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Heal With Blair, Melbourne (2025)

03/09/2024

I spend a large part of my day reflecting upon emotional responses that are 100% natural and to be expected based on the circumstances that caused them to arise.

Sometimes, when experiencing strong emotions, some of us think we shouldn’t be feeling this way. Something happens and if I could ‘control my emotions’ properly, I should be totally zen about it. We should be ‘in control’ of our emotions so well that we don’t feel anything. This is not the case.

Those emotional responses are part of being human and there’s absolutely nothing wrong about it and nothing to fix. Part of the work is to accept that they are natural and learn how to navigate the rise and fall of emotions, the arrival and passing of those feelings. When normalising emotional expression, we tend not to overthink it anymore or apply too much self-criticism, and we can let it move naturally.

The distinction is when circumstances create an activation that is too much, too quickly, for the nervous system to handle. The response moves someone well beyond their zone of resilience, and they resort to a default response in the fight, flight, or freeze categories.

At this point, you work on the activation and move from one of the primal responses into something that allows the limbic system (emotional processing) and the brain’s cognitive functions a chance to catch up and become available again.

If you’ve never paid attention to emotion much, sometimes this distinction is hard to define. It may all seem like too much. However, when you observe and reflect on the times you’ve experienced emotion in enjoyable ways and less distressing moments, you begin to appreciate the difference between natural expression and overwhelm. When you know this in real-time and navigate accordingly, you’ve come a long and healthy way on your healing path.

01/09/2024

The thing we have the best chance of changing is ourselves. We've got to remember this.

You can greatly influence your internal experience. Much more so, in fact, than what someone else can influence it.

When we realise this, we are in our power and things can improve.

29/08/2024

It's easy for children to become confused, especially as infants or toddlers. There is no frame of reference, no experience, no knowledge, or no phones (yet!) to draw upon to make sense of what is going on in their experience.An automatic freeze response often follows the confused state. The child needs to scan the environment to try and gain some understanding and clarity. Most of this effort is about calculating safety or threat; certainty or risk.

The antidote to confusion at this age is support from a parent or caregiver. This support is often nonverbal, like holding hands, a supportive hand on the back, or a hug. This establishes the basis of secure attachment, and the child will know there is a safe haven whenever they are confused or when they explore to their limits and need to return.

If support is inconsistent, unavailable or unreachable in acute distress or confusion, the freeze response may be more relied upon. If this becomes a pattern following several incidents, then the pattern is likely to be embedded into the subconscious and play out throughout adulthood too.

When circumstances aren't clear, especially in the context of emotional involvement, like in relationships, the freeze pattern may reappear. The person has adapted to not turning to others for support, so they remain still and stuck for long enough until the circumstances change.

The key difference between then and now is that the adult version of that confused inner child has resources, skills, knowledge, experience that the child never did. It is the consciousness of the adult to apply what they know now and reflect on all the moments they have moved forward despite anxiety and fears. This self-reflection of evidence will enter the subconscious too and begin to reframe the patterns of the past.

08/08/2024

Patterns established in childhood and influenced by inherited trauma responses can take time to unravel fully. It's just the way it is. The reason for this is that the pattern has coupled itself with harmless behaviours or familiar reactions. We have to separate the parts you want to keep from the parts that need changing.⁣

In addition, trying to create change too quickly can backfire by causing more resistance. This is a common response.

The ego responds badly to change. If you don't work around this slowly and gently, the ego has a big bag of tricks to convince you that your healing efforts are pointless and that you should go back to the way things were.

Instead, reflect on the progress you've made this year and consider how far that trendline might take you over another period of time.

Sometimes, these years can feel like a long time and really, they can be. However, think of the legacy of positive influence you have set in motion for your children or loved ones that will continue to create benefits for many more years to come.

05/08/2024

In relationships of all kinds, learning to listen attentively is just as important as learning to say the 'right thing', give the right advice, or know something. It is healthy to be seen and heard. The quality of this connection between two people is healing.

03/08/2024

Many years ago, this was an enormous problem for me. Honestly, I would have the same 2-3 thoughts repeating at least 1000 times a day (this is no exaggeration). It was relentless.Now, when I think back, I honestly, hand on heart, cannot remember what those repetitive thoughts were. I can remember the time and the events, but the thoughts and the connected emotions have no impact on me whatsoever anymore, and that was the worst time of my life.

So, I'm inviting you to join me on a 14-day healing sprint to break the power of at least one of your most persistent ruminating thoughts and to reclaim freedom in your mind and body.

It's all going to be in a simple and private whatsapp group. I'll be there to guide you every day and be there for all of your questions, challenges, insights, and breakthroughs!

We start Monday 5th August. DM me 'Free my mind' and I'll share the deets to get you in and started. Let's do this!

29/07/2024

Emotions and feelings come and go like the weather. They are messages from the body delivered in real-time. Usually, the emotion reflects a natural and genuine experience. If we are scared, we'll feel fear. If we meet up with friends, we'll feel happy. The emotion will follow the circumstances and then pass once the circumstances change. However, we tend to add an extra layer of meaning to some feelings. So when the feelings naturally pass, we are still left with a mental impression that will last. This mental impression will then stimulate more of the same emotions artificially because the original circumstances have since changed.

For example, let's say someone sits for an exam in high school. Let's say they've studied for it and tried their best, but the test was harder than anticipated, and they get a 'D' grade. The natural emotion would be disappointment, sadness, anger or frustration. Now, we could stop there and allow those emotions to pass and get back to living our best life.

However, the person could add extra meaning, such as "I'm dumb" or "I must be stupid." This mental impression may continue into the future, causing future anxiety about exams, creating shame about their perceived intelligence, etc, which could then create a secondary meaning, such as creating a pessimistic view of their future prospects or even life in general. None of this is true. The person had a bad experience in the test. That's it. The next moment is new, and the experience can be anything.

When we assign meaning to a feeling, we create a platform for future mental and emotional processing. As such, we can create distortions of reality that become increasingly difficult to reconcile.

When we allow feelings to be named and

28/07/2024

At some point in life, the high-functioning freeze-adapted person gets the 'knock on the door'. It's like an internal impulse to move, to change, to open, or to expand. This is countered by an array of egoic resistance responses that bury those impulses because the risk, at this point, does not outweigh the rewards. The innate desire for expansion is quickly thwarted back into a contracted state.

However, as life ticks on, the knocks keep coming, and they get louder. Sometimes, they point to the things happening in life now as things to break free from. Maybe it is. But maybe it is the state of freeze they've had running in the background for most of their lives, formed during moments or years of trauma during childhood.

This is a reckoning moment because the risk-reward equation starts to flip. The risks to their health, mental and physical, get more serious because the impulse to open and release cannot be held down any longer. The effort of trying to suppress takes a toll, and mental anguish and physical illness will inevitably follow.

This is the moment when the reward for unravelling this deeply held freeze condition can become more appealing. Not only to return to the mind and body to calmer, more regulated states, but to open up and expand the person into a new and exciting life experience with possibilities and potential the major themes.

27/07/2024

For years, I had no structure on my healing journey. I just went with the best thing I could find at the time that could get me out of my pain.It made sense back then because I had no idea what I was doing, but it took many, many years to get where I wanted to be.

The healing journey is a long and winding road, and it's easy to lose focus and feel like you're going backward. I've fallen off the path many, many times myself!

These days, it is very different. Through trial and error, learning and working with many different people, I've fine-tuned it into a pretty reliable framework.

The link to your personal healing plan worksheet is in my bio. For a short time, you can also get my personal assistance to complete it... for free!

If you want some extra help moving forward on your journey, maybe you'd like to dig a little deeper, maybe you want some help uncovering those hidden blocks we can't see for ourselves, or perhaps you'd like more help building new and effective resources, whatever it is, I'm here to help.

(Or go to www healwithblair dot com slash healingplan)

21/07/2024

The healing process can seem like a long, endless road. There are often many things to work on, and we can easily get lost and confused about where and when it will end. A good goal to focus on is how well you navigate the typical stuff that happens every day. If we can quickly move on from the irritations, stresses, and frustrations that arise most days, we can enjoy the little things more, be present with our friends and loved ones, and invest our energy into our projects and purpose.

Developing confidence comes from self-reflection. Think back to times when you reframed a negative thought into an acceptance of what is thought, when you worked with your breath to calm down, or when you had that short conversation to repair after an argument, you will reinforce to your conscious and subconscious that you are capable of navigating thoughts and emotions and can keep doing it.

When you do this repeatedly and a natural confidence emerges, you won't need to think it through much. It will become the new normal.

Once you've reached this point, you've overcome much of the past struggles and can consider a big chapter of the healing journey successfully concluded.

20/07/2024

And it's not just for the warm and fuzzy feelings that feel so good. Love is healthy. When we can give and receive love in a way that honours our needs and boundaries, our health will be in good shape.

19/07/2024

If a spider bit you as a child, you will likely create meaning from that event. In simple terms, you worked out that spiders can bite, and that hurts. You may add another layer of meaning by thinking that all spiders bite and are dangerous. Perhaps this will turn into a phobia, or perhaps it will just put someone on alert when they see a spider.

Either way, whenever such a person sees a spider, their body responds with the meaning the mind assigns. In this case, the body increases the stress response, the heart beats faster, the eyes dilate, etc.

In summary, the meaning will create the body's response. This happens all the time. For the most part, it's not harmful. As we grow up, we constantly experience life as it unfolds, and we naturally seek to understand what happened so that we can be more prepared or navigate this experience more easily or beneficially next time.

Persistent problems arise when patterns leave us more distressed than what is reasonably warranted. In other words, the body continues to respond in ways that are not proportionate to the present moment.

There are several ways to address this. One is to redefine the meaning we attach to past events, people or memories. The other is to reverse-engineer the meaning by changing the state of the body.

When we can cultivate more states of relaxation, inner peace, calmness, and maybe joy and excitement, the mind will be able to adjust how it perceives life. In other words, the lens through which we see the world changes according to how we feel.

If we do this repeatedly over time, those deep-running patterns will slowly lose influence and effect, and our lives will become the ones we've defined for ourselves, no longer at the mercy of the past.

10/07/2024

Once you set an intention and believe it can be achieved, things begin to work in the background to allow that to happen. It doesn't matter if you stop believing or if you stop doing anything that might tangibly appear to be helping yourself heal. There is still a force in motion to create the positive changes you want.

09/07/2024

Limits and limiting beliefs are not the same. Limits are real. We have constraints in our daily lives that prevent us from taking the actions we'd like to take.

Time is the biggest one. There is nothing we can do to create more time. We can try to use it better but we still can't make more of it. It's a real limitation.

Limiting beliefs are different. They are often opinions that have some truth to them, but they don't represent all possibilities. We can often challenge and disprove limiting beliefs when we think through them consciously. So, in effect, they are illusions that stop us, but there is the potential for other thoughts, movements, and actions.

Limits frustrate us like limiting beliefs do, but we are better off working out what can't be changed, what is truly immovable at that moment in time, because when we do so, we can surrender to what is real.

We don't want to fight against something, mentally and emotionally, like time, that we can't do anything about.

It can be liberating when we accept our limitations and the limits to our capabilities. It's ok. We all have them. It's not a problem. It's just what it is.

When we let go of things we can't change or can't do, that pointless internal fighting against reality gives way. We can find some peace, maybe some happiness, and usually, an opening to what is really possible can present itself.

08/07/2024

"We cannot reach the goal by mere words alone. Without practice, nothing can be achieved." - Patanjali Maharishi

21/06/2024

There's no easy when it comes to grief, in whatever way it happens, and there are more ways grief can occur than when someone near and dear to us passes away. Often, grief can occur when our expectations, hopes, dreams, and visions that we invest so much into cannot be realised. We know this can be frustrating and disappointing, but when it truly lands in our mind and body, it is a grief experience, too. When there is a finality to our realization, it can trigger very powerful emotions, and expressions of grief, including tears, anger, depression, and bargaining, are likely to follow.

When it comes to other people, often we want them to be a certain way because that's how we are, or we know things could be better or even great if they were different.

Realising our parents or partners cannot be changed through our persuasion or own actions can be a big moment. The only way they could adjust their attitudes or behaviours is their own healing journey, but they refuse or simply deny it.

Like with any grief experience, when we can see things as they really are, instead of how we'd love them to be, we can get closer to true acceptance and the peace that follows.

However, do not assume these major realisations can be quickly resolved mentally and emotionally. Again, like with any grief experience, there is no set timeframe for reaching acceptance, and no one can rush it. Allowing for organic expression in moments when it comes through is the best anyone can do.

Finally, grief is best resolved with support. We can feel very alone in the grieving process but being able to lean on other people can be assuring and comforting in those turbulent and confronting times.

19/06/2024

Our experience is two-sided. Yin/yang, happy/sad, up/down, etc. Improving our quality of life is about navigating the inevitable ebbs and flows every day. In therapy, there is a perception to 'fix' the problems that have arisen in life. This is reasonable. However, the most effective approach is not only focusing on the problems. It is about building the resources you can rely on to help yourself navigate the ebbs and flows better in the future.

By reflecting and affirming what's working, you are helping yourself identify those resources and like skills as they are strengthening.

Revisiting these affirming developments regularly in therapy serves to increase their influence on the flip side, which can otherwise be too overwhelming and create the conditions to drag you into negative spirals.

Reflecting on what's working builds an evidence base to remember when you are challenged by limiting beliefs and critical self-talk. You can point back to those affirming moments and know with certainty that you have coped with hard things before the capability to do so again is there.

16/06/2024

Movement seems to be essential in all aspects of life, including our health—not just physical movement but also the movement of our thoughts and emotions.
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When we allow for easy movement, momentum follows, but without the stress, pressure, and burdens we can often feel when we push too hard for too long.
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When we get stuck in limbo states for too long, we must find a thread, an opening to create movement. The alternative is despair and frustration that builds over time.
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Heal With Blair