Browsing Tag

Mindset

Emotional abuse or Physical abuse, what is worse?

2018-03-26
Emotional Abuse Physical Abuse

People ask me regularly whether emotional or physical abuse is worse. As someone who is abused sexually, emotionally, physically and financially I ought to have an opinion about this. From what I see, most people believe that physical abuse is the worst. Maybe because it is so visible? The pain easier to understand?

Physical abuse

I believe that physical abuse contains aspects of emotional abuse, because the emotional and psychological effects of abuse are also present in this type of abuse.  I remember the first time my ex choked me. That’s an emotional experience that never goes away. True, the bruises faded. My body healed on it’s own. But it took a long time before I healed the emotions coming from that physical experience. Even now, I don’t like it when a scarf touches my neck very tightly. I don’t wear turtlenecks and if I do it is often to challenge myself because I don’t want to connect my past experiences with the feeling of having something around my neck. I want to be free of that burden and don’t give in to negative associations my mind has made from that experience.

Emotional abuse

The thing with emotional abuse is this: it is harder to recognise and to comprehend especially because it is so vindictive, often hidden and not very obvious. It is harder to understand and to recover from it.  Healing emotions, in particular in situations of child and partnerabuse is very difficult. The effect abuse has in your life, both short and long term is enormous. The path to healing is a difficult rocky one that needs constant awareness.

Healing process

If you look strictly; with physical abuse it is your body and the body does the job itself (NOTE: if someone is not abused to the extent that he or she has broken something or in pain for the rest of his/her life of course).

The way you interpretate your experience with abuse will determine how you feel, not the experience itself.

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With emotional abuse YOU are the one who has to work. Most likely there are patterns of emotional abuse that have existed for a long time, maybe a feeling of dependence, lack of self-confidence and you might have given control to the other person for so long that you don’t know who you are and what you want anymore or now afraid of making choices. Maybe you don’t dare to say no to the other person and always give in by doing what the other person expects you to do and you probably don’t know why exactly. It is probably hard to accept that you are the victim of abuse and to understand how and in what kinds of ways you have been abused. Next to that you might have to deal with the controlling and manipulating behaviour of an ex-partner or parent that can linger on for years after breaking up the relationship making it hard to create new healthy patterns.

Physical abuse contains aspects of emotional abuse. Physical and emotional abuse can be equally difficult to heal. The difficulty of healing depends on the type of abusive situations and the thoughts you created around that experience.

How do you interpretate the abuse?

I believe that both emotional and physical abuse have in common that emotional abuse is involved. And where emotional abuse is involved there is work to be done to recover from it. Change won’t happen automatically. Although I am known for my opinions I cannot say what is worse; emotional or physical abuse. Because that depends from one person to another.

The way you interpretate your experience with abuse will determine how you feel, not the experience itself.

None of these two options can be a “winner”. Both are hard to recover from. There is no price to be given. There is only compassion from your fellow survivor who has felt a lot of emotions like you do.

Abuse, Mindset, Personal

How to gain mastery over your emotions (in 3 steps)

2018-02-19
How to gain mastery over your emotions (in 3 steps)

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. – Aristotle

How to gain mastery over your emotions 

I love this quote by Aristotle but I don’t completely agree with him. I believe anyone can gain mastery over their emotions. We all have the ability to take control over our own thoughts and beliefs and thereby having control over our emotions. And because of that the power to control our behavior without being blown away by feelings and circumstances.

But to achieve this, one needs to realize that there is an alternative to their behavior, and we need to know how to make the change. And of course, we have to be willing to change.

Without the decision and commitment to change a behavior, nothing will change, period.

Without the decision and commitment to change a behavior, nothing will change, period.

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First step: Identify your feelings.

When you want to start you first have to be conscious and curious about what you are thinking. Listen to yourself. What are the thoughts that are spinning through your mind? What is the language you use in your thoughts? Are they unproductive negative victim thoughts (why is this always happening to me), or are they empowering you? What emotions do you feel? If you find it helpful, you can write them down.

Second step: Acknowledge your feelings:

What is your emotion telling you? How you feel about something tells a whole lot about you. A particular moment in your life might give you anxiety while another person might get pleasure out of the same experience. But there is often another meaning to feelings as well. You just have to dig deeper to find it.

I will give you an example: a few years ago, I told my children to get ready for school. After repeatedly asking and reminding them, I saw them playing with Duplo, while the clock was ticking, I found myself feeling angry and stressed out.

When I took a closer look at my feelings I noticed that it wasn’t so much angriness and stress that I felt, but the feeling of disrespect because they weren’t listening to me, and the feeling of shame because I wouldn’t meet the school’s standards by being on time.

I could change both situations: I explained to Tycho and Sem what I felt, and guided them more in their morning tasks. We became happier morning persons because of it ;-). Next to that, I learned to give less importance to what other people might think and so I became more relaxed and therefore I gained more energy throughout the day. Energy that I didn’t spend worrying about others.

Third step: Take back control

When you have thoughts like: “Well, if she just hadn’t said this” or “If he would have done that, I would feel…” you are giving your personal power away. Others seem to have the power to control your emotions. Remind yourself that you are the only one accountable for your emotions and instead of blaming, find ways to solutions, and make the experience useful.

To feel happiness you will need to redirect your energy of “poor me” into “powerful me!” Give limited space to the things that are draining your energy and that you can’t control, and give attention to the things that give you energy and that you can control. Your life will go where you focus on, so focus on where you want to go, not by what you fear or makes you feel powerless.

Change your thoughts: If you think: “What drains my energy right now,” you focus on what drains your energy and you will feel empty. But if you think: “what gives me energy?” Your focus is on all the things that give you energy and you will feel completely different because the latter empowers you instead of draining you.

Which language do you use?

It is as simple as this: no person or situation in the whole wide world makes you feel sad or happy..

“But hey Alianne, wait a minute” – you might think- “when he did this to me and when I felt…” Yes, I know, I hear what you are going to say, but let me finish. No one makes you feel sad or happy because your emotions are based on how you’re interpreting each situation and event in your life, see?

What makes your neighbour feel happy, might be different from what makes you happy. And what feels disastrous and gives anxiety to one person, may just feel like a tiny bump in the road for another.

What makes you feel pressure in the form of anxiety and stress? How can you turn this around? Where do you want to be in 5 years’ time and what action can you take to get there? Those are questions that will help you move forward.

In which direction are you going?

Imagine how you want to feel: Close your eyes and take deep belly breaths. Feel your mental pressure and let it go with a deep exhale. Imagine yourself feeling relaxed and happy. Think of what makes you feel happy and feel relaxed. Realize that you are the only one in control over your thoughts and thereby the moments of your life. The only thing you need to feel happy is to imagine it.

What are the actions you can take to become where you want to be? I recommend you do this guided meditation of Jason Stephenson and enjoy his beautiful Australian accent: https://goo.gl/kaJP1o

Use your experience:

The truth is that you most likely have experienced this emotion before, although maybe in another context. What did you do previously when you felt that emotion? What was the outcome? What can you do now to get a better outcome? What kind of action can you do now to feel the way you want? What do you need to feel the emotion you want to feel? And how can you give that to yourself?

If you are feeling stressed, it is important to implement more fun, spontaneous actions.  So go out, have some fun, and relax a bit!

No harm can come from that!

X

Family, Home, Mindset, Personal

How to stop running back to abusive (boy/girl) friends

2018-01-29
abusive friends

Let’s say you have a best friend and she is dating this guy. He is charming, funny, wants to spend a lot of time with her. You are very happy for your friend and you share all the things that women share when dating a cute guy :D. But after a while, you notice that she is canceling appointments with you. It’s getting harder to make an appointment with her because she is busy. She starts making sentences like: “my boyfriend doesn’t like it if…” “my boyfriend thinks I should” “my boyfriend doesn’t want me to…” She starts worrying if she is good enough for him. She tells you about his complaints about her, tells you about his long nights away. Perhaps even tells you about his anger issues. But as time progresses she shares less and less because you wouldn’t understand anyway, and on top of that you don’t understand their relationship well enough. At some point,  she comes to you and the truth comes out. He has hit her several times and she is afraid.

Question: Would you recommend for her to run back to her boyfriend?

No, of course you wouldn’t.

But if the situation were reversed, would you have returned to him? If so, why would you return to such a guy? Maybe because you feel you love him. Maybe because deep down you are afraid of being alone. You find leaving scarier than staying.

So we stay and try to justify our boyfriend’s behavior. And like a skill, we become experts at convincing ourselves why we should stay, why we HAVE to stay. Something I personally used as an excuse was: “he needs me, otherwise he’ll hurt himself.” I also told myself that if I just could be better, if I just would change this or that we would be fine. This was something he had told me all along and I just adopted it. I told myself that it wasn’t that bad, that all relationships go through rough patches, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Honesty

But I should have been honest with myself and if you ever find yourself in such a situation, I believe you should be honest with yourself too. Because all the things I told myself about why I should stay ultimately came down to this: I was afraid to leave because of my low self-esteem. Before the trauma bonding, before anything else it came down to low self-esteem and not loving myself enough. I could not believe that what I felt was really happening – because I didn’t trust myself enough, due to my low self-esteem. When I entered the relationship, I didn’t have a high self-esteem in the first place. Ten years of sexual abuse, the beginning of puberty and typical adolescent uncertainty does that to someone. The fear kicks in after the first hit, but the foundation of emotional dependence was already there.

But if I truly loved and trusted myself the way I should have, I would have left and I think that is something that most of us will recognize. Loving the other more and valuing ourselves less is the first cause to make us to stay. A few things that can happen while this is happening.

Leaving is scary (and can be dangerous). The future is uncertain. Starting over again is scary. You are left vulnerable. So you just ignore that gut feeling that tells you that you should leave. By staying you and I didn’t asked to be hurt, but by staying we did create the possibility for him to do so and thus allowed him to go on.

The crazy making cycle

In an abusive relationship, you can’t communicate your needs without being punished for it and if you could, your needs probably wouldn’t been met. This is because you are in a toxic relationship.

Suddenly you realize the dangerous situation you are in and you are afraid to leave. This time it is not because of being hurt but because the situation is now so dire. He is now so out of control, you are afraid of losing you and possibly your loved ones lives.

And then ultimately you leave. You probably feel a lot of self-blame after a while. Maybe you feel stupid for being in that relationship for far too long, for losing friends and family, for hurting or not listening to them. Because of this, your self-worth probably continues to go down. Maybe you feel alone, scared. You start a mental loop full of thoughts. Maybe he wasn’t that bad. Maybe it was you; maybe you can do better. Maybe you even deserved to be treated that way. All these things start playing in your heard on repetitive cycles.

Until you either end up in a relationship equal to this one with even less self-worth and self-esteem or run back to your ex.

But how do we break this cycle?

Build you self-worth

Understand anxiety

  • We must understand our anxiety and how to deal with it when we feel it coming. What do you do to calm yourself? Do you call a friend, does ASMR help you (like one of the videos perhaps? https://www.youtube.com/user/StevePickles94/videos ) or do you have other healthy techniques that helped you in the past to calm down? Whatever you choose, remember to do breathing techniques to calm yourself. You can’t make healthy choices if your mind is running around, so calm your mind first. Breath slowly in and out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ04nsiz_M0

Pay attention and learn to trust your gut

  • Pay attention to your instincts in your relationship. When you feel that something is off fundamentally, it probably is. But sometimes we don’t trust ourselves enough to trust our instincts. For example, because you fell in love with an abuser before. Well, let me help you out: the problem wasn’t so much in the first place that you fell in love with an abuser. The problem was that you didn’t act upon your instincts when you felt and knew something wasn’t right.  It isn’t enough to have those gut feelings. Everybody has them but if when the signs aren’t clear because of our low self-esteem or past experiences we don’t trust our instincts, we ignore it, and we do not act on what it is telling us and continue to act against it. We confuse ourselves and ultimately can’t feel the signs anymore. But luckily we can prevent, reverse, and strengthen this “skill” by paying attention to our gut. Let it be an comforting thought: you have the power to choose who you spend your time with. And if someone isn’t treating you right, you have the power to walk way.
    Let it be an comforting thought: you have the power to choose who you spend your time with. 

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What is your source?

  • Now we are paying attention to our gut, it is time to understand what our intuition is telling us. Sometimes we are so consumed by fear, anxiety, and doubt that it is difficult to know what is what. So first of all we must define our feelings. What is the source of these feelings? Is it truly your intuition or is it fear? I think this is a great article to help you start with that: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rosalie-puiman/your-gut-feeling-fear-or-_b_6667194.html

Set standards and be clear

  • Now we learn the difference between actual fear vs. our instincts acting up. It is time to listen and act upon our instincts. If someone is crossing our boundaries, then it is time to communicate that with them. If that doesn’t help and somebody crosses them over and over again, then you have to decide if this situation is healthy and what you want to do with that situation. Remember, as we grow, our perspective, our attitudes, and our needs change anyway (crossing boundaries or not).

Dare to let people and thoughts go

  • Other people who are going through their own growth process don’t necessary grow with us; it can happen with people who are close to you. It doesn’t always mean that you’ll have to say goodbye (this is only possible for non-abusive relationships of course), but if something has a negative impact on your life, it is best to let it go and find positivity and closure to learn from that situation.

Find help and support

Move your body

  • Do a crazy dance. Seriously. If you find that your mind is spinning, spinning, and spinning and you want to snap yourself out of that loophole, do a crazy dance. What not to do: hanging out on the couch listening to sad music that will allow your mind to go through that loophole again. If you feel that your mind starts again and you want to step out of that loophole do some kind of activity like running, dancing etc.

Level up

  • Level up. New things in life are scary. Uncertainty is scary. Life is scary because nothing is certain. But you have one person you can learn to trust your detour and that is yourself. The amazing Yourself is someone who will always be with you and the best thing is that you can control how she reacts to circumstances. You are in the powerseat of your life and you and only you are responsible for the choices you make.

Other must reads: http://tinybuddha.com/quotes/tiny-wisdom-when-its-time-to-move-on/ by Lori Deschene

 

Abuse, Mindset, Personal

17 ways to tame anxiety

2018-01-07
anxiety tame

When you leave a violent relationship there are a lot of things you will have to face and deal with. Your life feels filled with uncertainty. And your uncertainty is feeding your worst enemy. It is called; anxiety. Anxiety is the body’s natural response to danger and boy, did you experience enough danger whether on a physical and/or emotional level.

But anxiety is not totally bad. A little bit of anxiety can actually be useful. It can help you to stay focused and can function as a driver to solve problems that are in front of you.

But when anxiety becomes a burden or even overwhelming, when it stops you from doing things that would actually be good for you and when it interferes with your relationships, it means your anxiety isn’t functional anymore.

So what can we do?

Reset the brain

First we want to “reset”the brain. To make the anxiety go from a wild beast into a tame little kitten.

Anxiety throws you off balance. But it is important that especially when that happens it is crucial to find your center again. Most of the time when we feel anxiety we start spinning out of control. We become crazy busy and desperately seek for some solution. But you can’t find a solution in the storm. To let your brain find a solution you have to step out of the situation, calm yourself and your brain down and find the solution in your peace.

I’ve wrote some things down that you can do to find peace during turmoil.

First of all I would like to start with an exercise from the book: “Retraining the brain” by dr. Frank Lawlis. I want to start with this exercise because I believe it is necessary to find out where your anxiety is coming from.

Write down the beliefs that are causing your anxiety. Look beneath the surface. Dig deep.  Now consider the following criteria (from dr. Frank Lawlis) to help you decide which beliefs are keepers and which need to be ditched.

1.) Is the belief absolutely true?

2.) Even if the belief might have some validity, does refusing to let it go best serve my spirit?

3.) Even if the belief might have some validity, does refusing to let it go best serve my emotional and psychical health?

4.) What possible payoff am I getting by holding on to this negative belief?

a.) Do I crave any form of attention – even negative attention?

b.) Does this belief give me an excuse not to succeed?

c.) Does focusing on this belief distract me from taking responsibility for my current situation?

5.) Can I name one way that I would feel better (psychically or emotionally) if I chose to let this belief go?

—–

I only want to add one thing at point 1, when you think a belief is true: How do you know that the belief is true?  What do you say to yourself to justify the belief to yourself? It is important to become aware of that.

Breathe the anxiety away.

It sounds so simple. But if you check in with yourself during the day you might notice that your breathing pattern contains a lot of shallow short breaths. If you notice such a thing, you have to stop yourself from whatever you are doing and take slow breaths for a few minutes. Breath in and count slowly to seven. Breath out and again count slowly to seven. There is nothing that is more important for you at that moment than to just breathe slowly to seven and to breathe out slowly to seven. You will feel instantly better.

Say no.

If you feel constantly overwhelmed by work or obligation it is time to stand up for yourself. It is okay to say no. Your mental and physical health is more important than most obligations.

Demand time for yourself.

A quote from Tony Robbins is: “if you don’t have ten minutes for yourself, you don’t have a life” or something to that extend. And it is true. So make sure that you have at least 30 minutes a day when you can check in with yourself and take care of you. After that you can take care of the whole world again.  So check out and relax…

Avoid blood sugar dips.

It is important to avoid blood sugar dips. When you forget to eat because of your busy schedule or binging netflix, you are allowing yourself to feel anxiety-like symptoms. This happens because your brain isn’t receiving enough glucose to function like it should. When you feel that your brain comes in overdrive to make sure that you eat something, making you crave for bad food. But the problem with a candybar or chips is that it will spin your bloodsugar to new heights which will spike up your insuline levels. End result: you will feel bad, tired, fatigued, because your bloodsugar will drop after that initial height. Causing you to… crave for unhealthy foods. So making sure you eat healthy food, will make you feel more energized, stabilizes your blood sugar and makes you less stressed.

Dance and sing.

I mentioned it before but hearing or playing music is very important. It doesn’t matter which music calms you down as long as you are choosing music that reduces your anxiety and nervous system arousal.

But you can also use music as a distraction tool, to keep your mind from worrying. Or ofcourse to dance on. Dancing and any other way to keep your body moving has the very pleasant benefit of reducing your anxiety levels :-))

Keep calm and celebrate.

Then two tips that are more obvious but are easily overlooked:

Don’t sweat he small stuff and celebrate the good in each day.

Keep a diary of things that went well, the beauty you have seen that day. Let go of your inner critic, let go of all the things you say to yourself about things that didn’t went well. Were they really that important?

Stop giving power away.

Find ways to take the power of worrying away. Me for example, can laugh about many of the things that happened in my life. I find the outrageousness in the situation, acknowledge it, and laugh about it.

For example:

last week (remember that I wrote this blog earlier for lifesurfer.net so this isn’t a current situation) I received an forwarded email from one of my uncles. It wasn’t send directly to me, but via a close familymember.

As you may remember from earlier posts; I haven’t heard from my family since I told them that I was being sexually abused as a child. Only to find out that all of them knew. Except for one nephew who did reply to my “coming outmail”, and after he said he would let it sink in, and reply after the judge would rule, I never heard from him either.

My uncle who contacted me via the close familymember didn’t mention anything about this ofcourse. No, he asked the close familymember to ask me if I could delete the word Hole in a previous blogpost.

He wrote something to this extend:

I have a very urgent request. I don’t know if you can do something with it but I’ll ask anyway. Now I started a business, people start searching for me and and my business by googling my name. When I googled my own name I was shocked to find the website of Alianne where you’ll find this http://lifesurfer.net/love-my-detour/

The search result has something to do with the combination of the words ‘hole’ and our site. On her site is a text about sexual abuse by an uncle.
I have no interest that this stays on the website the way that it is. I have nothing to do with this and I don’t want to be associated with this whatsoever.It is a small effort for Alianne to remove the word “hole” so that I (note from me: ofcouse he meant: she) will no longer be visible in the search results.

When my clients make a connection (which of course there is not) it can have an adversely affect to my business because they can think that I’m that uncle. There aren’t so many Looijenga’s out there.

Do you want to send this request ASAP to Alianne?  You can also forward this mail. If you don’t want to do this, I will ask her directly. But because there is no contact anymore I prefer it by doing this through you.

——

At first I was very angry  (feel free to hear it the way Richard Gere was saying this in Pretty Woman :p, if you don’t remember: https://youtu.be/tELpCUzjel4?t=47s) and I cried a few tears. I even called that familymember to ask her what she was thinking by forwarding this request.

Angriness is a healthy reaction as long as you don’t hold on to it (borrowed this sentence from Emilie). So within half an hour I realized the absurdity, the audacity, the nerve and the madness to even think my uncle can ask this or can even demand in this situation. He lost the right to ask me anything when he knew I was being abused but did nothing about it (with all the consequences that had for me) and when I had the courage to tell my family about it he dropped me like a hot potato, just like the rest of my family. He doesn’t have any excuse for this behavior except for his own self-interest. Even if he was the only Looijenga in this country, even then it would show a gigantic narcissistic arrogance to have the audacity to ask me to do something for him 🙂

And I started to laugh. And that broke the anger and released a transforming energy that only anger, the comical and cosmical has.  It gave me the power to create a part for this blog and another blog that’s coming up soon. Just stay tuned.

To return to the subject: instead of letting anxiety get the hold of me, which could easily happen, and changing one word in an old blogpost so I wouldn’t be visible on page 3 of his googleresults, ignoring all the 400+ Looijenga’s out there and to never to use the word hole again, I laughed about it and reduced the impact to a story that until it vanishes will give enough chuckles and gasps in my motivational speeches. I took the power and thus the worry away.

Meditate.

Ofcourse you didn’t expect this one, did you ;P. Yes, meditation is very important to rewire your brain. That’s why I start with meditation in the morning (good intention) and end the day with meditation in the evening .To celebrate the wins that happened that day and to prepare for the new day. I put on some relaxing music, think of all the things I am grateful for, decide what I want to accomplish the next day and let it all go.

Meditation will restore your brain pattern to normal and will retrain your brain to deal with anxiety differently.

Practice, practice practise.

If you haven’t properly taken care of yourself for a long time it takes some time to reset your brain. No magic overnight here, babe. But if you practice you will eventually learn your brain that a new era has come. A time where she has to start acting differently.

Accept that you don’t have control anyway.

This is probably the most difficult one. Accepting that life and life’s experiences are not in your control. The knowing that what happens a moment from now, is unknown.

Conclusion:

There are a lot of things you can do to calm down your anxiety, these are just a few that helped me. Do you have tips for other survivors about how to tame that inner beast?

Family by blood, Mindset, Personal, Speaking

About forgiveness, letting go and moving on

2017-12-25
About forgiveness, letting go and moving on

If I only hadn’t provoked him/her

Why didn’t I leave him/her sooner?

Shouldn’t I have stayed?

Am I disloyal?

If I only I hadn’t taken so long about doing the groceries, he/she hadn’t had this outburst.

Many survivors of sexual abuse or domestic violence blame themselves in one way or another for the things the abuser did to them.

It is one of the biggest reasons why women stay with their partner, even though he/she has done so much harm to them.
They experience a form of guilt because they didn’t behave the right way causing the abuser to use this as an excuse to abuse.

This isn’t really odd since this thought pattern is used by many abusers to break the spirit of the victim and after that, it is imprinted in the thought patron of the (former) victim.

To get rid of your anger, resentment, and self-guilt you will need to forgive yourself first. I will show these steps in a minute but first I want you to answer me honestly.

  • How much influence did you really have about the situation?

In relationships where violence is an important factor, the abuser or sometimes even the family blames the victim. They will ask you why you stayed that long if it was really that terrible. Why didn’t you just leave and why didn’t you stop the abuser from abusing you?

Now listen. Know and accept that a (former) victim never, and I repeat, never is guilty for the actions of an abuser. Regardless of what you have done, there is never an excuse to abuse someone mentally, physically or financially.

Do you experience trouble with accepting decisions you have made? For example, staying with the person who hurt you? Or not leaving sooner? You probably never made the most decisions if you knew then what you know now. You simply didn’t know then what you know now so it is pointless to punish yourself for it. Accept that you were somebody else at the time. People make different choices when they experience anxiety than when they are relaxed. Decisions based on anxiety are only focused on short-term thinking (survival) and have nothing to do with careful and rational thinking.

But hey, Alianne, I really did something stupid!  

Okay, so you have done something incredibly stupid. Something you have had some influence over. You said something ugly to someone, or you broke someone’s middle phalanx.

Try to be as honest as possible and reflect on the circumstances that have taken place. Let go of anger. View the occurrence as if you are watching a movie and let it unfold picture for picture. What happened, what was your trigger that unleashed the behavior you regret now? What can you learn about the event?

Realize and truly acknowledge you have done something a bit stupid. Know then that everybody does stupid things. The purpose of it is to realize and learn from it, to share your experiences with other people. Own it and learn from your mistakes. Stop wasting your time blaming yourself and hurting yourself. Self-blaming keeps you down and you can’t help other people get up if you are laying on the ground yourself!

Your mistakes and shortcomings don’t define you. They never have and never will be. Acknowledge that you have the right to be forgiven and make use of your mistake to grow and learn from it.

First, you had a thought, which became part of a conviction and based on that you made a decision. Only by learning experiences do you learn that your thoughts and conviction are subjective and time bound. They are only snapshots of experiences you had until that point. You couldn’t react any different than with the knowledge you had up until that point! With the knowledge you have now you would have reacted quite different, if only to avoid the pain of your present emotions!

All that self-blame and guilt costs you a tremendous amount of energy and pain. Energy you could use for the better. If you decide to forgive yourself now, you can channel that energy to positive things in your present, instead of living in the past. All those negative emotions contribute to your body being tense and creating negative rituals and belief systems contributing to negative health for both the mind and your body.

Please note: Forgiving is something different as forgetting. It would be a waste to forget your experience. You have been through the ordeal and you gained an experience you’ve learned from. It would be a waste of time and energy to forget about it. But it is time to move on by letting go of your negative emotions.

Action plan:

  • Write down what happened or share the story of which you would like forgiveness with somebody else. Be as objective and detailed as possible.
  • Acknowledge and feel the pain that the memory gives you.
  • Grieve about the sadness the memory gives you or the pain it gives thinking about how long you hold on this emotion, all the energy you have given to this emotion, if you need it.
  • Realize that everybody makes mistakes. Acknowledge that you have learned from your experience.
  • Know that you are a good human being and that this memory doesn’t define who you are. Accept that you have the right to be forgiven.
  • Nobody has the right to hurt another. That’s why it is important to stop hurting yourself.
  • Create a mantra for yourself in which you tell yourself that the situation had its purpose: you learned from it and it is time to move on. For example, say something like this: “I should have taken care of the situation differently. I am not proud of what I did, but I am proud that I learned my lesson and I will close this chapter now.”
  • Give permission to yourself to move on and when necessary (for example, if you start self-blaming), interrupt yourself and remind yourself that you have forgiven yourself.
  • Take a deep breath through your tummy and when you release the breath, you imagine that you let go of all the negativity.

You are a wonderful human being.

You deserve to have a life with positive influences and empowering people, intentions, and dreams. Let go of what was and create a life and meaning as you envision it. Now grab your dancing shoes and let’s dance!

Mindset

19 ways to become a confident woman

2017-12-18
confident

I always enjoy seeing a confident woman. Not only because the power in me acknowledges the power within her but also because it is likely that she had to work hard for her confidence.

It’s sadly still very common in our society for women to be taught to be passive, and to give, give, give and ask for nothing in return. To give the best cookie on the plate to others so she is left with the crumbs.

This is especially true when we are abused. We are told we are nothing, we question our own intuition, our decision-making, but most of all, we question ourselves and shrink to the point that our self-worth, standards, and goals in life depend on the opinions of others. We forget that to take care of others we have to take care of ourselves first. A confident women isn’t afraid to speak her mind because she knows she has a message to share with the world. She will never talk negativity about herself because she knows that she is the only one that sticks with her, in good times and in bad until the end of her days. She learns how to become her own best friend.

So how do people become confident? What are their traits? What do they do?

Below I will share with you what I believe are the traits of confident women, what my believes are that made me confident and what you can do to become a confident woman yourself.

Read More »

Abuse, Love, Mindset, Personal

When others talk badly behind your back

2017-12-05
talk gossiping
When someone talks badly behind your back it can feel pretty awful. It doesn’t matter if that person is someone close to you or someone you barely know.. Knowing that someone is deliberatly degrading you in public, trying to hurt you or even trying to persuade others to think negatively about you, is enough to feel hurt for several days.

Gossiping is often not about you

Most of the time when people talk badly behind your back it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with them. They probably have an issue with themselves and they blame it on you so they don’t have to sort things out with their own personality. That they are talking behind your back instead of facing you and talk open and honestly in your face is a sign of immaturity and a reflection of them, not you.
There are many reasons why someone might talk badly behind your back. It is likely that person may suffer from poor self- esteem, anxiety or jealousy. That person may even have some trouble with control issues. They feel the need to degrade you behind your back so they can either feel good about themselves or can shift the blame of something they know (deep, deep) deep down is their own issue.
If you make your issues the problem of someone else you don’t have to work on yourself, right? For the bad-talker to realise that they are the one that has some work to do is scary so it is easier to make it your issue. This is especially the case for someone with anxiety or poor self-esteem.
Sadly, as I have said in previous blogs: you can’t choose what others say about you. But you can take the power back and choose your response. You can engage in their little games and let them dictate how you feel and how you behave but you can also raise your own standards by realising that their need to degrade you has everything to do with their issues and insecurities and NOTHING to do with you personally.

Choose your response

Once you know that, you can decide how you want to respond and thus take your power back. Do you think the gossip was an one-time event and you just want to ignore it? Do you want to confront the other? Or do you want to kill them with kindness? You can choose a method that best serves your standards.
Kill them with kindness.
This is one of my favorite methods and it has nothing to do with faking kindness. In many cases I try to feel compassion for the gossiper. Try to see their insecurities, anxiety etc. That does not mean that I want to justify their behaviour, it just helps me to understand the motives of the other person, forgive them, hold my power together and maintain the standards I have set for myself for how I want to treat others.
Limits
It does not mean, however, that you have to spend a lot of time with people who literally keep you down. I suggest that you keep them at arm’s length. Stay true to yourself, uphold your standards, refuse that the behavior of others dictate how you should respond.  Just don’t be too personal. They have shown that they are not trustworthy in that way. Pouring your heart out could be ammo for even more gossip.
Choose people who support you
They say that you are the average of the people you spend most of your time with. So you best spend it with people who love you, support you, are honest, mature in a way that they dare to talk openly and honestly. Surround yourself with people who makes you feel energized and who are not degrading your self-confidence.
Confront them
Another favorite of mine: tell them that you’ve heard that they have an issue with you and that you would like to talk about it. This shows your goodwill, your level of maturity, your courage, your ability to set your ego aside and that you are willing to take the first step eventhough that other person has hurt you.
Don’t take it personally. Above all: refuse to be a victim. Remember that it is their issue. It has nothing to do with you. And while you can’t choose what other say or think about you, you are always in control in the way you choose to respond.
Love,
Alianne
Mindset

But what if the abuser says: “I’m sorry”

2017-11-30

(This blog was originally written by me for LifeSurfer)

But what if he says “sorry”?

Be honest. How many times did you stay because your ex-partner said he was sorry? He might even have cried tears, threatened to kill himself because he finds himself a low excuse of a man. Maybe his friends and family told you that you should forgive him. Maybe you felt guilty or blamed yourself for holding a grudge towards your ex-partner or maybe you even felt guilty for standing up against his abusiveness. Or did you accept the excuses and the dramatic behavior he made for himself to rationalize and justify for himself why he abused you, whether he blames his upbringing, his exes, your “faults”, or the stressful job and or life he has.

Does he feel sorry?

Let’s be clear. A man (or woman for that matter) should never be using past or other experiences as an excuse to get away with hurting someone else.

That does not mean that an abuser doesn’t feel sorry at all. He can feel sorry, albeit probably most for himself ;-), he can also use his apologies to gain sympathy with you and if he doesn’t succeed, to gain sympathy and acknowledgement from others.

Feeling sorry for him after abusive behavior

You probably did what I did after a dramatic apology. Before you know it you are comforting him, reassuring that you will never leave and that the two of you are a team and that you’ll get through this together.

You might notice, as did I, that the longer you stay in that relationship, the less dramatic and frequent his dramatic excuses are. In my opinion this is because he knows that you won’t leave him or will return as soon as he want’s you to. You are like a puppet and he is the one in control (in his opinion) and winning you back feels like a drug and makes him feel right that it wasn’t that bad and that he is the one in control over you.

Does it matter?

But let me ask you this first. Does it really matter if he really is sorry? Because it doesn’t mean a thing when in the nearby future he will abuse you again, and again. It doesn’t mean a thing if he is not willing to solve his inner frustrations a different way. It doesn’t matter if he is genuine in his remorse if it doesn’t mean enough for him to change and view you differently, and to stop hurting you physically, emotionally, financially. And it doesn’t mean a thing if he demolishes your self-worth, your self-love and if he isn’t building you up, but tearing you down! You must remember that whatever happens, you are worth so much more than that.

Change is inevitable

We are all able to change, because change is inevitable. Change happens when you have enough reason to do so.

If we are motivated to change but have difficulty doing so (but we want it bad enough), we seek help. We don’t have to be persuaded to seek help, if the drive in us is strong enough and we just do so because we can’t live with ourselves if we don’t. It is either that or we leave the situation.

At that moment we associate pain by not changing to the person we really want to be. When something is a MUST and not merely a “I should be or should do”, we change.

It could be possible that you are going to meet someone like your ex-partner but maybe in a different form in the future. Remember that it is the actions and not the words that we should trust. Remember your worth, remember that you have the right to be respected, to be loved and to be treated with dignity.

Just listen to this guy 😉

https://www.facebook.com/viralthread/videos/576993502490351/?pnref=story

Abuse, Mindset