friends, real world interactions, causes anxiety, you feel like you are in captivity in a cage, and detached from any healthy interactions.
Social media does not help, it lends itself into isolating us even more, plus it encourages the feelings of exclusion and an unrealistic idea that others lives are better than yours. Isolation also causes social anxiety. There is hope. Change is always possible.
Here are some suggestions to cure isolation:
Talk to everyone you meet.
Accept invitations even if you don’t think you want to go.
Build relationships.
Spend less time on social media.
Reach out and have an actual phone conversation instead of just social media.
Leave the house.
With a little bit of discipline and investment of your time you can get out of isolation and back into life. And if life is too much you can always go back to solitude but this time without the isolation.
Jun7
Thoughtful Thursday #216 – Reparenting Yourself
You grew up in a dysfunctional family, your self esteem is shot, your squirming over an embarrassing action, you want to disappear, you feel rejected at every turn. Sounds like your hurt inner child is expressing itself.
Then you probably need to reparent yourself.
Many of us have grown up in chaos, we have no recollection of who our true self is. That is OK. Of course you don’t know who you are in your core, it is impossible to know if you grew up with chaos and confusion. This is where you can learn to be your own best parent.
Will it be easy, probably not, your tip is the child within feels your feelings, the hurt child within acts those feeling out inappropriately. Here is where reparenting comes in. If you can give space to those trapped feelings, both good and bad, your parent self can step in and stop any extreme behavior, or at least give a time out.
There is much written about reparenting, here are a few resources:
Adult Children of Alcoholics
Strengthening My Recovery (Book)
Alcoholics Anonymous
Taming Your Outer Child (Book)
How to Reparent Yourself (Youtube video)
Google “Reparenting Yourself”
https://www.healingfromcomplextraumaandptsd.com/inner-child-healing (Website)
beatingtrauma.com (website of Elisabeth Corey, trauma survivor and life coach)
http://pete-walker.com (Therapist and trauma survivor)
You are worth the effort and can bear the temporary, uncomfortable feelings of doing this important inner work. Give it a try.
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