11 Things You Can Do To Support Someone Who Is Grieving

In your lifetime you are likely to know someone who is grieving.

I am often asked the question: What can I do to support them?

On the flipside, I see many people who tell me of the unhelpful experiences they have had in their grief journey from other people.

Here are 11 things you can do to support someone who is grieving:

1. People React Differently To Grief

No two people grieve the same. Some will cry. A lot.

Others will appear unaffected (believe me they are affected).

Some will keep busy.

Others will be unable to do anything and will feel very confused.

There will be some who are angry or bitter.

And there will be others who appear to be very happy.

You may find the grieving person talks and talks about their experience.

Or they may be silent and say nothing.

The list of responses is enormous.

2. Ask, Don’t Assume.

It is easy to assume the help you provide another person may be the same as the help you may have wanted in the same situation, or that you gave another person you supported. But that may not be so.

Remember, everyone grieves differently. What one person wants is not what another wants.

Things you can ask.

• What can I do to support you?

• Can I cook you a meal?

• Do you need anything from the shops?

• Do you need someone to sit with you?

• Do you need a hug?

These are just some examples of what you can do to support. There are many other things you can do. You need to ask.

And keep asking. Long after the person has died, ask about them. Always preface that with asking if it is okay to ask about them. Most people like to talk about the one they lost. That keeps their memory alive and gives them a chance to talk about them.

When my mother died, I lived on the other side of the world. No one knew my mother. It was really hard because there was no one I could talk to about her. I really appreciated the friends who asked and listened while I talked.

3. Grief Is Universal, We All Grieve At Some Points In Our Life.

If you haven’t already, it is important to remember that you will experience grief one day. Most likely you will experience more than one grief.

If you have experienced grief you will likely be more aware of the unhelpful things that can be said and done. On the flip side, you may have wanted certain types of support that the person you are now supporting doesn’t want.

Always ask.

4. Grief Never Ends

Although the acute time of grieving will pass and the pain will lessen, there will always be pain around the death of a loved one.

Always be sensitive to that when interacting with someone who has experienced grief.

5. Be With The Person Who Is Grieving

When supporting someone who is grieving, often just being there is important. You may physically be there with them, or you are elsewhere offering your support.

If you visit someone, let them talk, say little, be okay with silence.

Sometimes you may visit someone and they don’t want to talk about their loss. It is okay to talk about other things, but let them lead that conversation.

If you can’t visit the person maybe ring them, or send them messages every now and again. Just say you are thinking of them. Ask if you can do anything to help. Offer specific help.

6. No Judgements, No Platitudes, No Pumping For More Information.

One of the worst things that can happen after a loss are the comments people make.

Examples are:

• They’re in a better place

• You can always have another … (child, dog, cat etc.)

• They wouldn’t have wanted you to be this sad

• Never mentioning the person or the loss of them. They existed. Mention them.

• So what happened? This is one that you may be itching to ask after someone has died by suicide, or been killed in an accident.

• Tell your own stories of loss.

That last one is easy to do. I have been mortified to do it myself. The motivation to tell your own story is often a desire to give the message it is okay and to be worried you may be judging the other person. You may also wish to communicate you have been there and understand some of what they are going through.
We all bring our own hang ups to supporting others.

If you have had those comments made to you in the past you are more likely to make them. You learn about grief from your own grief experiences. Often they start in childhood when a grandparent dies. Or more likely, a pet dies. This is where you learn how to work with grief.

Be mindful of any comments you may make. Pause before saying anything to check that what you are saying is helpful.

7. Be A Safe Place – Support, Be There, Listen, Maintain Confidentiality

When someone is grieving they need somewhere safe, someone safe. You can be a safe person by being there to offer support. Just be there. No running commentary, no rush of words, just be quiet. Listen when they want to talk. Don’t offer solutions – they don’t want one.

Most importantly – don’t talk to other people about what they have told you. They need to know they are in a safe place where they can share things that aren’t going to be spread around to other people.

Actively listen. That means you put your phone down, you look at them, if culturally appropriate you occasionally make eye contact.

When they say something respond to that. You may acknowledge what they are thinking. You may agree with something they have said. You may summarise what they have said.

Do this naturally and according to the context of the conversation.

They may say: “He loved watching the sunset with me.” You may respond: “what a lovely memory”.

8. You Can’t Fix Another Person’s Pain

It is so hard to see someone else in pain. A lot of the unhelpful comments come from the compassionate response to seeing someone you care for in pain.

Hard as it is. You can’t fix it. The best you can do is be willing to sit with it.

If you have your own pain that is brought up by another person’s pain then you may need to tell the other person you are sorry for their pain but that you need to leave. You can always explain later when both of you are more receptive.

Remember, if you need help with this then seeing a grief trained counsellor may be helpful.

9. Your Story Is Not Important Here

You may rush to share your own story here. As I mentioned earlier, you may want to share it from the purest motives. But it won’t come across that way.

Just be with the person and save your story for much, much later when it may be more appropriate to share it.

10. Give Permission To Grieve

It may seem unnecessary, but many people feel pressured by other people and their own expectations to not grieve.

Let them know it is okay to grieve.

Many people who are grieving need to be reminded of this.

11. Grief Is Normal

The final point is that grief is normal.

It is normal to feel like you are going mad. That is a common experience.

Forgetfulness, numbness, confusion, being distraught, anger, bitterness, disbelief, headaches, aches and pains, not feeling hungry, not looking after yourself, obsessively doing things, wanting to pace constantly, wanting to be busy and so on.

These are all normal grief reactions.

And there are many more.

The best support you can give is to let them know it is okay to feel that way.

Don’t rush them off to counselling, unless they ask.

These reactions will gradually abate over time. Eventually the person will start living again and will start looking for meaning in their experience.

If you are concerned about someone keep in mind that grief that is considered problematic is not diagnosed until at least 6 months after the loss.

Allow time.

If you think after 6 months the person is struggling to cope then you might ask if maybe they would find counselling helpful.

Of course, sometimes people want to talk to a counsellor in the initial days or weeks of grief. That is fine for them to do. But don’t force someone and pathologise their experience.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how you can help you with a friend’s experience, or talk about your own experience that has been triggered, or refer a friend who is struggling with grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

How The Stories You Give To Your Life Assist With Your Grief

There is a lot to talk about in this topic, so the blog is very long. Allow several minutes to read it, or read it in stages.

All people have a major thing in common. We give meaning to everything in life.

We organise events into a narrative, or story, that allows us to form a sense of continuity and meaning in our lives.

Grief is no different.

We assign meaning to losses and these meanings impact the course of our bereavement.

Assumptions about the nature of life, love, suffering, human vulnerabilities and death inform a lot of the meaning we give to life. We source these assumptions mainly from our culture and our life experiences.

One Story: The Assumption They Were The Only One Who Loved Me

One thing I see a lot in my work is where a person loses someone they love and feels rejected by others in the period after the loss.

Maybe that has been your experience? In which case you may relate to the story that forms where the person who died is the only one who loved you.

As a result of this story you may push others away because of your hurt.

Loss Hurts

Loss hurts BUT memories and what the one you loved has left behind will continue and can help you find a meaningful, productive and hopeful path forward.

So much of loss can involve deep despair and it is impossible to express that loss in words, especially early on in your grief.

It is during this time you may find it hard for your story to be heard.

Putting Your Story Together

You may not have a story that makes sense, even to you. You may not be able to put your story into words. You may need to talk about events before you can put together a story that makes sense.

Maybe those close to you are hurting too and aren’t able to hear your story.

Maybe friends are too busy to hear your story.

Grief groups can be helpful but they only work if others in the group are able to listen and not impose their own agenda on your telling of the story.

This is where a counsellor who specialises in grief can be helpful. I am such a counsellor, and my interest is in hearing your story and allowing you to tell it. I know how important that story is.

Questions To Explore During Your Time of Grief

Some questions that can be helpful to consider are:

• What should I do with this sense of meaninglessness?

• What did my loved one’s life mean?

• What did I learn from them?

• How should I make good use of all the love they gave me?

History Of Beliefs Around Grief

At the end of the nineteenth century, when modern psychological theory was born, it was believed that grief had an end point.

The theory stated that to grieve properly you had to sever attachment to the one who died. Continuing to have an emotional bond with the person was considered pathological!

By the 1940s the time limit of 4-6 weeks was suggested as the correct length of time to grieve!

This is where the belief that you had to ‘get over’ grief and get over it quickly came about.

Many people tell me they encounter others who suggest that now the funeral is over it is time to be over the death! The harm caused by that belief is significant.

It is now known that the brain has to make major changes to its neural networks after the loss of a loved one and that takes months.

Missing My Mother

When my mother was alive she used to ring me every week. I lived overseas and was very isolated with no one to share events in my life with. My mother was that person I talked to.

Then she was dead and there were no weekly catch ups. Things happened in my life and there was no one to share those events with. I missed her.

I mentioned this to my brothers and the response was that I obviously needed to see someone because what I was experiencing wasn’t normal. Of course they were wrong, but at the time I didn’t know that.

More Recent Understanding Of Grief

By the 1980s beliefs around grief had expanded the grieving time to two years. Attachment to the dead was seen as being important. There was emotional energy in the relationship and it was believed you had to withdraw that energy and pour it into other people instead.

This slowly transformed to an understanding that memorialising the person instead of withdrawing emotional energy was actually what was needed.

It was still believed that people would “recover” and go back to normal.

How Grief Is Understood Today

There have been great advances in grief understanding since then and the word “recovery” has been replaced by words such as adaptation, re-integration, management, coping or transformation.

Recovery is considered to portray grief as something minor and fails to acknowledge the importance of loss and something that is not repairable.

The main understanding today is that you “don’t get over” grief.

Life never returns to how it was. Part of working through your grief involves learning how to adjust to the new reality without the one you love.

Ways You May React To The Death Of A Loved One

Grief reactions and responses typically involve:

• emotional distress,

• depressed mood,

• confusion,

• difficulty sleeping,

• forgetfulness,

• crying a lot,

• feeling a range of emotions, seemingly with no control over them,

• loss of interest in forming new relationships and goals,

• disruption of sense of self, worldview and life narrative.

Problems can arise when, over a long period of time:

• it is hard to accept the loss,

• there is preoccupation with the deceased,

• loss of identity and role in life

• and loss of purpose and goals for the future.

This is a situation where counselling interventions are required.

Grief Is Not Full Time

When you are grieving, you don’t spend every waking moment engaged in grief. In the initial period when you are likely to feel numb it is more likely you will be preoccupied with what has happened, but over the next few days you will start to spend time living.

You do take time away from grief. Your brain can’t manage if you don’t. You also need to live. You need to eat, drink, sleep, shower, care for others and so on.

You do need time to grieve, but you also need time to:

• learn the new reality

• develop new roles in your life

• develop a new identity without your loved one

• develop new relationships both to your loved one and those around you.

It is important to also understand that grief is not just something within you, it is also something that is between you and other people around you:

It involves:

• your world view and changes you may need to make to it,

• reconstructing meaning in your life

• forming a continuing bond with your loved one

• reconstructing your identity

• making positive changes in your life as you adjust to your grief.

Meaning Making

There are two aspects to making meaning of loss. These are:

• Assimilating the loss into the assumptions you made about life before your loss and the self narrative you had. This approach allows you to maintain a sense of continuation with your life before the one you loved died.

• Accommodate to the loss by dealing with previous assumptions about life by reorganising, expanding, or replacing them. This will often result in positive changes and personal growth that allow you to continue with life.

To do this three things need to happen:

  1. Sense making – you need to make sense of your life now,
  2. Benefit finding – you need to find a benefit either in the death of the person or your growth as a result of that loss. You may find you grow in your knowledge and sense of competence in your life, you gain valuable perspectives about life, develop stronger relationships with others and establish valuable connections.
  3. Identity change – It has been known for thousands of years that pain leads to growth. After the initial disorganisation of grief you go through a long period of growth alternating with the pain of loss. As the pain of loss becomes more bearable you continue to grow.

What Grief Involves

Grief involves you allowing yourself to feel the pain and all the emotions associated with your loss. Then you will start to reorganise your life and develop a new identity. In the process you will change your worldview to incorporate your experience of grief. You will rebuild yourself and develop a new narrative (story) of your life that includes the grief experience.

This is meaning making.

The type of meaning you make will include the culture of your society and family and how these two cultures understand death. There are different ways of expressing grief, different rituals around mourning, different ideas about what is normal and how to relate to the one who has died. This will have a major impact on how you make meaning of the death of your loved one.

Your outlook on life will also have a deep influence. If you are someone who tends to see the positives in life you are more likely to look for the positives in your experience. This doesn’t mean you won’t experience any pain, but it does mean you will seek to find positive meaning in your grief.

Ultimately, how you view grief will depend on your outlook on life, how your family perceives death and how your culture conceptualises grief.

Why Meaning Making?

When your losses challenge or even shatter the meaning you have given to your life you search for new meaning. Making meaning of their loss is how you understand and make sense of their loss. During this process you will reconstruct that meaning through making sense of what has happened, seeking to find a benefit in your new reality, and identifying the way you have changed.

Strategies to Make Meaning

One of the main ways to make meaning is through storytelling. This is why it is important to have someone to tell your story to. This is where seeing a counsellor can be helpful.

As you tell your story of loss again, and again. As you remember details and share them, even adding them into the overall narrative, you start to gain a sense of the loss of that person.

Your story may be about things you would love to tell the one who is gone.

Your story may be about things that didn’t happen, but you wish had. Or it may be about things that did happen that are now causing pain.

In your story you may be able to find an understanding about the things your loved one did.

The story may involve gaining permission to grieve. This is particularly important if you were not allowed to show emotion to your loved one in their life.

It may also involve an exploration about what death is and how you and the one you loved felt about death. You may even tell a story about whether you believed the death was preventable.

It is important to remember that not all meanings are positive. Some people include a lot of regret in their story. They may believe something could have been done to prevent the death.

Over time, even those less positive meanings can be incorporated in a large, more positive meaning. That doesn’t mean all deaths are positive. It is hard to see a positive in death due to murder, or an accident for example. But it is possible to see positives in what you were able to do after death. Maybe being able to honour their life in some way can be the positive that came out of their death.

Who Am I Now The One I Love Is Dead?

When you love someone your identity includes that person. When that person dies part of your identity is challenged.

You exist as a person in a relationship. But if the other person in that relationship is dead then who are you now?

You may have been a partner, child, parent, friend to the one who died. Now they are dead, who are you? What is your identity now?

Your life had plans, hopes and dreams that included your loved one. What is your life now without them?

Telling your story, over and over helps to put your loss in order and start making sense of it. You can celebrate who they were, cherish the memories you have of them, and feel grateful for what you gained from that relationship.

You also can express the negatives about losing that person. In fact that is what you will most likely spend the early part of acute grief focusing on. As time goes on the time spent on the negatives will become less and you will switch to celebrating their life, cherishing the memories you have of them and living your life to honour them.

Over time you can learn to understand yourself better and form an understanding about who you are. This is an important aspect of grieving.

The Importance Of Your Story

Part of being human involves constructing stories about your life.

Your stories will most likely include things that were important to you. They can be negative things and positive things.

All those stories contain meanings. It may not be obvious when you construct them, but telling others can help you to identify those meanings.

The stories you tell around grieving are not simply stories about the death, they are also stories that affirm life, everlasting love and consolation. Also contained in those stories are the pain, anguish and the often daunting challenges you faced in grief.

Recognising what you have been through and survived is valuable for you in recognising who you are and assists you to make further meaning about the loss of your loved one.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief, telling your story and finding meaning in your experience please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

How to Learn Not To Fear Emotions

A big problem for many people I see is unprocessed emotional pain. A large volume of unprocessed emotional pain.

It is not surprising given the belief in our society that you should just push those “bad” feelings down and ignore them.

If you didn’t grow up in a family that supported you experiencing that pain and learning how to process it, then you will be unlikely to know how to process it.

Emotional Pain Is Not Bad

Some mental health approaches pathologise the experiencing of emotional pain. As a result they teach the suppression of emotional pain.

This belief and teaching fails to understand the roots of some pain. Unprocessed emotional pain that has been with you for a long time will continue to be with you until it is processed.

You will not be able to process emotional pain until you have developed the courage, strength and skills to stay with those overwhelming emotions until they are fully processed.

Emotional Pain As The Monster Under The Bed

A lot of people tell me they fear those emotions. I can understand that. A lot of these unprocessed emotions relate to childhood.

A child needs to be taught how to process emotions. If they aren’t taught then those frightening emotions are impossible to process. The child learns to fear those emotions because they seem insurmountable.

If you add to that difficulty a family that actively encourages the suppression of emotions, even punishes family members for feeling emotions, then that fear becomes terrifying and deep seated.

The Pain Body

In his book “A New Earth” Eckhart Tolle describes the ‘pain body’. This is the “energy of old but still very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being.”

The pain of old traumas is often described as energy because of the way this pain crops up again and again. The pain is actually stress or trauma that has never been processed so remains in the body. When that stress or trauma was initially experienced the nervous system became dysregulated and the emotions felt at the time became trapped in the body. Things can trigger the memories around this stress or trauma and you are again feeling the old pain.

Not Feeling Into The Body

Unprocessed pain can cause you to fear emotions and their associated feelings. To avoid experiencing what is feared you stop feeling into your body at all. The body becomes a scary place where emotional monsters lurk.

If you can’t feel into your body, you can’t release the pain and you can’t feel safe and relaxed. In order to relax you need to be able to feel your inner body. That means you have to be prepared to feel the feelings there.

Actions Are Trapped In Your Body

Many somatic therapists talk about the actions trapped in our bodies.

Peter A Levine, the developer of Somatic Experiencing and author of many books including ‘Waking the Tiger’, speaks of the experience of animals chased by predators and escaping. After the animal has escaped the predator it shakes its body to release the energy still in the body that allowed it to escape. He likens it to our need to release that excess energy after a fight/flight event. This allows the energy to be released from our bodies.

Eckhart Tolle also talks about releasing energy from stress. He tells the story of two ducks getting into a fight. After they are finished they move away from each other and flap their wings several times. Then they continue on as though nothing has happened. The ducks are also releasing the excess energy.

The Problem Of Holding On To Experiences Instead Of Releasing Them

We humans tend to hold on to these experiences. Instead of the release actions of the animal that has escaped a predator or the duck that has just finished a fight, we hold on to the fight or the escape.

Humans create narratives of events and the escape and fight get woven into our narratives. If the opportunity to process the events and release them does not happen, the events are kept alive and ongoing by continuing to tell the story, even to ourselves.

Remembering Events But Releasing The Energy

We need to remember events. This is how our brain keeps us safe by remembering dangerous situations and alerting us to similarities in situations. The problem arises when we continue to think of the events as ongoing, instead of past events.

The way forward is to learn how to regulate emotions.

Learn not to fear experiencing the emotions. That you can do this and actually those monster emotions are not massive, overwhelming giants, but mild little critters that are quite manageable.

Once you learn how to regulate and that those emotions are not as scary as you thought they were, you can then learn to be kind to your body. You can learn to be present and have confidence in your strength and ability to process painful feelings and emotions.

You can also learn that difficult emotions can be temporarily destabilising. That they may need attention to work through them. But they can be worked through and you can emerge stronger in the knowledge that you have the skills to process your emotions.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you learn not to fear your emotions and to process them, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

4 Questions You Need To Grapple With As Your Grief Matures

It is a strange concept. The idea that grief matures.

Usually it is described in other ways such as time passing, or moving on from the acute grief phase and so on. But as I thought about what I was writing today the word matures popped into my head.

When you think about it, matures is a good word to describe what happens to your grief as time passes.

You do eventually find yourself learning to live with the absence of the person you loved who is gone. You start getting interested in participating in life again. The pain you felt early on transforms into something less acute, still there, just not as sharp.

It takes time. A long time.

So I Think They Aren’t Coming Back

That is bigger than you think. That moment when your head knowledge that they are not coming back is joined by that deep seated belief that they aren’t coming back.

You may not have reached that point yet. You may think it sounds crazy. But when you think about it there is a gap between knowing someone is not coming back and believing it.

Their Loss Is With Me Constantly

Many people tell me that their loss is always with them. The knowledge that this person is not with them. This is particularly obvious when doing something you may have formerly done with the person who is gone.

I remember that feeling. I also remember that over time it stopped hurting so much. And that is what other people tell me as well.

One person I saw told me that they likened their grief to a tape playing over and over in their head. Missing Fred, missing Fred, missing Fred, missing Fred. They were grieving the death of their husband of 40 years. They worked together so every moment of the day was in each other’s company. Missing Fred was the one constant in life. No matter what they did, Fred was always not there.

Why Bother With Life?

Initially many people find their biggest issues are about getting out of bed and going through the motions of the day.

Then they reach a point where they realise life goes on and they can’t make it stop. There is no choice but to move forward in life.

As each day comes, the previous day recedes into the past. What was yesterday quickly becomes last week. Last week quickly becomes last Month and so on.

Life’s forward progression is relentless. At first you were bereaved last week, then last month, then months ago, then last year, then years ago.

It is sad, but an inescapable fact of life. The one you loved becomes part of your past, not your present. Your choice is to keep going or give up. Most people find that keeping going, even when it feels hard to do, is what they do.

Question 1 Who am I, now?

The first question you are likely to grapple with is the big question of who you are now that the person who was part of your life is no longer there.

You are defined by the ones you love. You are defined by the relationships you have. When an important relationship is gone, who are you?

Question 2 What Do I Do Now?

You may continue to do the same things the two of you did or you may choose to do different things.

When making that decision you need to decide if you did something purely because the person you loved did that or you did it because you loved doing it too.

Do you still want to do that thing? Has it lost its meaning now the one you loved is not doing it with you?

Do you want to do new things? Maybe you never did them because you didn’t have time. Maybe now you decide to drop old things and do new things.

Question 3 How Do Other People Fit Into My Life Now?

Many people who lose a partner find their couple friends no longer hang out with them. You are no longer a couple. That is hard to fit in to couple friendships.

You may find you hang out more with other friends.

You may also find you work to make new friendships.

You may also decide you want a different social life. Maybe you want to do completely different things (hence new friends) or go out more or less than you used to.

All these relationships are open to you. It is a different way of being and whatever you do there will be changes.

Question 4 What Next?

What do you do now? What new future are you going to make? You can’t keep the old one with your loved one in it. So what will your new future look like?

You have an opportunity to have a whole new life. Bit first you need to stop and think about what you really want to do.

You have a new freedom. You may find that exhilarating, terrifying or a bit of both.

Allow yourself time to dream and imagine what your life could be. Try things out. If they don’t work you can just move on to try something else.

You have been given an opportunity to change your life. Don’t be frightened to take that breathe of courage and try new things.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

24 Common Signs Of Trauma and How To Heal

Experiencing a traumatic event has a major impact on your emotional, physical and psychological health.

Trauma may be long term, such as being in a relationship with a narcissist or an abusive person. Trauma may be a single event, such as something painful or shocking that happens.

Trauma challenges your sense of safety in the world and the reliability of the world.

Trauma challenges your sense of self, of who you are.

Gabor Mate, a Canadian doctor and expert on trauma in his book “The Myth of Normal” writes that “trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you”.

In this quote he is talking about the impact of a traumatic event being individual. Some may walk away from an event relatively unscathed whereas others may be deeply impacted.

The age you are when you experience a trauma has an impact on how you are affected. Trauma occurring in childhood, while the child is still developing their sense of identity as well as developing their brain, has the potential to cause more damage than trauma affecting an adult.

The 24 most common signs of unhealed trauma include:

1.    Being chronically exhausted

2.    Finding it difficult to trust others

3.    Compulsive behaviours and addictions, all about avoiding unpleasant feelings

4.    Not feeling safe anywhere, at home, out of the home, inside your body

5.    Experiencing emotional numbness

6.    Experiencing difficulty concentrating

7.    Having a heightened startle response

8.    Finding it difficult to sleep or having nightmares.

9.    Feeling numb and dissociated from what is going on around you

10.   Skin issues such as rashes and other irritations.

11.   Upset stomach, diarrhoea, bloating, nausea and so on

12.   Constantly apologising

13.   Constantly thinking about things

14.   Gaining or losing weight.

15.   Feeling emotionally dysregulated and struggling to contain feelings of rage or anger

16.   Feeling Depressed

17.   Self-isolating from others

18.   Uncontrollably crying

19.   Experiencing difficulties relating to others

20.   Being frightened of being alone

21.   Struggling with memory and processing information

22.   Having unrealistic beliefs about other people.

23.   Feeling guilty, and experiencing shame.

24.   Being hypervigilant.

As you can imagine, experiencing even some of these signs is distressing and challenging to your sense of who you are.

How Do I Recover?

The biggest impact of trauma is your sense of who you are.

The good news is that you can rebuild your sense of who you are.

You can also learn how to trust the world. Part of that learning is identifying what safety for you is, right now.

You also need to allow yourself time to grieve for what you have lost. Without that healing is not possible.

This recovery will not happen overnight. It takes time. Don’t rush. Don’t think you are failing because you are not “over it” quickly. Cut yourself some slack and be patient.

What Do I Need To Do To Recover?

Sometimes, if the trauma had a smaller impact on you, you can recover with the help of supportive people. Other times you need a trauma trained counsellor to help you.

The first thing you need to do is to understand what safety looks like for you.

Once you understand what that is, you can work at rebuilding your sense of safety.

Rebuilding Your Sense of Safety

To feel safe, you need to feel safe within your body. When you suffer a trauma you may want to run away from the unpleasant feelings. You experience these feelings in your body. A major part of coping with the unpleasant feelings is ignoring what your body is experiencing.

To rebuild your sense of safety you need to learn to feel what is happening in your body. You also need to learn to be comfortable with those feelings.

For someone who experienced trauma as a child, there may never have been learning about feeling into the body. For those who learned already, it will be more about learning to feel into the body again.

Regulation Is A Major Part of Feeling Safe

When you experience uncomfortable feelings in your body you need to be able to cope with those feelings.

Many people learn unhealthy ways to do this. Addictions and compulsive behaviours are about dulling feelings. Emotional numbing is also an unhealthy strategy.

What you may need to learn is how to calm your body. Being able to calm yourself down allows you to feel you have control over the feelings in your body as well as the emotions and memories that come up. That is very empowering. When you have control and feel you have power then you can feel safe.

Internal Safety Leads Outward

Once you feel safe in yourself, you can feel more confident to start trusting those closest to you, then those less close and finally strangers and situations you encounter day to day.

When you feel safe in yourself you also can experience greater clarity around the people in your life and can make decisions about what relationship you have that are unhealthy and set boundaries around those relationships.

Boundaries may look like ending the relationship, limiting when you see the other person, or even limiting the type of contact you will have with them and the type of behaviour you will tolerate from them.

Allow Space For Grieving

When you experience trauma, whether it is recent or in the past, you have lost things that are important. The loss of sense of self and sense of safety. What way you saw the world and those around you is lost. You have also lost the life you had. There may be other losses as well.

All these losses need to be recognised and grieved over.

Grief isn’t pleasant. It hurts. You may even feel angry. The pain is deep.

It is important to learn to be okay with those unpleasant feelings. Don’t try to avoid the feelings by getting busy with activities, be they work, social life, hobbies or relationships. Those avoidance activities will only prolong the grief, they won’t solve it.

A lot of the signs of trauma are caused by trying to avoid the pain.

Counselling is helpful here too in learning how to process this grief.

Building Your Connection Back To Self

When you have grieved the losses and rebuilt your sense of safety in the world you can work on establishing a connection to yourself so you can get to know Who You Are again.

This is a wonderful opportunity to explore the things in life that help you feel who you are. The things that feed you.

This is where you learn to listen to your body as it tells you it is comfortable.

This is where you may find that trying new things will help you discover aspects of yourself you didn’t know existed.

Here is your opportunity to learn how to live in the post trauma world.

Space and Time

As you rebuild your sense of self and safety, as well as grieving for what was lost, give yourself the space to grow.

Ensuring you sleep enough hours is important. Take yourself out to the beach of the bush. Sit and feel the waves at your feet, sit under a tree and listen to the sound of wind through the leaves. See a trauma trained counsellor.

Surround yourself with people who support you and will encourage you to grow and try new things.

Most importantly give yourself time. See this as a journey that is best enjoyed and taken at a slow enjoyable pace.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with healing from your trauma, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

Grief is learning and learning takes time

How many of you have experienced grief and felt very disoriented?

In all the losses I have experienced I have definitely felt disoriented. I thought I was going mad until I went to a grief course and learned that this is the most common experience of people.

There is the here and now. There is reality. But it is new and so different.

The Loss Of The Familiar, Safe Framework

All the normal routines and things that anchor the day are not there anymore.

The day-to-day interactions with the other person, whether face to face or through telephone conversations and messaging, or online connections, have gone. What is left is very new and frightening. You no longer feel that safe framework around you.

The feelings of disorientation will eventually pass, as you learn the new routines and learn to feel safe again within the framework of those new routines.

You never forget the old routines and what they felt like, but you learn new routines that help you to feel safe again.

There Are Many Losses To Grieve.

What I have described so far has been fitted to someone close dying, or the relationship ending and them not being in your life anywhere. I will continue to write about that perspective, but there are many losses where you experience the same disorientation and learning.

This could also apply to:

• a new house,

• a new location,

• a new country,

• changes in your health that impact how you live your life,

• changes in the health of someone close to you,

• the loss of a pet (due to death or no longer owning it),

• losing your job,

• losing financial security,

• and so on.

The Role Of Adaptation In Learning

As you progress through the days after your loss, you will learn how to live in this new reality. The term used for this is adaptation.

Many people see adaptation as learning how to live the same life again.

But you can’t. Your life isn’t and never will be the same again.

There is a lot of pressure from society to get over the loss and “move on”. There are non grief trained counsellors who will work with you to move on within the old framework.

But that old framework doesn’t exist any more. Trying to fit back into it is doomed to failure.

What adaptation is about is learning to live in the world as it is now. This applies to anyone moving through life. But for you, dealing with grief, this is about adapting to the new reality, the new world in which you live. The world without the person you loved and still love.

The Brain Is An Expert At Keeping You Alive.

Your brain is designed to keep you alive.

One of the things it does is predict what will happen. This frees you to focus more on interactions with other people, which are always potentially dangerous.

Your brain will pattern much throughout your day as it predicts the routines and dangers in your world.

How Your Brain Predicts Regular Interactions

If you have had a relationship with someone that lasted many years, your brain has strong connections to the normal daily interactions you had with that person. So as you go through your day at the times where interactions normally happened, your brain will expect them. If those interactions don’t happen, that is confusing for your brain. You notice. You again experience that sense of loss.

Over time, your brain learns that those interactions won’t happen and the reminder, coupled with the fresh sense of loss, slowly abates.

It takes your brain months to learn the new reality.

That means the sense of disorientation will continue until your brain has learned and adapted.

Your Brain Works On The Assumption That Your Loved One Will Be There

Your brain is designed for connection. There are several structures within the brain that feed that connection. There are hormones within that brain that feed that connection. Your brain works hard to maintain those connections. Your safety framework is part of those connections.

Your brain seeks those connections. When someone you have a connection with is gone, then your brain seeks for the connection and can’t find it.

That is very disorienting.

Who Am I When Not Part Of That Person?

So much of your identity includes the people you love. Your brain actually has structures that connect you with the people you love.

When someone you love is no longer in your life, your brain has to remove the connections. This impacts on who you see yourself as, as well as impacting your connection to that person.

This means you define who you are in relation to the people in your life that you love and the places you go and things you do.

• Who are you if you lose your partner?

• Who are you if you lose your child?

• Who are you if your pet dies?

• Who are you if you are no longer working in a particular job?

• Who are you if you live in a different place? A different country?

• Who are you if you have lost a body part?

• Who are you if your health has changed?

This is more work that your brain has to do and it is disorienting.

Why Do I Keep Seeing, Feeling or Hearing This Person?

Many people report feeling their loved one is close to them, or think they see them in a crowd or hear their voice.

When you consider how the brain works, this is not surprising.

You are not deluded. You are not going mad.

Your brain will continue to predict the presence of that person for a long time.

After my mother died I would want to pick up the phone to tell her about something that had happened. This is part of the brain’s prediction of the person still being there.

Other people will say they still expect the person to walk through the door. They may say they feel the person is walking through the house. They may report feeling the other person touches them.

You are not going mad if that is your experience. It is your brain. Part of your brain is predicting those connections and not yet aware the person is no longer there. In time the brain will learn they are not there.

After my grandmother died I would go to the house and clean it. I often felt her presence in her old bedroom because that is where I expected to find her.

Forming Continuing Bonds With What You Have Lost

As your brain learns that the one you have lost is no longer there, it changes to allow the past memories and learn the new present. In that healthy state you will continue to feel a connection with and love for the person.

That is known as continuing bonds.

Integrating Your Grief

Another healthy way your brain will adapt is that the relationship to the one you have lost and the pain you experience will settle into a longer term response. In this place you will learn how who you are now that person is gone. You will learn how to live your life with the grief. You will learn how to remember alongside the grief.

This is know as integrated grief. You will still hurt, but it will be less acute.

You will have reached a point of learning to live and accept the new world, as it is now, and our place in it.

It Is Okay To Ask For Help

Grief is a long and continuous process. This is no smooth path. It is a long process where some days you will feel as though you have made great progress, and other days you will just want to turn your back on the world.

I liken it to a Northern Hemisphere autumn where the sun is often covered by clouds, there are winds that are no longer warm, and leaves are changing colour and falling off the trees. Everything is different and confusing. Some moments are beautiful and some moments are depressing.

You may wake up to a beautiful sunny sky and a late day of great warmth. Then you may wake up to clouds, wind and rain with a bleakness in the air.

And there is the constant flurry of emotions mirroring the multicoloured leaves as they leave the bare trees and blow around.

You may feel pressured by others or by yourself to “move on” and “get over it”. But you can’t get out of this place of swirling emotions, of good and bad days, of feeling you take a few tentative steps forward then hurtle backwards.

Navigating this time is hard. Sometimes you need help. This may be talking to a friend who understands. This may be talking to a grief trained counsellor.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with the learning in your grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

How To Talk To Other People Without Causing Unnecessary Pain

In my last blog I wrote about not suppressing your emotions and the way counselling should be an exploration of your emotions and through that to allow healing to take place.

But the fact is when you are hurting other people can inadvertently cause you pain.

I gave some examples:

•    The person struggling to cope with the death of their partner being asked how they are.

•    The person being asked about their job when they have just been made redundant.

•    Being asked what your parents do when you are a teenager whose father has just died.

For people on the receiving end of these curious or caring questions it can be something they learn to dread.

So how do you avoid causing pain to others?

Personal Boundaries

Boundaries are important to pay attention to when interacting with others.

Your boundaries and the boundaries of the other person are important.

Personal boundaries usually are best described as layers of a circle. In the centre is you. There are things you don’t ever tell other people. That is healthy and normal.

The next circle out is intimate relationships. These are the people you are intimately involved with. For a child that would be parents. For adults that is usually your romantic partner. You tell these people things you don’t tell others, but you still keep some things to yourself.

The next circle out is family. This is anyone in your family that is not your intimate relationship. This can be siblings, parents (if you are an adult), grandparents and so on. These are people you will allow to know things about you but maybe not the private thoughts you share with those you are closer to.

The next circle out is friends. These are close friends that you will share information with. People in this circle and the inner ones will be aware of more private things about you. They will be more likely to be aware of bereavements, loss of job and so on.

The next circle out is acquaintances. You will most likely say hello and exchange pleasantries with them, but they are unlikely to know private things about you.

The outside circle is strangers. Unless you are sharing information about a specific thing that you are both involved in you will not tell them anything. An example of that specific thing may be to share that you own the same breed of dog they have, or your child has the same red hair and so on.

Communicating With Others

In communication boundaries are important. The type of questions you can ask will depend on which circle you are in.

Acquaintances and strangers may become friends over time. But you need to know them better before they move into that circle.

When you are getting to know someone you are more likely to ask questions about each other. This is where things can get tricky. It is important not to ask invasive questions. Be mindful that you may be used to asking personal questions in your friendship group, but you are no longer in that group and it is not appropriate to ask some questions.

For example:

A common question women of childbearing age get is “Do you have children?”. This may seem a fairly innocuous question but it can be very upsetting.

Women struggling with fertility report the pain caused by such a question. Then there are women who don’t want children and are fed up with having to justify their choice to other people who have no right to judge their choice.

Another question to younger women who are in a steady relationship is “When are you going to have children?”. That is a big NO. That is nobody else’s business. Again, if the woman is struggling with fertility that is very hurtful.

Only raise the question of children if they raise it.

How to ask “How Are You”

Many people struggle with how to support bereaved friends. Do you ask them how they are or not? When my mother died I didn’t mind being asked. I lived on the other side of the world and no one else knew her. So it was comforting to feel someone remembered.

However, for many people, that question is one they don’t want to hear.

“How do they think I am. I just lost my [loved one].”

So what do you do?

Maybe say something else. “I have been thinking of you”. You can maybe add an offer of help. Maybe you are heading to the shops and you wonder if you can get them anything. Or you are willing to sit with them if they want to talk or just have someone there while they don’t talk.

If you want to ask how they are, preface it with “I know you are grieving and in pain at the moment. But I know that some days are better than others and I care that you are hurting and was wondering how you are today.”

What grieving people need to hear is that you haven’t forgotten their grief and that they are not alone.

What About Asking About Your Job?

Don’t.

Unless you are at a business function, when it is normal to ask someone what they do, don’t ask.

For people who are not working because they are parenting, or disabled and unable to work, or chronically unemployed that question suggests their only value is in having a job.

Asking A Child About Parents

With the high rate of relationship breakdowns at the moment, asking a child about their parents is potentially hurtful.

If the parents have separated the child may still be getting used to it and still grieving about the loss of their family unit.

If a parent is dead and they are still hurting in their grief, they won’t want to be asked that question.

This is one for adults to remember not to ask, and one to teach your children not to ask.

Asking About Family

This is similar to the one above. Remember adults can hurt too. Estrangements across a family are common and questions about family can be very difficult in the acute grief stage.

Be Mindful

When you meet a stranger or acquaintance be mindful of the topics raised in your conversation. Avoid questions that are more intimate. Stick to generalities and only ask questions on more sensitive topics if the other person raises the subject.

Be aware of the other person’s body language and monitor them for signs of discomfort. If you ask a question or make a comment and the other person looks uncomfortable, it may be appropriate to ask if your question or comment was upsetting and apologise.

Be Aware Of Which Ring You Fit Into

When interacting with other people be aware of which relationship ring you fit into.

Be wary of asking questions that are not appropriate for the relationship level.

Think before you ask questions of a friend. Is what I am going to ask going to cause pain? Is there a better way of asking? It is okay to tell a friend you don’t know what to say but you care and want to help in whatever way they need help.

If you are struggling understanding how to interact with other people, seeing a counsellor can be helpful.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your communication with others, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

Suppressing Your Thoughts And Feelings Seems Right, But It Isn’t.

In the current world there is a general belief that if an emotion is too hard you just suppress it. Force it under.

One of the main styles of therapy that is presented as “the correct way” to be and to operate tells you that these uncomfortable thoughts and emotions are faulty and wrong. You just have to work harder. You have to will harder. You can over come this.

But the truth is all the will in the world will not heal those uncomfortable thoughts and emotions.

I Failed Magic Wand Class

I see a lot of people who come to me for that style of therapy. They think it will be like a magic wand that I wave and in a few sessions they will be all fixed.

If only it were so.

The Myth Of Instant Gratification

We all want things to be achieved instantly.

Instead of working hard at following a correct diet and activity regime, we want to take a pill to lose weight.

Instead of working through those uncomfortable emotions. Instead of allowing time for those emotions to heal. Instead of allowing time for our brains to make the necessary changes to heal. Instead of doing all this we want it to be better instantly.

Having to work at something is hard and in this modern world with instant everything working at something is not what we have been taught to expect or have to do.

So maybe you come to me expecting instant results.

The Reality Of Healing

Sometimes the difficulty you are experiencing can be resolved with one or two counselling sessions.

Other times the difficulty will need longer.

Maybe your expectations have been raised by the passion for “the correct way”. You expect I will tell you what is wrong with you and you will do some homework and exercises and keep them up and you will be all better.

After all, it is so much easier to push things down and pretend they don’t exist than deal with them.

Isn’t it?

The Lure Of Running From Those Uncomfortable Feelings

So you run from those uncomfortable feelings. But they come after you.

So you run from them with alcohol, or cigarettes, or drugs or other addictions.

That works for a while, until the effects wear off. Then what do you do?

Running Is Like The Scab Over A Cut

As a former Registered Nurse, I liken the suppressing of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings to a scab that has formed over a cut.

You cut yourself, it hurts and it bleeds. Your body starts work immediately, defending from infection and commencing healing. First you will see a scab form. Ah! Its getting better.

But is it?

If all goes well, the scab forms, healing occurs underneath and the scab eventually falls off to reveal healed skin underneath.

But it doesn’t always go well.

Under that scab there is an infection. Pus forms and is trapped underneath the scab. That cut hurts. That cut is not healing as you thought it should.

The pus builds up. The cut hurts more.

I watched a colleague once remove the scab on a man’s leg. Her comment is so relevant here.

“I never trust a scab. It hides things that shouldn’t be there.”

She had noticed the signs of infection under the scab.

Scab removed, the cut was able to be cleaned and the infection cleared up. Not overnight, but over a matter of days with continued cleansing until the infection was cleared.

Counselling is like that.

Healing Requires Work and Time

If you want to resolve those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings you need to work at them.

I am not going to tell you that your thoughts are “faulty”. They aren’t.

I am not going to instruct you to not think about them. I will help you examine them to find what lies underneath them.

I may not seem to be “working” with you, but I am.

I Trust You To Be Able To Heal, Maybe With Help

I trust you as a person to have the ability to heal those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings with my assistance.

By assistance I mean that I will help you identify what is actually going on. I will tell you that what you are experiencing is a normal way for your brain to respond to your circumstances. Then I will help you work with your brain as it heals.

I will help you understand the unconscious parts of your brain that you cannot control consciously. I will help you heal those, which will often involve feeling into your body as well as allowing your brain to express itself through art, sand play, movement or other expressive methods.

I will tell you that things take time. Because your brain can’t rebuild new neural circuits overnight. Expect a few months at least.

I Don’t Use A Magic Wand

Whatever you do, don’t be like the people who come expecting me to wave my magic wand and make you all better in one session. See the start of progress, no matter how slight, as the wonderful evidence that healing has started.

And don’t tell your children they just need some “strategies” to cope with those painful thoughts and emotions when what they actually need is compassion and understanding that what is happening in their life hurts and it is okay to hurt.

Soldiering On Doesn’t Work

Wanting to be able to just “soldier on” was a wonderful marketing ploy for a drug company selling cold and flu tablets. We apply solider on to everything, including emotional pain. But there is no instant fix and even the “soldier on” message has been shown to be the worst treatment for those colds and flu.

Allow time. If you need to see a counsellor expect it to not be instant and be very wary of someone who tells you your thoughts are “faulty”.

In The Next Blog

I mentioned the pain of dealing with painful thoughts and emotions.

In the past few weeks I have seen a lot of people who have struggled with other people inadvertently causing them pain through their questions.

How are you? To the person struggling to cope with the death of their partner.

What is your job? To the person just made redundant.

What do your parents do? To the teenager who is grieving the death of their father.

These seemingly innocent comments can cause a lot of pain. So what can you do to avoid those foot in mouth blunders?

I will talk more about this in my next blog.t

Can I Help?

In the meantime, if you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with managing your thoughts and feelings, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

Reflections on Grief

By Nan Cameron

This is a poem I wrote in response to grief I experienced.

In an instant it’s gone
Just nothing
Cloying
Vacant
Nothing
Hanging in the space
Left behind
Nothing matters
Not anymore.

The disbelief
The horror
Of the fullness of life
No more.

And you stare at the empty shore
And feel the emptiness
The infinite emptiness.

Desolate shore
Howling winds of emptiness
Blow across the bleak sand
The ocean of desolation cries to the hollows.

There is nothing
Once there was light
Laughter
Joy
Delight
Sunshine
Love
Now there is only this bleakness
The searing pain
In an instant it was gone.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

What If The Trauma You Experienced Has Given You Some Amazing Strengths?

So many people who have experienced trauma in life live with the sense of terrible brokenness.

There is the sense that “I am defective”. And so much in your life has told you that.

There is a terrible sense of shame that these things have been done to you.

The Untrue Messages That Dominate Your Life

But those messages and the other negative ones you received are not true. They are the words of the people who traumatised you. If they were dysfunctional enough to traumatise you, then they were too dysfunctional to give you accurate information about yourself.

For many of you, you may be aware of this but are unable to turn off the negative messages in your head.

People Rise Above Childhood Trauma Better Than You Think

Over my life I have read and heard so many people’s stories. Many of them speak of surviving trauma to arrive at the point in their lives where they could share their story.

One thing that emerges from the story is the way they survived.

Some people are fully aware they have achieved a lot and want to share that heartening news.

Do You See Your Strengths Or Your Failings?

Other people are not aware. They may come into my room feeling such a failure, when they have achieved amazing things to just get to my door.

Maybe you are one of those people who sees only the negative and defective and can’t see the truth, that despite the horrible things that have happened to you in life, you are an amazing and unique individual.

Maybe you think that seems insincere. You don’t want to be told by me that you are amazing and unique.

Looking At Your Trauma From A Different Perspective

But what if, instead of seeing the awful things that have happened in your life you saw instead how they have contributed to you being an amazing unique individual.

What if you could see the way you have survived as being a triumph and instead of seeing the defective you see the triumphant you.

The Reality Of You, Here, Now

The reality is you are still here and you are living your life. You might not live it as well as you want to. You might not feel totally in control of your reactions. Those are things you can work on. But the fact that you are here and functioning is testimony to the way you had strengths and abilities that allowed you to function despite the things that have happened to you in the past. And just maybe those things that happened have given you strengths and abilities other people don’t have.

What Might Those Abilities Be?

There is the obvious one about your brain developing more in some areas that often means you are better at reading non-verbal communication than others and are better at spotting danger.

But there are other areas too.

Maybe you are more understanding of others.

Maybe you are more compassionate.

Maybe you have a drive to seek justice for others.

Maybe you believe in honouring your word so that you are reliable and admired for that.

Maybe you have tenacity in difficult situations that allows you to keep going when others give up.

Maybe You Need Help To Heal And See Your Strengths And Abilities

Maybe you can see these things but then that belief in yourself is blown away by all the negative messages in your head.

Sometimes you need assistance to heal. You need assistance to see the real you.

This is where a trauma qualified counsellor can assist you.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your healing and identification of your amazing strengths, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz