In Buddhist psychology, there are two parts to consciousness, the mind consciousness and the store consciousness. Mind consciousness is our active awareness for everyday living while store consciousness is often referred to as the “unconscious mind” where our past experiences are stored. In some situations, we go through life without engaging our mind consciousness. For example, when we drive without actively thinking, we are using our store consciousness.
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.
How Reparenting Helps to Address Your Insecure Attachment Style
If you have an insecure attachment style, you can potentially benefit from doing some reparenting work. Insecure attachment affects those in their ability to form healthy relationships, make decisions and/or to cope emotionally. On the other hand, reparenting yourself helps you to heal your inner child, gain trust and maintain emotional stability. Thus, you enhance your ability to cultivate close relationships, boost confidence and enhance overall well-being.
Attachment styles first came from the work of John Bowlby, a psychologist. He first proposed Attachment theory in the 1950s and 1960s. Attachment theory helps us to find out more about the nurturing that was experienced during the initial years of our life and how it affects us today.
Bowlby’s view is that the bond between mother and child is most important of all. The first formative 18 months is very crucial in the child’s development. Where there is adequate nurturing, the child grows up to be a secure adult. Conversely, the absence of adequate nurturing leads to insecure attachment and the forming of invisible emotional wounds that often results in maladjustments in the emotional, social and cognitive development of the child.
How to Connect with Your Inner Child using S.H.I.F.T.
You may be wondering about how you can connect with your inner child. For a start, you may even have some doubts about the idea of having a wounded inner child. After all, it is not like the inner child is a being that you can actually see or hear externally. Let alone one that is wounded. How, then, do you connect with your inner child, if you are interested to heal aspects about your childhood?
Well….it is true that you can’t actually see your inner child with your naked eye. It may even feel like you are playing pretend when you close your eyes and attempt to see your inner child. Yet, just because you can’t see something with opened eyes does not mean that it does not exist. For example, just because you can’t see electricity does not mean that it is not working in the background when you turn the lamp on.
How to Deal with Emotional Overwhelm When It Feels Too Much
Going through a tough period?
Finding it hard to deal with emotional overwhelm?
Perhaps, you are at a loss about what to do with the flood of feelings that are coming up.
A client once described her experience as being in a washing machine, with the flood of emotions spinning round and round and unable to stop. And it happens to the best of us. Whatever the trigger is, it may be that you are feeling angry or sad, all at once. Or that you are feeling torn.
You just can’t make out what to think or how to go about solving your problems. No wonder you struggle to fall asleep. Well, if you have been feeling struggling, I would like to invite you to create a safe space for yourself.
Instead of being in a rush to repress or deny what you are going through, give yourself some time to process your feelings.
Start by putting your hands over your heart and center your breathing.
Be in a safe non-judgmental space as you work through this.
10 Signs of Emotional Bullying: How to Spot Them
Emotional bullying is when a person tries to get what he or she wants by making another feel afraid, small and helpless.
It can happen in a children’s playground. Or it can happen in adult relationships. These days, emotional bullying can also take place online.
Emotional bullying brings about negative effects. If it is made repeatedly, the victim’s mental health can decline. Victims end up with depression, anxiety, shame, guilt and fear, and have difficulties showing up fully at work or in their business. Emotional wounds can create leaks in attracting money and abundance too.
Fortunately, it is possible for anyone to work on healing emotional wounds. In some situations, victims are not able to recognise that they have been bullied. Well, it is important for anyone to learn how to identify the signs so that you can tell if there has been bullying.
EFT Tapping Circle: What Are Group Borrowing Benefits
“Borrowing Benefits” is one of the most profound discoveries in EFT tapping circles. It happens when we come together in a group to clear negative emotions or limiting benefits. “Borrowing Benefits” is the discovery that simply watching other participants do EFT on their issues, while tapping along with them, reduces the emotional intensity of our own issues. It is as if we are “borrowing” the positive energetic shifts, even though we are not directly working on our own.
To begin with, our issues may or may not be the same as what another member of the group is going through. However, just by observing and tapping along on the issues that belong to another group member, we can potentially experience a reduction in the stress or tension that we have in relation to our own issues. This phenomena is also pretty much aligned with the concepts that “everything is energy” and that we are all inter-connected.
Continue readingHow to Heal Your Invisible Childhood Wounds
We may not realise at first that we have been carrying childhood wounds, so any talk about healing will be considered moot.
Childhood wounds are, after all, invisible to us.
And if we can’t see them through our naked eye, why does it matter whether we are carrying them or not?
Well, it may well explain contributing reasons behind our current day issues like
- anxiety
- depression
- constant insecurity
- low self-esteem
- inability to find loving relationships
- inability to have better success,
- etc
In other words, just because we can’t visually see our wounds does not mean that they don’t exist.
As I understand, according to Sigmund Freud, they are hidden in the deep recesses of our psyche, buried deep in the unconscious. We repress our pain, hurt and anger in these wounds. Because they are yet to be resolved, they can blindside us. It is why we are often in self-sabotage.
Thus, if we don’t heal our past wounds, they can bleed into everything that we do or encounter today.
“We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.The child we once were is still there.” Paul Coelho
Mindfulness Teachings from Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child
I’ve enjoyed reading Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and thought I’d honour his recent passing by sharing what I’ve learnt about applying mindfulness for healing the inner child.
Connecting with The Energy of Mindfulness
“The energy of mindfulness is the salve that will recognize and heal the child within.” Thich Nhat Hanh
How Self-Love is a Mindfulness Practice of Tiny Habits
As I’ve discovered, self-love is not just a practice but a mindfulness one.
This means that loving ourselves is not a mere one-time or a short-term exercise; whether we are going for a therapy session, a singing bowl meditation to heal our heart chakra or buying ourselves a branded bag so that we can feel better.
Self-love is much more than any of these.
Some of us may have the expectation that self-love can happen magically overnight. The truth is that for those of us with trouble loving and accepting themselves unconditionally, it takes consistent work. It’s certainly been my experience.
Over the years, life would throw me a new challenge again and again and due to being triggered, I’d find myself reverting to the same pattern of feeling unlovable and unloved. At first, I felt disappointed and bitter that none of the healing I did appear to have worked. It would seem that doing inner work was pointless.
Yet, upon review, I realised that my early efforts were sporadic to begin with. Eventually, after seeing how I was caught in repeated patterns, I began to realise that self-love is not going to be an overnight or a one-time healing thing. It finally occurred to me that if I am interested to have enough of a breakthrough, I need to regard self-love as being more of a practice.
How to Validate Your Inner Child with What to Say
Validating our inner child is one of the best things we can do, especially if she (he) has suffered from emotional neglect for the longest time. When we validate her feelings, it aids in her healing and recovery. Her unresolved needs of not being listened to are now being met. Ultimately, it boosts our emotional well-being from the inside-out.
Let’s understand more about what validation is about. In general, when we validate someone, we are showing that we acknowledge his or her emotional experience. The opposite is true of invalidation when we ignore, reject or judge the other person.
Validation doesn’t mean that we have to agree with the reactions or choices of others. We are simply saying that we can understand why they would feel a certain way based on what happened. Also, we are demonstrating acceptance of who they are – regardless of how they feel or think.