Challenges and Disappointments

A good therapist doesn’t have to have experienced your problems to help you overcome yours. General therapy skills and intuition help! In an attemptto be an ever better therapist to my clients new & old, I have taken some time out to go through my own life experiences, and re-look at them from a different perspective.

So I started on my own ‘Life Coaching’ process… Also in an attempt to move my own life forward a step. (Now that my youngest children are starting school, it really is time to move into a new-phase mindset.)

When I came to the section on ‘Challenges and Disappointments’ I can see how I have grown stronger from the ‘Challenges’ and can accept them, but I was challenged by my ‘Disappointments’ greatly.

I can look back at the challenges that I have faced in life… some menial (but real all the same – house buying, paying bills etc) and some quite traumatic, and I can look at them in great depth with no problem at all.
(Divorce, having 4 children under 5years old, nearly losing one of my babies at 3 months old, a forced sexual experience as a young teenager, and my own upbringing was hard at times  – memories of seeing my mum being beaten up, my brother being belted, parents bitter divorce followed.)
All these things seem to have been dealt with – mostly using EFT, NLP & hypnotherapy, and I can see how much stronger I am as a person for experiencing these things, and how it can help me be a better therapist to have gone through some tough things in life and then deal with them in a positive way.

But, my goodness, when it came to the ‘Disappointments’ some new things cropped up. Of all the things that could have been a lifelong niggle, it was the disappointment with myself that hurt me the most. Including things that I had no control over.
I have no conscious memory of being a 3 week old baby with heart failure, and I have no physical symptoms as an adult, but do I feel guilty and disappointed in myself for causing my parents and family such trauma? Oh yes! And who does that help…?

Then, looking at my current life situation… My children are happy and healthy. They have parents and family who love them very much, a privileged life, fun, lovely friends and a great school to go to. It just so happens that their parents don’t live together anymore, and so they have two happy family units… But do I feel disappointed in not making my marriage work? Of course I do. But why? And more importantly, who does that help? No-one.

Looking at my own life from a different perspective has helped me to realise what emotions I was stuffing down.
Now that I can see that I need to let go of the disappointment I seem to hold against myself, I can look again and see things differently. Let myself off the hook, and continue on my life’s journey with a lighter feeling about ‘me’… I’ve done my best, and I’m not that bad after all!

“The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.” Abraham Lincoln.