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Meet Joy In It’s Tracks!

Meet Joy In It’s Tracks!

by | Oct 29, 2023 | Self Development

Tell Yourself These Three Things To Find Your Peace

I have found myself working with clients lately who tell me they feel completely stuck in their lives. They describe experiencing lots of intense big feelings. They are connected to symptoms of anxiety, overwhelm and report an inability to move forward.

Are you experiencing this too?

Are you lying in bed at night, and feeling completely overwhelmed with all the thoughts of the day, instead of falling asleep?

Do you wake feeling exhausted and continue to overanalyse life? Is it easy for you to make decisions, or does the analysis paralysis kick in and everything has to be considered?

Before I commence any work with clients, I find myself exploring all their perceived blockages. I get the client to explain in detail how they internally experience their challenge.

When you breathe air into that area that feels stuck, things start to open up from within. You can gain an incredible understanding of exactly what is jammed into tiny spaces. You can learn, see and feel all of the things that contribute to what you are perceiving as stuck. When you shine a light on the resultant subconscious behaviours that you implement unknowingly to keep you safe.

When you are in neurological survival, you aren’t thriving. Your clarity of thought has been sabotaged. Your decision-making ability has been hindered by trying to process too much information.

When you are in survival, your brain is simply reacting to the outside world. You aren’t seeking joy bubbles, and you are running a behavioural program that is likely anchored into something from the past.

When you are in the space of survival, you are not present.

There is an art to returning to the present moment. It is where you can create change. The present moment is where you can reset and revitalise. It’s also where you maintain motivation to continue chasing joy bubbles.

 

Here are three things you can tell yourself to return to right here, right now.

1. Start the day right

Before your feet hit the floor, the moment you wake up. Take a deep breath in and out. Smile (because the muscles required to move your face generate a tiny dopamine hit) broadly and state the following-

“Good morning gorgeous! Today is going to be a great day!”

Sounds ridiculous I know. But seriously try this. The reason it’s so successful is that this is your first energetic intention for the day. 

This singular statement can be likened to ringing the bell for the universe to come calling, ready to take your order for the day. This statement (or something like it) is very intentional. It drives purpose and it is very high in vibrational energy.

Stating this statement first thing in the morning is like you are creating your internal weather system. It’s the easiest way to manifest emotional sunshine for your day ahead!

2. Choose again.

Throughout the day, remind yourself that the human mind can experience up to 80,000 thoughts a day. I know busy mind right? Additionally, you need to be aware that these mostly subconscious thought processes can contain up to seventy-five per cent negativity.

Why so blue?

Your brain automatically defaults to what you thought about yesterday. You’ve laid the thought cable already through your analysis, review, and audit. And then you attached emotions to the thoughts — in other words you have already attached evidence that you were correct to feel bad about the thought.

The brain has already placed the thoughts into the memory system. Evidence locked in. It’s that simple.

When you have a positive thought, your brain will seek evidence to demonstrate you were correct. Therefore it takes a little more effort on your part to create a shift in the tide of negative you think about.

I liken your body to a gigantic hotel. Your mind is the presidential suite. When you have a negative thought come along, it’s like a homeless person is using the bed of the presidential suite as a toilet — you get the drift. 

That negativity needs to be immediately evicted for you to remain present.

If the thought is crappy and negative, then your presidential suite is being trashed and abused. This is what negativity does to your psyche.

Due to the sheer number of thoughts in your mind, in my clinical experience, we don’t need to analyse everything. You simply need to insert a circuit breaker into the mind mix and change the direction of where you’re heading.

You can try saying “choose again”, which was coined by Gabby Bernstein a decade ago. Alternatively, you could try the Byron Katie question “Is that real?”

Both are useful and have their place as guards against negative thoughts continuing.

Here’s the thing, the moment you consciously recognise that something negative has sprung up into the mind, you can choose to take action. Insert the circuit breaker question and simply breathe.

The use of breath allows you to calm down physically through the recognition that you aren’t under threat. This breath brings you into the present moment and reactivates the brain that the old survival program is not required.

Once you’re present again, you can better discern what is real and right in front of you, or what is simply an old and unwanted thought pattern. In this moment of recognition, you are changing the plasticity of your brain and choosing a new neural pathway to reroute the thoughts.

Fair warning. When you first begin to ‘choose again’, or ask yourself ‘is this true?’, you may easily become overwhelmed with the number of times your awareness is alerted to negativity.

Let me say that this is normal when you first realise how much smack you think and say to yourself!

I choose to see this as a very productive step forward, and you can too. The more you acknowledge, the more you shift, and the faster you change the old reactive thoughts.

3. Wrap up the day well

At the end of the day, as you’re brushing your teeth be sure to make eye contact with yourself. Allow your eyes to soften at who you see. 

This is a simple act of kindness to and for yourself.

This single gesture also sets you up to dialogue with yourself. No matter how extreme your day has been, you need to celebrate you survived another day. 

Dig deep and find some small component of your day that you could celebrate — even if only starting a high vibe with your morning intention.

Celebrating small wins allows the body to create small hits of dopamine. It also trains your mind to actively seek positivity, instead of becoming trapped once more on the negative mouse wheel.

This simple exercise works well for your night and sleep routine. You’ve inserted a circuit breaker of thinking of the negative and actively gone searching for evidence of what was potentially good. 

For those days where it seems nothing has gone well, I invite you to use the time to reflect on what you learnt about yourself or another. This activity allows you to place yourself in another’s shoes and observe their behaviour or actions. 

Observation allows you to see another’s experience, without you having to judge or invest in their drama. Sometimes when you can acknowledge that another‘s behaviour is subpar, the realisation is a gift on many levels. 

We are all human, working towards perfecting our imperfections. We all have good and bad days. We all experience stress. We all respond differently to stress.

Conclusion

What might you lose if you could set your intention, keep those negative thoughts in check, and wrap up a day by being your cheerleader? Give just one of these tips a go, to shift your motivation to live the life you want!

First published with Illumination, a Medium Publication. Click here this piece.

Need a taste of calm?

Click here to enjoy Karen’s latest
freebie offer.

Enjoy this program’s short presentation, which includes the experience of a meditative hypnotic recording to support resetting your calm.

Want to read more like this?

This is My Roar – signed copies of my first published book can be purchased from this website. Self Reflection – A little Look Within – click here 8 Hot Tips How To Journal – click here Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself? – Click here

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Health & Business Coach, LEAP & NES Practitioner, Intuitive Meditation Facilitator, and published author. She is a self-confessed laughaholic.  She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’ 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland
This Is Your Permission Slip

This Is Your Permission Slip

by | Feb 27, 2023 | Self Development

To Go After Living The Life Of Your Dreams

Having cancer is a huge fish slap across the face. BUT, that slap is sometimes just the wake-up call you need, to give yourself permission to cram as much life as possible into every single day.

I recommend you don’t wait for the slap!

I challenge you to ask yourself “what would life be like if you could live your dreams?“

And if you’re going to deep dive into this, where do you need to give yourself permission to live that dream?

Let me ask this rather bold question.

“Do you have the balls to grow, evolve and live the life of your dreams on your terms, your rules, your way?”

One of the best healing lessons of my personal and professional life, occurred when I embraced the fact that I am responsible for my own happiness.

I stand by that statement, even after having chemotherapy and multiple surgeries. I still found some way in the situation I found myself in, to reframe the experience into an opportunity. It’s kind of like a life mission now, to reframe every aspect of life into something joyous.

You don’t need a cancer experience to have the same outlook or seek more positivity in your life.

It sounds completely obvious, but the implementation of being accountable for your thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviour and let’s call it for what it is — adulting — can leave you feeling utterly smashed on some days.

Don’t kid yourself. We all have stuff, emotional baggage, life experiences that have knocked us down.

When you take ownership of that experience, you are granting yourself permission to heal and evolve from the aspect(s) that caused you pain. As you begin to confront the hurts, this form of adulting enables you to hold yourself accountable for your ongoing responses (as opposed to reactions).

It took cancer for me to confront the demons I had buried in a deep dark place. What might it take you?

Here are the gifts that you can receive by gifting yourself permission…

It is a gift to acknowledge life’s lessons from painful experiences.

When you acknowledge your emotional response, is simply just a component of your old survival reaction, you are giving yourself permission to pause. This acts like a circuit breaker on your stress response.

Once you’ve paused that survival reaction, you are gifting yourself permission to connect with your breath. This has a soothing response to your frazzled nervous system.

Those moments of connecting into a steady breathing rhythm are actually granting yourself permission to ground back into your body, instead of being disassociated.

It is at this point the healing begins — because you’ve landed back in your body and arrived at an energetic space of choice. You can choose to continue reacting, or you can choose to seek a solution.

This is the true gift for healing — granting yourself permission to pause, to breathe, and to do life a new way. That permission process reactivates your capacity to experience joy and revolves around doing your thing — not someone else’s.

It can be both a terrifying and truly liberating experience, to step into that space of vulnerability- the space that holds both your heart and your inner child’s wound, which is held in the shadow space of self.

There’s a few things you need need to do work in your shadow space:

  • Patience
  • Courage
  • Permission
  • Big balls!

It can be confronting to face the patterns of what causes you pain. The desire to heal and ultimately one day feel better within, requires permission, and patience with a side dish of consistency.

It’s not always easy to stand within your sacred space and shine your authentic light to the world. To shine your light, you gotta build a fire. For that bonfire 🔥 to illuminate you have to stack logs on the fire.

Here are 10 Ways to give yourself ‘permission’ to keep doing you!

1. Recognise we all have stuff

Everyone has stuff, challenges and hard things. It’s not a competition who has had the worst experience. We all have our own set of beliefs and behaviours, which drives how we respond or react to those life experiences.

The trick when you are triggered and feel yourself reacting is to step back and assess and reflect on, what within you requires your love and attention to heal? You can’t change anything unless you acknowledge what is there to keep or shift within you.

2. Don’t chase people for their attention, affection or approval.

Seeking external validation can contribute to the acknowledgment of your strengths and emotions. However, when we often rely on friends and loved ones for support and encouragement, this can weaken the signal from our innate gut response.

One of the best forms of accountability is to give yourself validation and approval. This singular action allows you to gain immediate ownership of your role in a situation.

When we stop listening to our internal signals, we risk developing negative seeking behaviours in order to validate our feelings and subsequent reactions, including:

  • difficulty trusting others (because when we don’t receive immediate validation we feel subconsciously unsafe)
  • high levels of anxiety (because we’ve not taught ourselves to the ways to self-soothe through/after specific situations or experiences)
  • multitude of subliminal fears (including but not limited to fear of rejection, not being good enough, uncertainty, out of control — honestly the list here can be endless)
  • unpredictable, uncontrollable emotions, defence-based reactions or confusing behaviours (because we’ve primed ourselves to seek an immediate dopamine hit or quick fix).

3. Use Self-Care to Self Validate

Incorporating a daily or multi-day activity each week soothes your frayed, stressed-out nervous system. These small actions, like meditation, yoga or walking each morning, act like a circuit breaker to your subconscious survival program.

The more small actions you implement regularly, the faster you break down the intensity of the initial survival reaction. Additionally the more you shift the body out of flight-fight-freeze and into rest-digest, the more relaxed you will feel for longer periods of time.

The more frequently you acknowledge the chaos, pause and insert a circuit breaker, the faster you change your neuro-plasticity for a calmer life.

4. Practice saying no

When you have an underlying subconscious fear of abandonment, rejection or your self-worth is so low on the agenda, it can feel confrontational to say no to others.

Whilst it feels great to be of service to others, I often find myself sharing an old proverb with my clients — “you can’t pour from an empty cup”.

If saying “no” feels confrontational or uncomfortable, start with the following phrase the next time someone asks you for something “can I check my diary and get back to you?”

5. Surround yourself with positive

I was coaching a client the other day, who was all over the shop. Bounces from job to job, and admits to struggling to stick with anything.

I asked the obvious question “what does happiness feel like to you?”. My client drew a blank and experienced one of the best aha moments I’ve ever witnessed.

It’s all well and good to surround yourself with positive people, activities and affirmations, but if you’re not connecting with that feeling of happiness, you’re missing the point.

Become an example to yourself, of how it feels and looks to be positive.

It starts with the intention you set for yourself before you even get out of bed! As soon as I wake up, I set my intention ‘I am the priority of my life’.

I instruct clients to create an invitation to pay attention to how they feel and what event causes them to experience anything negative!

6. Journal out the negative

Writing is a beautiful and passive way to express all those feelings and thoughts that swirl around your head. It’s a brilliant tool to express all the stuff doing laps inside your head which block your capacity to verbalise words.

Any form of expressing the emotions within you, gifts you the opportunity to release the negativity and return to a space of neutral calm. The less drama you have inside your head, in terms of overthinking, over-analysis, worry or doubt, the more space you have to welcome positive alternatives.

There are occasions where the release of old, unwanted emotions leaves a void that simply must be backfilled with the energy of something alternative. These are the moments you could write yourself a love letter. But to shift that, you may require a fuck-you letter first!

7. Attract loving people into your life

Work hard to just be yourself. The more focused you are on yourself, being present, and clearing out your old negative stuff, you naturally become a beacon of light.

The more you shift the brighter your light shines. When your light shines bright, you naturally attract amazing human beings into your life who make you want to be and embrace more.

9. Detach & Distance from Negative Juju

Some people simply thrive on remaining negative. They literally receive a dopamine hit when something goes wrong and validates their negative perception of a place, person, or thing.

They are brilliant at sabotaging everything in their life. These are the people who will sink with the Titanic and then gloat about it.

Detach. Distance. Avoid at all costs. Don’t let them drag you down. These people provide you with a choice of how best to view your world, and make choices to be happy.

Just do your thing. Be true to you and shine your light brightly on the world.

10. Immerse into Nature

There’s been a bunch of positive medical research to demonstrate immersion into nature is great for the mind, body, and spirit. It’s because it’s not man made, it’s vibration is natural and has a harmonizing effect on the human body.

Ask any physicist, psychologist, or ecologist, and they will respond the same way. Humans increase their capacity to relax amongst living things (as opposed to man-made spaces), because the particle-wave motion of living things resonates in a similar way to the body.

A simple walk in a nature reserve can be almost meditative.

Conclusion

Making positive changes in your life doesn’t have to be or feel hard. It’s simply a matter of making a commitment to yourself and gifting yourself permission to make yourself a priority.

You really can choose to change and bloom from within xxx

Originally published in Illumination, a Medium Publication.

Want to read more like this?

This is My Roar – signed copies of my first published book can be purchased from this website.

Self Reflection – A little Look Within – click here

8 Hot Tips How To Journal – click here

Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself? – Click here

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Health & Business Coach, LEAP & NES Practitioner, Intuitive Meditation Facilitator, and published author. She is a self-confessed laughaholic.  She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’ 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland

The Mother Load

The Mother Load

by | Jul 10, 2022 | Self Development

5 Tips How To Embrace The Mother Load

I heard the phrase ‘mother load‘ the other day, and it resonated strongly. It summed up the stress experienced by a mother who so often does for everyone else first, and there’s not much else left for her.
 
So often in clinic I work with women who have lost their identity in being the amazing mother, wife, and employee that they are. I can put my hand up and say I was one of them!
 
Working through my treatment and multiple surgeries, I had a lot of time to reflect and change the way I do life. I had time to review the rituals that keep me energerised.
 
I came to realise that if I don’t honor self first, if I don’t fill my bucket first, then everything else suffers. I choose to allow my own child to see my humanness moments – because I’m not superwoman. I don’t want to emulate that sterotype and perpetuate the pattern to another generation – that women have to be everything.
 
Be yourself. Live your life.
 
Allow your kids to see your full spectrum of life – this is how they learn to regulate themselves!
 
Yes install a filter, because kids don’t need to know everything. However, they do need to see you not be everything for everyone.
Kids do need hear ‘no’.
Kids do need to learn how to mop, vacuum, set the table, stack the dishwasher, wipe down the bench, cook meals, pack up after themselves. It’s called life.
 
Here’s to the mothers (and fathers) who have the patience of a saint and continue to breathe through yet another emotional crisis.
 
Here’s to the mothers (and fathers) who keep trying their best, especially when working through their own stuff whilst juggling all the things in the air.
 
Here’s to everyone who is honest about the intensity of the mother load – you’re freaking rock!

Here’s to everyone who parents with integrity, and passion.

Cheers to everyone who puts the emotional welfare of their children above all else.

So how do we embrace the Mother Load?

1. Learn To Juggle Less

I often relate all of the things we do in a single day, is very similar to juggling balls in the air. More often than not, we feel overwhelmed, when we try to add extra balls to what we are already trying to juggle.

If you’re already at maximum juggle, and trying to add more, something has to fall – right?

Sometimes we need to recongise, that a solution we are seeking can only be found, when we place all of the balls down, and turn our head and see what it is we were looking for.

It’s not failure, if you pause what ball you choose to throw in the air. It’s not failure if you discern what ball to throw, and what to put down.

Sometimes, it’s actually more efficient, and far less stressful to simply juggle one or two things. What’s the worst that can happen – you do those few things really well?

2. Debate  Like A Hostage Negotiator

One of the best things I ever learnt to do was debate like a hostage negotiator (I thank my lucky stars for my eccletic edutcation and technical training).

What I mean by this, is that when you are juggling, you’re using a lot of mental energy to keep all the balls in the air.

A hostage negotiator needs to understand the personal investment needs of everyone involved, so that the discussion can commence. A good discussion will quickly identify who needs what, and in what time frame. But more importantly, you ihighlight the other persons’s why. 

When you understand the emotional response of what is driving someone’s bheaviour, it no longer becomes peronal – it’s just a logistical solution to solve.

So often, family members get involvled in heated discussions, because they have made the a situation personal. They are reacting. They have activated their defence programs.

At the end of the day, you’re the hostage to negativity when you invest in the drama of others! Learn to simply observe amd ask the qurstion – why is this important right now?

3. Identify the Emotion

It’s frustrating when an emotional response drives sub-conscious and reactive behaviours. It leaves us feeling out of control. What’s actually going on is our Inner Child is expressing an unresolved emotional reaction from the past.

Acknowledging the emotion (that is driving the the defensive behaviour), is a present time response. It’s not a reaction. Therefore responding in present time deactivates the old reactive survival pattern so that  you can take immediate action.

I teach how to talk to your inner child in a recent podcast episode.

4. Make Time To Decompress

Life in westernised society is fast paced. It’s choatic. It’s hectic. If you’re lucky enough to be afford activities, life is even busier.

Add kids to the mix, and the juggle at times can feel mental. Its enough to make you want to stay in bed.

I find when I work with parents who struggle with the mother load, they haven’t dedicated any ‘time out‘ to themselves.

Sleep isn’t enough to charge the battery. You need to physically rest. When the body is rested, the mind follows, and can soothe all those thoughts and feelings that are doing laps inside your head.

When you’ve got kids, taking time out can feel like a luxury you can’t afford. Zoning out infront of the TV or social media doesn’t actually count!

When was the last time you walked the dog whilst listenin to a podcast?

When was the last time you sat in your  favourite chair and read a great book – for the fun of it?

What about a trashy magazine that takes you a week to read over each and every coffee break?

It’s worth noting that the Heart Math Institute researced that three minutes of meditation daily (or even practicising mindfulness), resulted in hours of wellbeing felt in the body.

Find what works for you to decompress consistently each day. 

5. Do Good, Not More

It sounds easy enough to do good, not more – but have you made the mind body connection with what actually soothes you?

Most of the time, when we pause the juggle, we have the oportunity to connect with our feelings. It’s at this point we can acknowledge the reactive emotion and do something about it.

It is these moments that we can discover what really matters. 

Conclusion

Reflection is such a gift to self to evolve the way we do the juggle of life and create opportunity for true life balance.

It’s only when we are present, and not operating a past tense survival program that we can focus on the things you can juggle (rather than drop or do poorly).

For more information about our survival switch and techniques to defuse it, view my book “This Is My Roar – Transform Your Trauma Tale.” Click here for more information.

Want to read more like this?

What Really Matters – click here

Self Reflection – A little Look Within – click here

8 Hot Tips How To Journal – click here

Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself? – Click here

How To Stop Making Excuses & Start Living Your Best Life – Click here

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Health & Business Coach, LEAP & NES Practitioner, Intuitive Meditation & Virtual Gastric Band Hypnosis Facilitator,  and self-confessed laughaholic.  She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’ 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland

Healing Emotions Hurt More Than The Physical Wounds

Healing Emotions Hurt More Than The Physical Wounds

by | Aug 24, 2020 | Breast Cancer

How to come to terms with the emotions of cancer

There are several reasons that cancer is associated with strong emotions. Cancer is an evocative word, which has traditionally referenced a deadly disease. Yet this doesn’t change the fact it is much harder to heal the emotions of cancer, more often than the physical wounds.

What I know to be true, is that upon diagnosis, there is an overwhelming sense of uncertainty thrown in your face. Your mortality is slapped down in front of you. There is an immediate fear of the future, fear of the unknown and fear of losing control.

I still vividly remember the Saturday morning my breast surgeon delivered the news of my pathology results. I had been able to get myself out of my hospital bed unassisted. It physically hurt like hell, but once I got comfy in the upright chair I was able to settle. The bed was for sick people, I didn’t perceive myself sick then. I was simply recovering from mammoth surgery.

When my surgeon sat at the end of my hospital bed, her face was serious and I knew something was wrong. You know that dread you feel watching a suspense movie? You experience that sensation when you know instinctively something is coming and can’t prepare for it?

She informed me that the results were significantly scarier, from what the original scanning and biopsy had shown. That was one of several days the floor disappeared and I felt like Alice falling down the hole.

I allowed myself to sit in the vulnerable

Hysterical tears don’t even come close to describing everything I felt and experienced that day. Hot mess doesn’t either. But I did both of those things and everything in between. Panic. Terror. Overthinking. Sadness. Worry. Anxiety. I experienced all of it, smothered by it in fact.

There was little resilience left after surgery earlier that week to do anything but cry. At that moment I felt completed defeated. In those conversation moments, my physical pain didn’t even rate. But I was gutted emotionally.

I can now reflect on that horrible day, understanding the true power of the fear of the unknown. It’s crippling and leaves you feeling nothing but raw, extremely vulnerable and very isolated.

The healing I’ve done on myself since has shown me that with patience and the loving support of friends and family, I have turned that raw into MY ROAR!

Even now, as broken as you may feel, you are still so strong. There’s something to be said for how you hold yourself together and keep moving, even though you feel like shattering. Don’t stop! This is your healing. It doesn’t have to be pretty or graceful. You just have to keep going. — Unknown

It did, in fact, take the promised eight weeks to recover from that mammoth reconstructive surgery. In hindsight that was the easy part. The hardest part was dealing with the resultant PTSD emotions that arose from a traumatic biopsy experience.

I had buried myself inside the physical recovery from surgery with very little time to deal with the magnitude of why I had surgery and my diagnosis in the first place.

The subsequent emotional feels that are incorporated deeply with diagnosis, and were often expressed as feelings like dismal failure and depression. Feelings of perpetual entrapment ensued, both physically and mentally.

 

Identifying dark places

That was a dark hole, which took some intense therapy to work through. With hindsight, I can see exposing the darkness of those negative emotions with external assistance, allowed me to openly explore all the feelings as the gift it was. Healing those emotions was so much more intense and way more challenging than healing from breast cancer surgery.

The talking therapy was the trick. I didn’t avoid it, I couldn’t, for that messy bitch of emotions slapped me every day. I didn’t process having cancer at the time of diagnosis. I was too busy being shuffled between appointments, having surgery and learning to walk again.

The emotional bastard bit me as I started chemo. The feels oozed out with my energy as the magic medicine flooded into my body. This was the time that my strong facade faded. And once again I was back to feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable.

 

The talking therapist supported me to gently explore the maze within and find myself again. The talking granted permission to the floodgates to open, which had been bolted tight. Those gates had held everything inside. It was everything inside that robbed me of my energy to recover physically. 

 

As soon as I wrote in my journal or purged with my therapist the cascading avalanche of all my stuff spilled out. There was a release. It was those moments of releasing the emotional that granted permission for the physical to relax and heal.

A friend shared the following quote with me during these darker days. The message was received. Be kind to self. Put self first. Do what it takes to heal. So I did.

I know you are hurting — really bad. I will not tell you to love yourself or smile, but to keep surviving, to get through this day, to eat whatever you want and not feel guilt. I will not tell you to stay in bed for a week, a month or a year if that is what your soul needs. I will remind you that you are still beautiful, even when you are dressed in all the grief. — Rune Lazuli

The emotional roller coaster of cancer is expected and very normal. It’s our human response to a stressful situation. The various things we feel are simply exaggerated because there is a societal perception that we are fighting for our lives.

 

I worked with a therapist

With the support of my therapist, I dug deeper into the abyss of the connective tissue within the wounds I now wore. Initially, those new lines caused much shame and embarrassment.

 

I openly explored my old wounds

I openly explored what my breasts had meant to me as an individual, a woman, a girl, an infant, and mother. I healed more mother wounds, and in doing so in poured an immense and deeply felt gratitude for my feminine.

 

I worked through the physical loss

I worked through what it meant to have nipples, and the grief I felt when I lost one. I was forced to process the new bumps to my milky white chest landscape.

 

I worked through the tears

I worked through months of crying every time I looked at my new chest landscape. The red scarring, the skin graft, the puckered skin and the limited range of motion made the emotions raw. It was this rawness that slowed the physical recovery. I was looking too closely at physical wounds, spending all my energy literally trying to fix them. Trying to control the uncontrollable.

From every wound, there is a scar, and every scar tells a story. A story that says “I survived” — Ft Craig Scott’’

What I’ve learnt is the depth that connective tissue stores emotional trauma. It stores a negative outlook. The tissue stores the false expectations we think we need. The stretch of the tissue holds onto the need to control and keeps you in a state of physical stuck and emotional disbelief. This equates to non-acceptance and inability to flow physically and mentally.

Now that I am embracing my role as a patient it’s getting easier to see those new landscape lines. I’ve researched tattoo designs, and the meaning of the symbol I’ve learnt that the ancient Amazon Warrior amputated her right breast in order to shoot her arrow strong and true.

The lesson learnt and accepted is that I now point true north — metaphorically, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. 

Final words

 

If you find yourself, a friend or relative, on the cancer rollercoaster, and the likelihood is that someone in your life will be affected at some time, I offer you this. We are gifted challenges, not to endure but to experience. These challenges which arise enable us to explore more of self. These challenges gift us the chance to choose a mindset to focus on what is in our control and surrender to that which is not.

The more we can soften our emotional and mental perspective, the faster and more at peace our physical vessel will respond.

 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Health & Business Coach, self-confessed laughaholic, and now Wellness Advocate residing in Gippsland Victoria Australia. She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’