emotionalmechanics

One of our greatest impediments to deep change is the fear of losing control. In The steps appear when you commit to change, I describe how a lack of commitment can be an impediment to change. We want change, but we don’t want to change. We fear it. What is that fear? It’s the fear […]

Change. Love it or hate it, it’s relentlessly and remorselessly thrust upon us. Yet when we choose to change, when we decide to tackle an issue, we can get lost not knowing what to do or what steps to take. This is particularly true with emotional issues like releasing trauma or unconscious shame. There is […]

If healing trauma were easy, we would live in a vastly different, healthier, trauma-free world. We don’t. Because healing trauma is hard. Firstly, you must come out of denial that the trauma even exists. Then you must identify the trauma. You must want to heal it badly enough to endure the pain. Finally, you can […]

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven R. Covey writes: “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” If most people don’t listen to understand, is it possible they also don’t speak to communicate? Listen to understand Some years ago, I had the privilege […]

Many years ago, I was a jet-setting IT consultant. New Zealand, America, Hong Kong. I was billed out at $300/hour in the pre-Y2K mania. Hotels, rental cars, lavish meals. Success? Tick. Yet I didn’t know I was about to run face-first into one of humanity’s immovable principles. That which brings you success is that which […]

Genealogy is big business. We all know that family member constantly immersed in online research or rushing off to visit old battlegrounds or musty parish records. Over the years, the facts pile up in old ring-binders or sprawling digital archives. Few of these researchers are aware of the difference between thinking about the past and […]

One of the pitfalls of a society characterised, as ours is, by emotional immaturity and irresponsibility, is a blurring of boundaries between ourselves and others. As we bring our unconscious to light, excavating programming that undermines us, we gradually expose these inappropriate boundaries. We learn to stay in our lane. Staying in your lane is […]

In the early 18th century, natural philosopher Émilie du Châtelet proposed the Law of Conservation of Energy. Wikipedia: “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.” Generational trauma obeys the Law of Conservation of Energy because it cannot be destroyed. It can only […]

“The past is a door I don’t revisit very often”. I’ve heard this, and similar beliefs on leaving the past behind, over the years. This seems to me like wishful thinking. My own experience is the opposite: the only exit from the past is by going back through it. Pema Chodron writes that “nothing ever […]

One of the characteristics of trauma that may seem confusing from the outside looking in, is that the more traumatised we are, the more we defend trauma. However, when we understand how trauma works, this seemingly paradoxical stance reveals itself to be entirely congruent with the emotional mechanics of trauma. The more traumatised we are, […]