The Group Hug
What are the little lies we tell ourselves?
If I were to list just those I’ve told myself today, I would even shock myself. Here goes:
- I’m coping with this situation
- I can do this
- I don’t need help
- It will get better
- I’m eating sensibly
- I didn’t drink every day this week
- My kids accept the situation
- My mother understands
Hold on there! I wrote those out so quickly, does that mean that if I thought about it any longer, there would be more?
They’re spilling out now……….
- I don’t look my age
- I will find a man who loves me as I deserve to be loved
I don’t know about you but I find that writing things down helps me to see in black and white, the contortions of my brain and the deceptions of my heart.
They seem like little lies, after all I’m not doing anything bad or shameful am I?
Or am I? …
The big lie that I’m not facing up to is that I don’t feel good enough………..most of the time.
I compare myself to others and delete those ways in which I might shine. I generalise that all other women are prettier, slimmer, better at small talk, better at looking after themselves than I am. I make this mean something, I distort it to mean that I am not good enough, that nothing I do will ever be good enough.
As I say that, I feel a lump in my throat. There’s some pain and longing there from my childhood. No matter how much we work on ourselves, by the time we reach maturity there is so much ‘stuff’ and even within simple sad memories, several aspects of it to look at. As a child, no matter what my marks, I was rarely top of the class so I wasn’t good enough. I know now that this was just the fabrication of my own little brain and that my parents were very proud of me but facts rarely obliterate these feelings we had as children. Happily we can revisit our younger self with compassionate therapy and we start to heal the pain.
Can we become addicted to the feeling of anxiety?
Much of the work I do is with mums who recognise that when they work on themselves, their own children benefit because we are energetically connected to them.
Our anxieties become theirs and our low self-esteem easily becomes part of their story.
Typical consultations involve an initial 90 minute session with mother and child to explore what’s going on, the patterns that are running and what an ideal outcome would look, sound and feel like. We then decide how to split the four one hour sessions that follow. Most families opt for two mum sessions and two child sessions where we start and end with the mum session. Others choose family sessions involving mum and dad (even if they are no longer living together) and the children, sometimes from two marriages. These family sessions enable the whole family to understand each other better , find new ways to communicate and develop individually and as a family.
Written by Judy Bartkowiak of The Hug Directory
Judy is an NLP and EFT Trainer and Coach specialising in working with children and families using NLP, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Matrix Reimprinting and Matrix Birth Reimprinting. She is based in Taplow near Maidenhead.
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