Monday, February 25, 2013

Chasing the emotion

There is a well known procedure in EFT called chasing the pain. You 'chase' or follow where physical pain leads you. It may lead you around your body in the form of different sensations, or an emotion may come up as might a memory. Things usually daisy chain together until you find relief from the physical pain and/or you gain insight into an emotional issue that has contributed to or even caused the physical pain.


You can do the same thing with your emotions. You can follow where anger may lead you, for example it could be hurt, sadness or fear. This is akin to different aspects coming up. Very often if someone taps on their anger and it's 8 out of 10 and it decreases to 0 but then sadness comes up and it's a 10, they might feel EFT didn't work. What has happened is they have come across another aspect of the same issue, in this case; sadness. Chasing emotions like this is like peeling an onion, and of course it might make you cry too!, but it's worthwhile in the end.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Website down

Apologies for my website and email being up and down over the last few days, hopefully it'll be back up again permanently over the next day or so. You can also email me at noreen(dot)barron(at)gmail(dot)com

Thanks for understanding!

Monday, February 18, 2013

What's your self talk

... when you're really really stressed? Do you say things like:

Life is unfair
I'm jinxed
I am a failure/I feel a failure
Things never go right for me
I am a bad person/I feel like a bad person
It's hopeless
Good things never last
This always happens to me
Bad things always happen

These beliefs are what you are affirming, they are what feels true for you in your life. When things are going wrong and we ask our self this question, our answers tell us how we really feel about our self, life and others. There is no point in sugar coating something if underneath we feel entirely differently. Affirmations can be either positive or negative, for an affirmation to be true, it has to feel true. Whether or not it is true is another matter, what's important is that it feels true for you. A better question might be, does this belief/affirmation serve me?

You can take one of your statements when you do this exercise and ask yourself what evidence do you have for believing it to be true and then start tapping. EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Be your own best advocate

Perhaps this is most true when it comes to looking after your health.

I gave birth on the 15th November 2012, I was 42 weeks and 3 days pregnant and under severe pressure from the hospital to be induced. I didn't want to be induced, I had researched it and spoken to many women who had been induced, and knew it usually ended up in a cascade of interventions with a cesarean section being the end result far too often. The drugs they use for induction are off label and have numerous side effects, or direct effects as I like to call them.

I had been transferred from midwifery to obstetric care on October 5th because of three high blood pressure readings and +1 protein in my urine. When I met with the obstetrician he immediately diagnosed me with pre-eclampsia, or toxemia as he called it, and then proceeded to tell me that “pregnancy is an illness” and “women who want home births usually end up with every intervention in the book”. He then informed me he wanted me in hospital until the birth, which was October 29th, over three weeks away. My husband and I left his consulting room shell shocked. I had just secured a home birth the week before so this news was devastating.

The next six weeks were very traumatic as we advocated for our voices to be heard. They weren't. I didn't go into hospital (apart from a two day stay to check the protein levels in my urine, which were fine), but I did go for almost daily check ups for the baby. Most of the time, all I heard was I could convulse, seize and die at any moment or the baby could be still born and so on. I had to sign a release form on more than one occasion. Trying to explain that I understood the risk factors and didn't need them explained to me every day for six weeks fell on deaf ears. I wasn't the 'expert'. I felt harassed and traumatised by this form of 'health care' and tried to explain how I felt on numerous occasions, some lovely people did listen but in general I was ignored and even sneered at for informing myself.

I did not go into labour, our baby's heartbeat fell and I had an emergency cesarean which was the last thing I wanted, but it was a true medical emergency so that consoles me somewhat. Do I wonder could I have done things differently? Of course I do, I should have gone for chiropractic adjustments, I should have worked more on my psychological state which was full of fear, thinking of going into hospital to give birth. At the end of the day we have a beautiful healthy son but that still doesn't negate traumatic feelings around his birth and the last month of my pregnancy which needed to be worked through.

Too many women have traumatic experiences during pregnancy and birth and it really is time to take back our own power and be our own best advocates.


For every effect there is a root cause. Find and address the root cause rather than try to fix the effect, as there is no end to the latter ~ Unknown

Monday, February 04, 2013

Why listening is so important

What does it mean to be listened to? It means to be heard, validated and witnessed. Research shows that children who receive little to no affection don't thrive and can even die and adults can develop mental and physical dis-orders that seriously impact the quality of their life. Because we need each other -we're social beings after all- one of our most important needs is to be listened to. We interpret being listened to as being important in someone's life, they're present to what we're experiencing and are accepting us without wanting to change us, make it better or reframe things. Being listened to is like a warm mental hug, we feel connected in a way that feels good and nourishing, it is essential for our mental and emotional health, which of course affects our physical health. I think it is one of the greatest skills we can learn in this life.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen ~ Ernest Hemingway