FW: Support

Spirals in Painter IX

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This week on Finding Water is called Support.

So the very first thing I'd like to say here is a truly heartfelt thank you to all of you for all your comments and good thoughts. They help and are a true support to me. Thank you.

I've got an afternoon meeting today with one of my local friends too. And I'll no doubt be talking to / emailing some of my other friends as usual throughout this week, with maybe a touch more awareness of the support I get from these contacts.

What I wanted to address though were things one can do to feel supported when there is no-one there.

I had a year when every time I reached out for support there was none. I'd ring and get no answer; leave messages and get no reply; I'd email and get no responses. That was a year when I was having to learn about self-support. Here are some of the things that I did that helped.

Morning Pages

When writing morning pages, or journaling, I found ways to pour out the negatives that did not then have them coming back to me - this is a real problem for some people - and I'm one of them - negatives when expressed can seem to double, and invite even more in. Yet its necessary to be able to acknowledge them, let them go and move on.

What I've found works for me is that I write out the upset, the grumbles etc. just as they come.

Then having done this I write what I'd like instead:

I write the positive opposites, or alternatives and these I put little check boxes next to and tick to show that these are the ones I am asking for, the ones I intend, the ones I want to put energy into. Sometimes these might be affirmations or wishes; often they are requests to the universe.



Past Successes

Much of what I do is energy work and there have been times, working on myself, when I've had to take two-steps backward to move forward. It really helps at such times to be able to recall those things that really, incontrovertibly worked!

For instance I no longer have migraines from eating chocolate. When anyone doubts that its possible to remove a severe allergic reaction to a substance I remind myself that I can now eat chocolate without migraines, something that I had difficulty with for about 20 years - for 17 of them I avoided chocolate as much as possible but always reacted if some had been snuck in by someone who thought "a little wouldn't hurt" - amazing how many people thought this! Now, amazingly, I'm grateful to them as they effectively conducted experiments on me that proved I was still allergic when given the substance without my knowledge.

These were life crippling migraines, each episode tended to last around a week when I could do nothing but lie in a darkened room - no medicines helped. The pain was excruciating. Bright lights and noises were awful. When I doubt that energy work can do any good (and there are bleak times when that comes to me) I remind myself of the chocolate. I've plenty of other examples but none so straight-forward. And if necessary I can eat some or drink a hot chocolate to really help me absorb the truth - that I am cured of this. Cured without drugs and using only energy work.

Phew - I clearly needed that as a pep talk to myself right now! I hadn't intended to go into it quite so deeply... but maybe it helps... it shows what I mean.

Of course chocolate allergies are not what I'm currently working on. But it still helps as reassurance.

Project, Monthly, Annual, 11 year reviews

Something else that really helps is to review what I've got, where I am now and how I got here. After all, if I'm feeling the need for support, it may be because I'm going down a blind alley and my intuition is trying to alert me - if so I'd like to spot this as soon as possible. Or I may simply be making slow progress and need a longish time scale over which to see that I am making progress. I may even have come to a stopping point and need to accept that - these are the hardest of all for me. To accept that what I've been working on heart and soul for the last x months is now finished, or at least needs to be left alone for a while.

I used to really dislike reviews at work - they always seemed to be synonymous with criticism - but for my own work its different and I've learned to love them. I get a huge sense of satisfaction just from doing them, something I never got from one I was paid to do! It doesn't even matter if I start out feeling that I'm getting nowhere - reviewing shows me what I've made, the ground I've covered, the actions I've taken - it will also highlight all the stuff I've forgotten, and some of the flakier ideas I've thankfully left behind! If I've not made progress at all it shows me why... other things have been happening and they have been taking their share of my time.

If you are still mid-project then there really is nothing like just doing the work, whatever it is you are doing, getting on with the next do-able small step.

But what if you can't see where to go next?

You've looked back and seen how you got here, you've got whatever you've been working on and it seems as done now as it can be. There are times when work does just need putting aside and waiting for you to get a fresh perspective before you make any alterations to it or build directly on it. Maybe its one of those times.

That's when you need the next project. Maybe something a little different, something to stretch a new aspect of you. Maybe something fun!

I'm at this point now with my SoulCollage® cards. Its not that I will ever have completely finished these - they are a reflection of me and I hope that as I continue to change they will too. Over the last few days away from blogging I've been doing a thorough review of my cards. I've chucked out quite a few and updated many others. And whilst I've been doing this its been at the back of my mind that I need to start, in some small way, whatever my next project will be.

I've ideas about what this might involve - I love having hard copy of my pictures and I love making those pictures digitally. I think it would be fun now to work larger than 5x7. I need some sort of purpose for my pictures - they are my current way of doing energy work - I'm fairly confident that what needs to be done will come, provided I'm there to do it.

On the other hand, I like the idea of doing something in 3D.

What means of self-support do you use?