My Blog

The Willingness to Will Nothing

October 7, 2018 By Shauna

As we travel on our journey there are times when everything we think we understand, all of our tools and our knowing of how to survive life’s curveballs seem to be irrelevant. Or maybe outdated is a better word… or archaic… or just plain useless. We find ourselves thinking and thinking about what our next survival tool will be. What will be the anchor in the storm? Revelation…maybe for a moment in your life, you are not supposed to be anchored. Maybe your most current upheaval is a new chance at a new beginning.

Do we always have to understand why things happen to us? Do we always have to have a plan for our lives? I have come to realize that it is the unknowing of life that is the most fulfilling. The deconstructing of a structure that may not have been sound in the first place. The willingness to will nothing. No thing. No outcome. In some moments that means we hurt and we don’t try to hide it or change it or overcome it. In other moments the hurt goes away and we feel relief and strength and hope. The un-structuring of our structure has opened a skylight in our roof. And we see things we have never seen before.

Then the journey begins again. Where? We do not know. Why? We do not care. Who and with whom, it is yet to be revealed to us. But the journey will continue. And it will be magnificent.

Love so deeply, hurt so much

November 8, 2015 By Shauna

Love so deeply, hurt too much.

“I can’t live without him.” “I need her back” . “He was my everything”. “She was my life.” When we love so deeply and we lose our love, the hurt is so profound it feels like an empty whole in our soul. The words “my heart is broken” could not feel more true. How do I help? How do I show a client who is in the darkest hours that this too shall pass? The truth is, the pain they are in is a testimony to the depth of love that they had for their lost love. My job now, hard as it is, is to get them to find a way to accept this. To honor the past and let it go.

There is no denying that we yearn for a life to share with another. We are humans who do feel complete when in the arms of a soulmate. Note, I say,“feel complete”. The truth is we are complete with or without a partner in our life. Now I need to get my heartbroken client to see this, feel this and believe this. Heartbreak is a journey and loss comes in many forms. It can be the death of a loved one. Or it can be the break up of a relationship. Either way, it takes you through all the five Stages of Grief, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. But unlike the death of a loved one, when a partner purposely leaves you, that person becomes an integral part of the grief process and all the stages to healing. Often bargaining and anger go hand in hand. “If you come back I promise I will change!”. But they don’t. So the anger begins. Then the anger at each other can turn into a hurricane that takes you both deeper and deeper into break up hell. Often just when you think you are out of the anger stage and on the road to acceptance, something triggers you to start all over again. You see them on Facebook moving on without you. Or one too many glasses of wine causes you to pick up that phone and call them. You start cycling backwards again. You don’t believe it’s true. Surely its just a phase and they will come back to you. You are back to denial! Then you get angry again. Then eventually, the depression hits.

The depression is the darkest part of this journey. But it is also the biggest step to acceptance. Hopefully you have stopped the bargaining. The anger is no longer covering the ache in your heart. You see the truth, that this relationship is really over. The next step is for me to help turn the depression into mourning. Depression takes you down into a black hole. Mourning is sadness. Sadness is what I need my clients to find first. “I am so so sad over what is no more. I am so sad that I lost my friend. I am so sad that the dreams I had for our future are over.” Once I see my client truly mourning the loss of this person in their life then I see the light at the end of the deep dark tunnel for them. For after mourning comes acceptance.
The mourning can take a long time. When you love so deeply you hurt so much. It is a cycle. Or what I like to call a ladder to healing. Some days we can pull it together and focus on the future and we go up the ladder three steps. Then other days something hits us and we take a step back down. Hopefully it was three steps up and then only one step down. Then the next time it is four steps up and only one step down. All of a sudden you realize that you are almost to the top. You are almost healed. I tell my clients to keep looking UP! Keep looking UP! Then one day there are no more steps to take. And ain’t the view pretty up there! You are standing there all by yourself! You are healed.

Dreams of your Future

April 3, 2014 By Shauna Leave a Comment

If you are like everyone else, your Facebook page…email inbox…even your favorite magazine covers are all screaming at you to follow your dreams! One beautiful image after another, with a truly inspiring quote, shows up time and time again. Then there are those precious animal pictures that show how some tiny kitten has climbed an unimaginable ladder and made it to the top, insinuating that YOU can too! In this world of positive thinking, affirmations and thoughts of the little engine that could, we are bombarded by images and challenged by others to go after our “dreams” and our life will be perfect. But here is the clincher, many people in this world have no idea what that dream is! Family, finances, obligations and just plain surviving have caused us to stay in the part of our brain that blocks out creative thinking. And THAT is where our dreams flourish…in our creative mind. It is reached by something called the Creative Child side of our spirit. It is this side of us that thinks outside the box and rocks the boat for change. It is the side of us that is spontaneous, free spirited and open for anything. That is the place that dreams are born. That is the energy we need to make our dreams come true. We all have that side of us. But for some it is louder and stronger and more powerful than for others.

So, how do we reach it? The first step is to give ourselves permission! “I give myself permission for the next ten minutes to touch that place within me where all my secret dreams live”. Then sit back and listen. Listen for your child-like voice that has been screaming with playful ideas but not been heard. With permission to dream we open up a part of our psyche that has been silenced. A part we thought didn’t exist, but was truly just hidden in the corners of our mind. Now here is the secret. There is an interesting piece to this process that must take place. In order to reach that creative side in our self we need to let go of LOGIC. An artist does not use logic to paint a picture. An actor does not use logic to embody a character. You can’t think outside the box if your logical brain has stuck you and your entire life IN a box! We need to let go of the negative logical thinking that hold us back. You know the ones that play in our minds and tell us “it can’t happen”. We need to silence those and let our creative voice be heard. We need to give ourselves permission to not be logical for one moment in our life! If you keep practicing this over and over then it will happen. One day you will wake up and your creative voice will be louder than the one that squelches your dreams.

Remember, your dreams of the future have as much of a possibility as anyone else’s! But they will never take place until you figure out what they are.

NOW DREAM IT, CHANGE IT, DO IT, BECOME IT!

I believe in you!

Exercise:

So here is your Dream Challenge

Journal! Write! Dream! Become!
•   What are five things you love to do that represent who you are?
•
•   What are five things that you want to do that you have never done before?
•
•   What is your biggest dream that you would like to accomplish THIS YEAR?
•
•   What is your biggest dream that you would like to accomplish in your lifetime?
•
•   What action can you take today, tomorrow and this week to move toward your dream?
•
•   Why should you do this?
•
•   What would it feel like to accomplish your dream?

Now ask yourself…
• What has stopped me in the past from going after my dreams?
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• What do I need to change in order to move forward towards my passion?

Couples Fighting 101!

August 28, 2013 By Shauna Leave a Comment

Are your fights getting out of hand? Try this…Couples Communication Rule One- The Art Of Listening! Most people enter into an argument with their own agenda. “I want you to hear my side, agree with me, and admit you are wrong.” Often what accompanies that is a world of bullying, yelling and replays of the past. So, the first thing I teach my clients is to listen to their mate, then acknowledge they hear what was said. “What, Shauna? Acknowledge them? No way! That would give them the advantage in the fight! I can’t do that!” You can and you should! The true goal of couple’s fighting is to work out an issue or fix the problem. Whether you are fighting over money, how to raise the kids, someone hurting someone else’s feelings, it doesn’t matter. You both have a right to speak your side and be heard.

Listening is not an easy thing to do. It takes a level of willingness to step back, breath and hear what the other person is saying. But if you truly love this person and want the relationship to grow, then you can use that as your incentive to let the ego go and LISTEN. Listening does not mean that you agree with them. Listening means that you respect your mate enough to at least hear what they have to say. After all, don’t you want the same respect?

When we let down our defense mechanisms long enough to practice this fine art of arguing, then we tend to stay in the moment, not bringing up the past. We keep our anger under control and focus more clearly on what is being discussed. Listening is not giving in. Listening is the ability to keep your ego in check and fight fair. In the end the scars from the fight are much less, the healing quicker and the answers more of a reflection of what is right for the health of the marriage. RULE #1 LISTEN!

Who am I really angry at?

August 28, 2013 By Shauna

Why am I upset…really? Who am I really angry at? As I came to write this newest blog I decided to reflect back on a lesson in A Course In Miracles that I often share with my clients. “I am never upset for the reason that I think”. So often I have a client that presents that they are really upset with a friend, or a lover over something that they have done recently. But when I question them deeper I find that it is a much deeper sadness that is affecting them. And it is this underlying sadness or hurt from the past that is raising its ugly head and causing them to feel angry in the present. It may not even be connected to the person that they are angry at now. It could be that the recent situation triggers for them the memories of the way an ex used to treat them, or a parent. Whatever it is, it all boils down to the fact that they are not angry for the reasons that they think.

So how do we know what we are really angry at? First you need to check the level of your anger to see if it is truly appropriate for the transgression by the other person. If you can do this and be self aware enough to make a clear judgment that it is an over reaction, then you can take this next step. Now replace the word “anger” with another word. “Hurt”, or “Disappointed” or “Frustrated” or “Wounded”. Anger is an emotional REACTION, a defense mechanism to protect us from deeper hurt, or future hurt. But it is a very broad word that really covers so many deeper emotions. If you can get under the anger to feel the emotion, then you can see where it may be stemming from. We need to calm down the fire to see what caused it. Then I offer you to ask yourself this question….”Is there anything else that this situation reminds me of that may really be present here? IS there someone ELSE that treats me like this that has hurt me in the past? It could certainly be that the person you are angry at IS the person you are angry at! But it could also be because you have never brought up to them a past transgression. I say it is like a coke bottle that gets shaken up. The more you hold in your feelings towards someone, the more they build up. Then eventually something happens and you take off that bottle cap and it blows!

Now let me share with you a tough pill to swallow! Sometimes when you are angry in a situation the person you are angry at is YOURSELF! Sometimes we deflect onto the other person the fact that we are embarrassed about our behavior. Or that we really know we were in the wrong and don’t want to accept it, or fess up to it. Sometimes, just like in the above scenarios, it reminds us of another time we acted the same way and THAT is what we are angry at. So there is a huge healing that can take place if you can also ask yourself, “Is there any part of this situation that I am angry at myself over? Did I do something here to hurt someone else? Do I need to learn something here about myself that I do not want to look at?

Anger is a valid reaction to being hurt. But if we do not deal with the reality of a situation and just sit in anger then we can never move forward or heal. So I offer you now, the next time you are angry, to ask yourself, “Is this what I am REALLY angry at? Is the depth of my anger appropriate for the situation? Am I really angry at this person or someone else? If not, ask yourself why! Then try and peel away the layers and see what you are really feeling. Journal, talk to yourself…do what you need to do to get to the root of your feelings. Then you can take the steps in any situation to move past the anger and heal the true hurt. Or in some instances…just let it go!

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