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Emotional Abuse

  • Anxiety, Emotional Abuse, Exercise, Intuitive Eating, Recovery, Relationships, Self Confidence, Self Empowerment, Self Love, Spirituality

    STRUGGLING WITH OVERWHELM? 6 Action Steps To Take Right Now

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    Overwhelm…probably makes you feel a little…Anxious? Nervous? Fearful? yep, even thinking of the word can conjure an unpleasant response in our body.

    So what exactly is it, where does it come from and most importantly how do we stop it from taking over?

    Overwhelm is rooted in a feeling of powerlessness. Overwhelm happens when we have lost our sense of self and have been plunged into confusion feeling a myriad of limitless options surrounding us with no idea which way to turn. This confusion may come from outside of us or from inside our own minds – but either way – it all feels like “too much” and often makes us want to shut down.

    It pushes many of us into procrastination or gets us doing meaningless tasks that aren’t in line with our truth.

    So why does overwhelm happen? Why, even though we know it is not helpful for us, do we let it in? Why can’t we stop it?

    Here are two fundamental reasons for overwhelm 

    1) YOU ARE NOT ANCHORED IN YOUR OWN AUTHORITY

    You get overwhelmed because your focus and energy is directed outward too much. There is too much emphasis on things that are going on outside of you and what other people are doing, thinking and saying.

    This is the manifestation often of a huge boundary issue, especially for empaths. Where your sense of self and identity is based on the reflections you receive from those around you and is not generated from within.

    You then get overwhelmed because there are limitless options available to you out there and without being anchored in your own authority you have no way to narrow down those options.

    The world is simply too much and your container is always overflowing with other peoples thoughts and ideas. Your own voice is crowded out.

    2) THE VOICE OF YOUR INNER CRITIC IS LOUDER THAN YOUR INTUITION/HEART

    You haven’t cultivated a strong enough relationship with your intuition and the voice of your ego takes over often.

    Your ego voice is one of fear. This conditioned voice will keep telling you you are not good enough, you need to be small, you shouldn’t cause a scene, you shouldn’t speak up.

    You feel overwhelmed then because suddenly everything feels like too much of a challenge. Everything is too scary, too dangerous, too risky. So you end up not doing these things – your ego has won – it has kept you safe and small.

    The pressure inside your mind has overwhelmed any dreams or desires you have in life to go and do what you want to do.

    The outcome as a result of either 1) or 2) or both is that you feel small and restricted in your own life and feel out of control.

    In both scenarios you are perpetuating a concept of separateness. You are disconnected from source, disconnected from truth.

    The natural order of things is wholeness, balance and abundance. The concept of overwhelm is a construct of your mind that keeps you feeling small because it wants you to be safe. 

    Overwhelm often comes with a growth moment. It is when you are asking more of yourself than you have done before.

    But, very importantly, you CAN grow without overwhelm.

    Here’s how…

    Here are 6 tips you can action whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed in order to reduce the overwhelm and allow you to move forward in life in whichever direction you want to go

    1) GET INTO THE BODY AND MOVE THE ENERGY

    Any intuitive movement is good, even just focusing on the breath works.

    Overwhelm manifests in the body but lives in the mind. Therefore you need to acknowledge it, and then move it. Examples include dance, yoga, stretching, walking, gym workouts. Any somatic practice that takes you out of your mind and into your body works well here. This is not the best time to learn a new physical skill though because you need your mind for that. Choose easy movement that you know how to do.

    2) TELL YOURSELF A NEW STORY

    Use affirmations to change the story in your mind. The most important thing here is to find statements that feel true to you. Here are a couple of examples.

    “I am more powerful than what is making me anxious”

    “I am a divine limitless spiritual being having a human experience”

    3) SET BOUNDARIES

    This will feel hard at first and may even feel more overwhelming but once you have set them and then stick with them your life will feel so much easier.

    A very tangible example here is setting boundaries around giving your energy to others. If you are constantly being asked by other people to do things for them and have no time for you then start setting boundaries with the people in your life. State clearly that you are happy to help them out but with conditions. Give time limits, share how much resource it takes you etc. let people know what you are available for and if they ask more of you then stay firm and say “no”. Make sure you are always spending time each day giving your own energy back to yourself.

    4) BREAK DOWN TASKS

    Break down tasks into the smallest conceivable size.

    I love this Hemingway quote that always reminds me of this…he talks about writing a book, saying that the idea of writing a whole novel can feel too daunting, too overwhelming…instead of thinking this he says “all you have to do is write one true sentence”.

    That is a beautiful example of breaking down a huge, overwhelming task – writing a book – into its smallest conceivable next step – writing one sentence.

    Take that principle to your to-do list.

    5) CHANGE THE TIMELINE

    Give yourself more time to do things. You don’t need to have everything done yesterday. This is so simple and so effective.

    We consistently overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a year or in a lifetime.

    Remember the tale of the tortoise and the hare. Consistent, sustainable effort over a long time period WILL give you results so long as you stay committed. Remember that you are in charge of your time and resources. If someone is asking too much of you you get to say “no” (remember action step 3 here)

    6) DO NOT STOP COMPLETELY

    When we get overwhelmed there is a tendency to want to shut down. But when we do that we lose momentum completely and it becomes more difficult and – to be honest – more overwhelming to start again. 

    Remember action step 4 – what is the smallest conceivable task you can do to keep the momentum rolling?

    For example, if you are moving house you may feel paralysed by overwhelm about sorting out and packing up your whole house – set yourself the task of clearing out and packing one bookshelf. The satisfaction of doing that will likely motivate and inspire you to do another shelf, and another. If it doesn’t then at the very least you have completed that one task and you can do another the next day. Just do not give up completely.

    I want to share one last BONUS action step….

    GET SUPPORT

    With all of these tips remember that you never need to go through this alone. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and like you cannot manage your life reach out and share those feelings with someone. Speaking out and sharing your experience is so so helpful in moving that energy. I want you to feel empowered to deal with overwhelm in your life but I also want you to know that empowered people still need support and guidance.

    If you are building a new coaching or healing business and are feeling overwhelmed and confused then I am here for you. I work with new coaches and healers to put together beautiful signature offers and build their business in a way that feels amazing and allows them to find success with ease, grace and flow. Click here for more information

    ALSO FEATURED ON MINDFLOWHARMONY HERE

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  • Anxiety, Emotional Abuse, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Empowerment, Self Love

    Courage, Confidence and Comfort Zones – You Don’t Need to Feel Scared to Grow

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    In this world of personal growth we often hear about getting outside our comfort zones and having the courage and confidence to push through all our fears to be a different, more successful version of ourselves. It is often described as being a challenge, an uphill struggle, we say we need to get ‘comfortable being uncomfortable’ in order to change.

    This blog post is going to propose a different way of looking at personal growth. I have developed a strong aversion to this language and have actually found in trying to take this approach I have, guess what, found myself struggling and feeling challenged at every turn. So I asked myself what if there was a different way to change?

    Can we grow, evolve and develop without this relentless Sisyphean push to continuously extend ourselves beyond our comfort zones?

    I have battled with this idea of getting outside my comfort zone for a long time. Is my comfort zone something I can define with a boundary that I can simply step over every now and again when I feel the urge to push myself? Or is it something more nebulous…a thought pattern that I need to bravely find my way out of in order to elicit some change in my life? Is it a physical place or does it just exist in my mind? Is it possible to feel safe everywhere? If that’s the case then how do I go about finding the edge of my comfort zone? Do we need to push through comfort zones to grow…is that really the only way?
    Is there a reason why life needs to be split into zones where we feel comfortable and those where we feel uncomfortable?

    I’m not going to answer all these questions in this blog post. I might not answer any of them in fact, mostly because my comfort zone has been an ever-shifting place that morphs itself unexpectedly from moment to moment anytime I think I have it sussed out.

    Sometimes the edge feels very clear, where my body says “No!” but my mind says “Come on, we can move through this!” Alternatively there are moments where I find myself way outside of what I thought was my comfort zone actually feeling totally fine.

    The point I am making here is that holding on to an idea of what our comfort zone is and then pushing ourselves to cross a specific line to get out of it and scare ourselves sufficiently in order to progress to the next stage of our own personal growth is not helpful if you actually want to get on with your life.

    The comfort zone construct actually just creates a barrier between you and what you want. “Stay in your comfort zone and you won’t get what you want. Success happens only outside your comfort zone” is the idea here. Well who says…and why should we be listening to them?

    I would argue you don’t need to be listening to anyone else but yourself when in pursuit of whatever success looks like to you. There is no need to put yourself in uncomfortable situations in the name of personal growth if you don’t want to. You can have any and everything you’ve ever wanted by operating effectively within a range of behaviour that feels good and manageable to you.

    In fact I would argue even further as to say the only way you will achieve the life you dream of living is by taking action steps that feel manageable and appropriate, not by trying to push yourself to some sort of extreme out of fear to effect change.

    So let’s explore another way of looking at this idea, for now drop the idea of pushing outside your comfort zone through fear and instead come with me and let’s look at something much more helpful and way less scary.

    If you want to grow, evolve and develop, what you really need is courage in action and confidence in yourself. These are mutually supportive behaviours so when you do one you help grow the other and vice versa. But you do have to do both!

    Courage in action is reactive and is something that arises in the moment. You come up against an activity which feels like an edge. It is something that you have never done before, there might be some risk and you have no idea whether you are capable of doing it. You use courage to step up and do this activity. Afterwards you feel relief, you feel proud of yourself and you feel like you have achieved something.

    Confidence in yourself is proactive. It involves encouraging yourself, positively affirming yourself and spending time taking care of and nurturing yourself. Building confidence in yourself can be done anytime anywhere all day everyday. We don’t need to do anything scary to build confidence. We can build confidence in ourselves by simply getting to know ourselves better and then acknowledging, encouraging and speaking kindly to ourselves.

    The ‘pushing boundaries’ construct is associated with fear and struggle. It is terrifying to step outside of our comfort zone in case we fail but we must do it so that we can grow. But that is because we have not grown confidence in ourselves first. It’s scary because we have no idea what will happen to us moving through this new activity. We are going in completely blind which of course does feel terrifying. Then when we are out the other side we breathe a sigh of relief and then feel happy and have a rush of adrenaline to show us we have successfully done the hard thing. We pat ourselves on the back and feel proud. We then add that activity to the list of things we can now do. Woohoo, we have grown we are now more confident in that thing. In this construct we are using the courage in action to grow our confidence in being able to do that action.

    That is fine. But what if we don’t want to feel scared all the time? I personally am done feeling anxious and fearful of new activities. I don’t want to keep approaching any new task with fear, or even seeking things which feel uncomfortable so that I can feel the rush and relief and pride of having completed them.

    Growing confidence in this way is very slow. You have to keep finding new tasks and conquering them and then adding that to your list of things you feel confident doing. Luckily, there is another way.

    Instead of constantly trying to find our edge or things that scare us, let’s instead build our confidence in ourselves first. Building confidence in yourself first means there are far fewer things that will scare you. Having self-confidence means knowing who you are and knowing that when you approach a new task you will either succeed or not but it doesn’t matter and it is not a source of fear either way. With self-confidence you simply just ‘do the thing’. You don’t have to push through a boundary or climb a wall. The idea pops in for this new task, you say woohoo let’s try this and see how it works out. There is no struggle, no internal dilemma, no anxiety or fear.

    Self-confidence is having a voice in you that knows the only time fear is appropriate is when there is a risk of harm or death. Any other task or activity does not warrant fear or bravery all it takes is a yes. Courage in action does not become this big moment of needing to overcome a huge hurdle but instead simply checking in with ourselves as to whether this feels like the ‘right’ thing to do, i.e. whether it is in line with our personal values and beliefs, and then moving forward with it.

    As someone who has spent a long time pushing herself outside of her comfort zone through endless fear barrier after fear barrier I can tell you one thing, it is terrifying and did not make me feel more confident. It did not lead me to the life of my dreams, it lead me to panic attacks, depression and cripplingly low self-worth.

    The only thing that grew my self-confidence was working on my self-confidence. Constantly doing things that scared me just made me feel scared. Crazy, huh? And yet…that is what we are being told is the only way to grow.

    I’m calling BS. You don’t need to be scared to grow. You need to take care of and nurture yourself so that the world feels less terrifying. From that place you will be so much more able to cope with new things and move outside your so-called ‘comfort zone’ in such a way that you will grow and change with ease and comfort.

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  • Body Image, Emotional Abuse, Recovery, Sexual Abuse

    Healing Is Not Linear – Crucial Advice For Moving Through Tough Times

    In my earlier blogs I talk about the impact of sexual abuse, see here and here. This childhood trauma had a huge impact on my relationship with my body and was the main underlying cause for my disordered and emotionally driven eating.

    Healing my relationship with food and my body was the most important thing I did for healing my relationship with myself and recovering from this childhood trauma.

    I don’t spend much time these days thinking about what happened or working specifically on deep healing around it. But that doesn’t mean triggers and stories don’t arise and it doesn’t mean I can say I am ‘fully healed’. These kinds of scars run deep.

    While they don’t now impact my everyday life they are still part of the fabric of who I am and from time to time things get highlighted or called up to be seen and to be dealt with.

    This is exactly what happened these last few days. Perhaps it was Valentine’s day and all the love being shared, I am not sure. But for some reason a conversation I had with some male friends triggered a massively disproportionate amount of rage. I got so infuriated and I knew it wasn’t about them personally or the exact things they were saying.

    I know the feeling of being triggered well now. It’s something we learn as we develop our ability to listen to our intuition. As we learn how our body responds and reacts to different events, conversations, environments and people we learn what is ‘normal’ for us and what is out of character or disproportionate.

    This skill is what allowed me to not take my anger out on my friends but instead go inwards and ask myself what was going on for me. Our bodies hold so much wisdom. Our bodies know what we need and how to handle themselves. It is so so crucial to develop our ability to truly listen to ourselves.

    Not only was I able to recognise what was happening and feel my reaction rather than unleashing it unfairly on the world, I was also able to be kind and compassionate to myself in that moment, even though I was angry.

    This is the key. To know that whatever we are feeling, even when triggered is OK. ALL of our feelings are valid. Every. Single. One. We are still lovable when we are mad, we are still lovable when we are hurting, we are still lovable when we are depressed. The way we are feeling is not a determinant of how lovable we are.

    Healing is not linear. There will be days, weeks, months, years when triggers simply won’t come up for you. Where you will wake up everyday feeling energised, hopeful and excited for life, able to handle healthfully anything that comes into your sphere. Then a conversation or event might trigger something and we feel ourselves falling. We try to grasp on to the feeling of peace, of joy. But it slips through our fingers and we find ourselves deep in the anger.

    Know that this doesn’t mean we have failed or that we have gone ‘backwards’ this is all part of the healing journey. In fact it’s an unavoidable part of the journey of life. The important thing is what we bring to the table to support ourselves through these times. We need to bring the awareness, kindness and compassion for ourselves that we have been developing. We need to recognise these feelings for what they are which are feelings. Feelings, no matter how intense move through.

    Knowing how to handle ourselves with love in those moments is crucial however there is one even more important piece of wisdom for supporting ourselves through these times and that is CONNECTION.

    The thing that helped me the most over these past few days is speaking out my feelings to trusted friends and those who triggered me. It sounds easy writing this now. But I know it can feel terrifying. However the energy of those feelings needs to move through and needs to move out of our bodies. Sharing with a trusted person in our lives is THE most healing thing we can do for ourselves.

    There is something profoundly pure and beautiful in sharing our pain with someone who understands. This is something I was totally unaware of until I truly began my healing journey. Telling a friend you feel angry is one thing but being able to express your emotion into the world while someone sits and stays with you with no judgement through that is something very different and incredibly special.

    If you are looking for someone to share your story , someone who is truly able to listen and hold space for you with no judgement then please know you can always reach out to me through the comment section below or email me directly sasha@sashafardell.com. Otherwise use the links below and join me over on instagram or facebook. Hope to hear from you.

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  • Anxiety, Blogvember, Emotional Abuse, Intuitive Eating, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Love, Spirituality

    22 – How to feel your feelings for real

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    This is one of my all-time favourite topics, firstly because I think it is just so incredible that we as humans who have this beautiful ability to sense the wonders of the world around us purposefully numb ourselves to its beauty so that we can avoid any hint of unpleasantness. I could talk for days about how we are taught to numb ourselves and how society is created on the foundations that in our life we should seek to live a life with only pleasure and any pain is bad and dissonant with our purpose here on earth. But this is not the purpose of this blog post!

    You want the action steps right? You want to know how to really get into your feelings. You know you numb yourself. You know that you don’t cry when you’re sad, you don’t speak out when you’re angry, you pretend you’re ok when inside you are slowly shrivelling up silently wishing you could hibernate forever…

    So how do we get past this, how do we get into our real feelings?

    As a disclaimer, read through the exercise first and if you have never done anything like this before I strongly suggest you do it in the presence of someone you trust, a therapist, coach or close friend or family member. If we have been detached from our feelings for a long time it can sometimes be quite overwhelming when we begin to explore them.

    The first thing to know is that feelings are bodily sensations. The way we experience feelings is visceral, it is felt physically. You can’t have an emotion just in your head (I will use the words emotion and feeling interchangeably in this post). If you think you can feel your feelings only in your mind then this is a surefire way to tell you are numbed to or have repressed your own emotions.

    Lets take a look at an example. An obvious one we all can identify with…fear. When we feel fear our heart rate increases, our palms get sweaty, we might need to go to the toilet, our hunger evaporates, we may feel our muscles tense and our senses become heightened. This is an extreme bodily response as when we feel fear our body sends around a massive amount of hormones in preparation to take action to save its own life, survival becomes our priority when we feel fear.

    What about other more subtle emotions? Every individual will experience their emotions in a way that is unique to them, they will have their own flavour but the way to identify them is the same.

    As a human you will have an emotional reaction to pretty much every change in circumstance around you whether you are aware of it or not, for example you will automatically respond when someone has said something kind (or mean) to you, if someone has offered to help you or you have solved a problem you have been working on for a while. In our ever-changing world we are constantly responding to evolving circumstances around us.

    In that moment where you sense a change in yourself, or if you don’t sense a change but something has happened and you think you ‘should’ have reacted then take a second to stop. Stay still. Sitting or standing. Close your eyes. Breathe in and out a couple of times. Bring your attention first to the breath coming in through your nose and feel it track down through your windpipe and into your lungs, filling them, then trace the air moving back out, feeling your lungs empty and the air coming out through your nostrils. Once you feel comfortable with this bring your attention to any sensations in your body that are acute, for example any pain, pressure or tightness. Move around your body and explore what is happening. Keep moving your attention around your body remaining curious and non-judgemental the whole time, take a few minutes. As you are doing this you will sense your mind making sense of your bodily sensations and it will start to give you potential answers to what you’re feeling. For example you might close your eyes and breathe and feel your legs become tingly, you might feel a tightness in your chest and the back of your eyes might begin to burn, your mind will spontaneously provide you with answers for how to make sense of what is happening. It might offer you heartache, grief, sorrow. Your intuition will know when you have the right answer. Remember that your body has felt this many many times in your life it is just that you haven’t been aware of what has been going on.

    When you first start doing this, especially if you have numbed yourself or repressed your feelings for a long time, the most common responses are likely to be anxiety, fear and emptiness or loneliness. That is ok. Remember we are doing this exercise with no-judgement.

    It might take you some practice to get answers on what you’re feeling, to start with you might not be able to tune in to your body. But this is all the more reason to keep trying.

    Reconnecting our mind and our body is absolutely vital to improving our well-being, spirit and happiness within ourselves.

    The amazing thing is that you have literally hundreds of opportunities to practice this throughout the day as you are constantly responding and reacting to the environment around you. If you are not sure where to start do this exercise in a scenario where you already know the feeling. For example, if you get angry when someone cuts in front of you in a line, next time it happens take a moment to check in with how your body is feeling. By reverse engineering it you will see how your body responds in different scenarios.

    At the other end of the spectrum, feeling huge emotions fly through your body taking you on a rollercoaster ride on a daily basis is a very different matter. This often disproportionate emotional response to what is going on around you can signify that there is something deep you are repressing and it is trying to be released any way it can, like a pressure cooker needing to let off steam. The exercise described above can still be very useful as you may notice that your body is actually telling you of the ‘real’ emotion that is lurking beneath the intensity of the one you think is being shown. For example often under intense anger there is actually a lot of pain and sadness

    If you would like to explore this exercise or go deeper with me please just book in for a free clarity session where we can discuss how to feel your feelings in more depth, just email me here to book a time.

    Lots of love xx

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  • Body Image, Emotional Abuse, Sexual Abuse

    Your Body as your Home

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    When you have been sexually abused your body is no longer a safe place. Most people take for granted that they live in their bodies, that your life expands outside the confines of your body. But imagine for a second this Home of yours, your private space, the physical manifestation of you has been robbed, broken into, attacked, ripped apart from the inside. Where can you live? This is a question that terrifies you and that you simply cannot answer. So you retreat, you try to take up as little space as possible, you become less than. Your life shrinks within the confines of your skin, you can’t imagine being able to trust your body in this world, it is no longer yours.

    You copy other people, you ‘act as if’, you mimic what others do, when they hop, skip, jump and laugh, you hop, skip, jump and laugh in the hopes one day you will once again feel whole. This is not living. You are not yourself, you are a puppet, entirely defined by those you spend your time around. So your life becomes complete potluck. Entirely based on your postcode, class at school, who’s in your dance class. You have not chosen any of it, you don’t know how to choose. And here lives the fear. The space between you and your body. This deep pervasive existential fear that you may never find a way to close this gap. You will be destined to a life of puppetry, hoping you will find a show and a puppet master that suit some facet of yourself well enough so that the show can go on.

    But there is hope. Any single tiny step that you take. Where you, the real you, make a choice and face the fear all on your own. You have planted a seed of hope. A seed that will root yourself in your body. That connects the you inside with the you outside. You take enough steps, you plant enough seeds and there is a garden, a jungle of shared experiences you and your body have been through together. You lay the foundations brick by brick of a glorious bridge back to yourself. And that’s how you come back to yourself, come back to your body. You take the step, you plant the seed, you build the bridge, you wave goodbye to the puppet master, the curtain comes down and you step off the stage into the life you were always supposed to live.

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