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What I believe or what know to be ‘true’ may be what I feel or my reactions to what I have experienced – emotions are that powerful.

And my own experiences personally and professionally as a coach have shown me that emotions and behaviours not only powerful but an important means of expression.

They can be a cry for help, they can be a signal or a warning flag or they can be a distraction.

But they are all individual and unique to us and our own experiences.

We learn behaviour from our environment and therefore any damaging or ‘bad’ behaviour can be unlearnt but the problem is that we have probably practised this behaviour for so long that it feels ‘normal’ to us, it’s automatic.

We feel stressed so we reach for the biscuits.

We feel trapped and frustrated so we lash out.

We feel unloved so we choose destructive actions or behaviours because we don’t feel like we deserve any better or can behave any better.

We spend our lives re acting. I don’t think there are many people ‘acting’ on COVID at the moment we are mostly re acting, waiting for more news, more instructions. We are dealing with to something unprecedented that we haven’t seen before and that we can’t control.

So, why aren’t our behaviours new? Why are they ones we have used time and time again?

What I have come to see through my years as a coach and counsellor is that those reactions are coming from our learnt behaviours.

The people I see and the people I have helped have experienced some kind of loss or maybe have a physical illness or anxiety as a result of loss and they come to me with that secondary problem.

My first question is always this – what is underneath the emotion, the behaviour or the illness?

My story.

My story involves a lot of death. Unexpected and yes, tragic deaths - I’ve lost a child, a brother and a husband as well as experiencing the kind of death we expect, an elderly parent. Those deaths had such an impact on me and my family my children that we learned that grief was the overriding emotion for us a family. I talked to people about feeling lost, of losing myself without really understanding those words.

However, through all the work I have done on myself and with others what I have come to understand and I know to be ‘true’ is that the biggest loss I experienced was not of those people, it was not even the grieving I did for marriage, the end of the fairy tale, it was the loss of myself.

Everytime I lost something or someone else I had lost a part of me.

But was does that mean? If they come back will you be you again? Probably not.

Because those people that you lose are part of who make up your version of yourself. Their values, their beliefs their approval and their love contribute to who you believe you are.

We are constantly looking for love, attention, validation and approval outside ourselves and my own grieving showed me that no matter who or what I was grieving it came back to me. Their loss triggered the emotions in me that showed me that I was lost long before they died.

Sometimes the biggest loss we experience is the loss of ourselves as a child.

We tried to be someone else because we were bullied or our parents were absent or disapproving and constantly trying to be someone else to re gain that approval meant we lost ourselves. The wrong choices people make often leads back to this, the harmful relationships, the failed marriages, the jobs or even the addictions nearly always, always stem from this loss.

And the grief you feel at losing another person or thing in your life takes you right back here to this loss to these emotions.

I KNOW you can grow from this I KNOW that you can move past these harmful emotions and behaviours. I have lived it, I’ve practised it and I’ve shared it

Let me help you

Reach out and get in touch…