I went for a walk along the dyke a few days ago and I saw the plant (pictured above on the left) lying on the ground.  I stopped and picked it up (pictured above on the right). 

But I knew that it would fall down the next time the wind blew.  Why was that?  The plant was too top heavy and the roots were not strong enough or deep enough to keep it up. 

I thought how often that plant represents our own lives.  Too many of us have weak roots.  Our early childhood conditioning and/or negative things that have happened in our past do not give us the strength we need to withstand the problems and challenges that are part of everyday life. 

When the wind blows (problems arise) in our life, we are not strong enough to withstand them and we fall.  This can show up in many ways: any kind of addiction, including overeating (the drug of choice for many people), depression, anxiety, fears and phobias, self-defeating behaviors and attitudes.

Unlike this plant though, there is something we can do to strengthen our roots and rebuild our lives the way we want them to be.  The first thing we have to do is realize that we are responsible for the quality of our lives.  This is incredibly powerful because it means that we have the power to change what we don’t like. 

The most powerful tool I’ve ever found for digging out and eliminating the weak, damaged roots from the past and replacing them with strong, healthy roots that will support and sustain our growth is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). 

Just like I helped that plant to stand again (even if only for a short time), I can help you strengthen your roots and rebuilt your life the way you want it to be.  There is always hope!

What would you do if you woke up to find yourself being thrown out of an upstairs bedroom window?

We had the good (or bad) fortune to stay for four days at a beautiful condo right on Okanagan Lake at West Kelowna last week.  Unfortunately, there were three forest fires burning in the area at the time and many people around us were being evacuated.  We were not in any immediate danger but as we drove by one of the fires in the hills behind us, I looked up at the billowing mountain of smoke and had a memory flashback to an incident that had happened fifty-two years ago.

At the age of seven, I lived with my parents and five year old brother in an older two-story house in the small town of Kindersley, Saskatchewan.  My father was a train engineer and was away doing an overnight run one summer night.  I woke up to find  my mother had picked me up in her arms and was carrying me to the open bedroom window, where she tried to throw me out.  I kicked and screamed and held on for dear life, refusing to let go, even though she kept telling me too.  As a result of my frantic kicking, my bare feet hit the red-hot livingroom window and the sudden shock of the pain caused me to let go and I fell to the ground below.

Crying and standing there in my underwear, I walked from the front door to the back, expecting my mother and brother to come out the door.  Hearing a noise, I looked up and saw my brother falling to the ground.  Only he didn’t land on his feet.  He fell on his face, hitting a pipe with his nose and upper lip.  Then my mother, wearing only a slip, climbed out, holding onto the small box that held the electrical wires.  The box broke and she slid down the side of our stucco house.

By this time, I’d realized our house was on fire.  I could see the flickering red flames in the living room window and the smoke billowing out of both doors.

The neighbors quickly arrived with blankets.  While the firefighters chopped holes in the roof of our house, we were led away to have our wounds cared for.  Both of my feet were badly blistered, my brother’s face was so swollen he looked like a little boy pig and my mother’s side was badly scraped by the glass in the stucco wall.

For years, I used to tell people that it was my fault that my brother was so badly hurt.  I thought because I’d fought so hard to hang on to my mother’s arms, that she had thrown my brother head first so she wouldn’t have the same problem. 

 Many years later, the subject came up and my mother was there when I told my version of the story.  She snorted and asked: “Is that what you remember?”  She said she had done nothing of the kind.  She let my brother out of the window the same way she had me, but when he fell, he landed on the pipe and hurt his face.  I had always thought that I was responsible and felt guilty for the pain my brother experienced.

How many things do you believe that are not true?   How much guilt are you carrying needlessly?    Are there burdens that you are carrying that you don’t need to carry?

Where does low self-esteem come from?  We certainly aren’t born with it.

  This is my grandson Rhylan, on the day of his third birthday. You can see he is trying to        hold up three fingers.  Children of that age are full of confidence. 

  One day, my daughter Shauna, Rhylan’s mother was in the car with her husband, Shawn,  Rhylan and their 18 month old daughter, Kendrah.  Rhylan made some rude noise (he burped, I think) and started to laugh, saying “I’m funny”.

Shawn replied, “You’re not funny”. 

Rylan:  “Yes, I am, I’m funny”. 

Shawn:  “No, you’re not funny”. 

Rylan: (with much more emphasis in his voice) “Listen to me, Shawn, I’m funny!”

Shauna was laughing hysterically, but silently, in the front seat.  After all, she couldn’t approve because Rhylan’s response to his father wasn’t really appropriate.  But he was standing up for himself.  That is an example of good self esteem.

But it doesn’t last.  Several studies have been done on self-esteem.  The results of the studies show that by the time children reach Junior High School, 69% of boys and only 50% of girls still feel good about themselves.  By High School, that has changed to 51% of boys and 24% of the girls.  And among adult women, only 1 in 5 women feel good about themselves.

I will go into greater detail on where low self-esteem comes from in the next blog.

Nervousness, restlessness, agitation, insecurity.  These are all symptoms of anxiety. 

One of my sons constantly jiggles one part of his body, usually his leg.  He shakes the table when we eat and used to irritate whoever slept in the same room with him because the bed would go creak, creak, creak all night long.

Another symptom of anxiety is grinding or gritting your teeth.  A surprising number of people have TMJ problems because they keep their stress in their jaw.  The TMJ (temporalmandibular joint) is the joint that hinges your bottom jaw to your skull bone.

I knew a lady who had lived through a tremendous amount of trauma and stress in her life.  In her efforts to control her stress, she clenched her jaw so tightly for so long that she actually shattered the bones in her TMJ joint.

After years of pain, suffereing, surgery and repair, she finally had to hve the whole joint replaced with an artificial one.  But you know what?  The pain didn’t go away.  Because the source of the stress was still there. 

The medical system had just been trying to heal the symptoms, not eliminate the cause!

Have you ever been depressed?  Depression is characterized by being overcome with events and giving up, with feelings of no control and hopelessness.

One of the ways that I used to cope was to try and control things.  Ask any member of my family and they will tell you that I was a control freak.  In my mind, I wasn’t controlling – I was protecting them.  That used to be possible when my children were smaller but as they started to grow up, I realized that I couldn’t control them any more.   I saw my children making choices, that according to my value system, were harmful to them.  And I could do absolutely nothing about it.  That was time of major depression for me, probably the worst I have ever experienced.

We had a seriously handicapped child that died at the age of seven.  As a family, we never dealt with his death properly and nine years later, several of our children were having serious problems.  In an effort to help, we called a grief counselor in to meet with the whole family.

One of the things he had each of us do was to draw a picture of how we saw our family.  I drew my husband and my five children in the back yard, with me watching them.  To my horror, I drew myself with no arms!  Talk about an expression of no control and feeling hopeless!  I get emotional just thinking about it.

In this short little story, can you pick up the number of different ways that unrelieved stress brought on depression?   Do any of you identify?