Feng Shui Coaching

Have you even been in a situation like this:

• you felt you needed to hide who you were, hold back, or shine a little less, to protect someone else from feeling smaller, weaker or devalued? (This can often happen between siblings, but also between child and parent.)
• felt embarrassed by trying your best?
• sensed that someone was jealous or even felt threatened by you? And was there ever a time when you felt you would be less loved and accepted for being who you are?

Many of us grew up with little or no encouragement or emotional support for our gifts and uniqueness. When I was a young girl for example, it was believed that praising a child would cause conceit and snobbery. Being different was definitely not a good thing. Survival meant blending in.

Yet at what a cost! Blending in – and protect ourselves from further pain — means developing specific coping mechanisms and survival skills, which in terms also means settling for less than we have the potential to be. Over time we begin to identify more with the coping mechanisms than who we were to begin with and these grow into our emotional stumbling blocks that hold us back as adults. It takes a lot of inner work to recover because these coping mechanisms are at the subconscious level, behind the scenes and to recover from them we have to remember the decisions we made and let them go.

In the natural world, coping mechanisms are neither good, nor bad. Tomato plants, for example, naturally repel insects. We do not judge plants as being good or bad for having these built-in features. In fact gardeners often choose varieties for certain coping strategies. There are certain flowers, for example, you can plant if you want to attract a lot of butterflies in your garden, while other plants have certain features that ward off insects, making them ideal companion plants.

Can you recognize any coping mechanisms or agreements you made about yourself in the past?  Remember not to label these as good or bad. They were simply what you needed to survive at that time in your life and it is safe to let them go.

What feng shui features do you think you would be useful in helping you understand your coping mechanisms?

In the next post, you will have an opportunity to do an exercise to help you release coping mechanisms.

(c) Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.