Hi Bonni-Mor,

I hope you feel better soon.

Peggy

Hi Indebt,

I understand where you are coming from.  You have behaved very responsibly by realising that your debt needed to be faced and now it is under control you can ease up a little bit.  The worst case at the moment is that you know it will be paid off in four years time.  You may have a windfall, family inheritance, gifts, a pay rise, a bonus which may enable you to reduce the term but I believe that the best you can do for the time being is to accept it as it is and not worry overmuch.

Well done.

Peggy

Hello Carla,

You were attracted to John because of the feelings of safety he was able to give you.  He is happy to provide for you and take his share of the housekeeping duties (I assume you are living together).  However, now you are comfortable together you are wanting to open up more and discuss your needs.  Communication is a two way street.  Does he tell you he loves you?

To work on your own self-esteem you need to write down a list of all your good qualities.  It’s OK to sing your own praises in the privacy of your own space and no, it is not big headed.  Add to the list as soon as something else occurs to you and repeat the words to yourself over and over again.  The more you believe in yourself and your own abilities, the less needy you become.

That’s where you start – with your “I AM” list until you become comfortable with your own character – then you will know what you have to offer and that you are someone worth knowing and loving.

Peggy

Hi Emilia,

This is a big, brave step that you are taking.  When you applied to be on the Masters Course, you knew that it would mean leaving people behind that you loved yet you decided that the end goal would be worth that sacrifice.  Now it’s only two weeks away, all those fears are surfacing.  You will miss the people you love – accept that.  Your dog will adapt to being with you and, yes, you will be enough for him – he loves you unconditionally, he’ll comfort you when you are sad, and he won’t mind a bit that you are introverted.  He will be your best friend.

18 months isn’t really very long and 3 hours isn’t really very far.  You can split the time up into smaller segments so that you can have family reunions during holidays etc. and, as others have pointed out, you can meet your partner half way sometimes.

Once you are there, your main focus will be on obtaining your Masters and this should keep you busy leaving you less time to dwell on ‘home’.  You will be sharing this Course with others which means you already have a common interest and I am sure that once you are there, there will be at least one person with whom you will strike up a friendship.

Good Luck for the future.

Peggy

Hi K,

Thank you for your kindness.

We all make choices hundreds of times every day.  What to eat, what to wear, what time to get up, who to see, who to phone, which room to clean and so on.  There is little point in regretting our choices – we don’t know what would have happened if we had made a different choice.  Ultimately, the path we go down through our choices is a path of learning.  Always.  The more difficult the path, the more opportunity there is to learn.  Following the ‘path of least resistance’ is going with the flow, flowing with life.  Air flows through us, water flows through us, fire flows through us, earth flows through us.  “Air my body, fire my spirit, earth my body, water my blood.”  I sometimes use this as a way of bringing me back into balance, chanting it to myself when I’m out walking.

With regard to anger, this arises when someone is behaving in a way that we don’t expect them to.  You are already expressing this when you shout, scream and cry.  I think your answer lies in forgiving those around you that have hurt you.  If you do sit with your anger, sit with forgiveness as well.  I can’t stress strongly enough that this is for your benefit.  Sustained anger is very damaging to your health.

You wrote to Mark that you cry when you talk about your children yet in an earlier post you said you have no children.  Also, are you distant from your fiance?

Peggy

Hi Kylin,

Social media has a lot to answer for.  Some people can just shrug things off and other people take them to heart.  We are all capable of  being embarrassed by something that happened in the past.  You cannot change what happened, you can just chose to see it differently.  Because you hadn’t practised, you weren’t as good as you might have been.  Had you practised, you might very well have done much better or even won the event.  There is no need to feel useless because of this one thing.  Most of us were useless at reading before we were 5.  After 5 years of practice, most of us got quite good/skilled at reading.  Replace your embarrassment with compassion both for yourself and for those who took the images.  With hindsight, they may very well be embarrassed at the way they behaved.

In Reiki Healing, mental and emotional issues are both covered by the same symbol.  In part, this is because how we think affects how we feel.  This works in reverse as well.  One does not exist without the other.  Sometimes, just placing one hand on your solar plexus and one hand on your forehead can calm you down (breathing deeply into the hand on your solar plexus).  Perhaps you could try that for a few minutes at a time whilst you are taking breaks etc.

Making mistakes is not the same as failing.  Making mistakes gives you the opportunity to learn.  The most you can ever do is your best.

I am sorry that you are feeling so sad and fearful.  What you need are mega doses of peace, love and joy, the very things that you have been wanting to give your parents in their retirement.

Peggy

Kathryn,

There’s so much in your post that it’s difficult to know how to unravel all that’s been happening:-

Relationships – food, family, fiance, friends, feelings, functioning, fatigue, fear, focus, framework.

Feeling like you don’t really belong happens in childhood.  It’s where we lay our roots and foundations down.  Now you’ve uprooted by moving 2500 miles away.  How are you going to give yourself a place of belonging?  My way would be to repeat over and over to myself that “I belong on Earth”.  I would do that every day of my life.  I would walk through nature, connect to the roots of the trees, and plant my feet firmly on the ground in confirmation of that statement.

Food is just one medium of having control over ‘something’.  You know that what you are putting in your body is ‘feeding’ yourself but are you aware that what you are putting in your mind is also ‘feeding’ you?  Nurturing yourself through your thoughts is just as important as nurturing yourself through food.

I wonder what the attitude of your family was towards food that you don’t want people to see you eat, that you feel ashamed, that you have to hide away and eat in secret.  Were you criticized for your table manners.  Eating weird combinations might just be your body telling you that you need the vitamins that those foods supply.  You will not function properly if you are not getting enough vitamins.  Do you take any vitamin supplements?  Fatigue could be caused through lack of iron in your diet (fairly common with women) or lack of the range of B vitamins.  They get used up fairly quickly when we are stressed.

Do you enjoy cooking?  Experiment with different recipes to give you a feel for healthy eating.  Make that pasta at home.  ‘Imagine’ that you are eating out in a restaurant surrounded by friends.  Our imagination is a very powerful tool.  One day you’ll be doing it for real.

Friends can come and go.  Some people make friends for life (rooted in friendship), some people realize that as they change, they become less compatible with their old friends and develop new friendships.  Those words from your best childhood friend must have been very hurtful at the time but you can look back at them from an adult’s perspective and see that you are anything but ‘dumb’.  It was just something she said that had no real meaning.  It is not the truth.

Depression is the opposite of expression.  It comes from anger and/or grief that has not been expressed.  Loss of friends, family members, old relationships even the loss of a childhood counts as grief.  Releasing all your pent up emotions through tears is not necessarily a bad thing.

You are 30 something and you are questioning whether or not it is normal to lay in bed, relax, read, meditate, be sedentary.  It is OK to do all of these things some of the time.  In simple terms, your body needs just three things to survive 1) food and drink 2) rest/relaxation/sleep 3) exercise.  I would suggest putting a time limit of, say, 2 hours per day apart from sleep on your sedentary activities and maybe increase the amount of exercise you take, making some of it a little more challenging.

I suggest that you construct a rough timetable for your day to give yourself an element of control so that you can discipline yourself to have a reasonably well balanced life including work/home/leisure making sure you do at least one thing a day which gives you pleasure.

Dwelling on the past is never a good thing.  Focus on all the positives you have in your life right now and all the good qualities that you possess.  Living in the present and loving what you have in your life right now is the key to your recovery.

Best Wishes

Peggy

Hi VLC90

You don’t sound ready for a such a major step and long term commitment as marriage.  You had doubts about your ex-boyfriend so you called it off and now you have doubts about your current boyfriend.  Discussion of marriage happened and then suddenly what – if only………….it was my ex boyfriend I was marrying!

You don’t need an expensive therapist to tell you that if you are having all these doubts now, your relationship doesn’t have a chance of succeeding.  You can’t turn your boyfriend into someone you want him to be.  He has his own strengths and weaknesses just like you do.

Encourage him to work on his self esteem issues by all means but be aware that change brings change – there’s no way of knowing what that will do to your relationship.

Meantime, put all marriage plans on hold until you are fully ready and able to commit 100% because you know he’s the right person for you.

Peggy