R U OK?

Hello lovely people and welcome back ❈ 

The annual campaign and a day of action, highlighting the importance of meaningful conversations. R U OK?Is being held today 12 September 2024. Are you someone who would let the person asking, ‘R U OK?’, know if you weren’t, ok? Is reaching out for help difficult for you?

We all know that if you have a broken arm, you don’t walk around in pain with a broken arm right, you take yourself off to the doctor quick smart. An x-ray would most likely follow, your arm would be set in a cast, and you would need to have at least one follow-up appointment when the cast was due to come off. All these steps because without them, you would be in pain and suffering. It is sociably acceptable across cultures, genders, and classes for you to follow this process. Then why would your mental health be any different?

I grew up in a house where my emotional well-being was not considered, I also grew up in an era where this was sociably acceptable. Where ‘men don’t cry’ and it was considered weak if you spoke about having mental health issues. Mental health stigma was alive and thriving in that era. I lived in a rural area that experienced a significant drought, where fourth and fifth-generation farmers’ livelihoods were completely impacted to the point of losing farms that had been in families for generations. These farmers were not equipped to deal with the stigma associated with their impacted mental health. As a result, our community experienced so many losses of older males to suicide. 

When this was occurring, my children were reaching their pre-teen years. It made me reflect on how I was raised, what these poor farmers were going through and how I wanted something different for our family. My boys needed to know that their emotional well-being mattered and that it was ok and acceptable in our house to talk about their feelings. That this didn’t mean they were weak, in fact, it meant that they were brave and emotionally responsible for taking care of their mental health needs. To make it easy for them to reach out to me, they just had to say, ‘Can I talk to you’. This meant they needed my attention, that something big was going on in their world. We used this sentence for multiple purposes, so sometimes I wasn’t sure what would be coming, a broken window, school detention, young love troubles or the like. It did condition my children that they could come to me for any reason, and I would listen first and then support them through whatever was going on in their world no matter how insurmountable they believed their situation to be. My children are adults now, and still come and chat with me about their big things.  

If someone asked you today, R U OK? how confident are you that you would answer them truthfully? What would prevent you from answering that person honestly? Have you or anyone else ever created a safe space so you could talk openly about your big emotions, where what you have to say takes priority in that space? Your mental health is important, you live with your internal dialogue 24/7, if you have more low-mood days than you do good days, I urge you to take steps to take care of your own mental health. Maybe when you reach out you could start with, ‘Can we talk’. 

❈ Thanks for joining me! Be kind to yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day ❈

Dreams

Hello lovely people and welcome back ❈ 

I came across this quote by Robin Sharma the other day ~ “Our wounds ultimately give us wisdom. Our stumbling blocks inevitably become our stepping stones. And our setbacks lead us to our strengths”. What do you think? How does one grow and learn if not through life’s dead ends, detours, roundabouts, and bumps in the road? Did I mention roundabouts, yes there are always a few roundabouts, there to revisit lessons not yet learned or to view situations through different (more mature) eyes. Do difficult situations result in you changing direction? Or lead to you giving up on your dreams?

Do you believe your dreams are worth persisting and fighting for, to achieve them when obstacles present blocks and barriers? Our dreams are full of our hopes and wishes, yet generally speaking, they usually don’t come to fruition without a lot of hard work, right? On the flip side of this, does that make your dreams even more special after you put in all that hard work to achieve them? Are our dreams worth changing and growing for?

The photo above is an example of what started out as a small dream. I really wanted floating wooden shelves for my counselling office space. The first photo is of a hardwood external very old step, it had lots of coats of paint, and some dry rot and had definitely seen better days. The process should have been easy, take the steps to a wood place and have the boards ripped to remove the outer layers, exposing the beautiful red hardwood hidden underneath. But no business would touch the step due to the age of the steps and the likelihood of potential unseen nails that would wreck their expensive machine blades. I was asked if I really needed these shelves as it would be labour intensive to achieve my dream shelves and easier to just buy some. As you can see, where there is a will there is a way. The boards were painstakingly sanded back, the rot sections were cleaned and then filled with black putty, followed by a couple of natural coats of varnish to bring out the rich red colour of the boards. When no premade fixture kits were available to attach the shelves to the wall to create the floating effect, steel plates and rods were crafted to create the mechanism that would support the very heavy shelves. It turned out to be so much more planning, creating and work than initially considered, but the end results were worth all the hard work. They look fantastic in my office space.

I can always remember having dreams, whether they have been small or big and seemingly out of my reach, just as I suspect you have. For example, one of my early dreams was to marry and have children, there was no forethought into just how involved and difficult this might be when I was a child. I didn’t care about that I just wanted my dreams to come true. I have achieved many dreams over my lifetime, some of which have been built on the back of achieving other dreams that have at times, been significantly influenced by events in my life. If certain events hadn’t happened, I believe my dreams would have looked very different.

Dreams are so very easy to conjure from our thoughts and feelings, though if there are lots of moving parts that just don't seem to want to work together, what do you do, give up, try another tactic, alter your dreams, or do you stay the course knowing it WILL eventually be possible. Your dreams, big or small are all important.  So keep dreaming, lovely people.

❈ Thanks for joining me! Be kind to yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day ❈

Authenticity

Hello lovely people and welcome back ❈ 

‘Authenticity’ is a big word, yet I like how it sounds and I like how it rolls off the tongue. But what does it actually mean? For me, it means being truly authentic – who you really are. Not who someone wants you to be, not a fake version of yourself but who you really are warts and all. Sometimes being authentic can be liberating for your soul, taking the worry and stress out of trying to act a certain way or trying to keep up a façade. So, let me ask you. Do you know who you are? Who you truly are? Do you live authentically or are you living to suit someone else's version of who they think you should be? FYI, you’re not who they think you are.

Many years ago, my partner was annoyed at a family member as this person was notorious for giving awful presents (Christmas, Easter, birthday), and my partner wanted to give something similar in return to this person. My reply was simple, ‘I’m not going to stop being me, I’m not going to live down at their level, that’s not who I am’. All those years ago I never really thought about whether I was operating from an authentic place or not, I just wasn’t going to stop being me because of how someone else was showing up.

As a child and teen, there were many times the situation required me to change who I really was, but as an adult, I’ve tried to live my life authentically especially after I turned 30 – this seemed to be a turning point in my life. This has meant that at times I have spoken up, disagreed with the majority, or offered a different perspective which hasn’t always been received well nor has it been a comfortable position to be in. Being true to what I believe in and what I know is right, is more important to me than conforming. Maybe my childhood has everything to do with not stifling my adult voice or speaking up for those who can’t. But at the end of the day dismissing my authenticity, who I am at my core and how I carry myself, goes against everything, it never sits well, and it impacts on my emotional well-being.

Let me ask you again, do you know who you are, do you know your values, do you know what’s important to you at your core? This is your authentic self. Do you care for and nurture your authentic self or do other people or situations impact how and when your authentic self shows up and is seen and heard? It can be uncomfortable living your authentic life, but sometimes it can be more uncomfortable not living authentically.

❈ Thanks for joining me! Be kind to yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day ❈

Validation

Hello lovely people and welcome back ❈ 

Seems to be a bit of a theme in my Blog posts currently and maybe that’s reflective of my own journey at present. My Introduction discussed our choices when something happens, and then I wrote about using Reflection as a tool for growth and coming to understand aspects of your journey. My last Blog introduced Self-care and its importance and the balance it has played within my life in grounding, soothing and acting as self-love. In this Blog, I write about Validation and unpacking the role it can potentially play in our journey.

Validation plays a pivotal role in our emotional happiness or unhappiness for that matter too. Validation can act as a way for us to understand our place in our own lives and where we stand. When you receive positive feedback – verbal, physical, emotional – then you judge how you are perceived within your environment through a positive lens and acceptance. And all is well in your world. The same can’t be said when the verbal, physical, and emotional feedback from your environment is negative. This has the potential to trigger old patterns or coping strategies, that can be conscious or at times unconscious and can elicit specific behaviours. I guess it does come back to perception and how we value ourselves when evaluating environmental feedback. If you have encountered positive validation throughout your life, then chances are you have come to expect positivity in life. But, if you have been raised in an unhealthy family environment i.e., Domestic and Family Violence, alcoholism, or the like, then you may have developed a critical lens through which you view feedback.

In expanding on this a little more, you may receive positive feedback though you have developed a default critical lens in which you filter all your environmental feedback. So even if there is positivity you may not fully accept it at face value and may be waiting for the ‘But’ or the follow-up of being asked for something. Developing a healthy sense of self is one way to overcome that critical feedback lens along with other healthy life patterns and skills.

Understanding yourself is another way to develop a healthy sense of self, when you learn to understand what you need which is often disguised or hidden under moods or behaviours, your emotional world can change. When we are upset or angry, these are just a behaviour, under the behaviour is a need that hasn’t been met. Sometimes we can give our power away, unrealistically expecting that someone else will know how to fill our needs. No one knows you like you know you, so don’t give your power away to them. Learning to fore fill your own needs requires self-exploration, honesty, understanding, trial and error, and practice, but it is all worth it! Internal Validation is a healthy way to live life, looking for it externally has the potential for disappointment as others can often get it wrong, no one knows you like you know yourself.

❈ Thanks for joining me! Be kind to yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day ❈

Self-care

Hello and welcome back. Do you ever have situations or circumstances that repeat in your life? And while you believe that you have learned lessons or taken knowledge from the experience, they seem to pop back up again! I 100% believe this is true for trauma or significant events in your life. We can never fully heal from things like this, as time passes, and we gain wisdom I think we can learn from these events through different eyes gaining additional insights. That’s why it’s called a healing journey.

I’m not talking about this kind of circumstance specifically, it’s more like being stuck in a holding pattern. The full moon energy seemed to affect me more so than usual this past month, I was so glad once it had passed. Yes, the full moon energy is a thing! When working with clients, we would sometimes have a run of situations and incidents, unusual things, or lots of arguments and sure enough it would be the full moon. I know this to be true when working with the elderly too.  

My feeling ‘off’ was more than the full moon influence, it resonated with a couple of other periods in my life when I had felt out of sorts like this. These had occurred when direction, finances, and choices leading to different paths were at play. I have attended counselling throughout my life as I have needed it, for me, it’s exactly the same as going to the GP when you are sick. As I connected with those previous periods in my life when the same feelings were present, I also connected back with the actions I took to increase my emotional well-being. While I revisited those actions and waited to see if they made a difference, my next steps would be to access counselling. Yes, even the counsellor needs counselling.

For those that have worked with me, you will know I always encourage self-care, I always bang on about how important it is even when you feel like it’s not working. From my exploration of those similar experiences, ‘self-care’ came to the fore front. I hadn’t realised I had pushed my self-care to the side, so I have made some small changes and guess what I started to feel better within myself. It’s amazing what happens when you tend to yourself like you would for others. Feels like I have turned a bit of a corner, yay! Self reflection in use again, people (Blog 2) such a handy tool to use, to learn and grow. Understanding yourself is so important because when you know yourself you can help yourself through tending to your needs #self-care#self-love, you’re just as important as those you love and care for too.

❈ Thanks for joining me! Be kind to yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day ❈

Reflection

I am a big reflector, meaning I naturally look back over my interactions to reflect what I could have done different and what I can learn. I find that this helps me to grow as a person, helps in my private practice, in my studies, in all areas of my life.

It's funny how lessons come up or rather the universe has a way of reminding you of lessons.

Recently I was assisting a young person through something that was significant for them that invoked feeling of embarrassing, shame, and feelings of being hurt. I assisted with the practicality of next steps whilst providing emotional support.... 

I felt drawn to come back to this person to revisit our conversation - I told them that they are not alone, that every person on the planet makes mistakes, does things they're not proud of or they feel ashamed of, or wish they hadn't done. We all have this in common because we are here living a human life on this planet. This is actually how we grow and learn. It’s okay to make mistakes, everybody makes them! I told this person not to focus on the thing they didn't get right, but to focus on what they had learnt from the experience. 

I can’t get this support when I was growing up, there wasn’t encouragement to be okay with getting things wrong. The messages I received were around being stupid which increased my embarrassment and feelings of shame. As a result, I am super tough on myself, I am a work in progress! Aren’t we all.

The next time you don’t get it quite right, don’t be so tough on yourself. Instead, be supportive remind yourself that this is how you learn and grow. We all make mistakes.

If you are struggling with a situation, Hand, Heart & Soul Counselling offers holistic counselling and therapeutic processes either individually or in a group setting (like minded women) 💜

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❈ Thanks for joining me! Be kind to yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day ❈

First Blog Post

Welcome to my first short and sweet Blog, stepping outside my comfort zone but in forward (digital) motion nonetheless! 

We are all here living a human life, just doing the best we can to navigate what comes our way and hopefully learning and growing as we go!

Sometimes we are coasting along in life and other times life just slams us, maybe for the first time or yet again!

How we choose to deal with what happens to us is a choice even if we have been knocked off our feet. We still have the choice to get back up, ask for a hand up, drag ourselves back up, or to stay where we have fallen. The choice is ours and ours alone. No one else is living your life for you.

Maybe you have been knocked down emotionally, maybe you’re struggling to find your feet again or you just want some guidance on next steps to hopefully begin forward motion on your journey. 

My passion lies with empowering women who have experienced trauma and/or hardship, to walk alongside them on their healing journey 💜 Hand, Heart & Soul Counselling offers holistic therapeutic processes either individually or in a group setting (like minded women), and counselling. 

Please feel free to follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

❈ Thanks for joining me! Enjoy the rest of your day ❈