Changing old patterns
Learned Helplessness is a phenomenon that occurs when a series of negative outcomes or stressors causes someone to believe that the outcomes of life are out of one’s control. While learned helplessness can affect anyone, it often takes root in early childhood. However, trauma experienced in adulthood can also leave you feeling helpless. Martin Seligman …
The word ‘trauma‘ comes from the Greek word for ‘wound’. So trauma is literally a wound in our mental state. Like any physical wound. Post-Traumatic Stress means anything that leaves an emotional residue in the system and interferes with its normal function. The various facets of Post-Traumatic Stress are innumerable; however, we can categorize them …
The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in our body, running from the brain stem to part of the colon, supplying both our organs and our brain with vital information. The word “vagus” means wandering in Latin, and the vagus nerve is a wandering cranial nerve that communicates to every organ in our body, especially …
My daughter asked me recently where the term ‘bunny boiler’ comes from. I laughed, as I recalled Glenn Close’s psychotic character in ‘Fatal Attraction‘ and how, after the huge success of the film in the 80s, any female who demonstrated a glimmer of insecure behaviour was labelled a bunny boiler, relating to the scene where …
Continue reading “When Trauma And Pain Show Up As Crazy In Relationships”
As soon as we are born, life comes at us. We all need attachment, to survive, and if your parents or caregivers didn’t meet your emotional needs fully, you were abused, abandoned, or neglected, you will feel unworthy and unlovable deep down. You will learn behaviours to cope and to keep yourself as safe as …
Our autonomic nervous system, causes us to think, feel and behave in ways that are driven by unconscious patterns and generates automatic responses. The autonomic nervous system’s job is to keep us safe and alive. It is made up of 3 systems: • Sympathetic nervous system: This system activates body processes that help you …
Continue reading “Do You Have A Dysregulated Nervous System?”
For most of my life, I would fly off the handle over the slightest thing, going from 0-200 in a matter of seconds. I was always told that I was ‘born arguing’ and when I look back, I can recall so many times losing my temper whenever I perceived that someone was ‘out to get …
I remember a few years ago, a friend persuaded me to attend a meditation class with her. I couldn’t concentrate or focus, it was boring, and I was just desperate to get down the pub after. This is just one example of how I typically lived for most of my life. If I did ever …
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung When thinking about the shadow self, I always think back to an argument I was having with my eldest daughter a few years ago, when she was a teenager. I remember she snapped something …
The primary goal of a human infant is to maintain proximity to its caregiver, which was necessary for survival during our evolution. Babies can’t survive alone. They depend on their main caregiver (attachment figure) to literally keep them alive. Founded by psychoanalyst John Bowlby in the 1950s and expanded by Mary Ainsworth, attachment theory outlines …