Calm Mind Therapy

21/09/2021

To er is human,
To forgive, Divine”
- Alexander Pope

What are we doing when we forgive?

True forgiveness isn’t half hearted. It means loving the person who has harmed you as if they hadn’t. It’s taking all that pain and putting it down, numbing it with forgiveness. The temptation to hold it and use it spitefully, forgotten, the instinct to revenge, buried.

It’s not “forgive but don’t forget”
It’s “forgive and forget”

To some that statement will seem naive, troubling even. But when I say forget, it’s not in the literal sense. It’s in the sense that it doesn’t matter anymore. The pain is forgotten. The person doing the harm is forgotten for the pain they caused.

Practicing forgiveness is extremely liberating. All of that energy can be recycled back into relationships you care about progressing.
What, though, if someone had committed an obscene crime against you or someone you love?
Take the case of Mary Johnson, who forgave the murderer of her only son.
She said “unforgiveness is like cancer. It will eat you from the inside out. It’s not about the other person, me forgiving him does not diminish what he’s done. Yes, he murdered my son - but the forgiveness is for me. It’s just for me."

And this forgiveness is not only to be afforded others, but to ourselves. Radically forgive yourself of the weight you are carrying. That way you can release yourself to the live and trust of others again.

If you are “being eaten from the inside out” be selfish and forgive.

15/06/2021

Take a cursory glance over social media and you’ll read a lot about privilege.
“That’s your privilege talking”
In meditating on stoic philosophy, I’ve begun realising just how much my life is filled with it.
The good things- taking a walk when I want, having a job, talking to friends, spending time with family and on and on…
But even more revealing has been the realisation that even times of difficulty can be reframed by simply viewing these experiences as a privilege. “It’s a privilege to be able to do this extra work” “it’s a privilege that I can feel anger, I welcome the feeling” “it’s a privilege to feel upset with my friend, there’s an opportunity to learn”
I’ve found this to be quite powerful and can often shift my mindset.
The quote below is an excellent reminder and one that is often pondered in Buddhist practice too. Imagine, the next time you are pi**ed off or are in a foul mood, that you had died that moment. Look around at the faces of your family, pets, or just take in that moment. How much would you give, had your died, to return to this very moment… right now. You have this moment to encounter life in this only life you get here. Enjoy it.

23/04/2021

No one can tell the truth all the time. Everybody lies. Why is it that we find ourselves tending to step away from the truth at times? Often it’s situational. But how far does this creep into our closest relationships? How often do we lie to..ourselves? We stick with a relationship that we tell ourselves will get better rather than face the truth that it’s hurting us. We refrain from telling a family member that they are being hurtful. We don’t stand up for other people, even when we know we truly should. We post a picture on social media that we know isn’t representative of how we really feel.
Repeated Inauthenticity can be poisonous. Not least because, in reality, we are hiding from ourselves and are scared to be true. Fear is running a huge part of our life.
On the other side lies relief of embracing your authentic self. Lies acceptance.
So if you aren’t telling the truth to yourself even though there’s a voice in the head that you know is right... start listening. You won’t be at the mercy of others, nor your “self” anymore.

And see what happens to the quality of your experiences.

28/01/2021

Empathy isn’t conditional. It isn’t given depending on whether you like someone or disagree with them. They may even criticise you. This doesn’t mean one becomes a doormat. Far from it. It means you aren’t wrapped up in your own head. It’s a superpower.
If it’s empathy- It is universal.
Truly embracing the understanding of another mode of being requires self-awareness. If you are judging with emotion... you are lost.

17/07/2020

15/07/2020

Are you too busy? Do you find yourself prioritising work rather than family? Are you spending your time so you can spend money, sometime in the future?

Let’s imagine you have worked hard, continue to do so, spending a lot of time away from ones you love? You’ve bought a house, drive a nice new car and have the best of things.

Tomorrow your loved one might die. It’s incredible that we feel we are owed any time on this earth. The evidence is overwhelming that we, or they, may depart this life at any moment.

Would you trade your house, car, money and possessions so you could spend time with your departed loved one? I’d wager you would. They would pale into insignificance, faced with such a choice. Yet that’s a choice we make- more than we would like to admit.

Who are we really living for? Are we using our time living for others- even neighbours/friends who we think will judge us if we don’t have the best of things? Are they really taking up space in your brain that the thought would rob you of the one thing that is more valuable than any material- your own time here, right now.
Time is the only currency that matters.

14/07/2020

Nothing can disturb you except that you allow to disturb you.

‘But I can not control my thoughts’

Can you observe thoughts come and go without mental judgement? Practice observing or ‘witnessing’, even for 10 seconds, the constant flow of metal chatter that comes and goes.

Realise- that this is our waking, natural state. If a thought perturbs, separate the thought by realising the effect it has on the physicality of the body, and let it go in the next breath.

Inevitably another thought will come. We cannot stop thoughts. But we can control the effect they have on us.

Then thoughts ‘become like thieves entering an empty house’

06/05/2020

Each of us has dwelling within us an almost unlimited source of strength and resilience.

If you doubt this, as it is natural to, take a few moments to think about the devastating circumstances some of us have overcome or the achievements we have made as a species. The boundaries pushed and records broken. The problems solved and technologies invented.
It’s tempting to fear our inner strength and deny that we are capable of greatness by reasoning that it requires spectacular individuals. An outlier, a maverick.
You have that capacity in you.
We can look at people who ascend mountains, become great sportspeople, startup huge businesses or whatever achievement they attain and too easily say “I could never do that”
Often those achievers are the first people to say- “you could” Explaining that anyone can do what they can.
The person who battles mental health issues every day yet keeps going. The single mother or father who struggles day and night but keeps going for their child/children. The person struggling with grief, intensely felt, yet even in those moments of shock and pain still feels a sense of gratitude. The survivor. Someone struck down with cancer in youth. Parents who lose children. Those in dire poverty.
It’s absolutely incredible that somehow people keep going.
That’s the strength that’s there, within.
It’s what allows us to grapple with life despite all of the inevitable suffering. We are even able to reconcile the consciousness of our own mortality. So we all-everyone-have strength that we don’t even know about. And tapping into that can open us to a world of possibilities that we would never have believed.
That’s the greatness that is within each of us.

29/01/2020

“Vulnerability”

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

Except from consolations: the solace, nourishment and underlying meaning of everyday words by David Whyte

13/01/2020

Who is the toughest person in the gym? It’s not the guy deadlifting 300lbs and then checking himself in the mirror.
I swear the absolute toughest person is the one who has just started. Who is overweight, struggling to breath, red in the face and hating it. They’ve overcome much more in the run up to biting the bullet and getting into the gym. They’ve overcome their own mind, their embarrassment (maybe), their fears. They’ve felt they might be stared at or laughed at... and they still had the bottle to take that step to come in. This takes immense courage. Yeah, hats off to the person whose been there and done it, they started too. But if you have a long way to go, the motivation is much harder to muster. These people are the tougher that day.
I am always in admiration of those that do this. Challenging themselves, pushing forward when their mind is screaming against it. In mastering this lies true mental toughness and freedom.

And it can be applied to almost any aspect of life.

Exercise is one example. Trying to stop smoking is another, giving up alcohol completely, going to a class when you are feeling socially anxious are others. Taking the first step in trying to repair a relationship, swallowing pride, moving on from a toxic relationship. All difficult. But not unassailable.

The more you do it, the more you can take it with you into the challenges that will, inevitably, come with life.

I like the quote below, it really means to me- never give in. Always learn. Rise to the challenge whatever it is.

10/01/2020

Living in the future? A reminder to come back to the present:
Worrying/ becoming anxious about the future is debilitating and often, we believe, beyond our control. “Freeing” yourself means taking steps to break that cycle, to give yourself some peace. It’s also intended to bring to the fore, that these thoughts are often chasing a mental phantom. The circumstances that cause the anxiety don’t exist, they are in an imagined future.

09/01/2020

Sometimes we need help to realise that we are stronger than we think we are.
Hypnotherapy is an excellent tool in relieving self-doubt and anxiety whilst building confidence.
Get in touch if you want to start the process of change.