My journey to overcome my anxiety. | Goal: mountain hiking alone |

I want to start to share some more personal experiences. The reason for this is that I strongly believe in openness and authenticity. One theme that I'm very passionate about is openness about mental illness. By being open and honest about some of my difficulties in life I hope to reach you who also struggle with something similar. It's better to struggle together than alone :)

The story I wanted to share with you today is linked to my panic anxiety and agoraphobia. I am scared of walking alone, and it does not really matter much where. If I walk in my neighborhood, the forest or city, usually my anxiety symptoms are the same. It`s hard to say exactly why, but some of the reasons is that I`m scared that I will get dizzy and faint, or get so sick that I`m not able to get home. I'm also scared of what other people might think about me.

So here are my story about reaching one of my goals right now:

view from my hike

We have a cabin on a mountain in Norway, and behind this cabin there are endless hiking possibilities. One of my goals was to be able to walk alone up to the first of the tops behind this cabin. Last summer my anxiety was so bad that I did not go further than a couple of steps before I felt all those terrifying anxiety symptoms, and my head got filled up with hundreds of chaotic thoughts. It feels so bad when you suffer from paralyzing anxiety, but even worse when all those judging thoughts comes about how pathetic and what a failure I am for not even being able to go on a small hike.

The last 6 months I have really worked on exposing myself to this particular anxiety. How I specifically do this is for a later time. So when we this weekend went to the cabin I felt for the first time that I was ready to try out my goal. Hike to the first top! Keep in mind that we do not talk about mount everest here, it's only a 30 minutes walk all together, but for me it feels like an impossible thing to do on my own! The terrain is rugged, so you have to be focused - or in my head: not get dizzy and not be able to get anywhere. And there are no roads, so if something did happen to me, my husband can't come and get me. In my head this transfers to certain suicide!

On our way home

With my goal strong in mind I embarked on my journey with my dog, Luna. I don't know what made my pulse the highest, all my terrifying thoughts, or the fact that it's steep uphill all the way. But it actually went ok! I went to the top and took my time enjoying the view! It actually went so good that the next day, I went there one more time, but this time I kept going and found a new path further down the mountain! All alone!

It might look like a small goal, but for me in my situation this was a very proud moment, and it showed me that all my hard work and all my hard times paid off!

What is your big goal?

If you want to read more about my anxiety and what I do to overcome it, here are some blog suggestions:

9 tips for tough times:

http://kristinectora.blogspot.no/2016/05/9-tips-for-tough-times.html

And

My turning point

http://kristinectora.blogspot.no/2016/05/my-turning-point.html

Narcissism

A theme that has come up a lot lately,is narcissism. Therefore I thought I'd  write my thoughts and perspectives on this subject, and what harm narcissistic caregivers / family can do in an emotional perspective.

The term narcissist can in my view be broadly divided into two meanings. One is what we colloquially call a narcissist when we think a person is obsessed with himself, and only acknowledge the person's own thoughts and feelings as reality. The second is narcissist in psychiatric significance. Because I'm no expert in the psychiatric  field, I will discuss the first variant, and on the basis of my understanding, experience and my intuition.

In my eyes, one of the most harmful issues with narcissistic caregivers or others around you, is not necessarily that this person did not allow you to express your thoughts and feelings, but rather that you were not allowed to have the feeling initially. What I mean by this is that it is one thing to have your own feelings and thoughts but not express them, and to suppress the fact that you have the feeling or thought in the first place. This mechanism forces you to turn off and reconsider all your emotional guidance, and not just lie or not talk about your emotions.

Although this is a logical mechanism for most people in similar situations, I would argue that it is perhaps an even stronger mechanism in people who are highly sensitive and / or Empatic. The reason for this is that you have an even greater ability to take on the narcissistic person's thoughts and feelings as your own, which in turn results in a rejection of your own emotional guide system. This is extremely harmful and can potentially pose major damage in your life in the long run. Emotional neglect and repressed emotions is something I have written about many times on my blog, if you want to read more go to the post about Emotional neglect here:

www.kristinectora.blogspot.no/2016/05/emotional-neglect.html

So what to do if you're in a situation right now? I think you have two choices:

1. Create distance. By this I mean that if you recognize the situation you find yourself in as harmful, the best thing you can do may be to create distance between you and the person.

You are the most important in your life, just like the person in question is in their life, and you are  responsible for your own life.

2. Focus all your energy towards you and what you want. The reason for this is that you are currently using most of your energy on the person and not on yourself. If you're working on your own situation and energy by going against what feels good, you will ,because of the law of attraction, either bring that person with you when you take a higher frequency, or you will no longer reside together anymore because their energy is no longer an energetic match.

Inner Child Work

In this blog post I will address inner child work, also called shadow work, as this can be a hard concept to wrap our minds around sometimes. It's a psychological fact that the most mental disorders and destructive behavior patterns are a result of of unresolved childhood trauma, this is why we call it the inner child.

The inner child will not evolve past trauma that is not being properly taken care of and treated. Let's say that you at 4 years old experienced a trauma. Keep in mind that trauma in most cases will not necessarily involve being beaten and locked in your room for months. Although this unfortunately sometimes is the case. I dare to say that for most of us , the trauma is more subtle in nature, like for instance emotional neglect. Those times you were ignored, or you got shamed for your so called negative emotions etc. At the moment you experience the trauma, your emotional body stops growing. This means that even though your physical body might be 30, your emotional body still is 4. And you have to treat it accordingly. Let's say you're now in a marriage that does not work the way you've hoped, so you go to a marriage counselor to get advice, and you're the one who experienced the trauma at 4 years old. If you in this situation is being handed tools to improve the adult you in the situation, let's say tools for improving your communication, this will NOT work for your core issue.

So what will work? You have to treat yourself at the level you are at. You would not treat a 4 year old child the same way you would treat a 30 year old adult. This is where the inner child work comes in. We have to internally treat the inner child by listening and unconditionally being there. In other words, we have to internally do exactly what a loving parent will to their physical child. If your child came crying to you, would you turn your back to him/her and said " I can't look at you, and your pain has got nothing to do with me! So go away!" Hopefully you would not! So then why are you doing that to yourself on a daily basis?

Inner child work is about taking care of your inner emotions and conditions like it was this physical child. This does not only have to be in real-time. The real inner child work begins when we start "time traveling". This may sound strange, but it is very much possible, and easy, to use your consciousness to travel in time back to the first time this trauma was brought on and change the frequency of your memory. Please note that this is a practise that is well known and used method in psychology, which is traced back to Carl Jung (1875-1961) who was  a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded “Analytical psychology”. Carl Jung is known as the originator of the concept of inner child with his work “divine child archetype”. So for those of you who felt  that this was a bit metaphysical for your taste, I insure you that this is a method that is much used in popular psychology today.

For more about how to use this method in your own life. This is something I will come back to at a later time. It is also something I can help you with in a private session with me.