Tag Archives: mental-health

THE SEESAW

TAGS BALANCE PARALLELS REFLECTIONS VULNERABILITY

The world has been like a kind of gigantic seesaw for some time, lacking balance in every aspect, governments fluctuate, rise and fall often doing things to bolster their own perceived credibility but which cause more worry for the most vulnerable persons in our countries.

It is good to know and reflect on these matters sometimes, not to depress ourselves, but to set our environment and all the happenings within it in context. The world exists and rolls on within a parallel process, and without realising it we ourselves parallel with it, and life rises and falls with it.

What of it you may ask? Well the thing is you see we need to consider , and have knowledge of our base, and use it to form a framework for our daily living, such a way of being allows one to hold and contain oneself, and others, in a steady and balanced way, as opposed to seesawing along allowing ourselves to be buffeted about with the trials of daily living.

I remember as a young child starting school I found it hard to master a technique for managing in the playground, but fortunately for me I had an older brother to stand up for me and chase the bullies away. In many ways life is a playground but such a metaphor does not really shape a notion of a safe and steady place to work from.

Have you ever been on a seesaw when someone much bigger than you jumps on the other end, and, rather than soaring up you find yourself trailing on the ground, and then the bully jumps off and goes off sneering at you., and you are left feeling humiliated and fall back onto the ground.

Having courage and trust is essential for moving on in recovery but there is so much more to creating a supportive framework for our living in this seriously unbalanced world.

A good question to ask is, what is going on here? and to examine the ins and outs of whats happening, it is in this way we may find a balance which can support our thinking and help us not to be overwhelmed and lose sight of positive choices we can make.

Imagine, if you will see the seesaw image again only this time a boy races to the scene and jumps on with the small child balancing the structure and defeating the bullying tactics of the large child.

So it is within us, to walk in a healthy and recovering framework we need balance which is central to safety, and maintaining our courage and trust.

ADD NEW RESOURCES TO YOUR COPING SKILLS TODAY.

COURAGE AND TRUST

TAGS STEPPING OUT TRAUMA RESILIENCE

Courage and trust are very important as we live and walk in recovery from trauma, we need courage to keep stepping out , rather than retiring back, and giving up, and we need trust to believe in ourselves and to engage with others who can help us on our journey.

Whilst the reflections in my blogs may fit situations in or for recovery from addiction, or other difficulties, they began as reflections on moving on from the affects of the pandemic brought about through COVID 19. I would like to finish off these reflections and move on to something new, and indeed many people are trying to do this, however the plain truth is that as I go about my daily life, I find, and observe that many people without being aware of it are still suffering from the effects of the insidious virus as above.

I can recognise them in myself having lost my husband in the very beginning of the pandemic, and I observe them also in others, who do not always admit to them, or even know that they have them.

What comes to mind this morning, as I return to writing following a two month absence due to house moving, and waiting on ‘services’ to move my broadband, not an easy matter as you may know!

It seems to me that when one stress builds on another, we actually can, at times, identify that we are still suffering, or dealing with previous stresses but I am still of the opinion that the affects, and effects of the pandemic, and indeed the stresses connected with the fall of global economies are insidious and imbued with denial.

It is from this stance that I bring forward again the need for courage to keep going in recovery, and to reach in for our own trust, and out for trust in others. It is interesting to observe that one can be helped by sitting with a number of people and not necessarily say or do anything but the essence, and presence of the others can have a healing effect.

I mention the above as it may encourage others to be content with small achievements of getting out and about both physically and mentally and indeed spiritually. Such movement links with trust in our selves and in others as we sense their presence in a positive light.

Those who have faith have even more support and holding to go forward and not allow ‘down days’ to overwhelm them trusting and reaching out with the knowledge and experience of having overcome fears and difficulties before.

If we think of it as rooms within our bodily house each of which has a purpose and contains different things we can use the metaphor to step into different sections of our being and connect with our healing resources.

It has been borne in on me recently that people have, since the pandemic, and the horrific traumas it caused, had to put their mourning on hold in order to survive, yes they grieved but could not engage in the process of mourning in order to move on.

I find it useful to think of how animals grieve and mourn, growing up on a dairy farm the cows would roar when their calves were taken away. It was a hideous heartrending sound, and my mother used to take us to the attic so we would not hear it as clearly.

It seems to mean that the animals were letting out the unbearable feelings in their roaring, they needed to roar so they could let go and move on, we are often too dignified to roar, and can be afraid we would completely break down and become totally mad, such as been our pain.

The complexity of the above situation has been the fact that everybody was affected by the pandemic in some way, and accordingly we could only hold another for short periods of time because no one , or few had completed their mourning and even as one event passed it just continued. Now there is space to see others , to offer them support, and to venture out from the madness to a new world we are all making.

In days of trouble we sometimes wish to hide and when we try and feel ineffective when helping others we are not necessarily back at the beginning but have the ability to trust ourselves by remembering how we handled the troublesome spot before.

During my lifetime I have found it important to return to basics when things get stuck and to examine and listen again for what I have missed, this process allows one to glean new information and knowledge of how to help oneself and others.

NOTHING IS MORE POWERFUL IN TRAUMA RECOVERY THAN BEING CLEARLY HEARD!