A community creates a person
Getting to know yourself
Throughout the book there will be links to videos and practices which are designed to help you get to know your emotional systems, focusing first, of course, on the seeking system. Whilst there are significant similarities in how humans experience and express care, assertion, curiosity, etc, we are all unique. Just as my main aim as a therapist is to help the person become their unique self as much as possible, this is also the aim here. As a result, the person at the end of therapy is better off than the person at the beginning – sometimes has some major life changes to make or tough realities to face – but better off as a result.
So if you are having trouble with feeling too much or too little, don’t skip the exercises – they are your passageway to self discovery. If you have picked this book up, try to show yourself some compassion and firmness to make changes.
We are part of an interconnected world. In my opinion, we can’t wilfully access previously blocked innate emotional systems alone. We can block within our attachment relationships, but we will reconnect with support in healthy connections.
This is revealed best by the videos we share. You will spot where we get stuck, in our own explorations and how together we can investigate much more successfully and meet all sorts of new experiences. Our clinical service is called Connection Studio to make sure that this issue hits home repeatedly. It is all about connection. Emotions are designed to be communicators, we are designed to be social. It’s just the way it is, just as fish swim in water. Welcome to reality; connection is the medium in which we live.
I haven’t written this book so you can read more, but so you can experience your emotional systems more! So, just as I do in therapy, I encourage you here and throughout this book to stop and attend to your feelings as often as you can. Have a deep breath, and a sigh, then see if you can notice what you are feeling inside. Practice being interested in your inner experience.
You may already be realising that you need more connection that you have in your life right now. Loneliness is a pandemic and the damage it does needs to be faced by us all.
So the task ahead of you might be better managed with professional help, but for sure it will be better managed with the connections available in your life. How you address this is key. We offer our best suggestions in appendix 1.
“It’s important that you are inside of you. Experiencing your sensations inside of you, that’s how you care for you.” Beatriz Sheldon
You will not find generalisations about what combination of past experiences, past or present diagnoses, or family history will make it more likely that you will need professional help. We are all unique and different times in our life can lead to different opportunities to make changes. I believe that the unconscious is an impossible but to crack alone and for this reason, I wonder daily as I write, whether by writing a book to help on this journey, I am encouraging people to do it alone? By writing this book, am I suggesting you can do it alone by looking inwards? A little of it, yes. You can learn more by looking than by not looking. However, just as you can’t do it by reading alone, you have to feel; you also can’t do it by being alone, you also have to relate. Feelings are social things; they aren’t about your relationship with yourself but your relationship with the world.
So, you need to recruit others; and more than one other, two, three, four… a community creates a person. Some of these may be voices from your past, people who loved you and who nurture you though they are no longer present. They may be family members, friends, colleagues, a Samaritan… it doesn’t matter who but it does matter that you do not try to do this alone. Let me give an example of an absent but very present part of my community.
In times of adversity I have learnt to listen to the voice I hold within of my husband’s mother who loved me dearly for just two years of my life when I was 17-19 years old. I had such consistently loving messages from her, I have never doubted that she loved me for me and unconditionally. When I am hard on myself and, when I remember to, I aim to listen to her voice inside me, soothing, loving and kind. I hear her chuckling and feel her hugging me and making things better. Sometimes it makes me cry to remember her like this, sometimes it makes me smile or laugh, but it always makes me kinder to myself and more loving to others. I am lucky to have had such a special person in my life, and of course I am, but it is as much about the act of remembering someone in a loving way and remembering the love that they showed me, that helps me be more loving to myself and others in the here and now. We all have examples of acts of love and kindness bestowed on us, from family, friends, acquaintances or strangers. If you can, remember that loving act when you need some kindness in the future.
And if you haven’t given too much already, give kindness at many, many opportunities. Genuine acts of generosity have more impact on you than on those you give to – but don’t give to receive (David Hamilton, 2020), just give because it is what you want and what they need. We are social creatures and we need community to feel safe, so it is no wonder that acts of kindness builds our sense of community and increases our individual resilience and endurance.
We all need a community and we all need an inner circle – the people we turn to at times of trouble. In these challenging times more than ever, the process of giving and receiving will build strong foundations and show us who we can rely on. At Connection Studio, we create online experiences so we can come together with genuine authentic opportunities for social connection even when social distancing is being enforced.
Support us and get your copy first
The Emotional Systems books are in progress with the first one being released later this year.
If you want to support us, have a sneak peek of a couple more sections and get your hands on a copy first, head this way…
