Video for Depression and Anxiety

Chronic Pain, Fatigue and Mindfulness

.

Itching

Fatigue

Rashes

Skin pealing

Arthritis

Back pain

Insomnia

Hang nails

Infections

Pink eye

Vomiting

Hair loss

Things our higher spiritual self does not have to deal with.

No wonder we become distracted, redirected and forgetful about being in touch with our higher consciousness level selves.

We can’t even call them on the cell phone, never mind ask them to relate to what we go through.

Getting into a higher level state requires detaching from our  physical selves. It is like ignoring the squeakiest wheel. ….and as we know, the squeaky wheel gets the attention.

We can have wonderful intentions of growing towards a higher consciousness level and then we develop some new pain or disorder…whether mental or physical.

We are subjected to all manner of mind control and persuasion techniques by society and the manipulators within it. And our bodies take more and more of a beating as we age.

Beating yourself up over not being able to get yourself out of your physical self and into a spiritual state, is another beating you should not have to endure.

It is effectually a beating of the consciousness by the consciousness…

A beating of the sub conscious by the sub conscious….

A beating of the mind by itself.

It is a paradox that you must accept the pains without the ego being involved because becoming one with higher consciousness means letting go of and identity with the self….yet repressing feelings about suffering only makes the suffering grow.

So we have to accept the inner child in order to heal…accept suffering as part of existing in the physical realm….sit with our pain to comfort it to ease it….walk through painful experiences to get to the light on the other side….and detach from the ego and identifying with our identity in order to achieve a higher consciousness…..

Yet in detaching from our ego we are acknowledging our identity with it…..so we first have to recognize the ego as a construct that is heavily influenced by brainwashing, false beliefs programmed into us, and manipulative people with their own agendas to serve..

We then can understand that many of our automatic  thoughts and attachments come out of this programming. …making the majority of the tapes running in our subconscious mind basically bad viruses…..and our conscious negative thoughts results of the viruses…..

Then we can begin to understand that We Are Not Our Thoughts….

Once we begin to accept that we are not our thoughts, we can open the subconcious mind to new formatting….better programming….we can alter and add new beliefs…and delete contaminated beliefs…..

A new understanding begins to arise at the back of our brains where those core beliefs are housed….that if our thoughts are not us, then we can observe our thoughts and evaluate their validity….

Holding onto beliefs that no longer serve us is not neccessary. We will not simply stop being ourselves by changing our core beliefs. It is the attachment to those addictive beliefs and thought patterns that keeps us controlled by others….and by our physical existance…..

We are not, in fact, the sum of our thoughts. We can rearrange the furniture in our brains that we call our thoughts. Rearranging the furniture, throwing out old pieces, adding new pieces that better serve our house….

The house remains, even when the things inside are altered.

So who is doing the altering and rearranging? It is not our physical selves….It is not our thoughts that are observing themselves….

Once we begin to realize this, then we catch a glimpse of what is doing the observing….It is not within the brain or the physical body….

It is that higher self…the higher consciousness….that can be awakened to observe and repair the subconscious …where suffering is at its roots….

Thoughts about suffering seem to create more suffering…and fear that the suffering will get worse….or continue to last is the root of the most painful mental and physical suffering.

Yet somehow you are beginning to suspect the most curious thing of all….that by entering this kind of trance….the one you have allowed your mind to enter while reading this….you were able to detach from your physical suffering for a few minutes…..

And so we took the journey together….just you and I….in a higher realm of consciousness….

Namaste..

Chronic Pain and Spiritual Health

Living with chronic pain is difficult emotionally and mentally.

Every aspect of your life is affected and you have to adapt each and every day based on the level of pain. It is difficult for other people to understand. 

Sometimes you have to cancel plans or leave places early. You may need help doing things or walking up the stairs. Fatigue haunts you like a malicious ghost that no one can see but you. It is an invisible illness that can be cruel and make you feel lonely. 

You know that other people have chronic pain also, but you still feel like you are the only one much of the time.

Days spent struggling to do the simplest tasks drain you physically and emotionally. No one can see your pain and it is hard to find any validation for what you are going through. 

Your social circle may have dwindled down to the last few who are willing to be understanding. Some of you are completely isolated from friends and even family has moved on without you. People get tired of hearing someone complain about their invisible illness. 

Some people think you are just trying to get attention.

This is backwards because chronic pain tends to have to opposite effect of getting attention. Many people do not realize this. 

Isolation has its own negative effects on your psychological state. Depression falls down over you like a dark cloud. There are days when you just stay in bed because the pain is too great….both emotionally and physically.

Chronic pain can be caused by all kinds of things.

Arthritis, fibromyalgia, spinal problems, diseases, and chronic illnesses. Pain can be mostly localized to certain parts of the body, or change locations from day to day. The mental pain is always a part of living with chronic pain….possible the worst part. 

Finding connection with other people can be difficult, but it is important for you not to feel alone. Feeling isolated and alienated for a continues period of time will wear on you and drain you. Your soul needs to heal and you need to feel special. 

Old emotional wounds can be triggered by depression and anxiety.

Feeling alone with pain can bring up emotional flashbacks from your past. Many people with chronic pain have some kind of ghosts from their past that haunt them. The feeling of being invalidated may be something you also felt in your childhood. 

The inner child that was not heard is now left alone and invalidated again.

Being alone with the emotional wounds feels like torment. Since you feel that people are already tired of hearing you express your feeling about your physical pain, you may be hesitant to talk about old emotional wounds with anyone. 

You struggle to survive each day, and you may push those emotional wounds deep down inside you. The pain will get worse from doing this, but it is hard to find any other way to survive.

Pain gets worse with depression, and depression gets worse with pain. 

You are more than your chronic pain condition.

You are not your body and you are not your thoughts. You are so much more than those things. The world has a way of confusing us about who we really are. 

You may not feel like it, because your life feels like it revolves around it. You had other plans for your life than living this way.

The unfairness of this can make you feel hopeless and question your purpose for living. You feel limited in the amount of things you can do for others. 

But you are worth as much as everyone else. It is the soul and spirit of you that has innate value.

Your value is not based of what you can or cannot do. The uniqueness of your mind, heart are limitless.

We can be broken and bruised, but we are resilient. Your resilience comes from your higher self… the self that does not live in the body and is not limited to the physical self.

Love is an unstoppable force of energy that exists all around you. You are surrounded by invisible energies that are yours to draw from Self love is an important step to emotional and mental healing. 

Thoughts on Depression and C-PTSD from emotional Abuse

Depression can make you feel like staying in bed and not interacting with other people. You know that if you go out of the house, you will feel different and out of place.

Other people will not understand your inner world. You feel like you will be forced to put on a mask to fit in. It is difficult to function.

You get more and more internalized. So you self isolate, and limit your social interactions. This is understandable because certain kinds of interactions can be emotionally traumatizing.

You feel like the one person that is out of place in the world.  You sit alone and hear the thoughts that come up from your subconscious. Thoughts that there is something wrong with you.

Some of the feelings you get are from emotional flashbacks. There are things that happened and ways you were rejected during childhood that cause your subconscious to store these kinds of feelings.

If you can identify the false beliefs behind your thoughts, then the feelings can be sat with and calmed. You were not born feeling like you did not belong in the world. These thoughts were taught to you….even brainwashed into you.

When you have a feeling that is painful, like hopelessness…try to discover what core belief that thought is driven by. The belief might be that you are not as good as other people. .. Or that the world is unsafe.

If you are carrying the core belief that you are less adequate than other people…that is a bad programming. These things are programmed into children who do not have emotionally supportive childhoods.

Think back to your childhood and if you were made to feel insignificant, unworthy, unneccesary, or anything else negative. If your thoughts and feelings were dismissed, criticized, or made fun of then you are probably carrying CPTSD…complex post traumatic stress disorder.

People with C-PTSD often get depressed or feel extreme anxiety. You may have trouble keeping up with other people or feeling normal.

Those false core beliefs that were fed to you can be re-programmed. You need to question each one of those negative beliefs about yourself. Be like a scientist attempting to disprove a theory.

If you feel that something is wrong with you compared to other people, then ask what things are Right about you. Write them down. Engage in activities that prove you are as good or better at those activities, than other people are.

Look at the qualities of your parents and whomever fed those negative, false beliefs to you, about yourself. What kind of people are they?

Would you consider those people reliable critics? Did tbey have any agenda in which lowering your power would have helped them?

If those people told you something bad about the character of a person you love right now….would you believe their opinion without question? Or is their opinion not reliable?

You can begin to go out and interact with people in small increments. Go over your present state of mind, before you go out…and before you leave your car. You can just sit in your car for a few minutes and listen to music that calms or peps up your nervous system.

How you feel when you interact with others is based on the current state of your nervous system, how much sleep you have had, your mental state, and your blood sugar.

You can think of those categories and assess each of them, before you go into a store or any other place. Then you will feel more in touch with yourself and have some ways to help yourself.

If you are interested in learning. NLP State Management techniques, you can send me a message via my web site

Gentlekindnesscoaching.com

For information about C-PTSD and how emotional abuse causes depression and anxiety disorders, join us at the gentlekindness facebook page.

You are special. Your gifts and personality are an important part of the puzzle of humanity. You are connected with all living things in an important way.

You matter. You have a unique voice that other people need to hear. You have special characteristics that someone really needs right now.

You have innate value.

Namaste,

Annie. Gentlekindnesscoaching.com

Gentlekindness facebook page

Annie Mimi Hall youtube channel

Invisible Illness and Isolation

Invisible suffering..Invisible illness…Invisible pain…Chronic illness….Mental suffering…Domestic abuse…Mental abuse..Narcissistic Victim Abuse Syndrome…PTSD…Chronic Pain…

These are all real illnesses and disorders, that other people cannot see. It can be hard for other people to understand what it is like for you. The lack of people supporting  you…or even believing you …causes re-traumatization.

There is the initial trauma of the illness, pain, or abuse and then there is a whole new kind of painful suffering caused by what happens next.

People do not see your suffering and so..

…some people do not believe you at all..

…they do not believe that it is that bad..

…they think you can just “shake it off”…

…they do not believe that you cannot do the things that they can easily do.

…they think you are lazy…

…they think you are a big baby…

..they  think you should have gotten better by now..

…they forget that you “still have” that invisible illness…

…they get tired of hearing the same things…

..they lose patience with you..

…you do not want to tell people..

…you lose friends…

..You self isolate…

Yes, that is often what ends up happening. Self isolating can be a relief from dealing with interactions with people. Over time the isolation can cause worse depression. 

The only people who really understand are people who have been through it or are going through it. 

The isolating process can begin with other people giving up on you, getting tired of you, or not wanting to listen to you anymore. You lose one ot two friends and family members. The you are afraid to lose the rest of them. 

You do not actively go out and seek new people because you fear the pain of rejection from them. “Why should you put yourself through this again”….is what your brain is saying.

The isolating can begin with ourselves, because it is too much effort or too painful to interact with other people, especially if they do not believe or understand what we are going through.

The retraumatization can be severe. When people just simply do not believe you or think you are exaggerating, that is one of the worst things you can go through.

Then, of course,  there are people who are predators, and they prey on the weak ones, who are desperate for understanding and companionship. If you have been set up and abused, because of your invisible condition, then it is very difficult to trust people again…or to trust your own judgement of who is safe and who is not.

We can also be retraumatized by bad therapists, counselors and insensitive doctors and nurses. I have heard horror stories of what people have gone through at treatment facilities, rehab facilities and emergency rooms. I have also experienced insensitive therapists and healthcare workers.

So where does this leave us? In pain…suffering…in need of human compassion…and isolated…

Some people physically isolate themselves in their homes. Other people build walls up around themselves and self isolate by disconnecting from other humans emotionally.

We can be around people all day long, yet be completely alone.

Some people cannot leave their house or apartment.

Other people just leave the house to go to work, and do necessary errands, and then self isolate themselves in their house, the rest of the time. This would be me…

When you have reached your limit of being traumatized and re-traumatized, then your mammalian instinct of self protection is going to kick in. Your brain wants to protect itself from any more trauma and abuse.

Sometimes the world appears to be a dark and dangerous place.   Interact with people is just a risk of being injured, when you are suffering from an invisible enemy.

No one can see your enemy and therefore it feels like you are fighting alone.

You energy is going into fighting against your invisible illness, mental illness, or trauma from abuse. You do not have a whole lot of energy left for reaching out to people who might end up hurting you. You do not have a lot of energy to explain and re-explain to people about your invisible illness.

You do not have energy to make new friends, knowing that at some point you have to explain to them about your invisible enemy. There is no guarantee they will understand you or stick around once they find out, anyway.

Your energy is focused on survival. Your little bit of energy that is left, is focused on just getting through one day at a time. Relationships take time and energy and after a while it can seem like there simply is not enough energy to go around.

I do not have any simple answer for this problem. I wanted to at least validate the people who are nodding their heads up and down, as they are reading this.

You are not alone, in being alone. You may be alone in your house at this moment, feeling isolated and different than everyone else. But there are other people who feel the same way.

The isolating is a normal reaction to being traumatized, suffering mental wounds and suffering pain of any kind. It is an instinct to survive be separating from potential danger.

It is also an instinct to preserve whatever energy is left, in order to use to heal and survive.

If there is any approach to this problem that could work, it would lie in the matter of balance. We have to constantly balance the various aspects of our lives. Find new methodologies for healing and for dealing with stress.

We cannot have the same amount of energy every day. Some days we feel better than other days.

On our better days, we can try to reach out a little bit. Go somewhere with people or call someone on the phone. Text someone or send and email. Whatever is in your comfort zone for that particular day.

There will be days when interacting with others is impossible. But some days we might be able to reach out, just a little bit.

Do what you can and take advantage of any days that are kind of good. If you cannot go out, then try to find people online to connect with.

Who you should reach out to and talk to, depends on what is good for you. Some of you have friends that you can all on the phone. Some people would be able to go out to a place where there are strangers and interact a little bit with them.

Another way to get some compassionate human interaction, is to do some volunteer work. Nursing homes will often let you come and visit.

You may have to set things up, to be a volunteer ahead of time. The people you visit at places like this, will not judge you in the same ways that you are afraid of your friends or family judging you.

Going out of the house depends on your condition. Some people are completely housebound. Reaching out to those people can be a way of helping yourself too. 

Animals are also great. Pets are good companions. As you know, if you read my blog, I get great joy and comfort from my bunny. I also like to go to places with a animals.  There is a place called Sun High Orchard, near my house. They have bunnies and sheep that you can pet and feed.

Sometimes you can go to speciality stores where the people will talk with you. Some places like that would be: comic book stores, craft stores, tattoo parlors, hobby shops and book stores. Any place where people gather, that have a similar interest.

It is okay to self isolate to a point.  Sometimes we need to self isolate for a while to heal our brains. But if the isolation is becoming a problem for you, then do a little bit of interacting on the good days and just rest in bed on the harder days. Balance is the key to most problems in life.

We are supportive of each other here and WordPress has been a blessing for me. I love hearing from the people that follow my blog and I consider the interactions meaningful.

Blessings to all,

Annie

Feeling Safe and Deflecting Shame from Others

The people that try to make you feel guilt or shame over not doing what they want you to do, are just serving their own agenda.

If they continue to try to emotionally manipulate you, they have no concern for your reality. They do not respect your right to see things from your own point of view.

People will claim to know what you should start doing…or stop doing..that will make you a better person. But take a closer look and see that they are trying to get you to fit into their own agenda.

You do not have to change your core beliefs to make someone else’s reality more comfortable. They are clearly not changing their beliefs to suit you.

If you are not trying to guilt and shame them, then what right do they have to do it to you. What gives one person, or one group of people, exclusive rights to know everything that everyone “should” and “should not” be doing?

Shaming people is not loving. Any group or individual that is making you feel bad about yourself, or trying to make you question your own truth to support theirs, is more concerned with serving their own agenda than wanting you to be your authentic self.

People that claim to care about your best interest, but try to shame and guilt you into changing for them, do not have your best interest at heart….but they have their own best interest at heart.

So let them continue to follow their own path and do what they feel best supports them…..while you follow your own path and do what best supports you.

Why is it okay for them to want an environment they feel safe and supported in….but you are selfish because you also want to feel safe and supported?

Physical Pain Should be Paid Attention To

Headaches, muscle aches, numbness, chest tightness, fatigue and weakness….

Insomnia, nervousness, trouble focusing your mind, trouble resting and relaxing….

Trouble eating, weight gain, extreme weight loss, chronic bowel problems, chronic pain….

People struggle through each day, dragging themselves out of bed. Dreading waking up in the morning, to endure another day of trying to keep other people from complaining.

Our reptilian brain ( triunal brain theory) is designed to protect us. The main function of this part of your brain is to protect you from danger. It is primal and the over-riding primal drive is for survival.

Anything the reptilian brain sees as a threat gets sent to the “fight or flight” system. This is where the amygdala activates the process of chemicals being sent throughout your body.

These chemicals include adrenaline and cortisol. The fight or flight mode was never designed for constant or continuos activation.

Stress filled lifestyle and anxiety disorders cause too much cortisol to be sent into the body , too often. This has detrimental affects on nearly every system in your body.

As you are reading this, you are thinking of your life and how a typical day goes for you. But that is the problem. ….

Society is so brainwashed that the phrase “how a typical day goes for you” makes sense and seems like a normal thing to say.

We should be able to compose our days, like a musical composer creates a symphony. We should have more freedom and more power to make our days the way we want them to be.

You should be spending your time thinking of new ideas, new concepts, new methods and original techniques to do things.

There is too much emphasis on “the way things have always been done.”

There are too many restrictions on our individuality, and our ability to try new ways to do things.

The “original thinkers”  are considered weird, non-compliant and “difficult,” even when their ideas are ingenious.

We are pressured to follow the ways of those who came before us, and the ways dictated by the  “powers that be.”

All of this ….forcing people into routines… and making us run on automatic pilot, has consequences.

….stress, anxiety disorders, depression, pain in both the body and the mind.

The body is what your spirit inhabits. Your soul has been assigned to live within this body .  But your body is not all of who you are, nor is it detached  from who you are.

Have you ever driven someplace, only to come to consciousness while you are driving, and not know where you are for a few seconds? Have you ever passed the turn to your destination because you had gone into a trance-like state while you were driving?

We were not designed to live in “automatic pilot”  mode …existing merely to repeat the same dull, or painful routines every day.

Even animals vary their routines. They adapt with their environment and respond to the needs of their bodies.

Your aches, pains and chronic fatigue are telling you that something is wrong. These are like emotions of the body.

Our emotions and our pains are speaking to us. If we cannot listen, and make changes….alter our patterns of living, then we will eventually develop illness and didease.

Listen to your pain and to your physical discomfort. Your body is trying to integrate with your mind, emotions and your soul. It is letting you know that the parts of your being are fractured.

Psychological problems manifest in the body. Physical illness and disease will cause psychological and mental pain. Our emotions tie everything together.

Be kind and compassionate with yourselves, and to others. There is no meaningless pain. It is all significant.

 

Blessings,

Annie

gentlekindnesscoachimg.com

 

Nothing but the Dark…

Suffering from a painful deteriorating illness and expressing the darkness with words of a wonderful writer.

 

aChronicPainLife...

I used to love the feeling you get when waking up from your worst nightmare – that moment  when you realise you’ve left the extreem anxiety and hopelessness behind and your eyes have come to a halt – when you can curl up all snug amongst the quilts and go back to sleep, knowing that when you wake everything will be okay.

Well, I’ve resounded myself to the fact this is a feeling I will never have again! The reality I’m in has become worse than any nightmare I’ve ever had and all hope is gone for making a recovery.  I’m tired of of it all. Each day is becoming more and more of a struggle and I’m not sure I have the strength to live a full life like this – one where darkness is my home and the view from the other side gets more appealing by the…

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Happy Day After

Good morning and happy Day After Christmas. Some people feel disappointed that it is over, while others are relieved. Personally I feel relieved but also sad that I feel that way.

If I lived in my own place, Christmas could have felt more normal. I did the best I could to decorate my small part of the house as cheerfully as possible, for the sake of the kids, but it is not the same.

I feel constantly home sick for any place that I could have to myself with my daughters. I have never been one to like staying away from home. Now I have been living in this house with my ex in-laws for a few years and I have felt homesick and out of place the entire time.

It wears on you more and more over time. I feel like I am being sytematically broken down by their manipulation and undermining. The worst part of it is that it is invisible to others, including my older daughter who they have been able to pull towards their side.

The concept of “sides” is bizzarre in the framework of a supposedly “caring” family, I know. Even that part is invisible because they put on a whole facade when others come over, or when they talk about the family.

The truth is I am lost here and I feel forced to act like someone I am not. Other times I speak my mind and try to be authentic but that is always met with retaliaton.

I am homesick for anyplace where I can truly be alone when I want to be. Someplace where my things are my things, and not the property of someone else because those things happen to be under someone else’s roof.

You would think the 1,000 dollars I pay a month would qualify me to have solitude and peace in the space that I pay for. You would also think that a reasonable amount of repairs would be included with that.

As it is, the shower has been broken for years and the oven / stove is non existant. The paint is pealing and other things are broken or inadequate.

When I used to live with them rent free, several years ago, I was told that people who do not pay rent cannot expect the world. Apparently “the world” included a toilet seat that was not cracked and falling off.

I had some silly notion that the repair rules would change after I was paying rent but the money was not the root of the issue, even though it seemed that way.

It was the part about “not deserving” and “not expecting” and basically “not mentioning and not speaking up.” That was the message at that time and it is still the message.

There are people who see you as non deserving, and those people will never change. Your only hope is to choose not to believe them and try to move in.

If it were not for the extreme financial undermining by these people, I would have already moved on and never looked back. But they created a complex, tangled situation that will take all of my brains and energy to get myself out of.

Christmas here felt depressing but I dealt with the plasticity of it, for the sake of my kids. They did enjoy their cousinscousins, even though there is a limit to “childish” fun permitted in the house as well.

There is a dark presense, that is felt but not seen. It is a heavy cloud of despair and oppression. The effect can be psychlogically detrimental and mentally wearing.

Next year I will be someplace else. I will find a way to at least get myself and my younger daughter out.  I have to find home because I have lived with the sick feeling of homesickness longer than I can.

Self Love and Restoring Balance

Life needs balance. Our bodies are systems of balance. We need a balanced diet or we become sick.

We need balance between work and play, rest and activity, and focus vs. relaxaxing the mind.

We need balance between socializing and time to ourselves. Too much of any one thing throws off something else that is equally important.

Our physical and mental health are dependent upon this critical balance.

We should not negect nature for technology. Nor should we forget about our family and friends because we become too focused on work.

The reverse of any of these statements is also true. We should not neglect our work, our dreams and our vision for our family.

It is a constant struggle to keep things in balance. Every physical problem has to do with something being neglected for the sake of something else.

On-going, extreme imbalance will cause disease, illness, fatigue, and a lack of wellness.

Ancient Chinese medicine was based on the idea of sickness and disease being the result of imbalance. This was an entire system of trying to connect certain health problems with particular imbalances.

The ancient Chinese medicine developers believed that by identifying imbalances early, you can prevent serious illness and diseases.

There are entire health arts related to identifying imbalances, and restoring imbalance in the body. Acupressure, acupuncture, yoga are all about restoring and maintaining the fine balamces within the body.

These arts also restore balance between the mind and the body. It is clear that physical health is intimately intertwined with mental and emotional health.

At any given time, something is bound to be in an imbalance. Our goal should be to look at imbalances if we feel like something is wrong.

Moderate to severe mental health problems can be your body’s way of communicating to you that it needs something. It could be that something is in starvation.

We can become emotionally starved for love and compassion. We can become starved for physical touch.

Emotional starvation can cause every system in the body to suffer. The mind will suffer as well and cognitive processes will slow down.

We were also made to be able to think and create. Being stuck in a routine job and living on autopilot can cause imbalance in your life.

We were made to have a balance, which includes variety and change, as well as the comfort of some predictability.

Remembering the importance of balance will help you to be able to identify and restore balamce to yourself. It is also something useful to pass down to your children or teach others.

Whenever you feel like you are having trouble keeping up with something in your life, or that something is being neglected, see what might be drinking too much energy and time from you.

If something is being neglected, it is due to something else taking too much of your time and energy. We do not always want to admit what that something is.

Even if you are not ready to make a dramatic change, yoi may be able to make smaller ones. Without change we cannot move forward.

Staying stuck in the same unhealthy routine will slowly starve your body and your mind.

Accept your tre self and nurture yourself without judgement. Restoring balance is not about self judgement. It is about self love.