I've been prompted by my website manager to write another Blog. I know it's been ages, but there's always so much happening it's hard to select a specific topic to write about. And I like Counselling Blogs to be intentional, usually about a current theme in my work. But what to choose?

I've got one. Hopefully this will be the right word at the right time for someone. I'm writing about Letting Go, because recently, I've been working with many older parents and adult children who are learning to do this, just as I've had to learn (and yes, am still learning).

So, I'm talking about the 'letting go' that's a requirement of life; the 'letting go' that's built into the human life cycle. Parents, letting go of children as they grow into adults; adult children letting go of parents.

Family life cycle 'letting go' is always painful, but so is growth. And inevitably letting go is about growth; either our growth, or the growth of the other. Actually, both. We may not welcome our own growth perhaps, but we must learn to facilitate someone else's.

Older parents, is it time to 'let go' of our adult children? Allow them to make mistakes and recover? Allow them to learn without our intervention?

Or the other way around. Adult children, is it time to let go of parental care? Are we still expecting our parents to pander to us, to mop up after us? Are we afraid of taking responsibility for ourselves?

By holding on, are we really meeting our own needs, rather than their's?

So maybe it's the right time for some difficult conversations - parent/adult conversations; gently, respectfully. We need to talk through these changes. Acknowledge that it's about growing up, developing, strengthening, maturing. Nothing offensive or disrespectful; just the natural order of things.

Life is full of choices, none of which are easy. But let's begin 'letting go' with love, wisdom and openness in our hearts. And we can be honest that letting go is a process. It's going to take time, gradual choice-making, and emotional release. It will be bit by bit; progressively.

But we're not the first people to experience this; in fact, people are doing it the world over. So, it's good to remember we're not alone.

When I'm reminding myself to let go, I look at the birds flying overhead. There's something about the freedom of flight that prompts me to let go where I need to.

So, find your reminder, and let's do what we need to do, and do it well. As we all know, we can't control life; but we can control how we handle it.

Last Friday, I praised a client who has changed amazingly in the time I’ve known her. But it’s what she’s done that counts; and this is what I was praising her for.

Then I asked the question I always wonder about when people decide to take a journey of self-discovery. The question is: How did you find the courage to face your problems and begin this journey?

She thought a bit; then replied: I wanted to be honest with myself and I wanted self-understanding. And I think I knew what I wanted to be like, but I didn’t know how to get there. But that’s when I realised I had to confront my past, and figure it out.

This was an impressive answer, (something I have come to expect from this young woman).

But for me, it still didn’t answer the question. So I asked again: But how did you find the courage to do this? Where did that courage come from; the courage that made you want to change?

She replied: I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to be what I was becoming, and deep-down I wanted to be successful. But there’s no shortcut in life. To be successful, you have to be courageous and honest with yourself. It was really like this – success means you have to face your fears.

But then this raises the question - why do some people face their fears, and others not? The client I was praising had a really tough start in life, and then lots more adversity besides. So what makes her different? What gives her the courage to confront all of this?

.

As people, we’re good at lots of things. We’re innovative, so we invent new technology; we’re creative, so we express ourselves artistically; we’re sporty, so we strive to win; we’re intelligent, so we come up with new ideas.

But there are other things we’re also good at, and maybe we shouldn’t be. As human beings, we’re really good at blaming. We blame everyone and everything. We blame others for our failures, for our shortcomings, for our disappointments, for our bad decisions. We blame the weather, we blame our neighbours, we blame the teachers; we blame the doctors. You name it, we blame it. Blame! Blame!

Why do we do this? One of the reasons is because we’re very reluctant to look at ourselves. For some reason, we don’t like looking at our own flaws and weaknesses, and taking responsibility for them. It’s just too uncomfortable, and it involves personal change.

But alarmingly, and more often than not, other people can perceive what we can’t see about ourselves! Let’s say that again, put another way. We know we can see other people’s faults, because they seem so obvious to us. But what we don’t realise is that our faults, the ones we don’t see, are just as obvious to them! As people, we’re probably more “blind” than “seeing” where self-insight’s concerned.

What we’re talking about here, are our blind spots.

What are blind spots? At the simplest level, blind spots are what we don’t want to acknowledge about ourselves, or what we simply don’t see about ourselves. They come in a multitude of complex forms from defensive behaviour to denial. But if we look at blind spots in more obvious ways like tendencies, they can be the tendency to complain, the tendency to play the victim, the tendency to make judgements, the tendency to get bitter, or the tendency to blame!

So now we’ve come full circle. Blaming! Do you know, quite frankly, I think blaming is a waste of time, because let’s face it, we’re all to blame. So, if we’re all to blame, why blame at all? Far better to work on ourselves!

So how do we do this? How do we work on ourselves, if we can’t “see” ourselves? Here’s a suggestion: If we can’t “see” ourselves, we can ask someone for help, someone we trust, someone we can be genuine with, someone who loves us, and who will give us honest feedback. They may have wanted us to see this for a long time!

Why would we do this, you ask? It’s hardly a feel-good experience, and why would we want to know?

Well, I guess ‘growing up’ isn’t always a feel-good experience. But, bottom line, we’ve got nothing to lose. Because here’s the truth; if we don’t start working on ourselves while we’re younger, our not-so-good tendencies will only get worse as we get older. Our faults don’t miraculously go away. Instead, they get entrenched. They stand out even more. Cringe! Do we want to be nice to be around, when we’re older? Or do we want other people to leave us to it?

So here are the facts. In order to stop blaming, we have to be prepared to take responsibility for ourselves. This involves an honest look at who we are. A good clean-up yields benefit. Benefit to us, benefit to others. We’ll be better people in the end, and there’ll be, (great news), fewer blamers in the world!

We all put on social masks. They’re the personae, or facades we put on when we step out the door in the morning. It’s the person we are in the workplace, or when we attend a public meeting; on the sports field; at a social gathering, and on Facebook.

But sometimes I wonder if there’s such a thing as ‘authentic’ anymore? Have we become so comfortable with our social masks, we are that mask? Or, do we not only fulfil a role; we are the role? It’s become one and the same thing. There’s no difference.

Don’t get me wrong; social masks have their place. They help us survive in life. They protect us, promote us, and focus us on what we want to be, or feel we ought to be. To a certain extent, putting on our social mask gets us out of bed in the morning.

But what concerns me, is the loss of who we really are. I’ve counselled a lot of people who only know themselves in their role, or they only know the identity they assume on Facebook.

But is this who we really are? More to the point, do we even know who we are anymore? Have we lost touch with our true selves?

I believe that if human beings aren’t going to be ‘lost,’ we need moments of real connection with other human beings in order to find ourselves. As human beings, we’re created to be relational, and I mean moments of face-to-face relational, without the mask, without distractions, and even without the technology. But in the society we’re building today, we risk losing sight of this.

Meaningful connection, as the word indicates, builds meaning into our lives, and the lives of others. Lack of meaningful connection, on an ongoing basis, can lead to isolation and depression. Or it can also lead to self-centredness and even self-delusion.

So how do we build meaningful, genuine connection with other human beings?

Let’s start in small ways. Why not start by putting aside your smart phone, unplugging your MP3 player, and genuinely listening to the person talking to you. Doing three things at once, or even two things, is not listening. So tune out the other channels, and focus.

Or, why not try genuinely caring when someone shares some personal hardship or adversity with you? Put yourself in their shoes and imagine how awful it would be. Feel their pain. Go on. It might be you one day, who needs someone to really care!

Or why not verbalise the affirmation that’s on the tip of your tongue? What’s so hard about encouraging someone and making them feel better? And no, I don’t mean flattery. I mean a genuine compliment; something you really mean, and something the other person needs to hear.

These meaningful gestures make our lives more purposeful and integrated. They are genuine, authentic connections with other human beings. Come on people; let’s start being who we were created to be!

You may have heard the metaphor the walking wounded. It’s most commonly used in First Aid to refer to the people with minor injuries after an accident; the ones who get up and carry on while the urgent cases are attended to. But it’s a term also used in Counselling, (although as counsellors we use it in different ways). Since it’s used differently, I need to explain how I use it.

When I refer to the walking wounded, I’m talking about us. We’re walking around managing well; performing our roles; carrying out our jobs. But we have hidden emotional areas; painful ones. These are the parts of ourselves, the emotional wounds, we don’t show other people. Sometimes, we don’t even know about them ourselves, because they’re blind spots.

Unfortunately, we’re not as safe as we think, because wounding does reveal itself in a number of behavioural ways, and one way is through our reactivity. I’m not talking about everyday reactions (I don’t get on very well with that person), I’m talking about over-reactions (that person grates me so badly I want to smash them, or – I feel so insecure and anxious around that person I want to run away).

Of course we all get on with some people better than others, but there are some people who set our teeth on edge. We feel rage and extreme agitation. Or, on the other hand, the very sight of some people is enough to undermine our confidence, and we feel fearful, or threatened.

It often happens that there’s a mutual dynamic going on. What I’m saying is that the reactivity works both ways. In counselling language this is called psychodynamics, because it’s a two-way triggering process. You’re a reminder to each other of a conflictual relationship, or a power struggle, based in the past.

Sometimes, if your negative feelings are so deep that they’re not really about the person in your workplace at all, they’ll be rooted in childhood. It’s just that the tone of voice, the type of comment, the look, the mannerisms, are the same. And you wind each other up, or trigger the power play, and you can’t ignore it. You affect each other whether you like it or not. This is the unconscious level operating in the workplace.

Just to make it clear, when I talk about psychodynamics, I’m not referring to one-off over-reactions. I’m talking about reactivity that’s on-going and has a theme. You may be reacting to the authoritarianism; a request from them sounds like a command and your hackles go up. Or you’re reacting to their moodiness; it feels controlling because it affects the atmosphere of the workplace. It causes you to shrink and wither. Or maybe, it makes your blood boil, (there are as many emotional recordings and resulting reactivity, as there are people).

Sounds ridiculous? Maybe, but to be honest, workplaces can be ripe for anything to happen. The right explosive and they erupt. And we all know instances of workplace bullying.

The counselling approach I take is like peeling the layers off an onion, and getting to the core of the matter. It’s not far-fetched; it’s about exploring the storehouse of our emotional memory.

So if you’re in an explosive situation at work, or you’re being victimised, or bullied, and you suspect you also have an effect on the other person; then this is about examining your unconscious and bringing it to consciousness.

The unconscious won’t just go away. Changing or managing our behaviour – being more courteous, or more tolerant - won’t alter our deep inner core. The storehouse of the unconscious has been building up over a lifetime. So this is the goal, to discover what’s going on, to understand it, and deal with it.

Have you noticed (I’m sure you have), that some people are endowed with a sense of entitlement, (sometimes based on privilege). And then there are others who also feel entitled, but theirs is rooted in lack of privilege. They feel they’re owed something in life because they’ve missed out, (and they’re probably right).

Then there are the Cinderella people, who don’t feel entitled at all. And that’s our problem. When people are kind to us, we don’t know how to receive it, and we thank profusely because they’ve done us a favour, which we don’t deserve. But when people are horrible, it’s no surprise, because our expectations of what we’re due are that low anyway.

So, what’s going on here? We all know about self-worth, so it must hark back to that somehow, but where does this Cinderella Effect (lack of innate self-worth) come from? Why is it felt at such depth? And why does it affect us in so many ways?

The answer to all these questions lies in the effects of early childhood experiences. An innately poor self-worth, felt at such depth, and affecting us in so many ways, can only have started in childhood. And we have to journey back there, and deal with the causes. If we don’t, this inner child stays with us, throughout our adult life. (You don’t believe me? How about yesterday’s reactive, or defensive, or over-the-top behaviour)?

The inner child is highly reactive because it’s at the emotional core, affecting our behaviour in the here and now. It affects our ability to receive kindness and love, because we don’t feel worthy of it. When we’re the recipient of love, it’s like a red flag to a bull because it stirs up our emotional wound, the wound that says we’re not worthy to receive.

How do you respond when someone shows you love, or blesses you with acts of kindness? Do you shut out the giver and forget to thank? Or do you over-thank (to relieve the guilt of not being worthy)? Do you instantly do something in return, so you don’t feel indebted? Or do you get clingy and desperate for more? There are innumerable ways to express our unworthiness. (As many different ways as there are Cinderellas)!

Of course, we’re not like this all the time; only when our wound is stirred up, and our defences activated. The rest of the time, we’re pretty normal! But this is the emotional state we revert to when we feel vulnerable; our default setting when we’re feeling deficient.

So how do we change the default setting? In my view; there’s only one way. We have to examine the past. Obviously, it’s not possible to re-write the past, but it’s possible to understand the past and its effect on our behaviour. And the surprising thing is this: we are capable of changing our behaviour when we understand and learn about ourselves.

Self-knowledge and self-understanding, resulting from a journey of unpacking the past, is a very honest process. An honest journey is what my counselling process is all about. So, if you think this is the type of counselling you want and need, then make contact, and let’s begin.

If you've looked at my website, you will understand a little bit about my approach as a counsellor. One of the counselling tools I use, is to help people identify their defensive behaviour (defensive behaviour = the way we mask our emotional wounds). Why do I help people do this? What's the point? The point is, so we recognise when our wounding has been triggered. And the point of this (hopefully), is so we can begin the journey of healing and change.

We recognise our wounding when we're over-reacting. Our reactive behaviour is not who we are. It's the behaviour of the unhealed self.

If we don't learn the difference between our defensive self and our real self, we think the angry foul-mouthed person, or the angry, gnawing in-the-throat, shut-down person is our real self. Yuck! But when we learn that it's our protective behaviour at work - blaming, attacking, panicking, getting desperate, whatever we do if we're the expressive type; or pouting, looking surly or resentful, if we're the non-expressive type, then that's our alert button. We recognise our wounding has been stirred up and we can take stock. What's going on? Why have I turned into a monster, or crawled into my shell, or put on my armour?

Are you there? Are you reflecting? Do you know how to go about this? Okay, first, back up a bit. How did the situation start? Recollect the events, or what was said. What was your initial emotion? Were you hurt? Did you feel fearful, got at, put down? What happened? Now, what does this situation remind you of? Who, in your past, treated you this way? What recurring situation is it reminiscent of? How far back does this go? Remember, you won't have over-reacted unless there's a deep wound; a wound from childhood. And if it's a wound, then it happened over and over again. In childhood, to start with, we only have a limbic brain (emotional brain). So that's when someone's repeated anger, or disappointment, or disgust, (or whatever it was), wounds us deeply. I'm not talking about one-off anger. I'm talking about on-going anger (or disappointment, etc). And it will have been someone close to us, responsible for our care; like a parent. As a child, this registers in our limbic brain, and we feel it so strongly, it gets stored; filed in our emotional system. It's emotional trauma. That's why as an adult, we can behave so childishly and extremely when the wounds triggered. Our behaviour may be out-of-proportion with the actual situation we're in; an over-reaction, not just a reaction. You could say it's "hit a nerve" but it's most likely a wound.

Do you want to start a journey of emotional healing and the process of behavioural change? I'm a counsellor working in the Christchurch area, so why not get in touch.