Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Belief! It can ruin your life.
What if everything you believe is wrong? What if your
beliefs are the root of your problem and not your upbringing, your parents or
your traumatic experiences? In a world where people are seeking answers we are
honouring a human tradition stemming from time immemorial. It is the very
nature of man to seek truth and understanding but in the process we gain small
amounts of information which instead of becoming a stepping stone to the next
tasty morsel, becomes a belief that can so solidify in our minds that nothing,
not even a glaring truth can shake it.
What is it in us that makes us so susceptible to belief in
the first place? Belonging, justification, survival, control or perhaps, fear.
No matter why we carry a belief it can be the basis of delusion and is often
the justification for persecution of others, it is hard to actually find
something positive to say about belief. For many it prevents healing themselves
or even looking for the best solution while they stick with the one presented
by someone selling a product or idea. For others it prevents happy healthy
relationships because they believe they were unloved as children, no matter how
many people loved them and showed them love and yet for more it can disarm
motivation and a drive away the enjoyment of life until they believe the only
solution is death when in fact it is not a solution it is an ending that is
also the beginning of grief and recriminations for others, those very same others who loved them.
Resolving issues can often come down to one thing,
undermining an erroneous belief, it is the basis of all successful hypnotherapy
sessions. The very fact that you believe your life’s miseries or failures can
be blamed on something in your past or outside of yourself is a mistaken
belief, believing you can’t talk about something is a mistaken belief,
believing that no one understands you or your situation is perhaps more
reflective of not wanting to be understood. Believing you can’t be healed is
just as mistaken as believing you are broken in the first place. What beliefs
do you have that you yourself can turn over in a moment of clarity, you may
even have done so many times but returned to the belief as a safe haven for
your own behaviours, your own lack of motivation, caring or untrustworthiness,
your own lack of ability to make good choices or to take matters in hand and
deal with underdeveloped areas in your character.
We do choose what we believe and as a choice it makes it
clear that at any time we are proven wrong in a belief, we can choose again. The
main obstacle to this would appear to be not wanting to be wrong as this forces
us to rethink our whole attitude to life, and even take responsibility for all
our actions and words to date. You can experience your ‘time of reckoning’
while alive and you can use it to develop who you are. We hear all the time,
about those who turned their lives around, those who woke up one day and
thought ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’, or ‘I don’t want to be like this
anymore’. Magically their lives changed and yet others will apply their belief
to that, they will say they found god, fell in love or faced their own
mortality. The belief is less relevant than the one truth in these situations,
that truth is the person undergoing the magical change decided to live life
differently, they took responsibility for themselves and then thought, I can do
life better than this, I can be better than this.
The magic is usually painful
and drawn from self-awareness, it is these people who are unique and free
spirited as they have managed to dump the chains of belief to express who they
are in a way they find more meaningful, more empowered. Sometimes because they wanted something as in
love, wanting love can change a person radically, so can nearly dying, but for
many neither of these things change their choices, for the few who suspend
belief long enough to know they have input into life situations, that their
appreciation of life and others IS the magic that happens, it is the happiness
anyone can experience it is the essence of feeling value where you may never
have felt value before. Happy people are never asking what their life purpose
is, they are never seeking to avoid challenges, they don’t hold on to grief nor
hold angry communion with other angry fellows, they don’t spend their time
contemplating life after death as a reward for this life, they don’t have time for that as they are busy
living. The most noticeable thing about happy people is, that when something doesn’t
work for them anymore, they either change it or recognize the change in
themselves, they constantly strive for depth of experience, depth of character
and enjoyment of day to day life.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Fear: is it your Achilles Heel?
Fear is "an unpleasant and
often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.“ Fear is
completely natural and helps people to recognize and respond to dangerous
situations and threats. Without fear it would impossible to balance risk with
outcomes and therefore it would be difficult to assess safety in situations,
what we are talking about then is irrational fear.
What is
fear?
There are a few types of fear,
the first being responsive fear, or fear based on a real situation. If someone
or something hurts you, you have a reason to fear it in the future. The second
is predictive fear. This is rooted in dangerous situations, things that are
known to be dangerous that cause a person to avoid a threat in the first place,
for example, checking for traffic before crossing the road. This is essentially
taught fears, where you may not have experienced the threat in life, but have
been taught safety as a survival skill.
After that comes exaggerated or
emotional fear which involves an individual "recalling past fears or
occurrences and injecting them into a current situation. This type of fear is
particularly relevant to conflict. Emotional fear affects the way people handle
conflicted situations. This fear relates to avoidance, which is somewhere between
responsive and taught fear, there is usually an actual event in the past, but
it may have no bearing on what presents as fear in the present. For example,
one may have experienced fear as a child in abusive situations and in the
present may fear meeting new people, In other cases this fear can have a
reality base, for example again, in an abusive situation the child may have
feared being left alone with a person, as an adult they may find it hard to be
alone and yet being alone also represents safety, When unable to put the past
event and the current fear together as a responsive fear a person may recognize
events surrounding the fear but is unable to isolate the actual cause.
Identification can save years of counselling and healing that doesn't return the
result of removing the fear.
Little Albert learned to fear
white rats in the 1920s, rats learned to fear a simple noise more than 80 years
later. Scientist Mark Barad of UCLA performed an experiment in which he and his
team combined a noise with an electric shock. They would play the tone and then
immediately apply a shock to the metal floor of the rats' cage. It was
classical conditioning, and it didn't take long for the rats to brace themselves
for the shock as soon as they heard the sound. At that point, their Amygdala’s
paired the sound with the shock, and the sound created a fear response. The
researchers then began the process of fear-extinction training, in which they
made the sound but did not apply the shock. After hearing the sound very often
without the shock, the rats stopped fearing the noise. Fear without threat is a
learned response
In the aura fear is usually
represented At the rear, the spine area is nearly always involved, back, upper
arms, hamstring, back of knees, calves, ankles and heels. This often represents
trust issues which in in itself presents unique problems around resolving or self-healing
using fear extinction. Some people do this naturally at some point in life, they
just get tired of being scared and start doing the things they want to do
anyway, after a relatively short time the fear dissipates, as a strategy this
can be viewed as desensitization and really does work. If you recognize this in
yourself and you determine to do things differently, your life will change for
the better in that area if not all areas.
What happens when we experience
sudden fear?
The Hippocampus: cements Response
to threat in long term memory. Saliva decreases as digestive system slows, the
thyroid raises resting metabolic rate and lung bronchioles dilate taking in
more oxygen. Your Spleen contracts and pumps out white blood cells while blood
pressure & Heart rate spike. The Stomach and gastrointestinal vessels
contract and the Amygdala sends out an
all system alarm the Hypothalamus triggers the Pituitary and nervous System
causing your bodies major organs to prepare for action, Pituitary calls thyroid
and adrenal system to action and skin vessels constrict causing chills and
sweat. Adrenal medulla floods blood Stream with adrenaline and Noradrenaline
while the Liver breaks down glycogen.. Phew. There's a lot going on, this in a
real fear situation is seen as the body preparing to save itself, in a panic
attack you have no action to focus on, no action to release and use the systems
that are set up, all you have to do, is focus on how awful you feel, it can feel
like having a heart attack as the body turns in on itself in confusion.
All of these responses without action are what
a person FEARS when they are faced with situations, they have a conditioned
response which comes into play when there is any similarity in the current
experience. but unlike the mice, for some reason, even when there are years of
being free of the original event, even when there are years of having no
threat, the individual continues to act as if the threat is real. Why is that? Perhaps
it is because unlike the mice, man can think further ahead, and can anticipate
something well into the future or perhaps it is because man is capable of a
broader range of emotions, like guilt and shame. Another possibility is a
simple lack of development in the area of responsibility and consequence which
is exacerbated by avoidance of challenging situations, if the development of the
fear is very young there can be confusion between anxiety and the very simple
'i don't want to' of a child.
Either way the only way past a
body response to a past event involves creating a new conditioned response that
counters the original fear response. While studies situate the Amygdala as the
location of fear memories formed by conditioning, scientists theorize that
fear-extinction memories form in the Amygdala but then are transferred to the
medial Prefrontal cortex (MPFC) for storage. The new memory created by fear
extinction resides in the MPFC and attempts to override the fear memory
triggered in the Amygdala. This is important as this is also the recognized
area of current activity and consequence or predictive thinking.
Fear extinction
According to the National
institute of health, in excess of 19 million people in the United States alone
suffer from irrational fear responses. These disorders include general anxiety
disorder, panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
When faced with a situation that
we fear we can train ourselves to have a relaxation response instead of a
stress response, this needs to be a deliberate and repeated practice that will
ultimately override the original tendency to panic. Methods to practice include
meditation, conscious distraction, facing the fear by deed or action and a
controlled relaxation response.
Anything's got to be better than just going with the fear right? Part of
learning to manage fear is learning to accept the sensation or anxiety that can
be what many other people experience as nervousness, this is essentially,
controlled fear.
Risk and outcomes are weighted
against each other and an individual simply decides it's worth it, in this is
the root of any victim style mental processing, The thought that no one else
experiences your weakness, your fears or your guilt, when the truth is they do,
they just manage it when they need to, face it when it is important and there
is something valuable to gain, or charge through it to get to the other side,
driven by the hope that life will be better there.
The anxiety level is directly
related to perception, the bigger you make the problem the less power you have.
Look honestly at the worst case scenario to introduce proportion, communicate
your fears to gain clarity and a fresh perspective and don't get angry at those
who inform you that your fear is irrational. I have often seen clients who say
to family and friends that they don't understand and there is merit in this,
but there is also merit in that the person suffering an anxiety disorder
doesn't understand the variables that rate from nervousness to fear that others
work through, There is great value in acknowledging that you don't necessarily
have a greater fear than the next guy, what is different is what you do with
that fear, the worst cases of anxiety always, absolutely always, involve years
of avoidance. Conversely If someone communicates a fear to you try not to
dismiss it out of hand, vulnerability is not weakness and if they communicate a
fear, they are also asking for help in some way, You will know if they are not
and just looking for a way to be enabled how you help someone is up to you,
enabling though leads to greater problems in the future.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Hidden stress is a killer
In today's world we have acceptable stresses that after a time feel like your normal state, they become indistinguishable from your personality causing problems in relationships, health and even motivation. There is a level of stress that maintains itself if a person cannot come back completely from it, on of the main benefits of any meditation regardless of the content is this level of relaxation. Any person feels energized and it is thought the very act of meditating offers the body a regenerative value equal to sleep, that is to say 30 minutes of relaxing effectively has the benefits of an hour or more sleep. While consciously achieving a goal or working out stresses in the body and mind there is the added value of having better quality sleep during the night. Winston Churchill had this down pat with what was called at the time, power napping. He would nod off for 20 minutes or so and wake to have a calm and clear mind.
There are many symptoms of stress most noticeable and damaging to the body, is the relationship between the adrenals and the heart, Heart stress can be seen as palpitations, tightening in the chest, high blood pressure in otherwise healthy people, heart burn and more. When the adrenals are fired up a person will feel restless, impatient and easy to anger, over a long period this is often identified as anxiety and can seriously impact an individuals ability to have good relationships and enjoy life. The very act of relaxing effectively has the potential to bring clarity of thought, a sense of the ever elusive peace and health to the body, while the benefits can be far ranging when a meditation is also assisting in a repetitive problem that adds to stresses like making decisions, confidence and sleep deprivation due to insomnia and more.
Chill Pill addresses stress itself rather than the cause of it, it really doesn't matter what a stress is, although it is worth finding a hypnosis or meditation to help with other issues, learning to relax properly after stressful days or even during them can greatly enhance performance in all areas of life. It takes longer to get upset about things and if you are one to make lots of little mistakes, feel irritable or tired a lot, Chill Pill will be of great use to you.
https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=Bfzn4263zvo7cyv5a6hhd44u3ei&tid=song-Tqrv4sdga4bfrxyfku3wrbohhqy
There are many symptoms of stress most noticeable and damaging to the body, is the relationship between the adrenals and the heart, Heart stress can be seen as palpitations, tightening in the chest, high blood pressure in otherwise healthy people, heart burn and more. When the adrenals are fired up a person will feel restless, impatient and easy to anger, over a long period this is often identified as anxiety and can seriously impact an individuals ability to have good relationships and enjoy life. The very act of relaxing effectively has the potential to bring clarity of thought, a sense of the ever elusive peace and health to the body, while the benefits can be far ranging when a meditation is also assisting in a repetitive problem that adds to stresses like making decisions, confidence and sleep deprivation due to insomnia and more.
Chill Pill addresses stress itself rather than the cause of it, it really doesn't matter what a stress is, although it is worth finding a hypnosis or meditation to help with other issues, learning to relax properly after stressful days or even during them can greatly enhance performance in all areas of life. It takes longer to get upset about things and if you are one to make lots of little mistakes, feel irritable or tired a lot, Chill Pill will be of great use to you.
https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=Bfzn4263zvo7cyv5a6hhd44u3ei&tid=song-Tqrv4sdga4bfrxyfku3wrbohhqy
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