Posted on

Ms Pink’s Musing on Grief and Loss

G’day Gorgeous!

I been looking for the opportunity to talk to you about something that I’ve been reflecting on,  I’ve not been home in nearly two weeks and when I returned home my beautiful little dog whom I’d had for eleven and a half years was really sick, he’s been sick for about a year and one of the things that has amazed me was the number of people that have different reactions with regards to grief and loss.

So I came home on a Wednesday night, it was very obvious to me that my dog wasn’t  his usual self and I had to take him to the Vet the following day, his issues were not resolvable and we tried all sort of things but his body basically said enough was enough and I had to put him down the next day, which was very sad but he was eleven and a half and had a really good life.  I always said that he must have been in his last reincarnation. He must been ready for nirvana because you know your last life, right before you reach nirvana has to be the best one. He had a pretty good life, but the impact even though I knew he was sick, even though I knew that his health was deteriorating and I knew beyond a doubt that I could not keep him in the space where he was suffering.

 

 

 

It still was a really difficult experience and a number of people have reacted to it in different ways. I’m always surprised to find that there is some people who don’t have the same level of emotional connection to animals as I do, and you know some other people who seem to have highly sensitive kind of response to animals, some people have lost horses and had really big reactions to it, some people can’t necessarily understand that because these animals are really big and it’s not like you can have them curl up on your lap but feels a little bit different.

But my main issue around that was to understand grief and loss, grief and loss happens to us regardless of our circumstances.  The worst thing that we can do to ourselves is not to take the time to acknowledge that a person or an entity that gives you some level of emotional connection is now no longer available to you in your life. This brings with it the sense of hollowness, emptiness, like something is missing, it’s a key component and something that people just misunderstand and often down play.

We think it shouldn’t be this important or I shouldn’t be so upset about it. In reality a lot of us have a connection with our animals that is very safe.  We feel that we can be true to ourselves with an animal and that animal is going to love us anyway. Particularly strong in the case of dogs.

So I just wanted to highlight the importance of recognising that grief and loss is a key component and whether it’s an animal or somebody who you had in your life. We go through a loss and grief process when we lose a partner even if it was just your decision to step back from a relationship, we still go through a grieving  process.

That’s just acknowledging that sometimes you just feel a bit flat, you don’t necessarily want to engage in doing things with people, you find that you’re a little bit more sensitive, really easily upset or life just sort of temporarily lost its mojo. It’s a really important thing to be aware of and to understand, give yourself that little bit of space and time to just reflect on a good times. I think about the good times that I had with that beautiful little dog, but also acknowledge the loss, that’s part of the grieving process to allow yourself to reflect back on the good times.

They’re not all good times and I get that – especially in a relationship. But it’s a really important process and if we just try to ignore it and pretend that it didn’t happened and move past it or pretend that it didn’t actually had an emotionally impact, we actually do ourselves a disservice. We make it more difficult for ourselves in the future.

Ok so that’s my musing for this week.

I hope to see you soon.

 

Posted on

Ms Pink’s Musing on feeling Not worthy in relationships

G’day gorgeous!

In the last few weeks I’ve been talking about relationships, how our behaviour impacts our relationships, and not just intimate relationships, it’s also about friendships. I am talking to you about some really interesting things that come up when we have issues in relationships. One of the things that come up for me recently was my own sense of self and how I interact in relationships and bringing baggage into a relationship.

I’m amazed that even though I would consider myself to be reasonably self aware, when I’m in relationship there are still some underlying negative beliefs about myself that get triggered somehow making me think that this relationship is either not good for me or I’m going to screw it up somehow, perhaps I’m not as good as they think I am, and this is even though I’ve done some huge personal development work.

So I just want to share recent experience. I have a new partner we’ve been together now nearly six months and this relationship is amazingly transformational, quite different to anything I’ve ever had before and I’m aware that a huge part of this is because I became very clear with what I want in a partner and what I don’t want in a partner. I became very aware that my choice of partner had an awful lot to do with me feeling like I had to give a lot of myself to somebody else, my value to any relationship was actually about my ability to give.
I always end up with partners with issues and those issues strongly impact me and after a while even though you see somebody work through their issues, you become resentful with doing all of the work to support them and to resolve their issues. It seems like they’re not trying really hard to resolve their issues. Now that I find myself in a situation with somebody who doesn’t have any issues I’m finding certain things trigger issues I have within myself not the least of which is somehow I don’t deserve this, that its almost too good to be true. So classic example, couple of weeks ago, a girlfriend of mine lost a partner and I went to the funeral and number of my other friends were there and they were all talking about the fact that my current partner is just lovely. He is, but the issue for me was not so much that they were highlighting that he was lovely. They were asking where we met, questions about him to the point that I had told them a story about something nice that he did for me. They were asking where can we get a guy like that? I went home and I said “hey just so you know when you get sick of me there’s half a dozen woman lining up waiting for this spot to be vacant and they all think that you’re awesome, we had a laugh about it and at that time I didn’t think it affected me, but a couple times that night and then for the next couple of days, I was making the same negative comments “so when you get sick of me”, “when we’re done”, “when you’re over it,” “when you decide to turf me out”. To the point that after a couple of nights he said to me, what are you doing? Is this you trying to push me away? Why are you being negative?
I had to stop and think, step back and think about the language I was using and try to understand myself, why would I do that? The next morning I thought, you know what? It’s because when everybody says how nice he is, in my brain there’s some really doubtful part right at the very back or down in my gut that says he’s too good for you and you don’t deserve it.

My response to that is to start pushing him away. There’s something about this relationship that seems to have no issues, nothing that I can fix. I’m not doing anything or contributing a huge amount, the fact is I like to be with this person but somehow just being with them doesn’t seem enough to me. Why would he stay around? I really don’t quite understand what I think is wrong with just being myself in a relationship. It still is one of those things that even though I’ve learned to accept it at the top thinking level, I still feel somewhere inside that I don’t deserve love and a huge part of that is probably to do with the rejection from my father.

I just thought that you might find it interesting that even though I sit here and do these videos and I have a background in psychology and everybody thinks that I must have all my shit together that I’m just a normal ordinary everyday human being like everybody else and as I say to my clients I have issues too. I still consult somebody else to help me understand myself. Sometimes the perspective we get about people its not always correct but it’s about our ability to be able to learn from our experiences and be more self aware and the ability to share that in a way that my partner can understand.
So I hope that was useful gorgeous.

Have a great week and I’ll see you soon.

 

Posted on

Ms Pink’s Musings on Rejuvenating Your Spirit

G’day Gorgeous…

I can’t believe that we are getting to the end of 2017. It’s been a hectic year for me and I know many others, so I thought I would talk to you about an area in the book that I mentioned about spirit. It’s important that we connect with something that replenishes our spirit regularly, to maintain balance in our lives.

We regularly give our energy to other people through listening to friends’ problems, supporting others through life and through your regular day to day activities. Because we spend so much of our own energy on other people, we must have a way of being able to get that energy back in. In the book, I talk about several things that you can do to replenish your spirit.

Firstly, you need to find out what nourishes your spirit. This is something that makes your spirit pool feel full again, and lets your mind feel refreshed and balanced. This means that this ‘something’ is something that you choose to do only for yourself.

I find the best way for me to replenish my spirit is to spend some time at the ashram. There are a couple of Satyananda ashrams in Australia and in for several years I’ve been doing Satyananda yoga and I found it to be right for me as it covers all the seven areas of yoga. I find that just being there and being disconnected from the world (my mobile phone stops working about a kilometre from the front gate) and I find that it gives me this sense of disconnect that’s awesome. It makes it easy for me to relax to unwind, and just take time to focus on putting some positive energy back into my body.

If I go on a Saturday night, they do a vibrational chanting ceremony. As a psychotherapist, I understand the importance of vibration, and how vibration impacts the in the limbic system – where the amygdala is. The amygdala is the part of the brain that is involved in arousal (mainly your fight or flight instincts). Chanting, just in its vibration, helps to balance and settle that area down quite a lot. People who are highly anxious, who do chanting or vibrational work, tend to find that it really helps a lot in reducing their arousal, making them feel calmer and more settled. There is also a fire ceremony they usually do on a Saturday night in the ashram, which I enjoy because it helps me to be able to feel myself bringing in some positive energy, build up the vibration in my body and helps me replenish my energy.

As a psychotherapist, I spend a lot of my working week giving my energy to other people. While this is quite rewarding to see the positive return, I still need to remember that I have to replenish myself – something we all need to remember to do. This allows our energy flow to come in and out, similar to a flowing pool, rather than a well that can just run dry.

That’s why I talk about the importance of trying to find the thing that replenishes your spirit. It’s about doing things that allow me to stop, and in lots of ways just experience pure joy from doing something that I love to do.

I’ve taken time to reflect lately, and I’ve realised its been a while since I’ve been to the ashram and really done something to replenish my spirit. I’ve been really noticing it lately, where I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something, which means I’m not going to be able to keep doing what I’m doing. I have learnt through my own personal spiritual journey, that it’s important for me to be able to go to a place where I feel like I can have that input into my energy space. This time also allows me to reconnect with my intuition and to my own body. Through time I have built my awareness of how important it is, and I get to a point where I’m yearning for it.

So, as we head into the silly season, I just wanted to reinforce the importance of remembering to connect with your spirit, finding something in your life that allows you to give back to yourself in a way that renews on invigorates you, so that you can continue to connect with other people going forward.

Posted on

How to cope with your annoying relatives, according to a psychologist

How to cope with your annoying relatives, according to a psychologist

Dr Tim Sharp bodyandsoul.com.au

The 9 mind tricks you need to navigate family tension – so you don’t crack.

In an ideal world, we’d love all our family members and look forward to spending as much time as possible with each and every one of them.

In the real world, however, this isn’t always the case!

Many of us have an “eccentric” uncle, or an aunt who enjoys a few too many wines, or just an irritating sibling or cousin who asks totally inappropriate and infuriating questions (about your work or your relationships or all those things you’d rather not talk about).

That’s life; and it’s a reality of life that during the festive season we tend to have more family gatherings and therefore more interactions with these people who normally, we’d spend minimal time with.

It might not be what we’d choose to do, and it might not always be fun, but it is something we need to manage. The good news is there are ways to minimise distress and maximise your chances of actually enjoying yourself this Christmas.

Here are my practical and powerful tips:

  1. Be prepared

Forewarned is forearmed. More often than not you know these people, you know how they’ll behave and you know what might well upset you. So, there’ll rarely be any surprises! Try to predict what might happen, and imagine the best possible outcome including you coping well.

  1. Use your strengths

We all have natural talents and attributes that can help us cope with adversity. These include gratitude and humour, social intelligence and forgiveness. Whatever yours are, find ways to use them.

  1. Ask them to stop

You can, of course, directly request the cessation of unwanted or unpleasant behaviours. This won’t always be successful, but it’s definitely worth considering in some situations.

  1. Limit your interactions with certain people

This applies to both the number of them and their duration. You don’t have to spend all day with those relatives you don’t like. Say hello, politely ask a few appropriate questions, then move on to others who you’re more likely to have fun with.

  1. Accept them for who they are

Stop trying to change them or expecting them to change – your relative has probably been the way they are all their lives and they’ll most likely stay that way. So, accept that and try to focus on whatever positive characteristics they possess.

  1. Avoid certain topics

There’s no point torturing yourself and so there’s no point entering in to conversations or debates that will only lead to you feeling frustrated or upset. Accordingly, steer clear of these subjects and/or redirect them on to something less adversarial if or when they do pop up.

  1. Choose your battles

Following on from the previous point, you don’t have to join every argument. And, even if you do get involved, you don’t have to win! Let them be right about some things – you never know, it might actually make for a more festive gathering.

  1. You can’t control what others do/say, only how you react

This is possibly the most important point to remember, in any situation. No matter how well you implement any or all of the strategies described, this won’t necessarily have total or maybe any impact on how your relatives behave. Regardless, you can always control how YOU behave and ultimately, that’s all that matters.

  1. At the end of the day, the end of the day will come

So remember that even if unpleasant, nothing lasts forever. Keep calm and enjoy the show.

Dr Tim Sharp aka Dr Happy is at the forefront of the positive psychology movement and founder of The Happiness Institute.

Posted on

Ms Pink’s Musing On Unnecessary Judgement

G’day Gorgeous! 

I was reminded this week about judgment and why is it that we actually want to judge others.  We look at what other people are doing and feel the need to put them down, put them in their place or make a judgement about something that they are doing.

The main reason that we do it is actually to feel better about ourselves.

When you notice, that you actually spend quite a bit of time critiquing other people, picking at certain things about how others behave, how they dress, the sort of car they drive or anything really about another person’s life – it is important to understand why we do that.

Who would do that? I wouldn’t do that!

It’s important to note that we need to use judgement in terms of working out what we want for ourselves.  You can’t move forward in life without some level of judgment, because you’re trying to decide what’s good for you and how you’re going to get there and what is it that you really want for yourself.

 

 

 

When we use judgement to actually compare ourselves to another person and trying to elevate ourselves above them, in most cases, this is not actually useful. One of the things that’s important to understand is that when we are judging other people, we are doing it because there’s usually something about that person thats making us feel insecure, inadequate or it triggers something within our own negative belief system.  We make ourselves feel better by looking at that person and denigrating what it is that they’re doing in order to elevate ourselves above them, making us feel better in comparison.

However it is actually about trying to get the feelings you have about yourself out, externalising them and projecting them onto somebody else, so that you don’t have to feel them.  Instead you might wonder what it is about that person that makes you feel not good or inadequate.  What is it that they are triggering within you because theres something about them that makes you feel threatened, inadequate or compared in some way.

So I want you to think about this the next time that you observe somebody, in your workplace, some other area of your life, or just a random stranger in the street and you notice that you feel the need to pass judgment on them I want you to stop and actually think “what is it about that person that makes me feel not so good about myself,” I want you to examine that and actually take a little bit of time to understand it, and if it’s something that’s been with you for a really long time then I would absolutely encourage you to try and get some therapy around that issue and try to resolve it for yourself.

Life is so much nicer and it is much more enjoyable to spend your life hanging around with great people, without feeling the need to judge them, or being judged by them.

If you stop and think about the process in reverse. If people are judging you, they are doing it to make themselves feel better their judgment of you is not really fair. Their judgement of you is based on their own feelings of inadequacy. In reality, they should be pitied for their need to constantly criticise others.

A great quote I have always loved “Your opinion of me… Is none of my business”.

I hope that was insightful… Until next time Gorgeous…

 

Posted on

Ms Pink Musing on Happiness

G’day Gorgeous…

This week I been talking a lot about the pursuit of goals and how we often perceive we will be Happy when we reach a particular point!

It is really important to understand how we often place our life on hold whilst we Endure until we can achieve Happiness. This musing comes from the first in the Diva programs – Delightful Diva.

I’m interested in how as humans we often see happiness as a destination…

Have a fabulous week Gorgeous!