Resilience Unravelled

Growth and resilience go hand in hand. We can think about our growth in two ways - by accident or on purpose. If we want to be resilient we need to take life by the horns and maximise our wellbeing by embracing both. Most people focus on growth on purpose because that's what’s wanted – its the things we planned for, were hoping for and were willing to get uncomfortable for but it's the growth by accident that we need. This type of growth is often related to shame, disappointment or embarrassment - the stuff of failures, mistakes and setbacks - but if we have tools to harness both categories then we can live on purpose. When we can choose to be on purpose, we choose to harness our choice and respond rather than react to life.  Doing things with a sense of purpose knowing where you are growing and doing it purposefully.

Robert Vershelst or 'Fireman Rob" was 23 years old with only a year in the fire service when he was part of the search and rescue operation after 9/11. Rob found the situation very surreal and didn't understand how to process it. He had these feelings for many years and used alcohol to quell the darkness. There were a lot of things going on in his life during those years that dragged him down before he started going forward. To get out of the hole was hard and it was not until he was older that he started to look at his mental health.Rob tried to find all the positives he could find from what had happened. One of the biggest was that for that time after 9/11 everyone was working together regardless of religion, gender, colour or political beliefs – they were working together for a common purpose. He now looks at that as one of the most impactful things in his life, that its possible for us to work together and have a bigger purpose than just having our point heard and being right.

Jennifer Fraser is a best-selling author and award-winning educator on bullying and the impact neuroscience has on personal development and culture change. Our culture is so seeped in bullying and abuse - from children’s playgrounds to the upper echelons of leadership - that we’ve come to normalise the behavior. The bullying paradigm has parents, teachers and coaches believing they must be tough to the point of emotional abuse in order for children to acquire the grit and resilience needed to attain excellence in a competitive world. Setting high expectations in an atmosphere of safety, trust and empathy is light years away from using threats, humiliation and cruelty if the goal is high achievement. Neuroscientists have found visual evidence in brain scans of the damage that occurs when subjected to bullying and abuse. The bullied brain correlates with failure to perform, substance abuse, aggressive behavior, chronic disease and mental illness.

Sam Syed is co-founder, CFO and COO at Capsll, an app that enables users to gather their once-scattered memories into digital time capsules. Sam was born in London and is one of six brothers with a Portuguese and Pakistani heritage. He became aware of racism at a young age but feels this helped him build his resilience. His working class background meant he grew up not always getting everything he wanted and he quickly realised he would have to 'break the mould' so he could get things for himself. Sam says he had a fantastic childhood and upbringing but is also thankful that it wasn't ‘silver spooned’ so that what he accomplished from his finance career in London, Dubai and New York he gained himself. He thinks his biggest success is that he never settles and that he’s always looked for the ‘what if’ and that has led him to being part of the team setting up Capsll.

Matthew Fox is a spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest and an activist for gender, racial and eco-justice. He has written more than 39 books that have been translated into over 60 languages. In 1993 he was expelled from the Dominican order of the Catholic church after 34 years, by Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). His mistake was reviving Creation Spirituality which blends teachings from the Christian mystics with science, the arts, social justice, environmentalism, and ideas from other spiritual traditions worldwide (including those of indigenous cultures). Matthew feels the difference between spirituality and religion is that religion has evolved to become mostly about social structures. Religion comes and goes in different eras or moments in time and at certain points, particularly in the west, has become linked to empire building and politics wheras spirituality is the essence.  

Belonging is an archetypal experience that we all seek. In the workplace, a sense of belonging will only happen if you have both diversity and inclusion. When you facilitate diversity in hiring practices and instill inclusive policies, procedures and behaviors, your organisation has its best chance of creating a culture that supports a sense of belonging for everyone. Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is a behavior. Belonging is an experience. Diversity is a fact in that you can look around you and note that there are people like yourself alongside people who aren’t like you. Inclusion, meanwhile, is a set of behaviors, frameworks or approaches that promote psychological safety and connectedness among team members.

There are a lot of things that happen to us in life, events, injuries, trauma or divorce. With any type of life event happens we try to protect ourselves so we cover ourselves to survive and continue living. A life event such as the pandemic makes people withdraw and disassociate to protect themselves and others from things they used to care for. When people do that they go into a victim mindset - things always happen to me and only bad things will happen to me. What we are saying to ourselves, our inner voice or the way we speak to ourselves means the way we create stories in our mind leads to a lot of resistance and fighting that we have to go through. Whether it's a relationship with another or ourselves, the story we are living in and telling ourselves matters. Part of the challenge is to recreate your own narrative.

Dr Stephen Sideroff is an internationally recognised psychologist, executive and medical consultant and expert in resilience, optimal performance, addiction, neurofeedback, and leadership. He has published pioneering research in these fields. He is a professor at UCLA in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and the Department of Rheumatology, and director of the Wallenberg Institute of Ethics. He was the founder & former Clinical Director of the Stress Strategies program of UCLA/Santa Monica Hospital and former Clinical Director of Moonview Treatment and Optimal Performance Center.Dr Sideroff started his career as a researcher looking at a learning and memory. He then moved into clinical work where he quickly realised stress was a major modulator of how people felt. They could be feeling really good but as soon as the amount off stress in their life increased their coping abilities become strained and they began to develop different kinds of symptoms. His most recently published book is The Path: Mastering the Nine Pillars of Resilience and Success. Amazon.com – takes model of resilience and lays it out path is a construct that is designed to help people who can get very overwhelmed when they think of all the things they need to do to become resilient – they feel they have to be resilient to work on being resilient.

Sallie Wagner feels resilience is incredibly important and crucial to our life and wellbeing in four major areas – physical, emotional, mental and social - and that there are some very simple ways we can build our resilience. Resilience can also help us to move out of all the regrets we have in life – the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘if only’.  As we build resilience we can move on from those regrets. She also believes that to create success we need to make a process for everyday. Mindset is not taught and we need the mindset to view the success we have in the future and also what it looks like afterwards. We need to have the right skills to have the right mindset for our careers, businesses and lives and then take action to make it happen. Without action it’s just a philosophy. Without action it’s just hoping and dreaming.

The First Africa Family Business Summit (AFBS) will be held at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra on June 24th 2022.The aim of the AFBS is to bring together family business practioners and help them to build a network that will allow them to share information and insights amongst themselves. The audience will be made up of family business owners and senior management, the next generations of their families and other key stakeholders in family businesses.The AFBS is a hybrid conference with virtual and face to face attendance. Dr Russell Thackeray will be leading a workshop on building personal resilience and the toolkits needed to facilitate this in the afternoon session. The evening Session will allow wider networking and focus more on organisational resilience with key speakers on the theme of  “Building Resilience in Family Businesses for Continuity”.

Like most people, successful executive, life strategist, and author Rob Swymer has gone through his share of adversity. Rob married his first wife Bonnie at the age of 21 during the summer of his college junior year and together, they had 3 children. In 2013, Rob lost Bonnie to a massive brain aneurysm and he learned that all the adversity in his life prior had given him the strength to endure the loss of a loved one. Rob believes our internal voice influences our every thought, belief, and action. He used this model to move forward. In reality our internal voice is louder than any external voice we can hear. Rob thinks you need to start with mindset. If you get your mindset right on a daily basis and with the inner voice in check there is nothing you can't achieve.

Often people attend time management courses and come back very enthusiastic about what they've learned. They start of with good intentions but after a short period slip back. Perhaps time management is bigger and broader and the question we should be asking ourselves is how are we managing ourselves. In the bigger context it's apparent that more people are asking themselves this question now than three years ago. Post pandemic people are perhaps struggling to reset the boundaries of what’s acceptable, how they work, what productivity looks like and how it gets measured, how they compare themselves to others and their productivity and how they can still establish credibility with their bosses when there has been less presence around.

A clinical depression in her 20s, and later, a bipolar I diagnosis, caused Michele Capots to lose all self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth. She felt defined by her illness and was unsure what it meant for the rest of her life. She no longer believed in herself, and lost the confidence to achieve her goals.Michelle knew nothing about bipolar and was in and out of psychiatric wards for three years. The self-stigma she felt was difficult to overcome and made her fight against. her diagnosis. Someone told Michele that she should to run towards the sound of the cannon and she took this as meaning she should run towards the problem rather than away from it. When she accepted that the disorder was only a part of her not all of her she found freedom and achieved mental wellness.

Kevin Roth began to play the dulcimer in 1972 at the old age of thirteen, and at sixteen recorded his first album which immediately launched him into international fame. His career took him to a concert and symphony stages around the world, to festivals, radio, television shows, and two appearances at the White House. Then came a sudden diagnosis of Melanoma which changed his life.He was given around two years to live and had the choice to accept the diagnosis or live. He chose life. Through adapting and combining techniques from his music and performance practice with others that he researched, he found a simple and powerful method to change how he lived and discovered how to not just survive but to become truly happy and thrive. Kevin feels we create stories every day. When we wake up it can be a good day or a bad day. For example, if you’re in a really bad mood and the phone rings and it's a friend you haven’t heard from a while then suddenly you’re in a whole other dimension. All the drama that was ruining your life is gone. When you look at mindful awareness and take the time to contemplate it you realise that you really shouldn't get upset about very much. The story is the story. We also need to recreate our life on a daily basis and retune ourselves through the day. Many people don't know how to sit in silence or be comfortable with themselves any more. We have an inner voice that will talk to us if we are quiet enough to listen so we can replace what doesn't work with what does.

Lara Sabanosh and her husband had been marrried for twenty years and had been based at Guantanamo Bay in a civilian capacity for four years. On January 9th 2015 after an evening event he went missing and his body was found later in the bay. In telling the story of his disappearance, the media portrayed him as a war hero and a wonderful husband and father but this did not tell the full story of their relationship. The evening her husband went missing he had assaulted her three times verbally and physically. The attack had been reported but the people who were questioning her about his disappearance were the same people he socialised with. Nobody was listening to her and the reports she had made against him ignored. Since then Lara has often been asked why people stay abusers. Lara feels that she became a military wife at a very young age. She was nineteen years old when she met her husband and was a college student with big plans for the future. She came from a close-knit family unit with no background in violence but she now realises that the stronger the ties between them came the more she lost herself. At the start of the relationship it was not abusive but she now realises that there were some red flags before they got married. There were incidents that happened which she now feels should have given her an indication about how he handled situations and that he was lying to her. After they got married these things became her problem.

Pre-pandemic in the US there was a notion that if you did all the right things, happiness would just happen to you. That's not actually the way happiness works. In the pandemic there was a paradigm shift where millions of people started asking themselves were they happy in their life or was their life ending up how they imagined it. Lots of people said no its not and resigned in mass numbers. A second paradigm shift happened when people asked themselves questions about their dissatisfaction at work. The HR department had always known the answer was more money and better benefits but now that people were asking if they were happy in life, the HR departments were at a loss. In the old world we knew that more money would make us happy. In the new world no one knows the answer because few people know how to make themselves happy.

 Paola Knecht is a certified leadership, transformational, and self-development coach with fifteen years of experience working in leading-edge global corporations, including Viatris and Syngenta. In her recently published book The Success Mindset: Take Back the Leadership of Your Mind she challenges the mainstream view of success and asks her readers to redefine success so it is truly meaningful to them. Paola looks at the difference between people who are extraordinary and reach things no one thinks are possible and people who don't achieve the things they want to. She feels that many people are living against an externalised idea of what success looks like rather than what matters to them and that they are following a definition of success that was not really defined by them but comes from external sources.

Clint Davis is an entrepreneur with a passion for storytelling and preserving the past. A cancer survivor who lost two siblings at a young age, Clint has always had a keen awareness of the importance of remembering the past, while also making the most of the present moment. He now empowers others to save their histories and pass on their legacies. In this podcast:Clint talks about how moving gives you the opportunity to reinvent yourselfWhy failure needs to be factored in Why holding on to your past is important.

Rosie Mankes is a life coach, motivational speaker, and author of Find Your Joy and Run With It, a memoir about overcoming her second battle with cancer, the transitioning of her mother into an assisted living facility, and the unexpected loss of her brother, all within one year.Rosie talks to Dr Russell Thackeray about how her identity as a secret comedian helped her come out of adversity happier and stronger and how humour was one of the healthiest coping mechanisms for her. In this podcast:Rosie explains how she managed to find joy in everyday living againHow making a number a small changes can work better than ‘big picture’ thinkingWhy you need to define what makes you happy

Karen Liebenguth is an accredited mindfulness teacher, certified coach, mentor and facilitator.  She is also the founder of Green Space Coaching and a life and executive coach, eco-therapist and mindfulness trainer.  She was one of the first people in the UK to start coaching while walking in nature after finding that both she and her clients get far better results outside rather than sitting indoors.  In this podcast:Karen explains why she became interested in coaching in natureThe benefits of being in natureWhy we need to experience mindfulness for ourselves

Dr Alex Hershaft was just 5 years old when the Nazis invaded his homeland of Poland. He and his family were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto but he survived and after escaping Nazi persecution and immigrating to the USA, he worked as an environmental consultant. In 1972, a routine inventory of a Midwest slaughterhouse changed the course of his life. He is now the President and founder of Farm Animals Right Movement (FARM), an international nonprofit working to end the use of animals for food. 

Lisa Broderick has worked with entrepreneurs and established companies to create lives of presence and purpose for four decades. Her approach of integrating science with metaphysics and her own personal experiences to help others with little or no scientific or spiritual training master their innate abilities with practices designed to improve their lives, their relationships, and how the world sees them. In this podcast:Lisa talks about how it’s possible to slow down timeThe science behind ‘All the time in the world’Controlling the perception of time

This week on the Resilience Unravelled podcast, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Arman Vestad who spent a lot of his life on the run! Through a series of poor life choices and unfortunate circumstances, he found himself dealing drugs and engaging in other criminal activity. After leaving prison for the 10th time, it wasn’t long until Arman found himself under arrest once again. This time, however, a policeman on the case sat down with him and asked what he could do to help. He showed that he cared, and those few moments changed the course of Arman’s life forever. In this podcast:Arman talks about the importance of young people having boundaries and limits The power of communityHow one person can turn someones life around

The Soberful Life with Veronica ValliThis week on the Resilience Unravelled podcast, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Veronica Valli who struggled with alcoholism through most of her twenties. A binge drinker, she was aware for some time that something was wrong but was unable to define what it was however a chance meeting led to her finally getting help and turning her life around. At the height of her addiction, Veronica was unable to go to work without the aid of a drink and her life and confidence were in tatters. She got sober in 2000 at the age of twenty-seven and now uses this experience to help and inspire others. In this podcast:Veronica talks about the signs that someone might be struggling with alcoholHow alcohol affects the genders differentlyThe importance of connection and community.

Jonathan Joseph saw a lot of toxicity and negativity when he was working in the luxury womans fashion and sportswear industry. This not only affected people working in the industry but also consumers through marketing and advertising. He thought that it would be possible to shortcut some of the issues such as the body dysmorphia created by unrealistic standards by empowering children rather than fixing broken adults. He feels that by using fashion as a lens to talk about and deconstruct complex issues, conversations can be brokered between children and adults because fashion is infinitely relateable. It can then help play a role in how children navigate the world

The type of conversation that many couples have often doesn't help their relationship. Often it boils down to a debate, a checking in about who knows what and whose ideas are better. What’s needed is an enlivened conversation that builds resilience and allows both people to explore and learn together. They can then move out of an adversarial mindset to a place where they can learn and be resilient together.Learning is the most important thing that a couple needs to do. A relationship can be demanding and needs energy and an inspiring vision, something to aim for that learning can be added to. The vision is what you’re going to learn to do together not who you already are when you start the relationship.

Welcome to 2022!This week Dr Russell Thackeray muses on the recent arrival of 2022 and suggests some ideas to make the most of the year. He focuses some thoughts on the nature of resolutions as opposed to goals and challenges us to think more creatively about where and why we are aiming as people often understate their long term ambitions. There will also some thoughts around choices and the nature of willpower, whether it depletes along the lines of decision fatigue, or whether it’s more of a belief system.Hopefully there will be a few ideas or nuggets that you may find useful.As we enter our next phase of podcasts, we would like to wish you all a tremendous and fulfilling New Year!!

Critical thinking is essential in helping teens work through a problem and realise what is going to move them forward so they get the result they want. Schools can’t be responsible for everything so parents need to be responsible for the provision of a parent model. A parent helping guide their child through making a decision is extremely powerful but Valerie often finds that although great strides have been made on parenting there is still some thinking in society that adults know best. It’s up to the parent to create a connection and allow their child to make mistakes and decisions and to figure out their own path

Another chance to listen to last year's Christmas podcast from Dr. Russell Thackeray. In it he talks about why resilience is so important at this time of year and also explains the need to stop and rejuvanate ourselves and/or invest in ourselves to plan forward. Finally, he discusses how the narrative we use can help our mental state and how confirmation bias can help give us the things we believe in.The only other thing to say is that we hope you have a happy and safe Christmas and we look forward to catching up with you again in 2022!

Whatever the size of a dispute, the issue at hand is usually not the problem. People generally prefer peace so only involve conflict if they feel there is no other way to get resolution. As we are not generally trained in ways to resolve conflict it is difficult to know how to deal with anger or upset without being triggered yourself. One of the key foundational skills of life therefore is learning how to listen to other peoples emotions. This can help in developing an emotional database and provides a way of avoid the trigger that causes getting upset or anger when someone starts yelling at us.

MS is a life limiting illness but people can choose how to look at it, deal with it and live with it. It can be very easy to feel out of control and slip into a depressive zone but manipulating the way you use your brain can help deal not only with MS, but also other illnesses or situations.  As well as mindset, there are many other things that can interfere with how your body functions. What you eat, drink and put into your body is important as is having a support circle and someone to talk about your MS to. Other things such as home cleaning products can also have an effect on your body and how it functions.

There are many types of yoga. Hatha, Vinyasa, Kundalini, Restorative and Laughter for example, and Paul Denniston uses elements from each in his Grief Yoga practice. Paul designed Grief Yoga to help with his challenging emotions of anxiety and grief by releasing pain to fund more empowerment and love. Paul feels that we can have physical pain in the body that is a manifestation of suppressed grief and thatbBecause everyone grieves differently, it appears in different areas of the body such as the back, neck, stomach, pelvis or chest.

Derek Newborn had always had a vision of how his life would be. He achieved everything he thought he wanted but, on the inside, abandonment issues from his past meant he felt extremely empty. The only thing he was concerned about was filling the emptiness he felt. and he used self-sabotaging behaviours to try to find the peaceful feeling he felt he was missing. Derek's fear outweighed any love he had for his family and partner and he was just focused on not being abandoned. The abandonment process though actually pushes people away so through his self sabotaging behaviours, Derek created everything to was trying to avoid.

When Clarke was diagnosed with Polymyositis he was depressed, angry, mad at the world but also helpless. Because the disease had progressed very quickly it was difficult to understand what was happening and as his body was declining, his mind was driving him downward as well. At the time Clarke didn't really know how much mindset can affect physical health but an experience he had when he thought he was going to die changed things and he realised he had something to live for. This change in mindset led to a change in physiology and Clarke now feels that mindset was the key to this and, we can do anything we want if we focus on what we say to ourselves and what we believe.

Nicki feels that we don’t talk about grief and loss and what we go through in the early days enough. There is a lot of information about grief but lots of it is irrelevant. We need to have an idea of hope and a path towards it but we don't need to have someone telling us it'll all be great. Logically, we know we’ll come out the other side and that we’ll get back to what will be a new normality without the person we’ve lost.

Jeff Martinovich has had many dark days but, when he looks back on the things that happened, he feels the key to getting through was perseverance and resilience. He thinks you have to dig deep to find strength you maybe don't know you have so you can find a way to keep fighting and grow so you can deal with even bigger challenges. 

Kathy Hagler partners with organsations through good times, crises, challenges, and obstacles, and helps to move their culture, climate, and character forward with clear vision, strategic intent, and success in an everchanging world. She says that organisations are similar to human beings - both have wounds and, like people, organisations can break and can heal. We all carry wounds in our bodies, minds, and spirits that can hinder our lives at work and at home. Using her own journey, the philosophy of wabi-sabi and the Japanese art of kintsugi, Kathy helps pinpoint the root of pain, suffering and distress in an organisation and its people and then transforms it by by building character, trustworthiness, and resilience.

David’s Richman's career working for a Wall Street firm was incredibly stressful. He suffered from both external and self-inflicted stress, was overweight and a smoker, did no exercise and had four-year old twins, as well being in a relationship with an abusive alcoholic. He needed to make a change but it wasn’t until his only sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer that he started to change his life around.He says it was like a light switch going on. His whole life he had been trying to be an overachiever for other people. Whatever it was doing he was looking for external gratification. Eventually he understood the concept of having to do things for yourself and when he realised this, he took control of his life.

Eating disorders cross gender, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic groups and are among the deadliest of mental illnesses. Anyone caught in the downward spiral of continually obsessing about food, weight, and body image, needs support to free themselves. People not suffering from an eating disorder often believe that saying “No!” to self-destructive behaviors should be easy but it’s not. It can be a daily struggle with no single solution. Instead it’s a journey of stops and starts but, through learning various strategies, it is possible to break its hold. 

The word 'sensitive' can be seen to have some negative correlations for men by being thought of a ‘weak’ characteristic. Frailty or vulnerability are things men cannot allow themselves to be and this may have led to the increase in suicide in men because they can’t recognise themselves as being vulnerable in any way. Cultural icons in films and books supersede all the emotions people have so there is a cultural expectation for men to behave in a certain way. If sensitivity is seen as something negative, there may be a need to reframe the term to reach men who may feel unable to embrace their highly sensitive natures within their existing environment.

Studies have shown that love after 50 can be more satisfying than at any other stage in life. People are more emotionally stable, more focused on the present and know not only what they have to have, but also what they can live without. Partnering is no longer about building a family, career and fortune. It’s about sharing intimacy as grounded individuals.

There are many people trying deal with substance abuse and addiction who don't talk about it because of the stigma they feel surrounds it. Encouraging difficult conversations and honest education around these issues, can help break down the stigma and ensure that those who struggle receive the help they deserve.  

Sometimes it takes a catastrophic event to wake us up, something that upends life as we know it. These turning points can be terrifying but we all encounter them in our lives. The real question is, 'how will we face them'? Although we want to hang on to what’s 'normal', disruptive moments are exactly what’s needed to transform ourselves and the world around us.Radha Ruparell is a global cross-sector leader with expertise in leadership development and personal transformation. She has worked with CEOs, Fortune 500 senior executives, social entrepreneurs, and grassroots leaders around the world. At the height of the pandemic she fell ill with Covid and found she needed all her leadership skills and experience to navigate through the uncertainity and change it brought.

Claudia Tinnirello is originally from Sicily but has lived in England since 2005. Not being an English native speaker, Claudia understands the struggles of overcoming judgement and the fear of making mistakes when speaking a foreign language. She has however discovered ways of becoming a better and confident public speaker by sharing her voice in many different ways - an international bestselling author and the CEO and founder of web design business Sophisticated Cloud Limited being just two. After being made redundant four times, Claudia had started to lack confidence and become unsure of what to do next. It was suggested to her that she join Toastmasters International to try to and restore her confidence and control her nerves and fear of public speaking. So much so she is now President of the Toastmasters International Basingstoke Speakers Club.

Prior to her professional life as a coach and consultant, Jennifer or Jen Crowley thought she had life she was meant to have. Married with a son, she also had a high profile job as Vice President of a large wine distribution company. She then went through what she refers to as a six year character building period before deciding she needed to follow a completely different path and left her successful 20-year career as an executive to share her path to change and fulfillment.

Pat Moffett married his wife Carmen in 1976 and they raised five children together.  Then, in 1998 Carmen was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's. After years of struggling with the disease, she was finally admitted to a nursing home and Pat then wrote his book ‘Ice Cream in the Cupboard’ about their story post diagnosis.After Carmen's death in 2010, Pat continued to work with the Alzheimer's Association, raising awareness and providing support for the caregivers and loved ones of Early Onset Alzhimer's victims.  He also brought his book to the big screen and the feature film ‘Ice Cream in the Cupboard’ was released in 2019.

Wendy Tamis Robbins anxiety, obsessive-compulsive and panic disorders started when she was a young child growing up in a volatile household. Anxiety controlled her life well into adulthood, to the point of agoraphobia. Despite this, she worked her way through Dartmouth College and law school before, in her 30s, she set her mind to overcoming the anxiety and panic attacks that increasingly limited her life.It took many years and an unsuccessful marriage before she finally took hold of her mental health and escaped from her self-inflicted prison. By realising that no physical sensation comes without a thought preceeding it and cultivating awareness and recognition of where your anxiety is being stimulated, you can find the thoughts behind the anxiety. Understanding that these thoughts are optional means you can choose new ones that serve you better.  

We all work towards a code, a pattern or belief system that we follow in life. This can be very difficult to change and to do so we need to deliberately step outside the code to find what is meaningful to us or to build the life we want to make for ourselves. If we create a picture beyond our current code, it becomes the motivation and the key to break it.

"There is no evidence to link the severity of pain with the amount of tissue damage. If the body heals and the pain persists it may be more about whether we are anxious, depressed or have negative beliefs about pain rather than the extent of the injury. Our attitude to pain can also affect the level of pain we feel as does our personality and behaviour."

Through counselling, Gam anon and researching addiction, Erica managed to separate the person from the addiction. The person she married was not the person who did those reckless things, but there was much anger and hurt. She couldn't throw the towel though because she knew it was his addiction that was causing his behaviour. When she first found out about the gambling she felt duped and angry but looking back she realised there were some missed red flags. Patrick would always have a reason for why her debit card didn't work and she believed him but now she thinks should she have demanded proof or better answers?