Managing your morning routine

Some of us would say we’re not morning people. The alarm goes off and we struggle to get out of bed and get motivated for the day ahead. Others would say there were night owls, coming more alive later on in the day and being able to party into the small hours. I think I’m something in between.

I force myself out of bed when the alarm goes off at 6am. Once I’m showered and have drunk my coffee I want to get on with things. Equally, I’d be happy if the alarm didn’t go off and I got another hour or two’s rest. I do tend to struggle more in the evenings and often end up asleep on the sofa by 9pm, waking up in time to go to bed. Predominantly that’s because I’m bored. If I have zoom meetings, or I’m out #bellringing, or with friends and family, I can stay awake and on the go. It’s almost as soon as I stop and sit down for half an hour, I’ll zonk out.

It is down to programming though. The more we do something, the more it becomes habit. I know that if I stayed in bed longer, I’d want to do it every day. I also know that I can keep myself awake of an evening if I’ve got something to do.

The Live Life Connected programme that I’m participating in has released the latest module and its all about making the most of our mornings. Taking a few minutes, or an hour, to ourselves, to give us a chance to exercise, meditate, read, journal or do whatever we need or want to do, that we always put off because we say we’re too busy and don’t have time.

The first thing we are asked to consider is what our perfect morning would look like. Think about it as your specific time before anyone or anything else gets hold of you. Make a list of those things that you’d like to do just for you.

The next step is to put a time against each item on your list. No need to be too specific about it, but just put an estimate of how much time each item on the list would take. It could be setting aside ten minutes to meditate, time to exercise, time for planning your day out.

The final step is to add up the time you’ve allocated to each of the things on your list. This is the amount of time you need to reclaim from each day. Don’t panic if it comes out as a big number. There are ways around it.

In order to bend time we can do a number of things to cover off all those items on your list. Option one is simply to get up earlier to fit in that time before the rest of your day starts. Option two would be figure out how much time you actually have, and make your perfect morning fit. Option three is to refine your morning routine to fit into your morning. Do you need to spend so long on a particular task or could it be done in less time?

To help you wake up on time, every time, we need to reprogramme our primitive brain and plan ahead the night before. The wake-up plan can support this in three steps. Your emotional and physical state is very different in that moment of waking up. Set your intentions before you go to bed. One good thing to do as soon as you’re awake is to move your body to regain control of your morning. As soon as you awake engage your presleep plan. When you wake up count down from five as you pull back the coves, sit up, move your legs over the side of the bed, sit up, then stand. Step two is to brush your teeth. When you do this, it signals to your brain to be alert and on it.

In order to wake up, you need to consider what time you need to go to sleep to make sure you get the right amount of rest each day. If you want to get up earlier, you need to go to bed earlier. Simples. Rethink some of those evening rituals and consider whether some of them could be done in the morning instead. You could start in incremental shifts, going to bed ten minutes earlier in order to get up ten minutes earlier the next day, gradually increasing it until the time you need to do everything on your perfect morning list. Or you could go for the short, sharp, shock treatment and move that alarm and go for it.

SAVERS is the six minute tool to help you master your mornings for success:

S – silence. Sitting quietly, being prayerful if that’s your thing, or meditating.

A – affirmation. Sayings that enthuse you, or get you thinking for the day ahead, that focus you.

V – visualisation. Imagine moving through your day as you embody your values and goals. Live that experience in your mind.

E – exercise. Move and wake up your body, get outside if you can.

R – reading. Read inspirational quotes or text to set you up for the day.

S – scribbling. Journaling, writing down your thoughts and plans. No need to spend ages on reflecting. Write three things you’re grateful for.

The theory being that you could do all those things in six minutes, and when you start to do them, you’ll start to feel better. Then you’ll want to spend more time doing them as you start to see and feel the benefits of them, and before you know it you’ve built it up to sixty minutes.

My morning routine currently consists of getting out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off, showering, drinking my coffee whilst playing a couple of brain training games on my tablet. I often find being able to solve puzzles in games first thing sets me up to be able to solve things better during the course of the day. If I don’t do so well at the puzzles, I notice I don’t do so well at being able to make decisions, or solve problems. Once my coffee is done, time to brush teeth and get out of the door to the office. I start work at 7.30am which is great as it gives me quiet time before everyone else starts to arrive and the interruptions begin. I often get more done in that first hour and a half than the rest of the day.

I don’t think my morning routine is too bad really. I would like to have more time to read, and I recently saw something suggesting we should aim to read at least 50 pages a day. I managed it once! It’s more difficult to read at the end of the day as my eyes are more tired from staring at a screen all day and, usually C had turned the tv on which means I can’t concentrate on what I’m reading. I prefer to read in silence. I ought to do better at exercising. When I lived in Ipswich and worked in Chelmsford so had an hours commute in the morning, I did used to get up at 5am to do a half hour Jane Fonda workout, so I know it can be done. These days I’m neither motivated to get up that early, nor feel comfortable doing it any longer.

I wish my end of day routine made better use of time.

Empathy, empathy, they’ve all got it empathy

OK, really bad pun on the Carry On film where Kenneth Williams plays Julius Caeser and utters those immortal words “infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it infamy”!

Anyone who has been on a leadership course will have been told that a leader needs to have multiple skills in order to be effective. They must be good at influencing others, planning, building and maintaining relationships, finding ways to improve things, set the direction of the team, create the vision and delivery the strategy. There are so many things that a leader must be good at or develop in order for perceived success.

With the sphere of building and maintaining good relationships comes the essential skill of empathy in order to achieve engagement, happiness and performance.

These days, especially post-pandemic (yes, I am aware it’s not over yet but the way people are behaving they seem to think it is), people are suffering more from the stresses of the workplace. You could read this into any walk of life where there is a leadership role, e.g. a voluntary position. There has been a decline in mental health with 67% of people in a global study experiencing increase anxiety and stress. People are more openly admitting to being sad, irritable, and having more trouble concentrating, taking longer to think things through and finding it harder to juggle their responsibilities. An article in Forbes by Tracy Brower stated that more people suffer from sleep deprivation due to stress and that people experience more negative feelings that spill over into their personal lives when they get an “off” email at work. When people experience rudeness at work it can have a negative affect on performance, turnover and customer/patient experience.

Being more empathetic during tough times can be a powerful contribution to positive experiences both for individuals and teams.

When people receive more empathy from their leaders they are more innovative, engaged and less likely to want to leave the team or organisation. People feel more included and find a better work/life balance, and therefore more able to cope with juggling their responsibilities.

Brower stated that leaders can demonstrate empathy in two ways:

Consider someone else’s thoughts through cognitive empathy. Think if you were in the other person’s position what would they be thinking.
Use emotional empathy. Think what it would feel like to be in the other person’s position.

Leaders don’t need to be experts in mental health. Its enough to check in, ask questions and take cues from what’s being said, or not said. Where there is alignment between what the leader says and does, there is a greater feeling of trust and engagement from others. Empathy in action is understanding someone else’s problems and doing something to help. Its considering another person’s perspective with compassion.

Empathy is something that I have awoken to more during the last couple of years. Empathy, empathy, we can all show empathy.

Outsourcing our emotions

If you are outsourcings your emotional life you’ll know because you’ll find yourself saying things like “I would be less stressed if the kids behaved”, “I’d be happier if I was respected more by this person”, “I’d feel better if this person stopped meddling in my business”. Podcast fave Tonya Leigh defines outsourcing something as to obtain goods or services from an outside supplier, especially in place of an internal resource. When you are outsourcing your emotional life, you are trying to obtain an emotion from outside of yourself instead of creating it from within your own internal source.

If we are emotionally accountable, we are the one who is creating our emotional life. When we want someone else to behave differently so we can feel better, we have given all the emotional power to that person. When we are blaming someone else for the way we feel we have not taken responsibility for our own emotions. If we are emotionally accountable and responsible for ourselves, it lets everyone else off the hook and we decide how we want to feel in every situation.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have boundaries, but you don’t make other people responsible for how you feel. When you decide how you want to feel you can set very clear boundaries with other people. When we outsource our emotions to someone else, often that person isn’t fully in control of their own emotions, yet we push more on them to change in order for us to feel better.

It can be really freeing to take control of our own emotions, take responsibility and accountability for them. It can change relationships. Other people don’t have to feel and think the same way we do. Let them be who they want to be.

It doesn’t mean you have to accept poor behaviour or become a doormat. It means you get to decide how you feel and set boundaries so that people can carry on doing what is not acceptable in your world but not in your space.

Be honest, who are you outsourcing your emotions to right now? Who do you want to behave differently so that you feel better? What would it be like for you if you released them from that responsibility and took ownership of your own emotions?

I have really focussed on this over the last year or so. I am taking much more control of my emotional responses to things. There have been certain things that triggered recently, and previous I would have gone into a bit of meltdown about it (I don’t take it out on anyone else, but internalise it all), however I chose to consider that what was causing me anxiety, was thinking about a situation which may never have happened. I was taking a situation, blowing it out of proportion because I wasn’t comfortable with it. But then I took stock and looked at it more objectively. Was anything really going to happen? What would be my response if this or that occurred? Why was I wasting energy on churning this over and over in my head, when it may never have happened anyway? I decided to make the best of the situation and enjoy some time I got to spend doing what I wanted to instead and turned that energy into something more positive. I didn’t fully ignore the niggles, but I chose not to let it dominate and not to shift it on to someone else.

When you learn to manage yourself instead of trying to manage other people, that’s when you get your emotional power back.

Be kinder to the person in the mirror

Our social media lives are, to some extent, dictated by likes. How many likes we give and how many we receive. I’m not a massive fan of either. I will only like what I really do resonate with, and that includes on family and friends’ social media accounts. If they just posted a picture of something cute, I’m not going to press the like button unless there’s something meaningful behind it. I don’t engage just because I feel I should because if I don’t I’ll hurt their feelings. The same goes the other way. I have no idea how many, or who likes anything I post. And I don’t care. That’s not why I posted something.

But how much easier is it to like and accept others, including strangers on the internet, yet when we look in the mirror, we find it hard to like to person we see?

Fearne Cotton has written several books I have enjoyed about finding yourself and being more compassionate towards yourself. Having gone through periods of depression, Fearne speaks from a place of personal experience and growth, not as someone who read a few articles about it.

She suggests in an article in Grazia magazine that self-compassion is more than just feeling ok about the bits of ourselves we believe are good, but about cultivating compassion for the whole package. It becomes an ephemeral notation if self-love is only about celebrating ourselves in moments of success which can be gone in a flash, leaving us depleted.

Cotton says that liking yourself is the most natural thing you can do, but this is likely to come as a surprise to a lot of people. We are offered tips on how to like ourselves more and build self-compassion, but its been there all along, we just haven’t learned how to tap into it. Its something we are born with and as small babies and children we thrive on moving from one thing we love to the next, experiencing fun and joy and love. Its only as we grow up we pick up societal cues and social conditioning, that erodes our sense of self-love. Whether its being told to be quiet, get in line, or work harder.

Cotton poses that we need to learn to undo all that social conditioning to reveal our natural and already thriving self-love. We spend so much time trying to eat better, sleep better, exercise better, be a better friend/partner/parent, but without self-love it’s pointless. How can we give full, unfettered love to others when we can’t even give it to ourselves?

When you love yourself, all those things fall in to place, you’ll eat better, sleep when you’re tired, be with people who bring you joy and do more of what you love with the people you love, because deep down, you know you deserve it.

Love yourself and everything else will sort itself out. Try it.

Drifting away with the fairies

As a child I dreamt of far-away lands, parallel universes where a different me was living a different life, of places and people that didn’t exist anywhere but in my head. Sometimes those dreams felt so real I could almost imagine them to be true.

We tend to get out of the habit of daydreaming as we grow older. Perhaps because it might be considered childish, a waste of time, and lacking focus, and has no visible outcome. Adult life is about productivity, achievement, and focus.

According to Anita Ghosh in Red Magazine, researchers are increasing understanding of daydreaming and how it boosts creativity, pain tolerance and conversely productivity. Daydreamers were found to be more refreshed and focuses after letting their minds wander, increasing their productivity when they returned to work.

Daydreaming activates a part of the brain associated with memory, introspection, and rest. Without the confines of the external world pushing to think in a certain way, we can generate an internal model to solve problems and reimaging solutions.

Daydreams are different to manifesting, the practice of thinking aspirational thoughts with the goal of turning dreams into reality. Daydreaming is enjoying the prospect of thinking and having appositive experience that ca be almost meditative.

Daydreams is categorised into unintentional, where daydreaming occurs when you don’t want it to, interrupting our focus, whilst intentional daydreaming is the practice of allowing our mind to wander deliberately and with purpose. Intentional daydreaming can be further broken down into focused and unfocused. Focused daydreaming involving an overarching narrative which you regular and guide your imagination by. Unfocused doesn’t settle on specific scenarios and has potential to be more enjoyable.

When we let our minds wander, we think about things we wouldn’t ordinarily think about. It gives us a chance to stretch our creative boundaries. Here are five tips for better daydreaming:

Create space – modern life takes so much of our time being absorbed in technology and doing “stuff”. Schedule in five minutes every day to daydream.
Work on it – we are more likely to daydream when our minds are less occupied. Things that you could do on autopilot but are stimulating enough to allow your mind to wander, are best.
Dream big – when you daydream in fantastical ways, or meaningful ways, you tend to be more creative, inspired, and happier.
Prime your mind – it can be hard to enjoy daydreaming but prepare with prompts that will guide you to positive thoughts.
Practice makes perfect – intentional daydreaming requires thinking in one mode for prolonged periods, which can be difficult. If you find yourself wandering off to negative thoughts, gently bring yourself back using your prompts.

I do still daydream about what life would be like if xyz happened, but not to the extend that I’m jealous of those who have that lifestyle. I can take moments to stare out of the window with no purpose at all, other than to take five minutes to watch the birds at the feeder, or the clouds flitting across the sky, whilst I mull over a problem.

I think so long as it doesn’t become a place to avoid what’s going on around you, but you use it as a place to help your make sense of all of that, it doesn’t do any harm.

Making it last

C and I will be celebrating our Silver Wedding Anniversary next month. That’s 25 years of weddedness as well as the four years together prior to that. We bumble along quite nicely. I can honestly say that we have never rowed, ever. We have periods of time when we don’t talk to each other much, but mostly it’s a simple existence alongside each other.

Gone are the heady days of “being in love” you experience in the early days of relationships. We’ve very much settled into the gentler form of loving each other through caring, mutual respect, sharing and so on.

Our actual anniversary will be on a Tuesday. We may well go out for dinner that night, but it’s a working day for me. We have plans to go away for an extended break towards the end of next month instead. The day itself will pass probably quite unremarkably, just like so many other anniversaries, and pretty much most of the days in between. We are unlikely to bother buying each other presents of any significance, although chocolates always welcome!

Its not just about celebrating one day though and recognising we “did a thing” all that time ago, which often these days is an achievement itself, when divorce can be such an easy way out. Its about the lasting love we have, and show each other, every day. It’s the attention we pay to each other through the many iterations of our relationship. Its about the unremarkable years the card shops don’t have cards for.

An article in Red magazine by Natasha Lunn sums it up nicely when she said that when we commit to someone we have no idea who each person will be in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time. You make a pact to build a life together without knowing what it will look like. Loving someone means noticing their emotional shifts, rather than making assumptions based on an older version of them we once knew. By “re-seeing” the other person we can be reminded that its wonderful to know that person can still surprise us.

When we choose to accept that getting to know someone we love is an ongoing process, we can see it as a gift. That’s the only gift I need for our Silver Wedding Anniversary.

Feeling confused?

Being confused about things in life is normal but it’s useful to know how to navigate those times in order to make progress. When we don’t know what we want or what choice to make we can spend time spinning around and not coming to any conclusion. Imaging what it would be like to refuse to be confused. Podcast fave Tonya Leigh gives us three ways to beat the confusion.

When we’re confused, we start to think that we are going to do something wrong or there’s a better way to do it, or we don’t know the technicalities of it. These thoughts can lead to anxiety and analysis paralysis. The moment we make a decision though, all our energy can get behind that decision. There are some ways we can deal with confusion:

Do you need more information? – if you’ve never done something before you’ll need to gather information so you’re no longer confused about what to do.
Make a decision – once we make a decision, we no longer waste energy on confusion and put our efforts into moving forward.
Take action – you don’t know what you don’t know because you’re not out there, involved in what it is you want. Experiment and participate to gain clarity in what you do and don’t want.

Don’t feel back about not knowing what it is you want, many of us as mature adults still don’t. The best way to figure out what to do with your life is to life your life and live it fully. Try lots of different things and notice what brings you joy and enthuses you.

Sitting at home trying to think your way out of confusion isn’t’ going to work. If you stay in a state of confusion it’s the easy option because you don’t have to do anything, you can hide being your confusion. The moment you make a decision you need to get behind it and put your energy into making it come to fruition. Once you’ve made that decision you are no longer splitting your energy between wanting something to be different but not doing anything about it.

By taking action to try different things you’ll find what you love and don’t love; what you enjoy or don’t.

If you give yourself the opportunity to be messy during the creative process of getting out of confusion, you’ll be willing to try new things and decide for yourself.

What are you confused about? Look at the three options and take action on one of the three. If you need more information, go out and get it. Maybe what you need is to just make a decision, so make it and refocus your energy. Get out there and experiment to gain clarity over your confusion if that’s what you need.

Do you need to learn, decide or live? Ask yourself that question next time you’re confused.

How to upgrade your three E’s

At the core of what most people want is to live extraordinary lives, see what’s possible, reach our goals, have more fun, enjoy our lives more, says podcast fave Tonya Leigh. She also suggested that in order to do that there are three areas of our lives we ought to focus on upgrading:

Education – exposing yourself to new ideas, new possibilities. You don’t know what you don’t know. The most successful people in businesses make learning a priority. If you want to grow your business, your life, your relationships, as a human being, you need to grow your mind. To be an effective coach, or leader, or teacher, we need to constantly learn. There are many ways to achieve this, its not all about formal education with certifications at the end of a three-year course. There are books, movies, organisations, podcasts, so many different ways to expose yourself to learning. This may mean learning new tools and skills, learning new ways of thinking or perspective. Ask yourself where are you being challenged at this moment? What are you curious about? Curiosity is there for a reason. Follow your curiosity. Your education is something that no one can ever take away. It is an investment for your future that can change the trajectory of your life.

Environment – looking at how your inner world and outer world compliment each other and when one grows, so does the other. It includes the people you spend time with, the condition of your home, the clothes you wear, the foods you eat, the quality of your water and the air you breathe, the quality of the materials you consume. All of that impacts on how you think, feel and show up. With tools to help you manage your mindset you can be in challenging environments and still manage how you think and feel. But if you had the choice to be in an environment where you could grow and bloom, why would you put yourself in an environment where you are constantly struggling. You might need to stop being around certain people, or change your diet, exercise more, start consuming materials that inspire, excite and educate you. Think about your environment and how it impacts you.

Energy – emotional and physical energy. How you feel is a vibration that is emitted from your body and we can sense energy from people. We can tell if people are anxious or uptight, motivated or happy, when we are around them because we can sense their vibration. The physical energy is the energy in your body which allows you to move. Anything you can do to upgrade these energies is going to have a massive impact on your life. Like attracts like. When you show up in a higher state of energy, you will be able to attract things you couldn’t have done in a lower state of energy. When it comes to emotional energy mindset work and meditation can help. How we think impacts how we feel. Starting the day full of appreciation sets the scene for the day. Paying attention to physical energy and whether you need to get up and move about to help you manage your mind. The more we can create physical energy the easier it is to create emotional energy. Maybe it starts with drinking an extra glass of water a day, or going for a walk, practice gratitude journaling.

You’ll all know by now that I am always wanting to learn. Not necessarily new stuff, but enhance what I already know. I would rather read a non-fiction book to a fiction novel. I want to be able to learn something from what I’ve read that I could put into practice. Obviously I’m listening to podcasts to help educate me and grow my mind.

I spent last year considering more about what I eat and introducing fruit into my diet, something I would never have bothered about before. I’m eating an average of three different fruits most days and can feel the benefits of not eating so much chocolate, crisps and less healthy stuff, although put an apple and a bag of crisps in front of me and I’m sure I’d take the crisps first! I am upgrading my wardrobe, trying to add some style and femininity into it and in turn making myself feel better through the clothes I wear. I’m thinking more about what makes me feel good rather than opting for the grungy stuff all the time. My home is still a work in progress because I’m not the only one that has control over it. There are pockets that I’ve improved, buy fresh flowers every two weeks and keep “my” surfaces as clutter free as I can.

I have a much better handle of my emotional energy. I have become more resilient over the last couple of years and shifted my mindset from trying to please everyone else, to taking ownership and control over my own thoughts, feelings and responses. I’m less great at the physical side of things as I’m still fundamentally lazy. I do go for walks most days, but other than that and #bellringing, I don’t do any other form of exercise.

How do you upgrade your three E’s?

How to tell if you are being gaslit

A couple of years ago and no one had heard of the term gaslighting, and to be honest until extremely recently, I still wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, other than it wasn’t nice. Gaslighting has become a new buzzword to represent being manipulated which can be destressing, dangerous and could destroy lives.

In an article in Platinum magazine Ronia Fraser explains that the term came from the 1944 movie Gaslight where the husband in the relationship manipulates the wife’s reality and isolate her until she becomes more and more confused to the point she feels she’s going insane. He makes subtle changes to her environment, such as dimming the gaslights, while having her believe the changes in light are all in her head.

Gaslighting can be very subtle in the beginning but is a highly effective way of manipulating and inflicting psychological torture. It’s a form of emotional and mental abuse where the abuse distorts and undermines the victim’s reality to the point they think they’re losing their mind. Everything the victim remembers appears to be untrue, leading to severe confusion and self-doubt.

Once the victim has been destabilised it can be easy for the abuser to erode their boundaries and even identity to a point where they are no longer have a sense of themselves too. In turn the victim then relies totally and exclusively on the abuser’s validation of reality for their self-wroth and happiness.

Abusers can use mind-altering drugs or alcohol to take advantage of blurry memories. Gaslighting is often found in abusive romantic relationships but can occur in dysfunctional family dynamics, friendships and even in the workplace. It can be connected to narcissistic abuse.

It can have severe adverse effects on the victim’s mental health and quality and perception of life. It can cause anxiety, depression. PTSD and self-harm and worse case even suicide. Many victims spend years in toxic relationships without even realising they are being abused it happens so gradually. It can be easy to explain away someone else’s unacceptable behaviour especially when we’re told it’s all in our mind. So, it’s important to recognise the red flags so we can identify it in others.

According to Fraser’s research 33% of women were called crazy or insane by their romantic partner, seven out of ten psychologically abused women showed symptoms of PTSD and/or depression. Of course, it doesn’t just happen to women.

Common manipulation tactics include:

Projecting and shifting blame – whatever a gaslighter is or does, they will project those behaviours and characteristics onto their victim. Shame, guild, insecurities. They may call you a liar, cheater, abuser, narcissist, selfish or other things when its’ them. The moment you confront them about it they will turn it back on you.
Creating a false narrative – the abuser will always twist the story in their favour regardless of what has really happened. They literally rewrite history by introducing alternative facts. Not only will they create a false narrative for their victim but will also spread it around them. So, when the victim reaches breaking point and starts speaking up, no one will believe them.
Making empty promises – narcissists tell their victims exactly what they want to hear, creating the illusion of having found their soulmate, promising unconditional love and living together happily ever after. Moving in together, getting married, going on holidays, never cheat again. None of it is actually true but will keep the victim stuck and chasing a dream that will never come true.
Denying things they said or did – this one is incredibly frustrating. You could swear on your life that they said or did something, but they’re adamant it never happened.
Calling your crazy – this is the epitome of gaslighting. Once the victim mentions something along the lines of “I think I’m going crazy” the abuser will not hesitate to validate this narrative and push it going forward. As a result, the victim starts to believe it and acts accordingly, which in turns makes it very easy for other people to believe it too. And so, the “crazy women” very quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, what can be done about it? There’s no magic pill or knight in shining armour.

Listen to your gut – if something feels work, it usually is. Deep down you already know, even if you can’t yet rationalise it, you can trust yourself.
Write things down – if you doubt yourself and your recollection of events, start writing it down as they happen. It will highlight the reality distortions and allow you to start trusting yourself again.
Connect with others – isolating victims from friends and family is one of the most common abuse tactics. Having external reference points is really important to expose the manipulation and see the reality.
Get out – there’s no way to outsmart a gaslighter or beating them at their own game. Don’t retaliate or engage. Their manipulation tactics are systematic and calculated. The only way tot deal with that is to get out as fast as you can.
Get help – damage caused by emotional abuse is deep and complex. Even if you are used to fixing things yourself it’s ok to ask for help from a qualified professional.
Self-care – an absolute must to the recovery from abuse. You might need to learn to develop self-acceptance and self-love.

Having read the signs and symptoms, I can say that I don’t think I’ve ever been in that situation myself. My ex did used to make me feel slightly inferior and what he was allowed to do, I wasn’t, but I don’t think he ever got as bad as trying to manipulate me. Luckily, I woke up to that relationship and that helped me be stronger in the next one. And luckily this one isn’t anything like it.

Its useful to be aware of these things though as it could help us identify someone who may be being gaslit and not realise it.

4 Ways to be of comfort

How we connect to other people beyond the simplicity of getting to know one another is now becoming more understood on a neurological level. Experts in an article in Psychologies Magazine suggest through touch, tone of voice and eye contact we are able to influence and change the emotional state of another person. The key is to understand how this co-regulation works to have a profound impact on another’s’ mood and to offer more than just a shoulder to cry on.

Co-regulation was described as the neurological and biological phenomenon that occurs when two or more brains interact and fall in sync. The point at which you recognise your interaction with another person can influence their thoughts and feelings. We are social beings and need to connect with others, so when a friend calls in a moment of trauma, overtaken by emotion, our impulse may be to try to fix the problem for them, to offer immediate relief. But, more often than not we cannot directly fix the problem, but we can help regulate their emotions and help de-escalate the situation.

The success of this ability relies in trust and being truly present for someone in distress. If you cannot trust someone not to judge you or keep your problems to themselves, you are less likely to be able to fully expose the extent of the problem.

Here are four ways to help you become a better co-regulator:

Establish eye contact – this will show the other person you are with them while they experience their emotions. It helps them feel seen and can be immediately calming.
Create physical contact – the level of contact must be comfortable for the person trying to regulate how they feel. It could be as simple as sitting near them.
Hear and validate their emotions – you may need to help them by putting words to their experience. You cand o this my naming what you observe, then offering calming decompressing techniques, like breathing exercises or meditations, as needed. Create an environment where all feelings and emotions are allowed to flow.
Model self-regulation – co-regulation often involves modelling how you self-regulate, demonstrating awareness and acceptance of how feel and engagement to encourage the person to mimic your behaviour. Talking through how you manage your emotions is a good place to start.

Understanding co-regulation can not only help you be present and supportive to a loved one in distress, it’s a reminder that your own state of mind can often benefit from reaching out to another. Having slowed down and softened speech and an open body language and giving your undivided attention all sets the scene for co-regulation to take place.