Are You a Closet Bunny Boiler?

Be honest, do you sometimes plan or even carry out rage-fueled revenge plots like in the movie Gone Girl? Or worse, when you watched Glenn Close boil Michael Douglas’s bunny, did you secretly nod in sympathy?

Find out right now for sure if you’re a closet bunny boiler, take our free quiz:

The ‘How Messed Up Am I?’ Quiz

If you let anger sweep you away when you feel wronged – then this post is for you.

Symptoms of a bunny boiler

Physically, you feel a fiery burning in your chest, and a compulsion to scream and shout. You are fidgety, needing to move, grinding your jaw and clenching your fists, maybe unconsciously. You might feel a tightness in your throat and chest. Nothing pleasant going on there!

You feel a sense of betrayal. By the individual or by life. You feel like the wronged victim and constantly think or say things like ‘it’s not fair! Why is this happening to me? Why me? How could you!?’

You know the whole world has suddenly turned against you!

When enough is enough

Anger is actually an important emotional response to a break up or divorce. Anger is your body letting out and releasing your upset and disappointed expectations. Dealing with future hopes and dreams suddenly changing.

But as we all know, anger is super-destructive. In the heat of the moment you can easily say things that further damage and destroy things you have nurtured and built for so long.

Breathe… don’t say it!

The very first thing to do is watch what you say. Find a way to at least postpone it. Avoid dramatic confrontations when you are in the middle of your anger, as tempting as they might be.

Instead wait. Find a healthy way to communicate what needs to be communicated later on.

At the same time, find a way to express your anger. If you keep it all bottled up inside, you might end up expressing it in passive aggressive ways in all areas of your life.

And no one wants to be that person.

So find a way to release that angry energy. Talk to a friend, join www.tantrumclub.com, take up boxercise. Whatever helps. And realize the truth that the anger will pass.

Don’t numb it with alcohol or ignore it. Don’t resist it. Let it run its course. Observe the physical sensations in your body, thinks ‘where am I feeling this in my body?’ Then imagine a soothing light and feeling calming that fieriness.

Most importantly, control the way you think about it. Because no matter how you might feel you dohave control. The moment you decide to take on this empowering perspective, you will start to recover.

You’re not a victim and you never will be

Most anger is rooted in a feeling of weakness, victimhood, betrayal. Resist the voice telling you to turn it out on other people. Instead take responsibility for it. OWN it.

You created this anger. You alone. No one else has control over you. You have 100% control over your life and your emotions. You created the anger. You can also end it. And you WILL.

Keep your heart open to other people. It might sound tough in those heated moments, but try to feel the anger while keeping your heart open, while feeling love towards others.

And don’t worry, being a bunny boiler isn’t a permanent condition!

Learn lot more about handling anger and reclaiming your emotions. Take our ‘How Messed Up Am I?’ Quiz here and find out if you’re:

• Angry Bunny Boiler
• In Denial & Keeping Up Appearances
• Cling-On Crazy
• Dazed Zombie
• Deep Grieving
• ‘MEH’

After the quiz you’ll get a free PDF report on exactly which personality type you are and how to deal with it in a healthy, wholesome way to be at peace and happy once more.

Tell us what you think about the quiz!

Adele

Have You Breached Your Personal Integrity?

Giving your word to something is SACRED. Your word is who you are. When you make promises you cannot keep, you are plagued by guilt. We all are.

If things aren't working out in your life and everything seems to be going wrong then it’s not weird karma or voodoo – it’s because you've breached your personal integrity. What this means is you have broken agreements with yourself or others and have lots of incompletion in your life. By sorting out all those broken agreements , cleaning them up and getting incomplete things complete, you will restore your power again.

Why Integrity is the Source of ALL Your Power

Integrity is not good or bad OR right or wrong. However, when you have integrity – you have POWER. When you say something will happen, and it does, your word has power.

Promises and declarations have no power on a foundation of little or no integrity. The height of madness is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result – making declarations and not having them happen has you lose faith in your ability to produce results.

So take a step back and ask yourself…

Where are you out of integrity? What is OFF? Are you up to date on your taxes, homework, work? Are you in communication? Where are you out of communication? Where are you hiding something? Where are you showing up late, where do you tell yourself ‘it doesn't matter’?

Start to be aware of when you make agreements and commitments with yourself and others. And STOP making promises you cannot certainly keep WITHOUT saying extra conditional words like:

‘I believe, I am told that, based on the following assumptions, to the best of my knowledge, as I understand it, provided I can achieve xyz, provided xxx happens, I can guarantee yyy, etc.’

This will allow you to stay in control, stay true to your word, and keep your power.

Already breached your integrity?

Don’t beat yourself up – you can reclaim your power. Here’s how to clean up your mess…

With yourself

The mastery of life includes integrity. Integrity is the process of cleaning up the mess you made. We made a whole bunch of agreements and didn't keep them. I said I wanted to be a chemist and never kept that agreement.

I only made that agreement with myself, but I am very important in my life. So I have to get my agreement that it is alright to let that original agreement go. Once I do that, the agreement ceases to exist. I start to look at the things that I agreed that I wanted to be, do and have, and find out that it’s alright not to be, do and have those now, and the agreements go.

With others

I've also made some agreements with other people and I will have to handle those agreements. I’ll have to say to whoever I made the agreement, “Look, I made an agreement with you and what I’d like to do now is not to keep that agreement. I’d like to know what you need in order to be willing to accept that.”

In your lives there will be people that you have an inherent agreement to communicate with that you haven’t communicated with. You've withheld your communication. You can go back and clean up that mess by taking responsibility and communicating with those people.

It may be hard, but it can be simple

If you've left some problems unsolved in your life – and a problem unsolved in your life is one that keeps coming up – you can handle it by expanding your purposes to include solving it. All of a sudden, what was a problem ceases to be a problem. It becomes a part of the solution.

For the most part, simply acknowledging to the person that you made an agreement with that you didn't keep your agreement with them, or that you did something to them, would be enough to clean it up. Essentially, what you do it for is to expand your purposes – which are to make your life work – to include making their life work.

YOUR ACTION PLAN to reclaim your power

Think right now – what agreements have you broken?

Choose one and expand your purpose to include solving that problem.

Get in communication with yourself or the other person involved, using the language in this post. For example, “We agreed xxx, yyy is what happened. I understand that what happened is not what we agreed. To restore my integrity with you I propose the following…”

Of course, be honest here too and don’t commit to anything you can’t do. Set out a realistic solution.

And prepare to feel absolutely incredible afterwards!

There are few things more liberating.

Share your story once you've taken action. I’d love to hear it!

Poor Me Syndrome (the New PMS)

Some people just love to enroll everyone in their lives in a sad story so they can get attention, have a sad story to hide behind, and not live a happy fulfilled life.

Perhaps you know someone like this. Perhaps you know someone like this… intimately?

You know when you’re stuck in this rut when you keep telling this story over and over again to random people in your life. When people pat your arm and say how sorry they are for you or if you walk around sighing a lot about your life. You also know you’re doing this when your reason for not being happy is your sad story.

A few sad story examples – sound familiar?

“My husband left me. My wife had an affair. I have no money because…”

“I would be happy if only Bob didn't leave me for the housemaid. I would be happy if my wife actually worked on our marriage. “

“I cannot work out because I have no time and my husband left me and I am so busy making my business successful so I just eat chocolate all the time.”

Ever catch yourself saying things like this? If you do, don’t beat yourself up, that might just become another sob story! Instead, it’s time to put that story aside and move past it.

Why self-pity is so seductive

Many people slip into self-pity because that first tiny step seems like a good idea. It’s like a comforting technique when ‘no one else quite gets me and my problem’. Perhaps it even gives you some fleeting therapeutic feeling of solace and comfort.

And that first time you tell someone else your sob story, if they buy into it, it certainly does feel good to have them patting you on the shoulder and saying comforting things to you.

And BOOM, right in that moment you have initiated a few powerful psychological forces which will make it extremely likely you’ll continue making that sad story your friend and identity.

A lovely reward for misery

We all desire attention, connection and feelings of importance. And when people start turning to you and giving you all three at once, just because you put on a sad face and told a sad story, it’s like a huge reward and instant source of pleasure. Your unconscious mind thinks it’s hit the jackpot!

Of course, this is an illusion, comforting is nice, but too much becomes a very negative form of attention. And self-pitying people end up alone in the long run, or at best surrounded by other ‘poor me syndrome’ sufferers.

Consistency and identity

If you’ve read Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, you’ll know one of the most powerful drivers of our actions is a need to remain consistent with what we have previously done and said, and who we have told others we are.

Once you take the first step onto the slippery slope of ‘poor me, poor me’, you will feel compelled to continue. And the further you go, the more you will feel it is your identity, the more you believe it yourself and want to reinforce it. You begin to spiral down into this pit of self-pity and negativity. Until one day you cannot remember life being any other way.

We love the underdog, we feel for the victim

And PMS gives us a chance to become both! Isn’t it a kind of romantic, wonderful feeling to be the poor victim and underdog, downtrodden by the cruel world. You can feel important and have a wonderful excuse for not achieving or even trying to pursue your dreams.

With all these seductive factors you can see why so many people succumb to self-pity…

But it’s time to WAKE UP!

Here is the cold, hard truth;

There is nothing evolved about sob stories

You just want attention or want to avoid doing whatever it takes to have a great life. It’s a form of laziness and you are not solving anything by telling the world about your story. Every time you tell someone your story you’re reinforcing it. So stop.

Rather than telling people your sob stories and reasons for not having a great life, get busy on sorting yourself out in 2015 and commit to living a happy and fulfilled life come hell or high water.

Want a helping push in the right direction?

Get in touch, that’s what I’m here for!

Are You A Giver Or A Taker In Your Relationships?

Some people live life being just on the take – looking at what they can get out of every situation. They’re also not interested in doing something unless they get something in return.

In some way none of us will do anything unless we get something out of it but true joy in life comes from giving without a guarantee of receiving anything in return. Like unconditional love.

If you find yourself being conditional in the gifts you give people i.e. I gave you x, you owe me y then your gift was not given unconditionally.

From taker to dictator

I think self-centered people often wind up taking the Dictator role in relationships. Especially if they’re paired with a giver. This is where `who gets what and how much` is always determined by the taker, the other partner gets whatever the taker decides they’ll get. And that’s that.

This inevitably leads to unhappiness for the taker’s partner. And a failing relationship.

You can’t take and win

This fascinating study ‘Reciprocity is Not Give and Take’ illustrates a powerful reason why takers kill relationships. With a series of experiments, a team at the University of Chicago found that when it comes to social relationships, including intimate relationships, when one side gives, the other side can give equally and both parties feel satisfied.

But when one side takes, and then in return the other side takes the same or receives something of equal value, then the dictator (sorry I mean the taker) is the only happy one left. The other party who was initially taken from is still not happy. It’s just human nature.

So to sum this up, the only relationship that can work and flourish is two givers. But watch out, there are still ways being a giver can be bad for you.

Be a giver, not a record-keeping matcher

Make sure you’re a giver, and not a matcher – someone who remembers every little thing they gave and expects the equal amount in return, or they’re just not happy. This Psychology Today article explains the matcher nicely.

Very often such matchers don’t even express all the things they feel the other party owes them and they become martyrs – always giving, giving, giving and feeling sad and frustrated because the world just isn't giving back. See my earlier post on martyrs here. Don’t become one!

Givers can be taken advantage of

In any relationship the giver is the happiest and also potentially the unhappiest.

Just make sure you’re with another giver, not a taker or a matcher. And the best way to be is always strive to give unconditionally, expecting nothing in return. Except perhaps that warm feeling of giving to someone you love.

Give from the heart because you want to. I think you’ll agree that’s true love and the foundation of something beautiful.

How to know you’re receiving unconditional love

And at the same time respect yourself, don’t be taken disadvantage of and make sure you’re receiving unconditional love too. Not in a tit-for-tat way. But just be aware of it.

When you’re conscious of this you’ll know if your partner is playing the role of a taker and dictator. And you can communicate it to them if they are, because they’re probably unaware of it.

When your partner gives love and is happy, regardless, you know it’s no strings attached giving. And when you mess up, make poor choices, get in your partner’s way, take a wrong turn or sabotage your own happiness and you’re partner’s not disappointed or irritated. And stays right with you, without judging or punishing. That’s another sign you’re not with a taker.

So, are you a taker or a giver in your relationships?

Share your thoughts!

Should we fake it until we make it??

According to Mail Online there was an article written on “Why acting like you are in love can lead to the real thing” that if you want to feel in love, perhaps you should fake it until you make it.

The article suggested that if you behave in the way you want to be perceived by others, you can develop emotions birthed from those actions.  Normally it is the other way around in that; from experiences and emotions, our behavior that follows afterwards is subject to how we have felt, hence the reason we acted in that way. But taking this on the complete flip side, this study suggests our behavior of “acting with certain emotions” can develop those emotions, to then be real.

To test the theory of behavior affecting emotions, The results are published in Prof Wiseman’s new book, Rip It Up,  where Prof Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, held a speed-dating night, where some of the prospective partners were asked to act as though they were already in love with each other. The 100 volunteers, taking part in the study in Edinburgh, were encouraged to hold hands, gaze into each other’s eyes, and whisper secrets to each other, according to the Daily Telegraph. When questioned at the end on their feelings, 45 per cent of those who had ‘acted in love’ wanted see each other again – more than double the average rate of 20 per cent. Interesting stuff innit?

Leading psychologist Richard Wiseman says that behaving as if you find someone attractive increases your susceptibility to their charms, and increases the likelihood of you falling in love with them. And although he does not advocate arranged marriages he believes a lot can be learned from them. Arranged matches are carefully considered, with thought going into whether potential partners’ families, interests, values and life goals are compatible.

Which if we are honest a sad reality is that in society today, that same careful thought and consideration is not going into a lot of relationships and marriages as it should. People marry for love which by all means is the most shared reason and a fantastic reason at that – however there needs to be more than just love, there needs to be commitment, not just to the person but to the relationship, there should be a connection and mutual understanding of expectations of that relationship and mutual passion to fight for one another when the going gets tough.

Those who marry for love alone in some cases can be blinded by passion and so overlook the crucial details that should never be overlooked. With arranged marriages however, the commitment is normally very strong. They get married knowing they won’t leave, due to family situations or the requirements agreed upon before getting married. Consequently when times are harder, they don’t run away and often bad situations bring the couple closer.

I am in no way encouraging an arranged marriage, however the action that is taken in an arranged marriage because of the different mindset is seemingly apparent to the results, that it can bring people closer by not having the option to quit, so they act accordingly.

Actions are the quickest, easiest and most powerful way to instantly change how you think and feel.’ in this same way when tough times arise in any relationship, rather than hold yourself stagnant in those emotions, the study of taking action is demonstrating an astounding result. The famous saying of positive thinking can determine positive results. If you do positive action, you can bring about positive thoughts and feelings!

If you act with a positive action despite how you may feel, it can not only develop positive emotions but a new outlook to your situation or your relationship.

With soaring divorce rates and record numbers of single-parent households increasing, researchers suggest it is time to rethink our approach to love.

‘The idea of leaving our loved lives to chance with an attitude of “Let’s see how it goes” may be OK at the beginning but when considering a future, a change in thought is screaming ‘necessary’.

We plan our careers, our children’s education and our finances but we’re still uncomfortable with the idea that we should plan our love lives.  But with everything else in which we want success, don’t we normally make a plan? A vision on where we want to be, and a passion to fight for what we want? We have commitment to excellence until we reach it, true? My question is… how much of this is applied to a successful relationship? Why wouldn’t we take the same consideration and care?

Relationships are core to life. Other things can make us happy, sure. But without relationships we would have no one to share our happiness with. If we take more action in our relationships regardless of current emotions I think we will be astounded with the results in the long run.

Act positively. It might just develop those positive emotions you’ve been craving.

Till next time!

Lots of hugs

Got a Gut Feeling? Your Gut Might Cause ALL Your Feelings!

Do you ever get a gut feeling about something? I was fascinated to learn that our gut and the health of our gut plays a huge role in how we feel.

Almost as much, perhaps even as much, as our minds do.

We spend all our time working our brain and the rest of our body to boost our emotions, but we may be ignoring half the cause of problems. Isn’t it exciting to think that we can literally feel happier and emotionally stronger, even boost our immune system and overall health, just by taking better care of our gut?

If you’re feeling down, anxious, depressed, or just want a big old boost of happiness-inducing serotonin, it turns out your gut most likely has a huge influence over it all, as its proposed in this very entertaining Huffington Post article.

The little friends in your second brain

You've probably heard of our friends the ‘good bacteria’ battling it out against the ‘bad bacteria’ in our digestive tract – our second brain. Well, the state of these micro flora and how well the good bacteria are doing determines a whole host of health-related factors.

For example, good bacteria decides how well the toxic by-products of your digestion are neutralized and whether harmful pathogenic bacteria or other substances are prevented or allowed to grow. And it determines how much hormone production there is and many other factors that affect the health of your immune system.

Did you know you have two nervous systems too?

That’s right. You have two nervous systems – one is the central nervous system we all know and love, which is in your brain and spinal cord. But you also have the ‘enteric’ nervous system, which is in your gastrointestinal tract – your gut.

Through this whole system your brain and gut are connected and the bacteria in your gut sends messages to the brain through the nervous system. These messages affect your mood, and you know the surprising part?

Your gut sends your brain more messages than the other way around. Your gut sends instructions on how to make you feel all day long. And since we can influence those messages, it’s something we should pay attention to, wouldn't you agree?

Happiness, anxiety and depression

You have neurons in your gut, which is another reason we call it the second brain. And these neurons produce neurotransmitters like serotonin – the primary chemical responsible for your feelings of well-being and happiness. We all know that, right?

But here’s another surprise. Serotonin is found in larger quantities in the gut than in the brain. So let’s influence our primary serotonin-producing environment in our gut and make more of it!

You may have experienced stomach pains or irritable bowel syndrome during times of great anxiety. There’s clearly a strong relationship between anxiety and the health of our gut.

There is even a strong line of scientific work proposing that certain probiotics can affect levels of proinflammatory cytokines and tryptophan in the gut, which have been implicated in depression.

“OK, I get it! So how do I start improving my gut?!” I hear you ask.

Well, that’s the next stage of my investigation. And don’t worry, I’ll share my findings with you as I go.

Perhaps you already have some ideas.

Share them with us!

Go on, give yourself permission to climb into a Porg-hole!

When I was little, I had a bull terrier named Porgie. I loved her so much so, that I would greet her on all fours, hide her in my bed so she wouldn't be cold and even come home and climb into her dog basket with her. She was an absolutely mental dog and I loved her craziness and zaniness. Porgie however, was no ordinary dog. She harbored a secret.

Not only did she chase her tail with joy, sit in the pantry and slip in her own drool waiting for a dog biscuit and eat noisily like each meal was her last, she had an inner wisdom which far exceeded her dog years.

I truly believe that Porgie was a guru in a previous lifetime.

Every few months, Porgie would be in a bad mood. Who knows what caused it – perhaps hormones, a phantom pregnancy, or Pluto aligning incorrectly with Venus. When this happened, she would go to the bottom of the garden and go dig a hole. She would then crawl into this ‘Porg-hole’ and growl if anyone came near her. I would attempt to coax her out with food but she didn't come out and she let me know that I was not welcome. 3-4 days later, she would come out of the hole, cover it up and come bounding back as if nothing had happened.

I used to think this was more evidence that my dog was weird and unwell but actually thinking back on it today – it was sheer genius.

In today’s society, we don’t ever allow ourselves to dwell in a bad mood. We are told to ‘snap out of it’, ‘cheer up’ and be happy. The dawn of Emotional Intelligence has created an international outbreak of suppressed human beings who don’t allow themselves to just be grumpy and to just be with their grumpiness, unhappiness or depression until is passes. Instead we must apply an emotional avoidance trigger or tranquilize ourselves with alcohol, drugs or antidepressants until ‘rational intelligence returns’.

GROWL. What Daniel Goleman didn't realize when he wrote his NY Times bestseller ‘Emotional Intelligence’, was that he helped contribute to the mass suppression of emotions which is commonplace in today’s society. Instead of expressing raw emotions, feeling them authentically, crying, screaming and just being grumpy when we feel grumpy, we are expected to be cool, calm, collected robots who smile politely, play political ping pong with the sales guy we hate and certainly don’t flinch in the boardroom when someone missed a deadline and messed up our project.

Your EQ is now more important than your IQ as this man managed to convince and advise nations that suppression is healthy, balanced and somehow good for us.

In describing the importance of acknowledging our emotional states, American psychologist Dr Maurice Elias says, “Emotions are human beings, i.e. warning systems as to what is really going on around them. Emotions are our most reliable indicators of how things are going in our lives. Emotions help keep us on the right track by making sure that we are led by more than the mental/intellectual faculties of thought, perception, reason, and memory.”

In her article titled ‘How to Understand, Express and Release your Emotions’, author Mary Kurus, a renowned psychologist based in New York, writes that emotions control our thinking, behavior and actions. If you ignore, dismiss or repress your feelings, you’re setting yourself up for physical illness.

The understanding is that emotions that are not felt and released can spawn a host of ailments: cancers, arthritis, and many types of chronic illnesses. The explanation is that negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, negativity, frustration and depression cause chemical reactions in our bodies that are very different from the chemicals released when we feel positive emotions such as happiness and contentment and also when we’re feeling loved and accepted.

Signs that you are repressing your emotions

When we have an experience that is painful or difficult we often dismiss the emotions or bury them under busyness, exercise, comfort eating or drinking. The problem is that our suppressed emotions don’t like being hidden. Our negative feelings stay with us; in the muscles, ligaments, stomach and midriff. These emotions remain buried within us until we allow ourselves to feel them and deal with them, thereby releasing them.

Short Term Emotion Avoidance Triggers (STEATs) and other ‘methods’ we use to suppress or avoid our emotions:

• Ignoring feelings.
• Pretending something hasn't happened.
• Overeating.
• Eating foods loaded with sugar and fat (‘comfort eating’).
• Excessive drinking of alcohol.
• Excessive use of recreational drugs.
• Using prescription drugs such as tranquilizers or antidepressants.
• Exercising compulsively.
• Behaving compulsively.
• Excessive sex with or without a partner.
• Excessive busyness.
• Constantly intellectualizing and analyzing situations.
• Excessive reading or TV viewing.
• Spending hours watching romantic movies or fantasizing about ‘the one’.
• Working excessively.
• Keeping conversations superficial.
• Burying angry emotions under the mask of peace and love.

You cannot control your emotions BUT truly acknowledging them and feeling them, allows them to move on.

You cannot change or control your emotions. Think of the people who trundle along day after day, seeming to function normally. And then one day they’ll suddenly explode over something seemingly trivial or harmless. This behavior is a result of a pressure-cooker syndrome; apply a little heat in the form of a tense situation and repressed emotions boil over. The more you try to control your emotions the more your emotions resist. Eventually you lose emotional control. It’s a vicious cycle.

It’s not popular in today’s society to express negative emotions in public. Seeming out of control is interpreted as a sign of weakness. We’re often uncomfortable around people who express strong emotions. As a society we’re taught to hide our emotions, to be ashamed of them and to be afraid of them.

We spend a great deal of time talking ‘about’ our feelings and emotions and very little time actually processing and feeling them. We attend workshops, visit therapists, and they describe how we feel.

We talk and talk about our emotions, intellectualizing and analyzing them, but how much time do we actually spend feeling them?

We are emotional creations and we must learn how to know our emotions, be with them, and release them in healthy ways.

Although I disagree with Daniel Goleman and his thoughts on intellectualizing our emotions before we give ourself permission to feel them – taking out our frustrations on others is also not particularly evolved. I know he wrote his book to prevent irrational rants in the workplace but the problem is we have become deader and more resigned than ever. Depression rates have never been so high as they are today and some psychologists believe that depression is simply long term suppression of emotion.

So Porgie had it right after all.

Feeling crabby? Go dig a hole away from others and go BE crabby and do not stop being crabby until you feel pruney with your crabbiness. Growl. Its really fun actually. Surrender to the emotions, feel them and be them until they naturally pass and peel away like layers of an onion. The crabiness is concealing a deep sadness, fear or anger so get to the root cause of your emotion so you can release the tension in your body and prevent long term illness from happening.

So, to hell with your EQ, smiling when you don’t mean it and fake bubbliness - its plastic and weird. Let people know how you feel in life. Give yourself permission to be a glorious crabby depressed mess until you are sick to death of it. Give yourself permission to climb into a Porg hole today – you will feel a hellava lots happier tomorrow and guarantee longer healthier life too.

Thanks be to Guru Porgie…

Till next time

Don’t Eat That Cookie! Are You Healing or Avoiding?

When you were young did your mother use to say, ‘Don’t cry. Here have a cookie and you’ll feel better.’

And you ate the cookie, got distracted and yes you did actually feel a bit better. For ten minutes. Then the pain came back, and it was time for another cookie.

Does this sound at all familiar? If that child was you, perhaps you grew up to associate fixing your emotions with food, or other short term distractions. Instead of facing the pain and actually healing properly. The fact is:

If you don’t confront your emotions, you’ll never heal!

The example of the daughter and her cookie comes from John James and Russell Friedman’s great book ‘The Grief Recovery Handbook’, where they talk about confronting your emotions rather than filling your life with things that fill your time, but only provide a short-term relief.

When you eat that cookie the fact is there’s no emotional completion of the pain caused by the event. The event and all the feelings associated with it are simply buried. Ready to keep coming up throughout your life no matter how many cookies you eat.

What are Your Short Term Emotion Avoidance Tactics?

Short Term Emotion Avoidance Tactics (STEATs) are things you do to avoid feeling the pain, numb the pain, or to take the pain away in the short term. They are often escapism-type activities where you keep SO focused and busy that there is no time to think.

They help you feel better in each moment BUT you’re not feeling better for real – it’s a false sense of security – a false feeling of recovery. And if you fill your life up with lots of STEATs your healing will not progress.

STEATs are so common after divorce

The sad thing is that for most people struggling to get over their divorce they’re engaging in a cycle of feeling the pain, applying a STEAT, feeling the pain, applying another STEAT, until over time they feel numb and they think this numbness is them healed from their divorce.

STEATs prolong the emotional roller-coaster of your divorce. So you never fully grieve for long enough or experience the loss critical to healing for real. Your emotional roller coaster will go up and down, up and down. Until you stop. And start to heal for real.

Your recovery exercise – which of these common STEATs do you use?

It’s time to be brutally honest with yourself.

Try to identify two short-term relief activities you’ve been doing to distract yourself and displace your feelings since your divorce or break up. This can be a lot harder than it seems, but it’s going to take your absolute commitment to honesty to truly heal.

Here are some common examples: Excessive socializing. Over-exercising. Fantasy or escapism activities (books, TV, movies). Shopping/retail therapy. Work and becoming a workaholic. Pretending something hasn’t happened. Overeating. Eating foods loaded with sugar and fat (‘comfort eating’). Excessive drinking of alcohol. Excessive use of recreational drugs. Using prescription drugs such as tranquilizers or antidepressants.

The list is endless, and it could be something totally unique for you.

So, what STEATs do You use?

Can you share a few with the world?

I’d love to hear them!