New “Gentle Awakening” Web Site

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Visit my New Web Site

Gentle Awakening at Weebly.com

http://gentleawakening.weebly.com/

Be Authentic, Seek Truth, Embrace Your Passion !

Spiritual Holistic Life Coaching

Hypnosis for Emotional Well Being 

Guided Meditation

Music

Mindfulness

Personal Growth

Seeking Truth and Re-wiring Conditioned Beliefs

Community for Empaths, Light Workers, Compassionate Truth Seekers, and Otherwise Spiritually Mindful Caring People 

Share This Journey Together and Connect in a Safe Space for Sharing and Exploring

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elf expression and validation.

We respect and honor the special unique gifts and beliefs of each other.

Seek to explore, examine, share an learn together from the individual personal

perspective of other light workers, healers, empaths  and holistic spiritual minded people. 

 

Depression, Loneliness and Invisible Illness

Depression and lonliness can exist together, but they are not exactly the same thing.

Lonliness is something experienced by all people at some point but it is not always accompanied by depression.

Usually lonliness is thought of as occurring in solitude but this is not always true either.

Some people experience lonliness in combination homesickness , when they are away from familiar people and surroundings. They can feel this even when there are people around.

Other people feel like they do not fit in and this leads to lonliness with people around. Some people feel more lonely around groups of people than they do when they are by themselves.

There are other circumstances where people experience lonliness with other people around. Some of these circumstances tend to cause a co-existing condition of depression and lonliness.

People with invisible illnesses like chronic pain, chronic illness, and mental illness often feel both lonliness and depression. There is a feeling of disconnection from others when someone cannot find anyone that can relate to what they are going through.

Toxic loneliness is something that happens to people that cannot tolerate being alone or cannot tolerate bring without an intimate partner.

Ross Rosenberg coined the term “pathological loneliness” when he was doing research with his clients that suffered from co-dependence.

He discovered that one of the reasons so many people go back into abusive relationships is the pathological loneliness.

Both the terms toxic loneliness and pathological loneliness refer to this intolerable pain associated with being alone.

Usually the abusive partner lures the victim back in with false promises that things will be different. The victim who is suffering from such severe emotional / mental distress from being alone takes their chances and goes back.

In the mind of the victim, the pathological loneliness and the depression that goes along with it, is more painful than the abuse was.

People with codependent personalities usually developed pathological lonliness as children from neglect and abuse.

Depression can also develope out of childhood abuse. This can be any type of abuse, including emotional and psychological abuse. People that were abused as children often have complex post traumatic stress disorder as adults.

C-PTSD can involve depression, anxiety and sometimes pathological loneliness. There are often internal mental tapes that play inside their head that repeat negative things.

Being alone can make the internal dialogue louder. Thoughts of worthlessness, shame and failure play over and over. These tapes are implanted in the subconscious during childhood by others.

Many people with C-PTSD do not realize that they have actual trauma that is the same as PTSD which was caused at multiple ages and multiple circumstances.

Many people who have mental illness like depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder had chaotic, traumatic, abusive or emotionally devaluing chilhoods.

People with depression have organic differences in their brains which can be seen with brain scans like an MRI. Certain parts of the brain that are supposed to light up to show activity, do not light up.

Depression can also co-exist with anxiety disorders. The sensations of imminent threat that occur with PTSD and CPTSD, can be felt alongside of depression and loneliness.

Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate one feeling from another. It can be helpful to people to be able to identify what sensations they are feeling.

Sometimes looking at the feelings and figuring out what is based on current circumstances and what is from early programming can help.

People with disorders of depression often feel lonely because they are unable to find people to understand their illness. Being disbelieved and invalidated can open up old wounds from childhood.

Some people are unaware that they had any abuse or emotional trauma because it happened at a very young age. The brain stores memories differently before the age of 5.

Conditions like depression and toxic loneliness are no less painful than other illnesses. Unfortunately many people are not empathetic about invisible illnesses.

A View from Inside the Beautiful New Jersey Woods

History Channel Videos About Halloween

Here are a few interesting short videos from the History Channel web site about Halloween. These are fun to watch and you can share them with your children too. Halloween has a complex, rich history which involves traditions and beliefs from different religions, time periods and cultures.

http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween/videos/halloweens-origins?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween/videos/haunted-history-of-halloween?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween/videos/halloween-goes-commercial?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

You are Beautiful Just as You are Right Now !

You have innate self worth and you are beautiful right now.

You can make changes, learn new things and progress towards a goal any way you desire to, but your innate beauty and self worth are fully in tact right now at this minute.

Other creatures like bunnies are beautiful just the way they are and they do not need to change or grow or do anything in particular in order for us to see the beauty and value in them.

image from pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/pin/311803974180733994/

The trees are beautiful just as they are at any stage of growth. Their special value is in their beauty and their unique presence.

image from pinterest  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/244601823485308118/

image from pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/pin/311803974180733961/

Babies are born and they are beautiful.

They cannot do anything to contribute to the household other than just to be there. They cannot do anything for people but strangers come up to them in the store and want to see them.

There is an innate beauty in life and in living things because of the spiritual nature of life itself.  The possibilities for the new baby are endless. 

People sometimes feel they envy the baby and the endless possibilities it has to become anything it wants to become. But you can still become anything you want to become. Your possibilities are still available to you of you can see reality as less rigid than the matrix you perceive it to be. 

You have an inner beauty as well as an outer beauty. There is no path you can take which will add or subtract from the spiritual being that you are. 

You can follow whatever values that you have and your beliefs can change along the path as you need them to better serve you.

 It does not change the fact that you are beautiful right now, and your self worth in perfect, even more than you can imagine. 

Imagine what wonderful things you can do once you accept your value and see the wonderful qualities in yourself !

Time for all good little Insomniacs to try to Sleep

I have had insomnia for a long time now. I am not sure about all of the reasons for it. I do attribute it to PTSD and anxiety. There is also a feeling of not wanting to go to sleep because I do not want to deal with what tomorrow will be like. Things are starting to get better in my life but there is a habit of dreading the next day. 

So I wonder how many other people stay awake to try to put off the inevitability of waking up in the morning. We know rationally that staying up will not change what time we have to wake up or whether or not we have to wake up…yet it feels like we can just stay in the quiet of our room and never have to leave…if we just don’t go to sleep. 

Then we end up sleep deprived and the day is harder than it had to be. As we stay awake later and later, we begin to think about how it will be harder for us tomorrow, if we don’t go to sleep soon. But still…we stay awake and refuse to sleep. 

Once we actually turn things off and try to sleep then comes the next problem. The quiet and the dark are peaceful to some people but…if you come from a background of abuse, mental illness, depression or anxiety…then the quiet is not always peaceful at all. 

In the quiet you can hear the thoughts in your own mind and they can torment you in a way that is hard to explain. Thoughts that involve intrusive negative thoughts, flashbacks, catastrophic thinking, and severe anxiety can become too much. 

So back on goes the laptop, the cell phone, Netflix , YouTube, WordPress or whatever distracts you from your own brain that wants to torment you to death.

So then it is 2 am…3 am…4 am….5 am….and maybe you will sleep before the sun rises because there is something about being awake when the sun begins to show itself …that feels like a defeat. Then on the other hand …sometimes it feels safer to sleep in the daylight than in the night.

If you ever lived in an abusive situation then you can relate to that feeling that sleep makes you vulnerable. You cannot see someone coming up to you…you cannot know if someone is watching you….if you are asleep. So sleep itself can feel like a dangerous thing. 

You begin to wish that you did not have to sleep at all…ever.

That you never had to close off your senses to predators that may approach during the night, while you are not suspecting them. While you are unable to protect and defend yourself. 

If you have PTSD from abuse, it is hard to shake that feeling that being asleep is unsafe…even when that person that you once feared sleeping in the same house with, is no longer a threat. But the threat can still live in your mind as if it is a living thing. 

So once again I bid you all good night and wish you peace of mind…as I wish myself peace of mind too. 

Much love,

Annie

Be WoW on Wednesday Post

This is my #beWoW post which stands for be Wow on Wednesday, This is sponsored by Ronovanwrites blog

Please take a pop over and see what interesting things he is doing. And now for my post.

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October in New Jersey

October in New Jersey comes with various feelings, memories and triggers for me. I love Halloween, so that part of October is fun and exciting. I love the creativity of Halloween such as the costumes, the imagination of both children and adults coordinating together, the haunted houses and the decorations. 

October is also a reminder to me that I am not living the life of freedom and independence that I would like to be, I ended up having to move back in with my ex in-laws a few years ago.

This was following a situation that I had to exit rather quickly and the offer from the in-laws was a last resort, emergency measure for me, in order to keep my kids safe and make sure there was a warm place for them to be for the winter. 

Along with living here comes many restrictions, control, manipulation and boundary crossing, which is how I knew it would be from many years of past experience with them. There are always conditions and intentional miscommunication about things that are important to me. 

If you have ever been in a situation where you felt your freedom was restricted then you know what I mean. I am sure many of you have felt your creativity, self esteem and your efforts to follow your own dreams and values, restricted by situations and people before. 

The reason October reminds me of just how controlled and limited I feel is that the in laws do not like Halloween. In fact they see it as Satanic  Witchcraft Time, which if any of you has ever done research about these things, you know that people that call themselves witches do not worship Satan, and that Halloween is not al about witchcraft for most people anyway. 

But living here restricts the type and amount of decorating I can do. I have to try to sneak my kids out in their costumes for trick or treating, or just deal with the consequences. My ability to be a parent that makes my own decisions about my own kids is severely interfered with in all kinds of areas of their lives. Halloween is not the biggest one. 

Other things about my life are intentionally interfered with and monitored to the point where I have to keep certain goals, dreams, activities, and even mail and bank statements invisible. I am completely alone with my decisions to move forward in my life, my behaviors towards those goals, and there is no one I can discuss or share these things with at this time. At least not in the “real life” world.

I have to count on myself. I have to plan by myself. I have to keep everything to myself, in order not to have any of my plans undermined by people who would rather have me dependent upon them, and follow the role and identity that suits their agenda.

But herein lies the questions…

How can we follow our dreams and become the spiritual person that we want to be…contribute to the world in the way we feel lead…and blossom and bloom…when we are in locked down situations …even to the point of mental abuse in some cases? 

What happens after an abusive situation is over? Are we condemned to a life of post traumatic trauma that we can never get out from under? Can we still reach towards being the person we were meant to be? 

If we were meant to do certain things…contribute to humanity in a certain area…care and love others…then why has the universe restricted us?..punished us?…

Are we being tested? Are being strengthened? Are we being punished? Are we being educated somehow? Are we being prevented from reaching our full potential due some bad thing we did in our past?

Have we been forgotten…forsaken… by God or the universe ?

I have been thinking about all of these questions lately and I have found that asking questions in a scientific, detached sort of way, rather than a reactive sort of way, can lead you to answers and possibilities.

There are always possibilities even when we do not see them. 

Even when we are able to see possibilities, there are even more possibilities and more potential within ourselves than we are able to see. 

One of the first steps to surviving the feeling of being controlled and imprisoned, is to consider the questions and to consider that there are possibilities that we cannot see.

Our minds allow us to see only that which we believe is possible. It has been proven by quantum physics that there are many things happening around us that our brains see but that our eyes do not see.

How can there be something in front of you that your brain sees but that does not get sent to your eyes? 

It has to do with the subconscious mind and how it interacts with your conscious mind. The subconscious mind has all of our associations stored in it. It holds our beliefs about reality, our biases, and associations between things and situations to what we think the meaning is of those things.

Our subconscious mind assigns meaning to what we see, what we hear, what other people do and everything else in our environment. Our subconscious mind decides the rules about what we can allow into our consciousness. This includes what we see with our eyes or what we do not see that another person right next to us, might easily see. 

This does not just apply to seeing objects that are in our space of vision. This also includes seeing possibilities for us. It includes seeing what potential we have. It includes seeing reality in a completely different way than we are used to seeing it. 

If we can begin with questions about what we think and what we believe, we can open a connection to that subconscious part of the brain.

We can question the rules about how reality has to be. We can question our inner rules that dictate how we expect people to treat us, how we expect people to see us. 

We can question any beliefs we have about ourselves such as not being good enough, deserving to suffer, being  easy to control or manipulate and any beliefs we have about being inadequate to go after the things we want. 

Once we begin to question the beliefs that have been programmed into our subconscious minds, then we can question where those beliefs may have come from. 

If you think that you are destined to be controlled and manipulated for example, where do you think that belief came from? We did not put it there ourselves. 

If you have a belief that you will never find a partner that understands you, wants the best for you and really loves you…where do you think that belief came from? You did not put it there yourself.

These things were programmed by other people and situations that you were in…mostly during your childhood.

Once you begin to question your limitations and the beliefs that are behind those limitation,  people will find you much harder to control and to threaten. Once you can change the early programming from your childhood, you will not be stoppable by others.

You will begin to see possibilities where you did not see them before.

You will see ways around other people and situations that may have been right in front of you the entire time. But other people may have been redirecting your conscious mind so that you would not see them. 

You were meant to do great things in this world and in this reality. Begin with the questions…

Why do I feel stuck? Who do I think is controlling me? What authority do they really have over me? Why do I feel inferior or inadequate? Who told me that?

What agenda did it serve for them? Were they telling the truth? Did they know the truth about me?

Is this feeling of being stuck something new or is it a conditioned state that is familiar to us from our past? Maybe others are trying to control and manipulate us but do they have as much power over us of we refuse to react the way they expect us to?

Why do I want others to approve of me? Do I need everyone to approve of me? Is everyone looking out for my best interest? Does everyone tell me the truth?

Did the people who told me I was inadequate, non-compliant, undeserving or not worthy…have some agenda of their own? Did they really know me? Were they telling the truth? Were they lying? Did they even know what the truth was about me? 

Who knows me better than I know myself? Why should I live my life to please other people who will never be happy with me anyway? What am I trying to avoid?

Is avoiding the pain of conflict worth living for others? Is the fear of upsetting someone else worth giving my dreams away, my self esteem away, and my life purpose away…just to serve someone else’s agenda?

Begin with the questions and see what your subconscious mind in holding.

See what beliefs are no longer serving you. Anything negative about you is not serving you at all. Anything that is limiting your possibility to go after your dreams is also not serving you anymore. 

Let go of the early programming and other programming that other people forced onto you only to serve their own purposes.

Anyone that told you things like.…You Can’t….You Don’t Deserve…You are not good enough…

You will fail…You should …You should not……. was probably thinking of their agenda and not about your happiness… or  “the Truth”  for that matter….

You have one life to live. You should live this life in order to fulfill  your happiness and your dreams. The people that really matter are the ones that will love you for being who you really are.

Blessings,

Annie   of gentlekindnesscoaching.com  and gentlekindness blog on WordPress

You do not do Things to Deserve to be Abused

Your Innate Self Worth and Value

You Have Innate Self Worth