How Trauma is Not Just in Your Head or Mind

What I found out about trauma is this: Trauma isn’t something that is just in your head or mind. It’s not just a past memory.

In fact, it is stored in the habitual reflexive state of your nervous system. It is in your heart, head, your stomach, arms, legs..all the sensory information that got coded. They manifest in an overreactive response to stress today: racing heart, shallow breathing, nausea, indigestion, trembling hands, blurred vision, etc.

For trauma recovery, it helps to remember: not just your head or mind, every part of your body was there in the past.

Continue reading

What Are Glimmers and How You Can Find Them

Glimmers are the opposite of triggers.

Glimmers are moments that act as cues for self-regulation and for soothing our nervous system. They are tiny moments where we feel relaxed, safe, assured and connected. In contrast triggers cause us to feel threatened. When we are triggered badly, our fight-flight-freeze response can get excessively activated and our nervous system becomes deregulated. 

The concept of glimmers first came from Polyvagal theory.  The theory was introduced by Stephen Porges in 1995 where we learn about how our autonomic nervous system is constantly on the lookout for cues to determine if they are dangerous. “Glimmers” is coined by Deb Dana, a licensed clinical social worker who specialises in complex trauma and also the author of The Polyvagal Therory in Therapy, as a way to help us shift out of survival mode. 

Continue reading

How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds When You Can’t Turn Back the Clock

Some of us may be resistant to the idea of having to heal childhood wounds. That is because we don’t like having to revisit the past in our memory. We fear that we would relive the pain and that we would traumatise ourselves all over again. 

Even more so, we wish that the past did not happen. For sure, if not for the past, we would have suffered less all these years and we wouldn’t have felt so lost, alone and confused. More importantly, we wouldn’t be unconsciously having an inner child that is bent on sabotaging our present. 

Perhaps, just like how movies portray, we dearly wish that there can be a time machine that can take us back. We would like to have the power to change things right from the start, instead of having to do repair or healing work. If we can change history, a time machine would certainly help. 

Continue reading

Self-Love Practice eBook is Now Live

I’m happy to announce that my new ebook, Self-Love Practice, is finally “live” on Amazon…yayyyy!! 

As I figure, it is time for an update with new insights and client stories. Although it has been at least 9 years ago since I published my first book on self-love, I’ve been suspecting that there is still a lot of people out there with no or little clue on what it means to love themselves. Much of my suspicion arose from my sessions with clients. They could have presented a problem in say, performance anxiety, relationship conflicts or having imposter syndrome. Regardless of the presenting problem, we would be led to the same place: the need to be and feel loved.

What really got to me is how timeless the message of self-love is. Thus, the idea of a new book was born about a year ago. Titled Self-Love Practice, the book is a reaffirmation and a deepening of what it means to love ourselves. It’s now available on Amazon.

Continue reading

How to Practice Loving Self-Acceptance

Practising loving self-acceptance is not something that may come naturally. In fact, it could be a key life lesson that some of us. You may find yourself attracting various experiences that involve this important aspect of what it means to embrace yourself totally.

Many of us long to be accepted for who we are. And so, we go about seeking validation and approval from others. However, the crux is that if we cannot accept ourselves, we cannot expect others to accept us too. Without any self-acceptance, we live in constant fear of being rejected.

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” – Mark Twain

I find it great to learn from movies too.  One of the movies that I watched with my children was Wreck-it Ralph show. Initially, I had found the plot rather slow moving. And so I was not paying full attention to it. But as the movie wore on, I discovered that there were valuable lessons on self-acceptance.
Continue reading

How to Reduce Relationship Conflicts: Make Observations, Not Evaluations

“Observations are the windows to empathy, while evaluations are the doors to conflict.” Marshall Rosenberg

Are you tired of encountering misunderstandings and conflicts in your conversations?

Well, a good book to read is this: Nonviolent Communication (NVC) by Marshall Rosenberg.

The author offers a ton of valuable tips for us.

One such tip: separate observations from evaluation. 

Observations focus on factual information without judgment, while evaluations involve personal interpretations and assessments.

Continue reading

Why You May Want to Reconsider the Business Advice of “Charge What You Are Worth”

Many business coaches often have the advice of “charge what you are worth” when it comes to pricing your coaching services. Even though you could be in the midst of getting your business off the ground, they may still recommend that you charge high prices for your time. They assure you that you are worthy and deserving and that at the soul level, you are also of infinite worth. Hence, you are justified to raise your prices since you are “more than enough”.  

Admittedly, such advice can stoke anyone’s ego. And since they are your business coaches, you may decide to take their advice by charging a high hourly rate. Yet, in reality, this advice may not be helpful especially if you are not backed by adequate coaching experience or have not been able to generate enough business. 

Let’s examine what it means to “charge what you are worth”, so that we can make better sense of the advice. 

Continue reading

The Secret to Manifestation that No One Tells You About

When you are trying to decide whether or not to pursue a goal or dream, don’t expect to have absolute guarantee or proof that things will work before you are willing to put in “trust”.

You may be praying for some signs from heaven but you’ve barely heard a squawk. Perhaps you’ve secretly been hoping for some iron-clad assurance that will allay your fears of making a mistake or going down the wrong path but that would be wishful thinking! 

Alas, it doesn’t work that way. I’ve been in the same shoes and what I’ve discovered is this: you can wait for assurance but so long as you don’t trust or believe, the dream that you want to see happen will not take place. Nothing would have moved or changed very much. 

Instead, the Universe is saying, trust first with aligned actions and the manifestation will follow. 

Continue reading

How Emotions Got Stuck in the Body

Have you ever felt scared just as a storm was brewing and there was loud rumbling thunder, whistling winds and lighting bolts in the sky?

Well, a deer in the forest instantly senses fear. 

It is most likely to be prancing, kicking, shaking and chattering thrice as much in nervous tension.

In fact, most wild animals react in the same manner when they are feeling scared. They can’t keep still. Moving around helps them to discharge the negative energy from their bodies.

However, humans are taught differently.

Continue reading

Metaphysical Lessons from Everything Everywhere All at Once