"I’m focused so much more now on what I have than what I don’t have, and I’m more aware of my capacity to change what I want to change. In terms of my plans and the future, I feel that I have more options and that I’m more aware of my potential. I’m also more aware that I can be ok with whatever choices I make. I used to look back at the past and just think about all of the wasted opportunities. Now if that starts to happen, I shift my attention to the opportunities that are in front of me. I feel like this therapy process has really helped me learn how to shift my thinking in this way – to notice I’m doing it, the negative thinking, and then to stop and shift in a different direction. It’s also taught me however, to be ok with the fact that negative thinking is going to happen sometimes! My friends have noticed a difference in me too, and said that I seem much more confident. A lot of people have also said that I’m much more positive than I used to be. I’m more active than I was before, I’m much better at dealing with difficult situations and conversations, and I’m doing things that I wouldn’t have managed to get myself to do before..."
"...In the therapy process I was able to let go of a lot of the stuff I felt guilty about, so, so bad about really, and also able to let go of a lot of the anger and shame I was holding onto around what other people had done in the past, how different people had acted towards me and how that had felt at the time.
I’ve also learnt processes for actually actively connecting with self love and self respect in a deliberate way, and really committed to and engaged with those processes and practices in a way that’s been entirely transformative.
I genuinely like myself now, and I don’t think that had been true for a very long time. And I feel full of energy and enthusiasm about loads of different things at once! And everything in terms of food and how I feel about how I look is different for me – I still want to lose weight and do more exercise and so on, and I’ve started the process of that, but I’m not anything like so preoccupied with this any more – that can happen at it’s own pace. And I’m not confusing that stuff any more with my sense of self worth. I’m actually able to honour myself now, and move more and more towards what I actually want to be doing with my life – with using my skills and abilities fully and for ends that I believe in.
My relationship with my partner has significantly improved, and so has my relationship with my kids, as well as how I feel about them when they’re there and when they’re not there as well. I’m so much more relaxed about them and about my relationship with them, and that helps a lot.
I feel well and energised and happy now for most of the time, and I know that if I felt low or down again in the future, I’d be able to investigate that, and do what needed doing, and move toward shifting myself in a different direction....
.....I’m not saying that I don’t get the anxiety coming up now and then, or that I don’t feel low now and then. But it’s like — I’ve got the manual, I know what to do.
The process is very practical. It’s not magic! It’s week by week, it’s training your brain to think in a different way, and then practising it (and getting it wrong sometimes!). I’m leaving the process with a whole toolbox of strategies that I’m confident I can go back and revisit..."
"When I first started therapy, I was struggling with frequent panic attacks, Anxiety and the destructive and upsetting thought processes of OCD – I’d had struggles with anxiety almost my whole life pretty much, definitely since I was a small child, as a result of difficult experiences in my childhood and onwards from there, but only recently recognised that this was what I was experiencing, and spoken to doctors and had names for the difficult things I was dealing with.
The main thing the therapy has really helped me with is being able to manage my thoughts and thought processes differently. I particularly love the techniques we worked with where you imagine your early mind as an animal – mine is a lion! – and your intellectual mind or cortex as a beautiful place – I went with Venice for this, because of a particularly significant and wonderful holiday we had there. I really loved developing and working with this process creatively, and kept on adding different layers and levels to it, using it in different ways, and spending a great amount of time very enjoyably engaged with these imaginings, in a way that felt and still feels really good. It’s something I use a lot, and it’s really helped me to feel better about my mind and my thoughts, and to respond to them in a really different way – a way that feels warm, gentle, and sometimes even playful!
It’s not that I never have a difficult negative thought now – it’s more that I respond and react to this really differently, challenging it and shifting myself in a different direction, using one of the processes from the therapy work, like the thing with the lion and Venice, or the thing where you surround people in golden light, or sometimes just things I come up with on my own.
And I’m so much calmer and happier than I was – most of my time is like that now. The panic attacks stopped quite early on, and then it was a longer, slower journey to get to where I am now emotionally, but I’m so glad I did it, that I kept going. It was so worth all the work and the effort of it, to feel this way now. I’m hugely more able to stand up for myself with other people too, and to be strong and powerful in my decision making.
Recently I applied for and got a different job, that suits me much better, and this is not something I would have managed to do before, particularly in terms of just making the decision to do it. I even felt able to negotiate with them on salary, again not something I would have done before. I feel much more confident and able to talk to and make connections with new people generally too, which has been really great. And I also just feel this lovely new sense of wholeness and peace that is a totally different way of experiencing things...."
