The Power of Nurturing Touch

“The analogy which often comes to mind for people who have been abused is the beaten dog: if an animal is continually mistreated, even though it wants to love its owner, and its natural instinct is to give unconditional love, the trauma will eventually become too much, and it will withdraw into its shell, ‘flinching’ when another human comes near it, whether that human is well-meaning or not”.

In my clinical practice I mostly work with people who have experienced emotional, physical and sexual abuse in childhood, which later leads them to become chronically ill. These early experiences create deep scars which need to be healed, which is not an overnight job.  Usually these people have tried many things before we meet.

I find there is a multi-level approach needed to heal such pain, including clearing emotional and physical trauma, reversing the perpetual ‘stress-fear’ response, learning how to manage people, (especially creating clear boundaries and saying no), learning how to put oneself first without guilt, selfcare, self love and more*.

Today I want to focus on just one aspect of this healing: nurturing physical touch.

When we have experienced physical or sexual abuse (and the emotional trauma which goes along with this), our body will store the memories and trauma in every cell. On a mind-body level we may feel it is no longer safe to be touched, because touch in the past equaled pain.

For example, if a child was often hit, but never experienced loving, nurturing touch, the body-mind will ‘equal touch with pain’ and create a ‘guard’ against further touch. This is part of the body’s natural self-preservation system, whose role it is to protect us and keep us alive.

Until the trauma is healed and cleared, the body will automatically and instinctually do its best to protect us from further pain or damage in a number of intelligent ways.

These instinctual, auto-responses will manifest for example:

• in ‘flinching’ if anyone comes near you or touches you
• an inability to ‘reach out’ to others for support
• feeling uncomfortable reaching out to touch others, even in a non-sexual way
• keeping people at a distance emotionally
• not feeling safe around others, always feeling on edge
• being defensive and ‘prickly’
• living alone because it feels safer
• not having relationships
• fear or discomfort with sexual intimacy

I can personally attest to being an expert in many of these protective strategies!

The analogy which often comes to mind when thinking of people who have been abused is the beaten dog: if an animal is continually mistreated, even though it wants to love its owner, and its natural instinct is to love, the trauma will eventually become too much, and it will withdraw into its shell, ‘flinching’ when any human comes near it, whether that human is well-meaning or not.

And so it is with us humans. We can only tolerate so much pain and abuse. As a child, without support or protection from the very people who are charged with looking after us, eventually we will create our own strategies for survival. Whilst these strategies may serve us at the time short-term, long-term they can create problems, including aloneness, isolation, unhappiness, depression and sickness.

I worked with a client a while back who had been horrendously abused in childhood. Both parents were mean, cruel, unkind and distinctly unloving. His mother would constantly put him down, humiliate and chastise him, making it abundantly clear she had no interest in giving him the loving attention he needed to feel worthy and develop healthy self-esteem, self-love and self-belief. His father would come into his room at night, haul him out of bed and throw him around the room like a rag doll. I felt sick to my stomach when I heard his story, although this type of story is quite common. Even though we can understand that people behave in this way out of their own unhealed childhood pain, it still leaves us having to deal with the consequences.

It was no surprise to me that as an adult, despite being well educated, above average intelligence and trained as a medical doctor, he found himself homeless, penniless and unable to work with severe chronic fatigue. Through working together he learned to recognize that this parental treatment was not normal or healthy, and that holding in the pain from the past had led his body to become ill. Within 6 months, through learning selfcare strategies and emotional healing techniques, his body reversed many of the symptoms and he was well enough to get on with his life.

But coming back to our theme of nurturing touch – at some point we are going to want to go beyond our old protection strategies, and one of the most safe and effective ways to do this is through receiving loving, nurturing, non-sexual touch from someone we feel safe with and trust.

All humans need loving, nurturing touch. It’s an essential need, and if it is neglected, or even worse, we receive abusive touch, we will create compensatory habits to protect us from further emotional or physical abuse.

“Many people who experienced emotional, sexual or physical abuse as a child will find themselves in unhealthy or dysfunctional partner relationships as an adult if they have not cleared the original trauma. For example, they may find themselves being sexually promiscuous because getting attention sexually is the only way they know how to get any attention at all”. 

Interestingly enough, many people who experienced emotional, sexual or physical abuse as a child, and therefore did not receive enough caring, loving touch, will find themselves in unhealthy or dysfunctional relationships as an adult if they have not cleared the original trauma. Such is the deep and natural desire to receive human love – we will do whatever we can to receive it.

For example, they may find themselves being sexually promiscuous because getting attention sexually is the only way they know how to get any attention or touch at all.

Or they may find themselves in an unhealthy relationship where they are treated by their partner the same way they were treated by their parents – ie, they are hit, put down, humiliated, punished, undermined etc. This comes about for many reasons (too many to list in this article) and have to do with a feeling of familiarity with this type of treatment, not feeling deserving of anything better, not knowing any better and the energetic attraction through ‘the law of attraction’ to an equally dysfunctional partner.

So what is the way out of this unhealthy pattern of abusive or lack of loving touch?

In my experience, despite the importance and necessity of cognitive emotional clearing therapies, in order to fully heal the physical trauma of loss of healthy touch or physically abusive treatment, we must experience loving, nurturing, healing touch as an adult. In other words, the very thing we have been avoiding (loving touch) is the very thing our body most needs to bring itself back into complete harmony.

One of the reasons we need this type of touch in order to heal is because much of the abuse we experienced happened at a pre-cognitive age. When we originally experienced the trauma, we were too young to speak or think, but just because these faculties were not developed does not mean the pain was not registered inside our body. Indeed it was – at an emotional, energetic, cellular, body level.

These experiences create what is called a ‘limbic imprint’ which is set up in the brain and memorized unconsciously. These limbic imprints can even be set up in the womb and during traumatic birthing experiences. Just because we don’t consciously know they happened does not mean they did not happen or are not there. The body remembers everything!

In order to fully heal, our body needs to be ‘re-programmed’ into experiencing the very thing which was lacking: safe, loving, nurturing touch.

But how do we get this if we are alone, partner-less, afraid to be near people, or in a toxic relationship where we are experiencing even more unhealthy touch?

I’ve found the best way is to find a bodywork practitioner who you feel safe with and explore what it feels like to be touched safely and lovingly in a non-sexual way. It’s not so much the particular therapy which is important here, but rather the ability of the practitioner to be able to understand this theme and give this type of safe, loving touch.

There are many other ways we can rebuild this trust within ourselves, including self-love practices, self care, healthy boundaries and more, but receiving safe, loving touch from another human is absolutely essential, because there is nothing that can substitute caring physical human touch which can only be received from another human being.

Sometimes it can be as simple as someone putting their hand on your back over your heart area. Interestingly enough, this is one of the few areas on our body we cannot reach ourselves – the back of the heart. Try it! Have someone put their hand on your back over your heart area and experience what it feels like. And then do the same for them, because you will know how good it feels!

If it has been your experience and you are still not receiving, enough loving touch, I encourage you to explore healing this way. It can be life-changing and literally give you your life back.

Kim 🙂

www.kimknighthealth.com 

* See my free program ‘9 pillars of health mastery’ which explains these different approaches in more detail.

The power of en-courage-ment to heal

This weekend a friend told me he doesn’t ever recall being encouraged by family or even many friends. It’s a sad and common truth which many people experience, including most of my clients, and which I can unfortunately relate to myself.

In fact, in my experience, the habit of encouragement is such an important part of wellbeing and health, it’s worth a blog to itself.

So what makes the act of encouraging others so important?

The clues are in the etymology (meaning):

According to the English dictionary ‘encourage’ means to ‘give support, confidence, or hope to (someone)’.

We will have more clues however if we look at the French dictionary. Encourage has its origins in Old French ‘encoragier’, to ‘make strong or hearten’. Encoragier comes from the word ‘coeur’ which means ‘heart’ in French. When we encourage someone we literally ‘lift their heart’, the seat of the Soul or Spirit.

The act of encouragement is so vital for physical, mental and emotional wellbeing that not receiving enough can leave us with rock-bottom self-esteem, self-worth and self-belief.

The act of encouragement is so vital for physical, mental and emotional wellbeing that not receiving enough of it can leave us with rock-bottom self-esteem, self-worth and self-belief.

In turn, deep unconscious feelings of ‘I’m not good enough, I don’t deserve’ (happiness, success, abundance, to be loved etc…) lead to dis-ease as a direct result of unhealthy behaviours and lifestyle habits which stem from these core limiting beliefs.

For people who are chronically sick, they have often endured a lifetime of criticism, judgement, punishment and abuse, all of which are the direct opposite of encouragement.

When we are criticized, chastised, humiliated and put down by others, (often the very people who were charged with our wellbeing, ie parents, caregivers, teachers), we come to believe we are unworthy and ‘bad’. We become ‘dis-heartened’ and ‘dis-spirited’ , which leads to hopelessness, helplessness and despair, which turn into anxiety, depression and even illness.

When we are encouraged, we feel ‘light-hearted’, optimistic, positive, hopeful and self-confident. We trust in our ability to navigate our way through life.

By contrast, when we are encouraged, we feel ‘light-hearted’, optimistic, positive, hopeful and self-confident. We trust in our ability to navigate our way through life. We feel we can cope and manage the challenges which come our way. We feel that people around us will support us in times of need, and that we can ask for help. If we grow up without encouragement, our heart is literally ‘broken’ because it’s ‘soul-destroying’.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of encouragement for health and happiness. If we have grown up without it, and even worse experienced the opposite, we will also find it difficult to encourage ourselves; instead we may be quite hard on ourselves, always putting ourselves down, comparing ourselves to others, beating ourselves up… It’s not a pretty sight (in our mind), but it’s what we’re used to, because it’s what we experienced growing up and it’s what we know. It’s familiar. 

So what is the way out?

As always the number one step is AWARENESS. Becoming aware of what is, whether that be recognizing the lack of encouragement, or our own self-defeating habits and behaviours.

The number one rule for recovering from unhappiness and chronic illness is self care. We have to give to ourselves what we never received.

The next step is SELF-LOVE and SELF-CARE. In fact the number one rule for recovering from chronic illness is self care. We have to give to ourselves what we never received. This is no easy task, because initially we don’t even have the neural pathways in our brain to know what love, care and encouragement are.

And we have to learn how to RECEIVE. We have spent so long protecting ourselves from receiving love because of the pain of rejection which led us to close our hearts, that we don’t know how to receive positive attention, including love and encouragement. As we say in Tong Yuan (Creating a Barrier-Free Heart) ‘it’s an art to love, and it’s an art to be loved’.

And we have to learn how to praise ourselves. I call this SELF-APPRECIATION. We have to learn how to appreciate who we are, just for being alive, and recognize our achievements. We must practice this daily.

When I work with clients, they learn all of this: they learn how to recognize past pain and clear it. They learn how to appreciate and love themselves in practical, tangible ways. They learn how to put a stop to continuing unfair treatment from others. They learn how to put themselves first without feeling guilty. All of this can be learned, and we must do this if we never learned to do it when we were children. I also encourage my clients a lot!

One of the ways I help people re-learn encouragement is by teaching them a daily meditation called ‘Tong Yuan’. Tong Yuan is a Chinese term which means ‘create a barrier-free heart’.

When we are hurt in the past, we automatically and unconsciously (energetically) ‘close’ our hearts  to protect from further hurt. A closed heart prevents us from experiencing and receiving love. It also perpetuates the lack of trust and fear which has built up inside us. The way out is to open the heart back up so we can experience what are called the ‘5 essential qualities of the heart: trust, openness, love, gratitude and respect. 

There are many ways to open the heart back up, but practicing Tong Yuan is a safe, easy, practical and efficient way to do so. It’s a daily practice which one can use for the rest of one’s life to keep building love, trust and self-awareness.

Whatever method you choose, the most important thing is to reverse the damage that a lack of encouragement has created. It’s also essential to have patience, because this is not something which changes overnight. But with persistence we can re-build courage and love in our heart.

Bon voyage!

If you want to learn more about Tong Yuan and how to open your heart check out the following links”

Introductory Tong Yuan program

Full Tong Yuan program

All Kim’s online DIY programs

www.kimknighthealth.com

 

Healing the scars of narcissism and emotional abuse

Whoever said ‘sticks and stones can hurt my bones, but words can do no harm’ obviously never grew up with a narcissistic parent.

Words cut deep.

Verbal and emotional abuse cuts to the core. It hurts. A lot.

Every time a supposedly loving parent (and later in life – friend, colleague, partner…) puts you down, humiliates you, shames you… you feel like you just got stabbed in the heart again… and again… and again…

It’s emotionally devastating and mentally exhausting.

It’s the reason why people end up with rock-bottom self-esteem and self-worth.

It’s also why people end up chronically sick.

I know, because I was one of those people.

Often when we grow up with a narcissistic parent or caregiver, because experiencing neglect or abuse was the norm, we did not know any different.

I’ve spent many years climbing back out of the hole of depression, chronic illness and low self-esteem which resulted from childhood emotional neglect and psychological abuse. It’s not a fun job, and at times it feels like it’s a journey which will never end.

The key, I have found, is in claiming back one’s power, one’s birth right to be happy and fully self-empowered. It’s about finding the inner strength which was taken away.

So how do we do this?

Well, first of all we have to recognize (re-cognize) that the abuse happened. The first step is always awareness.

Often when we grow up with a narcissistic parent or caregiver, because experiencing neglect or abuse was the norm, we did not know any different. It can take years to recognize what really happened and often that recognition comes when we find ourselves in a similar relationship as an adult. This is because whatever is not resolved from childhood will turn up again and again in adulthood until we get the lesson and can move on.

“It’s perfectly normal to want and need to be loved. But it’s the right type of love which is important. Unhealthy, dysfunctional ‘love’ is not love at all – it is unhealthy craving and attachment coming from a place of lack and fear”.

For me the recognition came when, through the law of attraction, I found myself in an abusive relationship at the age of 28.

Initially he was very nice, very charming (a classic sign of a manipulator). But once the ‘honeymoon’ period was over (not that there really was a honeymoon), another side of his personality started to reveal itself.

It was literally like living with Jekyll and Hyde. But because I had grown up with a similar dynamic, I could not see that there was something very wrong with his behaviour, and tolerated it for some time, my brain feeling totally confused over what was right or wrong. (Being confused is another classic sign that something is not right, but we don’t know how to discern healthy behaviour from unhealthy abuse).

A classic sign of managing abusive people is we always want to give them another chance, because our naturally empathic nature wants to be loving and fair.

One part of me (the gut and heart) kept on telling me ‘this doesn’t feel right’ whilst another part of me (the head) made excuses for his nasty comments and selfish behaviour. It was just my Mother playing out all over again, so I was used to it. The fact that my body was so stressed in his presence and wasn’t getting any proper sleep didn’t help. No-one can function on 3 hours broken sleep a night.

So for some months I tolerated the abuse, one minute thinking “I’m going to leave”, the next rationalizing (‘rational-lies’) to myself “Oh, he’s got a lot on his plate, I’ll give him another chance” (another classic sign of managing abusive people – we always want to give them another chance, because our naturally empathic nature wants to be loving and fair).

I was in an abusive relationship, and I had had no idea! If no-one had pointed it out or told me, I would never have known!

Fortunately the universe knew I needed help. I was in the library one day and whilst browsing the shelves a book literally, as they say, ‘jumped off the shelf’ at me: ‘Men who hate women and the women who love them’.

I opened the book up, and the chapter heading said ‘Jekyll and Hyding’. It started to describe the Jekyll and Hyde-like behaviour of emotionally abusive people: how one minute they will be nice as pie, and the next totally obnoxious and venomous. It was like I was reading my life in this book. I checked it out and devoured every page.

I continued to make excuses (rational lies) for his Jekyll and Hyde behaviour – there was always a reason to justify the angry outbursts, sullenness and nastiness.

It was as if I was the person in the book. Finally there was an explanation for what was going on in my life. Everything became crystal clear. I was in an abusive relationship, and I had had no idea! If no-one had pointed it out or told me, I would never have known!

Even so, I carried on in the relationship for a while, not really knowing what to do (another classic sign of getting out of an abusive relationship: we tolerate it far beyond the time we should walk away). I was freshly arrived in New Zealand and had no friends (another classic sign of a manipulator – they isolate their prey – I hope you’re taking stock of all these tips!). The prospect of moving out and getting on with my life by myself in a new country was scary.

In any abusive relationship there will at some point come a time when this last straw moment happens. It can often be something quite innocuous.

I continued to make excuses (rational lies) for his Jekyll and Hyde behaviour – there was always a reason to justify the angry outbursts, sullenness and nastiness. Often I would think to myself ‘I’m going to move out’, and then I’d find myself giving him another reprieve.

Then one day the ‘final straw moment’ happened. In any abusive relationship there will at some point come a time when this last straw moment happens. It can often be something quite innocuous. And so it was for me.

I came home on a Friday afternoon after a long week at work to find him washing the dishes after cooking his dinner. At the time I was earning for us both while he set up a new business. I couldn’t believe it. He had made himself dinner and not thought about cooking for me. It was the last straw.

Dysfunctional relationships tend to be very ‘sticky’. There’s a sticky energy which keeps the two dysfunctional parties together, and it’s not so easy to disentangle oneself.

Calmly and silently in my mind I decided I would move out. The next day I looked in the paper, found a place, and announced I was moving out.

His only words were “So, you’ve had enough then?”. Ha! So he really had known what he was doing!

Even though I moved out within a few days, it did take some time to completely extricate myself from the relationship because dysfunctional relationships tend to be very ‘sticky’. There’s a sticky energy which keeps the two dysfunctional parties together, and it’s not so easy to disentangle oneself.

For months he begged me to come back, promising he would change although he never did (another classic sign of a narcissistic personality: even after visiting a counsellor for one session he declared the counsellor had told him he didn’t have any problems).

It took every ounce of strength to walk away, because the part of me inside that had never been fully loved was just desperate to receive love and attention, even if it was unhealthy, dysfunctional love.

Wow, he was good at pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes. Abdicating any sense of personal responsibility for inappropriate behaviour is another classic sign of a narcissist. They just don’t want to admit any part or responsibility in what is going on, and will usually turn the ‘fault’ or blame around on others.

Finally an invitation back to the UK for a wedding drew me far enough away (you can’t get much further than the other side of the world) to be able to start creating very clear boundaries and find the strength to fully say ‘no’.

I remember sitting on the phone as he begged me to come back. It took every ounce of strength to say ‘no’, because the part of me inside that had never been fully loved was just desperate to receive love and attention, even if it was unhealthy, dysfunctional love.

This is what keeps so many people stuck in emotionally dysfunctional relationships: our human need to be loved.

It’s perfectly normal to want and need to be loved. But it’s the right type of love which is important. Unhealthy, dysfunctional ‘love’ is not love at all – it is unhealthy attachment coming from a place of lack and fear.

When I work with clients I take them through an ‘emotional needs audit’ to measure how much these essential childhood needs were met (or not) in childhood. Usually if someone experienced childhood neglect and abuse, the score will be very low, along with rock bottom self-esteem and self-worth. Fortunately this can all be turned around, with commitment, desire and dedication.

The 3 steps to getting out of an emotionally abusive relationship

Experiencing authentic love and care is a basic human need. When we experience emotional, psychological or verbal abuse as a child, it erodes our sense of self, self-value, self-belief, self-worth… all the healthy ‘selves’.

So step one of getting out of an abusive relationship is awareness of what is really going on.

Step two is doing something about it.

This is when we have to put up boundaries, say no, stop tolerating the behaviour, and if necessary, if nothing improves and the situation is not resolved, move on.

Step three is refilling our emotional needs and learning to love ourselves again. This takes time.

Our solar plexus is where we energetically ‘attach’ to our parents. We literally have invisible ‘chords of energy’ connecting us from our solar plexus and / or heart. Once it’s time to extricate ourselves from these toxic relationships, these chords must be cut.

Experiencing authentic love and care is a basic human need. When we experience emotional, psychological or verbal abuse as a child, it erodes our sense of self, self-value, self-belief, self-worth… all the healthy ‘selves’.

Instead we end up with low self-confidence, self-doubt, shame, guilt, uncertainty, frustration and fear. It’s not a pretty sight, and it affects every part of our life because it sits so deep inside us.

One of the classic end-results of such a childhood is that we feel dis-empowered – a victim of life. This is intimately connected with our solar plexus, our power centre. Our solar plexus is not only a brain in itself (gut brain), with a complex ganglion of nerves and gathering of neurons, it is also where we energetically ‘attach’ to our parents (and other people in our life).

We have to re-build self-love and self-empowerment. These are two absolute essentials if we want to restore ourselves to our true self, to the part of us which we disconnected from and gave away as a bargaining chip for love.

We literally have invisible ‘chords of energy’ connecting us to other people either from our solar plexus and / or heart. When we have experienced abusive or dysfunctional relationships, once it’s time to extricate ourselves from these toxic relationships, these chords must be cut. This is another process I lead clients through called ‘cutting the ties that bind’.

So we have to re-build self-love and self-empowerment. These are two absolute essentials if we want to restore ourselves to our true self, to the part of us which we disconnected from and gave away as a bargaining chip for love. Not that we can ever give away our true self, because it is who we innately are. So really we have to re-find our true self and reconnect with that part.

All of this is possible with commitment, perseverance and dedication. But we have to be ‘in it for the ride’, which means we have to keep going when it gets tough, which it will do, because those old feelings and beliefs of low self worth, lack of  self-belief etc will keep rearing their heads.

This often will happen if we are still in contact with the people where the original dynamic was set up: our parents (or caregivers). If they do not change, our ‘buttons’ will be pushed when we interact, because they are behaving the same as when we were a child.

Even as an adult it takes great courage to be strong in the face of controlling or abusive parents, because deep down inside there is still a part of us that wants their love, wants their acknowledgement and positive attention. But if they are not going to change, at some point we have to take it upon ourselves to walk away, be strong, stand up for ourselves and believe in ourselves.

That inner strength is to be found in the heart and gut, especially the gut, our power centre. Finally at some point we have to feel strong enough to stand up and proclaim “I’m good enough, I deserve love, and I’m enough as I am”.

It’s not easy, but we have to finally and fully separate ourselves from those people who, because of their own unresolved painful pasts, cannot love themselves or others. We have to stop allowing ourselves to be held back by the pain and people of the past, and claim our right to happiness and success.

It’s all possible, with commitment and perseverance.

Summary of classic signs you may be on the receiving end of emotional abuse:

1. When we grow up with a narcissistic parent or caregiver, because experiencing neglect or abuse was the norm, we did not know any different. It can take years to recognize what really happened and often that recognition comes when we find ourselves in a similar relationship as an adult
2. The abuser is initially very charming. They are also often charming with other people and totally different (mean) to you. This leaves you feeling confused because other people can’t see what you see and don’t believe you when you say you are not being treated well.
3. Feeling confused over their behaviour: your heart and gut don’t feel right, but your head rationalizes (rational lies) away their behaviour and makes excuses for them
4. You feel stressed and walk on eggshells most of the time
5. You can’t sleep because your body can’t switch off the stress response in their presence
6. You keep giving them ‘just one more chance’
7. It’s like living with Jekyll and Hyde
8. It’s hard to extricate yourself even when you want to, or even after the relationship has ended, because of the ‘sticky’ dysfunctional energy between the two of you
9. You are afraid no-one will love you if you leave
10. If you feel something isn’t ‘right’, and say so, they will turn it around and make you ‘wrong’, leaving you feeling confused and doubting your inner feedback

If you need help dealing with or getting out of a verbally or emotionally abusive relationship, get in touch, it’s my speciality!

Or check out some of my DIY online self-empowerment programs.

I truly wish you an empowered, love-filled life.

www.kimknighthealth.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Worry – Negative Imagined Reality

‘A lot of the time our thinking is ‘imagined reality’. For many people this imagined reality is more negative than positive, and can become more real than reality itself!’ Kim Knight

Many, even most, people are not aware that they ‘worry’. They ‘think’ their ‘thinking habit’ (worry) is normal… when actually the mind is not designed to do nearly as much thinking as they ‘think’ is ‘normal’!

Our mind (or head brain) is a tool to be used, if and when we need to, for certain functions, such as coming up with creative solutions, analysing data, making meaning of information, and when we don’t need to use it, it’s meant to be ‘quiet’ – sort of ‘offline’.

I used to be the biggest worry-wart ever. I never knew I was ‘over-thinking’, and that I didn’t need to. I also never knew that it is possible to stop worrying, even if circumstances in our life are not going the way we want them to go. In other words, even if life on the outside is not looking to great, we can control how we feel on the inside, which in turn affects and improves the circumstances on the outside! This means we have much more control over our life than we may previously have thought!

I also didn’t know that worry is a mental habit, rather than an emotion, which needs curbing asap if we want to feel happy and healthy.

Is it real or is it just all in your mind?

Worry is ‘mentally rehearsing what we don’t want to happen’, without even realizing (most of the time) that we’re even doing so!

According to research, we have 60,000 – 70,000 thoughts a day. That’s a lot!

So how aware are you of these 60,000 thoughts?

• Could you count them if you tried?
• What goes on in your mind?
• Are your thoughts positive?
• Negative? Happy? Sad? Angry?
• Churning? Making you sick to your stomach?

 Is your mind mostly focused on positive outcomes and scenarios inside your head, which make you feel uplifted, peaceful, free, at ease, happy?

Or does your mind dwell on ‘worst-case-scenarios’ of what could go wrong, the worst thing that could happen, the terrible things your friends might say to you, fear of what your Mother thinks of you, fear of what your boss or colleagues might say to you, what your bank manager might tell you…?

A lot of the time our thinking can be ‘imagined reality’ – and for many people this imagined reality is more negative than positive, and can become even more real than reality!

Actions have consequences

This imagined reality, even though it’s in your head, is going to have consequences, for a number of reasons:

• Negative thinking leads to negative emotions like doubt, fear, anger, sadness, panic and more.
• Thoughts create feelings and feelings create thoughts. Negative feelings are not pleasant and beget more negative feelings in a vicious, downward spiral. This, as you are going to see, has negative consequences in your body.
• Thoughts are real and create reality because ‘energy follows thought’. Just because you cannot ‘see’ your thoughts does not not make them real. (People experiencing NDE’s (near death experiences) have described how they actually can see their thoughts as ‘thought forms in the ethers. Annie Besant and CW Leadbeater explain the structure of thought forms in detail in their book ‘Thoughtforms’)
• We live in a world which is ruled by universal laws. One of those laws is the law of ’cause and effect’ which means that actions have consequences. Thoughts are a form of ‘action in the mind’. What you think can become real.
• Negative thoughts and feelings create a change in our physical chemistry. ie, they change our cells, hormones, tissue and organ function. Quite literally.

From my personal experience, the two biggest reasons to stop negative thinking (worry, worst-case-scenario thinking, imagined reality etc), is because:

1. Thoughts can become reality (so do you really want all those fearful thoughts to become real?)
2. Negative thoughts create a cocktail of toxic hormones and secretions inside your body, which can lead to sickness

This is not some flowery hype. This is real. Negative emotions and negative thoughts create toxic chemicals in your body. I cover this in depth in my ‘Smile your way to Inner Peace’ meditation series, where you learn how to dissolve toxic emotions from the internal organs.

Emotions and Organs

Yes, emotions get stuck in the organs, and affect the physiological, biological functioning of those organs!

In particular worry affects the stomach, spleen and pancreas, which according to Chinese medicine work together as a unit. This is why we say things like ‘I was sick with worry’ or ‘my stomach was tied up in knots’.

When we worry our Qi (life force / energy) gets tied up in knots, which stops the stomach functioning in a normal, healthy way. This can lead to digestive issues such as IBS, poor digestion, poor metabolism, nausea, even vomiting. It almost always leads to anxiety, which is a combination of a mental, emotional and physiological state.

So the habit of worry affects our mind (thinking), emotions (feelings) and body (physiology).

• So why do we worry?
• Why do we over-think?
• Why do we dwell on what we don’t want rather than what we do want?
• Why do we spend so much time on imagined reality in our head, re-hashing conversations which did happen, or imagining conversations which might happen (but probably won’t)?

There are reasons for this, which I explain in my free training video ‘How to be worry free’ which you can catch at the bottom of this page.

In this training I explain:

• Why worry isn’t an emotion (as most people think)
• The 2 main causes of worry
• How and when the worry habit is set up
• Why worry is connected to what happens to us in childhood
• How we can learn to stop the worry habit
• and much more

You can also check out my ‘Worry-Free-Me’ online program which teaches you how to stop worrying in 30 days.

For a full list of online DIY transformation health programs see kimknighthealth.mykajabi.com

Controversial Common Sense

‘All truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as self-evident’ – Arthur Schopenhauer 

Controversial and common sense, and what lies in between… 

Recently, whilst talking with a friend about a book I’m writing on the ‘meta-physical’ (above and beyond) meaning of physical illness, when I mentioned the subject of the potential emotional stress conflict themes underpinning breast cancer, her immediate reaction was ‘oh, so it’s a controversial topic you’re writing about then?’

I was actually quite shocked at her response for two reasons: (1) because it has become so normal for me to understand illness in this way and (2) because she is a highly intelligent, well-educated woman. In my world, rather than this perspective on illness being controversial, it’s common sense, although it wasn’t always like this.

Her comment got me thinking: why is it that until we see the truth and common sense of something, we may find ourselves thinking it’s a ‘controversial’ subject?

The answer, as always, lies in our level of ‘wisdom’ consciousness, self awareness and perception of universal truth.

I explored this topic in depth in my ‘What healthcare is right for me?‘ program, which explains how the type of healthcare we choose, or even know exists, is a direct reflection of our level of self-awareness.

Whilst for many people, the concept that ’emotions turn into symptoms’ seems ludicrous, one of the most frequent comments I hear from clients, especially after their first breakthrough session, (where we delve deep into the emotional meaning behind symptoms), is ‘Oh, it just makes so much sense – I don’t know why I didn’t see this before’.

Dr Candice Pert (1946-2013) explained the science behind the power of emotions to create physiological chemical changes in her wonderful book ‘Molecules of Emotion’, leading her to be called by many ‘The Mother of Psycho-neuro-immunology’, and ‘Goddess of Neuroscience’.

So what do we mean by ‘consciousness’ and ‘self awareness’?

Self-awareness and consciousness often have less to do with our intellectual abilities, and more to do with our world-view and understanding of the universal laws of life, or universal ‘truths’. These are topics which are difficult to talk about and explain conceptually, especially if our mind has not yet ‘evolved’ enough to comprehend their meaning!

I have no qualms in openly admitting that if I had read what I have just written 30 years ago, it would have made no sense at all. I remember picking up Louise Hay’s book ‘You can heal your life’ many years ago, before I understand what I now know about healing, and reading the first page. Even though it was written in English (my first language), it was as if I was reading a foreign language – I understood absolutely nothing! It was sheer gobbeldegook! A year later I picked up the book again whilst browsing in a bookshop, and the exact same words made complete sense.

So how is it possible that the identical words and concepts can be meaningless (or mean one thing) one day, and then be meaningful (or have a different meaning) the next?

It comes back to consciousness, and how much our mind and self-awareness have evolved to understand, interpret and make sense of concepts and truths we previously could not comprehend, or perceived differently.

Professor David Hawkins, renowned physician and psychotherapist, wrote and spoke about this in his many writings and teachings. Using techniques derived from kinesiology, he presented a method by which one gauges truth, or consciousness. 

On his chart below, the further up the scale one moves, the more one’s consciousness becomes aligned with universal truth. The further down the map of consciousness we are, the more likely we are to scorn the truth (ie be ‘ridiculing’ or ‘violently opposing’ truth).

The amount of reality or truth we are able to process in our mind is also intimately connected with our ‘worldview’.

Machaelle Smallwright writes about this beautifully in her book ‘Dancing in the shadows of the moon’, where she explains the theory of the ‘ring-pass-not’.

A ring-pass-not is a mental boundary which figuratively (and literally) sits around your consciousness, and within which you experience your version of the world. Everyone’s worldview is different, which is why we can say ‘we each live in our own world’ or we may say someone ‘lives in a world of their own’ – because they literally do!

The amount of ‘reality’ – or truth – you perceive is directly related to your ‘ring-pass-not’. The ‘wider’ the figurative circumference, the more reality (or universal truth) is contained within it. So whilst all of reality is available to us at any given time, you will only be able to contain or perceive a certain amount of the totality according to your current level of consciousness. If you were to perceive beyond your ring-pass-not, it might literally ‘blow your mind’, so until you are ready to take in more reality, your ring-pass-not will keep you safe.

One of the reasons I am now able to understand what I could not 30 years ago, and why I was able to understand Louise Hay’s words a year after originally reading them, when they made no sense at all, is because my ‘ring-pass-not’ expanded during that time.

Our consciousness is always expanding, or at least it should be. It will expand if we are willing and interested in learning new things, which I was at the time. When we are going through difficult life challenges, we will be pushed to expand our consciousness!

Have I lost you? Well, it’s possible that what I’m saying may sit outside your ring-pass-not!!

So, coming back to the topic in hand: why is it that until one is ready to understand the connection between emotions, stress and symptoms, and how trapped emotional energy builds up to become physical sickness, one just doesn’t ‘see’ it?

Because until we are ready and willing to ‘open our mind’ (and consciousness) to new concepts and ideas, we (and our mind) will remain closed and barred off from understanding them.

What then allows us to ‘open our mind’?

Often it comes at a point of sheer desperation: we have tried so many things which haven’t worked, and we are in so much pain and discomfort, that we become willing to ‘see things differently’. We surrender. We give up. We say “I’m ready to do whatever it takes to change”. And at that point our consciousness shifts. It’s like a window opens up in our mind which was always there, but which we never saw before. It’s like magic!

And this is when what previously seemed ‘controversial’ or ‘ridiculous’ becomes ‘normal’ and ‘commonsense’. And all of a sudden, we see things in a completely different light, and our whole world, as well as our worldview, changes. We’re still the same person, but our consciousness inside is radically shifted.

The true key to freedom is in these shifts and evolution of consciousness. Once our mind and awareness changes, our life changes. We are never the same again, and our life and health can change exponentially.

As renowned philosopher, architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller said “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”.

Is it time to upgrade your reality? Do you want new options and answers for your health and life? If the answer is yes, then maybe it’s time to perceive the ‘common sense in the controversial’ by upgrading your consciousness!

About the author

Kim Knight is a health and wellbeing educator who teaches people how to transform their health problems through TKM root cause analysis and TKM lifestyle medicine.

www.kimknighthealth.com

 

Giving your troubles to Mother

“The most important role model for a child is the same sex parent” – Dr Phil

As an emotional intelligence therapist, I tend to mostly work with women (and a few men) who have experienced childhood emotional abuse, neglect, and emotionally absent parents.

One of the core problems if you’ve grown up with emotionally absent or abusive parents is that your emotional needs have not been fully met, or have not been met at all. But the problem is you don’t even know this because you were just used to what you experienced – it was your norm.

So for example you don’t know as a child that it’s not normal to feel afraid all the time, to be on tenterhooks and walking on eggshells, waiting for the next shoe to drop, argument to break out, or punishment to be meted out.

You don’t realize when you’re growing up that it’s not normal to lie in bed at night, feeling alone, isolated, afraid and confused, and that there’s something wrong with not being able to reach out or run to Mummy or Daddy for a comforting hug.

It’s usually not until we hear stories of what life was like for other people, our friends, colleagues… that we see how radically and fundamentally different our life was, and how actually what we experienced was not normal or healthy at all. 

And it’s often only later in life, when chronic unhappiness and illness set in, that the end-results of the dearth of nurturing make themselves known.

So here are a few questions for you  to help determine if you did, or didn’t, receive a healthy level of nourishing love:

• When you were a child, how normal and safe was it for you to run to your parents when you felt upset, hurt, angry, disappointed?
• How often did you get swept up in your parents arms to be kissed and cuddled and told you were gorgeous, beautiful, adorable?
• How easy was it for you to run to your Mother with whatever upset you or you were experiencing to be held lovingly and told ‘everything’s going to be OK’?

Or did you experience a childhood where you:

• Kept to yourself, held everything inside, because there was no point going to Mummy – she would just brush you aside, chastize you, shout at you, even punish you?
• Lie in bed at night holding your teddy bear for comfort because that was the only thing you could hug and would hug you back?
• Talk to your pets and love them with all your heart because they listened, and they didn’t judge you or be mean to you?
• Crammed sweets and savouries down your throat every time you got upset because they made you feel better, comforted and safe?

Do you often wonder in awe as an adult, as you walk around the supermarket, and watch parents lovingly pick their children up or speak to their children with gentleness and kindness, and think to yourself ‘Wow, I wish I had been treated like that‘?

The ability to be able to run to our parents for nurturing and consolation is one of the most important needs for a growing child.

Without it we grow up feeling isolated, afraid, lonely, finding it difficult to ask for help, afraid to share our feelings with others, afraid to speak our truth, afraid to be happy, and much more than this.

With it we grow up feeling safe, nurtured, supported, able to move out into the world feeling strong and full of authentic self esteem and self value.

What to do now you’re grown up?

So what to do if you did grow up with a dearth of nurturing and love, and now it’s up to you to provide it and find it for yourself?

Well, for a start, do yourself a favour and don’t get into a dysfunctional relationship where you’re craving to get the love you never got from your parents, from a partner who can’t give you what you want, usually because they didn’t get it either when they were growing up.

By this I don’t mean you are not going to find, or shouldn’t find, a truly loving partner who will love you in a healthy way. What I mean is that when we didn’t get our needs met as a child, later on in life, if we don’t heal these unmet needs, we tend to unconsciously gravitate towards another adult who cannot meet our needs because their needs weren’t met either as a child, and so we unconsciously attract ourselves to a partner with the same issues as our emotionally absent parents! This will keep repeating until we change inside and heal our past.

Secondly, (or really firstly), learn to recognize the truth of how your past was. Many people will say to me “Oh my childhood was good, it was fine…” and yet when we dig deeper we discover they were not as happy as they thought they were. Yes, you might have had good friends, enjoyed school, enjoyed sports etc, but if you were constantly afraid and alone at home, this is not good, and unless the emotional trauma is recognized and cleared, it stays in the body at a cellular level and unconsciously keeps us unhappy and sick.

Thirdly, learn how to heal the past, let go of the trapped emotional energy… learn how to speak your truth, stand up for yourself, and ask for help… learn how to love yourself, appreciate yourself and value yourself. These are all absolutely necessary in order to experience authentic health, happiness and success in life because it is only from a solid rock of self value and self love that we can move out into the world to fulfil our dreams and life purpose.

And remember – no matter what happened, YOU ARE OK, you are a good person, you DO deserve LOVE and to be loved, you DO deserve to be happy, healthy and successful. These are you birthrights and you deserve them.

Never give up hope that you can come out the other side of an emotionally abusive childhood because with the right help and guidance you can!

About the author:

Kim Knight is an emotional intelligence therapist who specializes in helping adult survivors of emotionally abusive childhoods to transform pain, unhappiness and sickness into health, happiness and fulfilment.

www.kimknighthealth.com

 

Toxic people – do you know how to deal with them?

When we have a backlog of emotions like fear, grief, disappointment, anger, sadness and frustration inside of us, it literally changes the biochemical make up of our cells, and it changes how we feel, think and act the world. We become toxic!

I was reminded this week of what it’s like to experience and have to deal with ‘toxic’ people.

Unfortunately this is a far-too common experience for many of us.

For a long time I did not recognize the signs of a toxic person. This was because I grew up in a family where it was ‘the norm’ to be dumped on by one particular family member. I just got used to being put down, critisized, judged and humiliated and never thought it could be any different.

Unfortunately if we experience such behaviour in childhood we can grow up into adulthood tolerating this kind of behaviour and thinking it’s the norm and ‘we just have to put up with it’.

I can assure you nothing could be further from the truth. It’s never OK to tolerate nasty behaviour from others.

So how do you know if you have a ‘toxic’ person on your hands, and how do you manage them?

First of all let’s define a toxic person and understand why they are the way they are.

A TOXIC PERSON DEFINED

A toxic person will often or usually have a very negative outlook on life, and this will be demonstrated by the words that come out of their mouth, and their actions.

If you say something ‘positive’ they will turn it into a negative. They will put you down, demean, critisize, be sarcastic, judgemental, mean, cruel, unkind and more. They may have an ‘acid’ tongue (and I’ll explain the literal meaning of this in a moment).

For example, you come home with a joyous piece of news, you’re feeling really great, and you just want to share your joy. They immediately belittle, put down or ignore what you have to say, crushing your happiness in a second.

They always seem to be in a bad mood, they have nothing good to say. They are just plain miserable, inside and out.

SO WHY ARE TOXIC PEOPLE TOXIC?

As I mentioned above, toxic people have an ‘acid tongue’. This is literally because they are over-acidic inside at a biochemical level! If you were to get a PH thermometer and pop it in their mouth, it would show high on the acidity scale, and as humans we are meant to have a more alkaline balance.

So why are they so physically and emotionally acidic?

Because of the acid emotions they still have stored inside them!

When we have a backlog of emotions like fear, grief, disappointment, anger, sadness and frustration inside of us, it literally changes the biochemical make up of our cells, and it changes how we feel, think and act in the world! We become physically and emotionally toxic!

So why are all these stored emotions stuck in their body?

Because they have not had the opportunity to heal themselves from the pain they experienced growing up, from the toxic environment around them. Deep inside they are in pain.

And so the hurt and anger that is still inside seeps out onto others.  And sometimes it just splurges out, a pseudo ‘vomiting’ of toxicity onto others.

And what’s really hiding underneath this behaviour?

A deep cry for love and attention. 

As humans we have a deep need for love and affection, and if these needs are not met during the early formative years of life (0-7 years), we will continue to try and get them met in adulthood, but if we are completely unconscious to the back log of stored unhappiness inside of us, it will come out by unconsciously dumping the pain on others.

Dumping and projecting our pain onto others is the universes’ way of trying to get our attention to the fact that we ourselves are not happy.

But the problem is, until we see ourselves we cannot see any of the meaning in all of this. And so we project our unhappiness onto others, blaming the outside world for our own unhappiness, and it’s all happening unconsciously…. until it becomes conscious and we become self aware.

It’s essential to understand that no matter how much another person is hurting or is unconscious about their feelings, they do not have the right to take it out on someone else. This is verbal and emotional abuse.

So how do I know all this to be true?

Because I was one of those people that ‘dumped’ my anger onto others. I had no idea at the time I was doing it. I had no idea I had years of trauma and stored hurt inside of me. I had no idea this was why I sulked and was sullen as a child, or why I often felt impatient and intolerant with others. I had no idea this was why I would get angry at the smallest thing or shout at people down the phone for no reason!

It’s taken years of emotional clearing work to clear away much of this backlog, and there’s still some left! But at least when I feel emotions now, and have the urge to ‘dump’ on someone I have the self-awareness to know it’s MY stuff, not someone else’s. I can now refrain from taking it out on others, and instead own my feelings, process them myself, and then have more self-compassion for the little girl inside who never got the love she desperately wanted and needed from her parents. And if I do ever find the old toxic energy seeping out onto others, I front up, own up and apologize, which in turn heals my own heart.

And this is what we all have to do, especially if we have this backlog of emotions. We have to take full responsibility for our feelings and learn how to heal ourselves.

Because the thing is, only WE can change our life and change how we feel. And all the power to do so is inside of us, we just have to know how.

We teach people how to treat us

SO HOW TO DEAL WITH TOXIC PEOPLE?

So, coming back to how do we deal with people when they are toxic, and unconsciously dumping all their hurt and pain on us?

It’s essential to understand that no matter how much another person is hurting or is unconscious about their feelings, they do not have the right to take it out on someone else. This is verbal and emotional abuse.

You will know when someone has not treated you right because your heart and gut brains will tell you so. You will cringe inside, feel ‘gutted’ (gut brain) and ‘hurt’ (heart brain). This is your body intelligence telling you it doesn’t feel right and it’s not OK. This is your internal emotional self defence system at work. (By the way, I have videos on Youtube about the 3 brains).

Now it’s up to you to do something about it, because no-one else can. It’s up to you to put a stop to such behaviour. And in the words of Dr Phil “we teach people how to treat us”.

So it’s up to us to learn how to put up clear boundaries and say ‘no’. It’s up to us to learn how to express our feelings honestly so that toxic emotions don’t build up inside of us. We have to learn it’s OK and necessary to meet our own needs. We have to learn we have a right to be happy and stand up for our self.

Teaching people how to be assertive and self-confident is something I spend a lot of time doing with clients. Learning how to be self-empowered is one of the most important and valuable lessons we can and must learn. And in every case so far, anyone I have worked with who has a chronic illness (eg chronic fatigue, depression, fibromyalgia, IBS etc) has a backlog of old hurts and emotional pains inside which need clearing).

You are not here to be anyone’s emotional punching bag. 

So next time you have a toxic person in your life dump on you, know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You are not here to be someone else’s emotional punching bag so that they don’t have to deal with their own unhappiness. (Unless you choose to do so. It’s really up to you!)

So have you had enough of this behaviour? Do you want a different way?

If you want to know how to say no, how to speak your truth, how to put a stop to toxic people in your life, this is exactly what I love helping people do.

Do join me in one of my online self help or live training programs. Because I want to help you be the happiest person you can be, and deserve to be.

And here’s a handy tip I’ve learned from 12 years of helping people put a stop to toxic partners, children, parents, friends, bosses, colleagues….

When we change our behaviour towards these people, they change their behaviour towards us, because they can no longer play the game! It works I can assure you, but often we are the ones who have to take the first step, or nothing will change.

And another tip – they become happier once a healthier emotional environment is established!

I will be going into more detail on this on my ‘Stop Bullies Now’ program (coming soon – keep an eye on my website or if you are signed up on any of my free programs you will get notification!).

Or you may wish to join my ‘Stop Depression Now’ program which also teaches how to identify and clear the backlog of emotions which build up to become ‘de-pression’.

Until then, stay strong and don’t put up with toxic people in your life! You are not here to be someone else’s emotional punch bag.

Kim

The Kiwi Health Detective

www.kimknighthealth.com

Image courtesy of www.stockunlimited.com 

8 roadblocks to healing

From my own very long journey back to health from chronic fatigue, depression and many other ailments, plus working with hundreds of women, I have noticed there are certain habits, traits, beliefs or patterns which will halt progress in its tracks. Here they are…

1. ‘HEALING WILL HAPPEN OVERNIGHT OR IN ONE SESSION’

This is one of the biggest misnomers that people looking for a solution will have: expecting healing to happen overnight, or even in a few weeks.

Why is it unrealistic to think this?

Because in 99% of cases, illness takes years to build up in the body, even before symptoms are noticed, and expecting an overnight change, without making the necessary changes within ourselves we need to make, is the biggest mind trick ever. In every client I have yet worked with, the actual ‘set up’ happens within the first 10 years of life, but it is not apparent at this time.

Partly this expectation is fueled by our healthcare system which does offer ‘quick fixes’ in the form of medication or surgery. For example, anti-depressants can take effect in a few days or weeks, allowing us to continue on with our daily life as before, without ever asking the question ‘why am I ill in the first place?’ Blood pressure pills can balance our blood pressure in days, but if we don’t explore why the pressure is out of balance in the first place, we are just placing the proverbial plaster on the wound.

The problem with this is, unless we discover and address what created the symptoms, the real problem is not being addressed, and symptoms are merely being masked, and will usually re-occur in some other form sooner or later.

Advertising also fuels this misnomer. How many ads have you watched telling you that if you have the flu or a strained back ‘just take xyz medication’ and you can get on with your day as if nothing has happened? No! If your body is sending you symptoms, it is asking you to take stock of what is going on in your life to understand what has brought it into this state of ‘dis-ease’. If you have the flu, the natural intelligence of your body is telling you it needs to rest and repair. Your body is not a machine and it deserves your care and respect! If you have chronic fatigue syndrome, your body is telling you to stop and re-assess your whole life, and how you are ‘doing’ life. Every symptom has a message which is waiting to be interpreted, and this must be done.

So expecting your body to self-repair overnight or in one session is simply unrealistic, and this must be understood and accepted. Then the real work of healing (which means ‘to become whole’) can begin.

2. THINKING ONE THERAPY WILL SORT ALL MY PROBLEMS

Often we can think that one therapy will be the one-stop-shop solution.

In my experience as a practitioner working with many clients, this is less likely to be the case. For my personal experience, I had to test and implement a number of methods to get results.

Whilst some people can hit on one therapy which will be the one ‘miracle cure’, the percentage of people this happens to is much less, and in my personal experience I would say about 5% of people are this fortunate. For the other 95%, we are going to have to use more than one approach.

Why is this?

Because finding and addressing the real root cause of illness, and all the many potential contributing factors, is not that simple. There may be physical factors, emotional reasons, belief and thinking factors, dietary issues, geopathic stress, environmental issues,  toxic issues, people issues, genetic or epigenetic issues, lifestyle and habit factors which need to be addressed. The list is long.

Many therapies are developed to focus on one particular issue, and may be perfect for that, and brilliant at addressing that one particular issue, but just like expecting ‘one religion to fit all’, it is unrealistic to expect that a therapy will address all causes.

So for example supplements can help with nutritional deficiencies, but they will not address the trauma and stress of dealing with an abusive partner which is creating the ‘dis-ease’ in the digestive system in the first place.

Plus what works for one person will not necessarily work for another! Which is why it is so important to follow our ‘gut’ feeling to find what ‘feels‘ right for us, and why healing is a journey of self-discovery. We must be prepared that we may need to use multiple approaches and that this will not happen overnight.

In my experience, getting well from a chronic illness is a cumulative process, where finding and implementing different strategies will eventually, sooner or later, help us to reach our goal of wellness.

3. ‘I WANT TO BE WELL BY’… (A CERTAIN DATE)

This is a very common expectation, especially if we have been ill for a long time. Of course we want to be well again, but putting time deadlines on the body does not work at all. In fact, it slows down progress because it puts our body under pressure to achieve a result it cannot achieve without right understanding of what has caused the problem, and right rectification of that problem.

A much better question to ask is ‘what is it I need to learn or change in my life in order to bring my body back into balance? What is it I need to do to stop damaging my body‘. Once we discover this, and implement it, and once our super intelligent body sees that we mean for real to live our life in a healthier way, and we have proven that we are no longer going to ‘damage’ it with negative beliefs, behaviours and actions, it will bring itself back into health. It doesn’t want to be unwell any more than you do, but it will keep you unwell if there are still lessons to be learned.

4. SOMEONE OR SOMETHING (OUTSIDE OF ME) WILL FIX ME

While it is true, useful and sometimes very necessary that we receive emergency treatment, medication or surgery, we must look at the bigger picture. We must understand that our body is a self-healing mechanism that can and will self-heal given the right circumstances.

The more we understand this, the more self-responsibility we can start to take for our health. We become more aware of what it is that WE are doing to create or perpetuate illness. Then we can start to make necessary changes and get a different result. As the saying goes ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result‘.

Initially it may feel scary to feel that we play such a huge role in our health, but ultimately when we take back our power and become self-masterful, it is a highly satisfying and empowering experience.

5. ‘I’VE TRIED EVERYTHING’

When a client comes to me and says ‘I’ve tried everything’ my first question will be to get a specific list of what ‘everything’ means. Usually I find although it may seem like a long list to the person, it is not nearly ‘everything’. Usually the number will be somewhere between 5 and 20 therapies.

Having tried and tested nearly 200 therapies myself, and trained professionally in 20, I know that I am also nowhere near to ‘trying everything’! There are an abundance of health modalities in the world today, and the more countries and cultures you experience, the more health approaches you will discover. On my journey to discover solutions to my illness, I travelled to Egypt, Mexico, USA, Canada, Costa Rica, Guatamala, UK, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and more and discovered some truly unique therapies!

So whether you have tried 5 or 50 therapies, why is it that thinking we have ‘tried everything’ will prevent our progress? Well, for 3 core reasons:

1. When we think we have ‘done it all’, we close our mind to new possibilities, and when our mind is closed, it cannot learn something new. In order for the change and transformation we are seeking to occur, we MUST be open to new information and possibilities, otherwise we are doing the ‘same old same old’ again and again, even if it is with a different method.
2. We may often have tried many therapies, but have you yet tried the right approach for what you need? If we are not using an approach that addresses the real root cause of the symptom, then it is unlikely we will find the answer. Most people are unaware that many health approaches never get near the root cause.
3. If we really have tried multiple therapies and nothing is working, then we need to ask ourselves one question: ‘what is the common denominator here?’ – and of course it’s us! Which means there must be something in us which is not yet changing or open to change, and this holds the key to the breakthrough we are looking for. It also means there is some vital piece of the puzzle which is still missing. We must find this piece, and this is precisely what I offer in my foundation ‘Kiwi Health Detective Session‘. In one 90 minute session we discover those missing pieces.

6. ‘I ALREADY KNOW THAT’

Similar to ‘I’ve tried everything’, the thought that we already know the answer will block our ability to see and hear new possibilities. We must keep our mind open to new information.

We must also let go of what we think we know and develop ‘beginners’ mind’.

As ancient Masters say “You cannot fill a cup that is already full. Empty the cup first”.

Even if you think you already know it, let go of the urge to think or say this when receiving advice from an expert, because they may just say something which could change your life. Which brings me to the last point…

7. THINKING PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS ARE CAUSED BY SOMETHING PHYSICAL

Now this piece of information is probably one the BIGGEST mindset changes that blows people’s minds if this is the first time they have heard it!

Physical symptoms are less likely, than more likely, to be caused by something that has nothing to do with any physical! Of course this goes against the grain of much of our ‘education’.

For me it was the missing piece of the puzzle: for years I tried physical therapies, never realizing that what was going on my mind and emotions was affecting my body. But as you will discover, everything we feel and think changes our chemistry, and chemistry is what makes our cells; when we feel and experience good-feeling thoughts and emotions, this will have a beneficial impact on our cells. When we feel and experience negativity and negative emotions, this will lead our cells to experience something completely different. This is why learning to keep ourselves ’emotionally clear’ is necessary for health, as well as happiness.

8. THINKING WE CAN DO IT WITHOUT HELP

Whether we like it or not, we all have our ‘blind sides’ where we cannot see our ‘stuff’. The interesting thing is, other people can see our stuff!

I remember the day I realized I was super stressed: one day I just became aware that I was really, really stressed, and that I needed to do something about it for the good of my health. The funny thing was, as I saw this, I knew I had been this way for years, but until that moment I had not ‘re-cognized’ it consciously. Upon having the recognition, I then saw that everyone else had been seeing it, but not me!

As human beings we are simply ‘not aware of what we are not aware of’, until we become aware. This is the key to healing most illnesses and unhappiness: becoming aware of what we were previously unaware of, and then having new choices.

As the saying goes, we can never see ‘the dark side of the moon’, and so it is with human consciousness. We need help to see our blind side, and this is why a coach is so invaluable and can save you years of  pain and thousands of dollars in wasted effort.

IN SUMMARY

Recovering from chronic illness is not easy. It can often bring us to our knees, but there is a reason for it, and lessons to be learned, and a gift in the journey. We must be prepared to put in the work, to persevere, to commit to ourselves no matter what.

As one of my first teachers said “healing is a journey of transformation: when you heal you change and are never the same again”. True healing requires that we transform and transcend our previous self. This is going to require change on all levels: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. Often illness is a sign we have gone off track, and it is a way of bringing us back on track.

Illness is never random, it always has a message, a story, a meaning. It is our body trying to tell us something, because our natural state is to be healthy, so if we are experiencing anything but this, it means we need to do and learn whatever it is to return to our natural state of health, which is possible.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “never, never, never give up”.

About the author

Kim Knight is a health and empowerment coach who helps women ‘who do too much but value themselves too little’ to take back control of their life. www.kimknighthealth.com

 

The True Cost of Staying Unhappy or Unwell

When I was ill with chronic fatigue, and unable to work for over 10 years, before I discovered what was actually causing the problem (which took me 5 of those 10 years), I would have given anything to find out (a) what was causing symptoms and (b) what I needed to do to get well.

Funnily enough, years later after I was well again, a very astute business woman asked me a question which really quite shocked me:

Her question was “When you were ill, and searching for answers, what would you have given, or paid, someone like you, (ie me the now well-informed health coach), if they had turned up on your doorstep one day and said ‘I have the answers, I can help you’?”

I pondered for a moment, reflecting back on the many months and years I had spent hardly able to walk, do the shopping or function as a human being at all … I mentally added up the number of therapies (140+) I had tried in those first 5 years and the thousands of dollars that had cost me. I remembered the loneliness and frustration as I searched for answers which no-one seemed to have, including doctors and therapists, and the friends or family who could not understand what was going on inside of me when I looked so ‘normal‘ on the outside.

Wow, I thought. I would have given anything. Everything!

Whilst I might not have given ‘an arm or a leg’ (I was still just able to walk after all, and I did need to cook my meals), I would have paid anything for someone to tell me what on earth was going on and how to get well. If I hadn’t had the money in the bank at the time, I would have taken a loan to get it!

That was not my journey however.

I know now, that in a strange way, I was destined to go through a long, protracted journey just so that I could (a) understand in depth the necessary steps for getting well and (b) help others to do so too and (c) be able to help others avoid having to go through such a long process.

I know that I was meant to try (to this day now) nearly 200 therapies so that I could learn what works and what doesn’t in particular for chronic fatigue and pain conditions, and be able to recommend the best options to others so that they wouldn’t have to try hundreds of therapies and spend thousands of dollars.

I know now that this journey provided me with exactly what I would need to help others recover in the shortest possible time with the least amount of angst. I know this now, and am very grateful for my personal journey, even though at the time it was unbelievably difficult.

What is it costing you to stay unwell or unhappy?

This then made me think.

What is the cost of staying ill or unwell, staying where we are, not taking the steps to get better, even when we know we want to?

Yes, this is a very common phenomenon, the reason for which I will come to shortly. But first of all let’s look at the real costs, both monetary and otherwise.

For many people with chronic pain and fatigue conditions, (CFS, ME, adrenal fatigue, burnout, chronic stress, anxiety, depression, fibromyalgia, glandular fever, PVFS etc) their lives are severely disrupted, many to the point of either not being able to work at all, or to the point that they still are working when they really shouldn’t be.

Let’s take an example of someone who is not working at all: let’s say their salary is $50,000 a year. If they don’t work for a year, that’s $50,000 that is not going into their bank account, plus the additional money that needs to be found to live. 5 years and it’s up to $250,000. 20 years and it’s a cool million dollars!

And yet, over the past 11 years since I have been helping people through these health conditions, I have found that on average the recovery time is 3-6 months, with some people taking only a few weeks, and others up to a year.

Personally I lost out big time financially. I sold my then mortgage-free house and car to pay my living expenses and therapy fees. I was unable to work for 10 years. At the time I sold my house it was valued at $300,000. The value now would be close to $800,000! Since then I have been paying weekly rent, another $350,000! So that’s another cool million or more down the drain. It’s crushing to think about, so I do my best not to, and keep looking forward…

But do the maths (or as they say in the good ‘ol USA ‘the math’). Which option do you think is better financially? To spend a small amount of money now to get your life back on track, or to stay unwell for years and lose a lot more. It’s a no-brainer really.

Which leads me on to the next topic: how long do we wait before taking action to restore our health and wellbeing?

The quicker you make a start at getting better, the quicker you get better

Years ago in London, I ‘put my back out’ while cleaning the windows in my 3rd floor flat. I was leaning out the window trying to clean the outside of the window when ‘ping’ something ‘went’ in my back. I had never hurt my back before and I really had no idea what I had done. As a consequence of my ignorance around back issues, I continued on as before, and did not seek help. 3 months went by, and even though I wasn’t in any real pain, I found that my range of motion was getting more limited.

Then one day I was sitting on the edge of my bed putting a sock on, and I realized that I couldn’t reach my foot. I was 26 years old and I could not bend over to put a sock on! Something was surely not right about this! ‘Surely I should be able to put my socks on‘ I thought to myself, and then remembered back to the day 3 months earlier when I had tweaked my back. Putting two and two together (finally) I realized I needed to seek help.

At that time, the only medical practitioners I had ever seen in my life were a dentist, surgeon and doctor. I had no idea who to see for my back situation, but I knew none of these three were the answer. Somehow, after asking around, I heard of a therapist called an ‘osteopath’. Gosh, that was a revelation, there were other medical practitioners than doctors and dentists!

I made an appointment with this man, and the first thing he said to me after hearing my window-cleaning story was this:

‘You should have come to see me as soon as you had the injury because now the body has compensated for the injury and it has set in, which means it will take longer to get better’.

This one decision to not seek help as soon as I could have after the original injury would, unbeknowns to me at the time, haunt me for another 20 years, including countless appointments with many osteopaths, and even visits by ambulance to hospital for morphine to deal with the pain. But that’s another story…

If I had known better and been more in touch with what was going on inside my body I would have saught help straight away, and if I ever tweak my back now, I know to seek help immediately, ideally the same day.

However, back then, I was completely out of touch with my body, and had no idea about alternative practitioners, so I did what a lot of people do, and ‘just put up with it‘ until I could no longer tolerate the pain and inconvenience.

The point here is, whilst conditions such as CFS, adrenal fatigue, ME, fibromyalgia etc are indicative themselves of not having gotten help immediately (because one simply cannot be experiencing these conditions without there being a multitude of long-standing stress and emotional issues that have been going on for months, and often years), at least once we know we have a condition it is wise to do something about it and get help as soon as possible from someone who truly knows what to do about it. Because the longer we leave it, the worse it gets. And the quicker we start identifying and rectifying the root causes, the quicker we can get well. It’s just common sense.

Whilst on the whole I have found the quicker we get onto it, the quicker the recovery, and the younger the person, the quicker the recovery, I have also worked with people who have had serious symptoms for 20 years and recovered in 2 weeks.It does happen, but I highly recommend not expecting it. It takes months and years to build up symptoms of chronic debilitating pain and fatigue, and we need to be prepared to take the time to make the necessary changes to reverse the situation.

What is the true cost of not being happy or healthy?

So what is the cost of staying unwell? There is only one answer to this:

EVERYTHING! YOUR LIFE!

Every day, month or year that goes by and you cannot function well physically, mentally or emotionally is time you will never recoup.

Conversely, every day, month or year you are happy and healthy is time you can spend doing what you want with your life.

What is it you want to do with your life? A fulfilling relationship? Enjoy quality time with your family, children, parents, friends? Share your gifts with the world? What does your life mean to you? Do you want to be lying on your deathbed and be grateful and proud of what you have done in your life, or do you want to waste away year after year wishing things could be different?

Not only do we lose out financially if we cannot work, we lose every aspect of our life: work, family, friends, hobbies, fun…

But here’s the good news!

We can get better if we know how. We have a choice and the power of free will. We can change our circumstances, as long as we understand that this change ALWAYS starts with us and from within. And it starts with the decisions we take over if we are going to do something about our situation, or if we are going to keep coming up with excuses as to why we should not take action.

Which brings me to the final point of this topic:

What is it that is really stopping you from getting well?

Why is it, when we know we want to be well, that we can find every excuse in the book not to?

Usually the reasons we give ourselves are something along the lines of “I can’t afford it or “I don’t have the time“. Yes I have heard both these reasons as a therapist a lot!

My response to that, given the statistics above, is ‘can you afford not to’?

Over the past few years I have discovered why most people think they cannot afford to do what it takes to get well. This has been the result of many years of personal discovery plus seeing the same pattern turning up in clients:

Deep, deep down, unconsciously, we do not feel deserving of feeling happy or getting better.

Please note the word UNCONSCIOUS here. We are not doing this consciously! It is something that is usually happening well beyond our conscious awareness.

Deep within we can have beliefs running our psyche  called ‘transparent’ beliefs because we don’t see them. They are also referred to as ‘false’ beliefs because once they become conscious, even though they tend to feel real, they are not the truth. But we believe them because we don’t feel deserving of good things in life, such as happiness, success, abundance, recognition and more.

These beliefs are formed early on in childhood, usually by the age of 7 years, and run our every waking (and sleeping) thought and action, without us even knowing it. They are, in truth, what have led us to become ill or unhappy in the first place. 

It goes without saying that we must discover and clear these beliefs, and the original events which set them up, in order to transform our current situation. And this we can do, if we know how. And it can take much less time and be easier than we might think. But unless we decide to seek the help to do so, nothing will change, and we will stay exactly where we are, for another month or year…

I have dedicated the past 25 years to learning this ‘stuff’, and I know for sure that we can change our circumstances as long as we make the decision to do so, and then follow up with appropriate, consistent action.

As the famous quote by Goethe goes:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

Don’t waste another day, month or year losing out on your precious life. Get the help you need right now so that you can get on and live the live you were born to live.

If you want to know the power of having a personal health coach, read my article here.

And if you want to check out my online self help Mickel Therapy programs, you can do so here. Even the most expensive program works out to be under $20 a week over the period of a year. How much could that save you in the long-run? Maybe your life…

In health,

Kim

www.kimknighthealth.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The power of a personal coach

Imagine this scenario:

You have decided to climb Mt Everest, which you have never done before. You know you really want to get to the top.

You gather together what equipment you think you will need and set off. Imagine however that you have no map or compass, or personal guide to tell you which direction to go. You see the top of the mountain, it seems a long way off, and you set off in the direction you think is correct.

As you travel, sometimes you find yourself moving towards the mountain, but then the path seems to take a different turn, and you end up moving away from it. It gets frustrating. You wish you had someone to ask for help. To turn to for support. You wish you could ask someone for exact directions, a helping hand, a known, tried and tested route up the mountain.

You keep going, but after a few weeks, or months, or maybe even years, you start to get more and exhausted and despondent. Are you ever going to get there? The final destination never seems to get nearer. You just wish you had someone to talk to who could encourage you, support you, show you the way, tell you what to do, help you reach the summit. You start to wonder if you will ever get there…

SOUND FAMILIAR?

Now imagine this instead:

You have decided to climb Mt Everest. You have engaged an expert guide from the start, someone who has climbed this mountain many times. They know the exact route to take, they know what equipment to take, they know how long it is likely to take to get there.

They tell you exactly what to pack, what clothes and equipment to bring, what NOT to bring, and show you they have a top quality tried and tested compass and a detailed map.

They show you the route on the map of how you will reach the summit together, and give you an idea of how long it will most likely take to get there. They sit you down and brief you on the pitfalls along the way, the likely hurdles of crevasses and rockfalls you will meet which if you were alone might scare you or make you want to give up.

Then you set off together. They carry your big pack for you so that you only have to carry your small backpack.

You don’t have to do any thinking or planning – they tell you exactly what you will do each day, you just have to follow them up the mountain path.They make you meals each day, put up your tent each night, and know exactly how far to walk each day to match your perfect pace and current abilities. They never go too fast or too slow because they know the perfect speed for you. But you must do the walking and follow their guidance.

One day at a time, you walk together up the mountain, the guide showing you how to navigate any landslides and laying down a ladder for you to cross dangerous crevasses.

Even though at times it seems to you like you are going in the wrong direction and moving away from the end goal, they assure you that you are going the right way and that you need to trust in their guidance because they have been there before, many times.

One day at a time you walk up the mountain, in exactly the right direction, gradually making your way up that huge ascent. And bit by bit you see that you are making headway, you are going in the right direction, you are on track, and you are getting close to summit.

Until one day you reach the top. You did it, you got to the top, with help, but YOU did it!

And now that you have done it once, you know the path, you know the equipment that is needed to get to the top, and you have this knowledge and equipment to use for the rest of your life.

Such is the power of a personal coach.

As Einstein once said: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it” 

A personal guide knows the route, they know the pitfalls, they know the unseen hills and valleys you will have to cross on your journey.

They can also see the blind spots in your psyche which you cannot, which will often keep you stuck until they are noticed by someone ‘on the outside’ of your consciousness. They know how to jump across crevasses and dodge landslides. They know how to take care of you when you just feel like giving up and turning back.

We must have new tools and fresh perspectives to solve our problems, and this is exaclty what I do as a coach for you.

Fed up of not knowing why you are unwell or unhappy?

Wanting to find a way out so you can get on with living your life?

You’re not alone.

Nothing is worse than having pain, exhaustion or ongoing unhappiness and not finding a cause or solution, or knowing what to do about it.

Perhaps these life challenges are turning up in the home environment, in relationships, with finances, at work, with colleagues, partners, family, friends…

No matter what is showing up in your life as an unwanted circumstance, a first ‘breakthrough’ session with Kim will get to the bottom of it, and then reveal the steps for transforming it… for good. 

By the end of a first breakthrough session with Kim you will:

• understand how everything that has happened to you in your life has led you, whether you have realized it or not, to end up where you are right now. We call this the ‘law of cause and effect’.
• understand the key events in your life which have contributed to issues of unhappiness and / or symptoms of illness
• most probably have ‘lightbulb’ moments in piecing together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of your whole life and the current situation you find yourself in, so that you can clearly see what needs to be done to ‘undo’ or resolve the issues at hand
• know that there ARE solutions at hand which up until now you have not yet known or seen, so that you have HOPE that you WILL and CAN come through this. You do not have to spend the rest of your life in mental, emotional or physical pain.

By the end of this session you will have become crystal clear on why you are experiencing your current (and maybe long-standing) health or (un)happiness issues. We will also map out the road to recovery via the options available.

kimknighthealth.com