Are you in control of your mind or is your mind in control of you?

There is an incredible intelligence within you that is constantly in conversation with your environment and with your emotions…. your mind is amazing.

Do you feel that your mind is in control of you?
Or
Are you in control of your mind?

To figure out who’s in the driver’s seat, we need to bring a little space to your thoughts.

Intentional slow breathing is the gateway.
Breathe deeply in (mouth closed) for 4 counts,
breathe deeply out (mouth closed) for 4 counts. Repeat 8 times.

When you bring some awareness, a new perspective to your thoughts can formulate.

Let’s ask your mind some important questions…

What should you be doing now? 

Write down your answers.

Next, finish the following sentences:

I should BE…
I should OWN…
I should DO…
I should LIVE…
i should HAVE…

Now, can you tell if you, your heart or your mind is in control?

Can you see how harsh and critical you are being of yourself?

Can you see how you are judging yourself?

When you hold yourself hostage to a “should” you are telling yourself

“you’re not good enough”
“you’re not doing enough”
“you’ve failed”
“your wrong”.

In my experience, these “shoulds”, the accusing and pernicious voices in our head, originate in childhood and adolescence. Perhaps it’s something that an adult said to you as a child, and since children are innately sensitive and narcissistic, meaning, they self-internalise the accusation or the emotional environment from their own self perspective (it’s the only perspective they comprehend), and therefore, they incipient an emotional coping mechanism.

Can you think of times in your early childhood, childhood and adolescence when someone said something hurtful? Probably after that, you started saying it more and more to yourself, adopting it as a voice in your head and believing it. And then, you behaved accordingly. Or perhaps, you grew up in a stressful or emotionally distressing environment, and therefore internalised the situation. An example of an emotional coping mechanism would be if you tried to please everyone or tried to make everyone feel better. Queue… putting everyone ahead of your own needs as adult, doing only what’s expected of you, or becoming emotionally unavailable in the adult relationships in your life.

This is where the PATTERN develops from an emotional incident or many emotional experience of the same kind.  Meaning, that you keep repeating this same emotional response and behaviour in adulthood.

This is what I would call “destructive programming”, which is the set of beliefs adapted through coping mechanisms adopted as a child, which have now elaborated into modus operandi, in other words, which have, for the most part unconsciously, become established repetitive adult behaviour.

It’s thoughts that have been “programmed” into your psyche through a combination of personal belief, personal emotional response and repetition.

 The way we we were treated when we were young, is the way we learned how to treat ourselves, and therefore is the way we still treat ourselves now.

It’s compulsory to underline that dissolving emotional and behavioural patterns is NOT an opportunity to blame your family/relatives/guardians/friends. It’s an opportunity for deep self relfelection, self compassion and self healting. The people in your life, most likely, did not intend to hurt you, they just didn’t have better tools for themselves at the time, and were doing what was done to them, and were repeating their own destructive programming which originated from the pain in their own upbringing.

Many of these patterns developed early in life through our environment. That’s not to say your childhood was bad or wrong, but most likely you went through some painful experiences. Now, how you live as an adult, you have outgrown the old patterns, yet you are still living the former patterns (subconsciously) which is creating chaos in your life.

Would you like to stop destructing your potential with your own thoughts?

Would you like to have a space to really listen to yourself, to gain a better understanding of yourself, so you can figure out how to create new thinking patterns that are true to who you are now?

Let’s get the foundation right.

I’m interested in getting to the root of the pain, anxiety, illness from an emotional-bio-social-psycho-spiritual perspective, so that we can uproot it, till the soil, plant new seeds and strategise a new growth (watering/nurturing/trimming) plan. It is spring time after all! 🙂

“Working with you is like spring cleaning my psyche” is how one client put it this week, and I particularly like the comment, as I am throughly enjoying the Berlin blossoms this week.

I am here to work with people who want to enquire deeply into your unique, natural bio-physiology and neurophysiology. I am not interested in finding something external to “fix” you.
I’m interested in your internal landscape; where we will look at

• what is your body communicating to you,
• what is your mind communicating to you and 
• what result this is having on you, your health and happiness (aka reengineer the subconscious patterns creating pain, illness and anxiety).

You can book your session here, and in the meantime, take a few moments to complete the “shoulds” exercise. It might be the revelation you’ve been seeking this week!

To supporting you,
Heidi

P.S For all the professionals with busy work weeks… I work Saturdays. 🙂 Book your session here. 🙂