consciousness – Carrie Burnett, LMT, Ph.D Candidate

Self awareness. WTF is it?

When I describe TruBirth sometimes what I often find myself talking about is how the class is a tool to create connection and self awareness in your reproductive journey. One way I actively promote this idea is through my online Facebook community. I regularly post questions designed to get members thinking and talking about their feelings and growing their tools of self awareness. Throughout my TruBirth E-learning course I have tools to aide in this process but I wanted to spend some time really identifying a general ability to be self aware.

You may be saying, “I am self aware! For instance right now I know that I really want to read this blog post.” 😉

You may be saying, “I feel like I’m self aware most of the time, sometimes I forget to turn off the toaster oven or eat lunch but I’m generally on top of my feelings.”

You may be saying, “Most of the time my emotions catch me off guard. I wish I had a better handle on what I felt and why.”

You may also be going, “Emotions??? What are those?”

Wherever you are this can be helpful, especially if you are even thinking about starting your reproductive journey! So let’s look at ways you as an adult can go back and create an inward environment that welcomes your emotions and, in turn, self awareness. Let’s talk about the 5 steps to self awareness.

Step 1. Creating an open space within your mind and heart.

This will be something you may need to return to frequently but it is simply saying to yourself, “I am open to feel what is with in me, and I will love myself wherever that is.“

You can just say this to yourself right now, but the more frequently you are saying it, and the more visible this is to you, the more your heart will open up to the reality of this statement. This is your self awareness key.

Maybe consider making it a note on your desk at work, or on you bathroom vanity. Maybe embroider it on a pillow or get it tattooed! The point is the more visible this is to you on a regular basis the more powerful it will be.

Step 2: Spend time in thought daily.

You may be thinking this seems too easy to be including in the 5 steps to self awareness, but stick with me for a minute. In today’s world where technology is handheld and can even join us in the bathroom for our daily poop, most people are spending what in the past would have been time to think or process on Facebook or reading their Kindle.

Now this post is not a guilt fest for using technology or even to imply that technology is the root of all evil. I’m not saying technology is intrinsically bad by any means, because at the end of the day you have the power to control your devices. You can chose to put them down. You can say “I will no longer take a device with me to poop” or “When I nurse my child I will not look at a device.” It’s up to you what is right for use of your technological devices, all I am suggesting is finding SOME sort of time that YOU want to be in thought.

That is all, just find time and be in your own thoughts. This time is not meant to be structured at all. What we are looking for here is unstructured time in your open thoughts.

All self awareness is the ability to assess right? But what do you have to assess if you do not sit with yourself regularly? It’s kind of like time spent with a good friend. Generally speaking you have no real objective other than just to be together. You probably are not doing regular psych evaluations with them yet you probably still feel you have a good idea of who they are. That is because there is so much to see when you just spend time with someone. When you just learn to listen.

So go for a walk without your phone, workout without music, turn off the radio on your drive home. It doesn’t have to be constant, just some time everyday. Who knows you might actually find that you enjoy being with yourself! 😉

Step 3: Broaden your emotional vocabulary.

We might all know things like mad, or sad or happy. Maybe you know more than that and that’s great.

There are literally 100s of words to describe your feelings!

A great assessment tool (perhaps you would call it a self awareness tool) would be to write down all the words you know that describe feelings. Maybe even try to define what they are or give examples. Then when you are all done, look up a list of words and commit to learning 5 or 10 new words! You might realize you already know more than you thought, and even this can be a great reminder!

With limited language skills comes limited ability to assess (see I keep using that word). If you only know the colors red and black, how well are you going to be able to dialogue about the sunset and refer to your assessments? This will be much easier the more language around the subject you understand! This is true with all areas of study, including your emotional self!

Step 4: Notice trends.

When you are spending time with yourself daily (DO IT!) do you notice any trends?

For example I might notice that when I think about writing I start to feel bad. Or when I think about the conversation I had with a co-worker I feel happy! You can really help yourself out in the beginning by writing theses down. Note in the examples that this does not have to look like some sort of PHD-level paper on emotions, this is very basic simple feelings, with whatever emotional language you might have. (It helps to have lots of language around this! Don’t you agree?)

This is what I call peripheral self awareness, in other words, this is the outer edge of your self awareness and is a step that can be/should be done ALL THE TIME. Like a reaction to stubbing your toe, the more you do this the more of a reflex it will become! Thus paving the way for you to further assess whats going on!

Your truth stands in your trends. If you can access these reactions and trends then you begin to find your deeper belief systems. Knowing these is like finding the road map to yourself.

Step 5: Asses your trends and draw conclusions from them.

Note: You are not on trial here. These do not have to be perfect or even 100% accurate – it is all a process. You are navigating new waters and you may follow an idea, only to realize it doesn’t really resonate with you after all and that time was not wasted! The process is what we are looking for NOT THE OUTCOME!

Let’s take a second here to remind ourselves that all feelings are welcome. Maybe re-read your self awareness key from Step 1? In order to be able to dig this deep you must create an open and loving environment for yourself so you can avoid defenses coming up and stopping the reflection process.

When you hear yourself saying “no don’t go there,” or “no don’t write that,” take note of that. This could be your mind’s way of pushing feelings down that we have deemed socially unacceptable or even “bad”. Be kind to yourself. This can be scary but if you feel ready push yourself there. This is most likely an area of yourself that really needs love and healing. This part of you may need to hear.

Look at the trends you wrote down and try to see if any conclusions you come up with feel right to you. By feel right I don’t mean that they don’t meet any resistance, but that they seem to fit. Finding this feeling might be hard, so if you cannot find one that feels right you can just write out as many as you can come up with and leave it at that. Next time you are thinking about it in your unstructured time, it might just come to you.

Examples of conclusions:

“When I think about writing I feel bad.” Some conclusions might be:

I am scared to write
I don’t like writing
I feel insecure in my writing ability

“When I talk to my co-worker I feel happy.” Some conclusions might be:

I feel connected to this particular person
I have feelings for them
They remind me of my father

Listen to the things that pop up in your mind, because this is WIDE OPEN. There are so many things that you could come up with. At the end of the day we are looking for the things that sit right with YOU and feel the most true. (it could be multiple)

You are a work in progress just like every other person on this earth. We are all navigating this life and trying to find our way. This can be a tool to help you find more joy and confidence in yourself and to feel deeper and truer connection with those around you. I hope these steps are helpful. Please feel free to comment any other ideas you may have that have helped you find your self awareness!

34% of women these days are reporting their birth expense as “traumatic”(1), 28% are showing some or all of the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in regards to their brith experience (2). Despite the growing ideal of “natural childbirth” over the last 10 years our cesarean rate has stayed in and around 30% nation wide.

As a childbirth educator and lactation consultant I see lots of moms just before and just after they experience birth. I know that in my experience there are moms who desperately do not want interventions at birth, that regardless of the precautions they take or the education they get they end up with the very things they did not want. I also know that lots of moms who experience this are told not only by those close to them but by society as a whole that if they should “just be happy for a healthy baby and healthy mom”.

This notion of being grateful for “healthy baby and healthy mom” is not lost, nor is it wrong, it is just used inappropriately and (likely) unknowingly by those around new parents in order to deal with the discomfort of the listener. I don’t think any mom is going to say, I am ungrateful for my healthy baby and being healthy myself. The notion that this statement somehow is the antitheses of the pain and loss mothers may feel is where the problem comes in.

When we practice self awareness and making space for the experience and feelings of others (as is spelled out 5 Steps to Pursuing Self Awareness) we realize that no two sentiments ever cancel each other out.

Birth trauma is used to describe experiences that pose a real or perceived threat to the safety and well being of the mother, father or baby in birth, including the threat of death. It can also be used to describe experiences where the traumatized person perceives a threat to the physical or emotional integrity of the mom, dad or baby. Note that this concept is not determined by outcome but by perception and experience of the traumatized person, so, for example, all that matters is that the risk of death be present, not if the baby or mom died. (This experience is not indicative of birth trauma, though it absolutely would fall under the umbrella of this definition.)

Birth trauma has a wide range of instigators from having medical procedures pushed or forced upon moms, to the loss of mom or baby, to the mourning of plans lost from the ideal birth a parent envisioned.

The presence of birth trauma is never to negate the fact that mom is grateful for the life of her baby or her own life. I have often heard women criticize those who are mourning and feeling the wide range of emotions associated with birth trauma as selfish or silly for caring more about ideals than the health and well being of baby/mom. I can tell you that in my time spent with those mourning the loss of an ideal birth or other traumatic experiences I have never met a mother who does not love their baby or the fact that they are both healthy.

The presence of birth trauma points to the fact that our existence is so much more that purely physical. Our physical life is not more important or more significant than our emotional or spiritual existence. This would imply that someone who lives enslaved or oppressed has the same quality of life as someone who isn’t simply because they are physically alive. I don’t know many people who would debate this fact, but if you deny people the space to feel their emotions to the fullest simply because they are physically healthy and alive you are imposing this idea. SO though a mother and baby who experienced a birth trauma may be physically healthy whats to say that they are emotionally intact? At the end of the day is it really up to ANYONE other than the mom or day them self to decide whether their feelings are important or not?

So lets not devalue your sentiment of how grateful YOU are for a healthy mom and baby by forcing your feelings on someone else! Those feelings belong to you and there is nothing wrong with that, if you want to interact with new parents feelings around their birth-ASK!

It may be helpful to think about why you want to move the conversation to the feelings of gratitude rather than listen to what really is going on in moms mind and heart.

One thing that is pretty common is a general discomfort with emotions that may be deemed as “bad” in our society. This would basically be anything that isn’t happy or anything that brings up feelings of sadness.

Another common reason people will be so quick to shut down the emotional processing of certain emotions in another is because they themselves have similar emotions that were not allowed to be felt, or were shut down by someone else. You yourself may have experienced birth trauma or even another form of trauma in your life, and have never allowed yourself to mourn and feel the feelings that go along with it. So when that person starts to talk about these things you yourself are triggered back to these repressed emotions and in order to shut it back down again and shut down the person you are talking to.

Identifying that this is at the root of your response gives you the ability to now decide if you would like to either work through your own experiences or if you are uncomfortable talking about this traumatic experience and maybe need to distance yourself from this conversations about the trauma at hand.

If the latter is your sentiment then simply say “I hear what you are saying, and I want to honor that. This is triggering some things in me that I am not ready to open up. I can not talk about this at this time.”

Once we have done that, we have set up a safety net to catch ourselves when we are talking to a new mom/dad about their experience. Then you can try one of the following:

Train your brain to ask questions and listen.

Offer to write out a birth story for the family as they tell it to you while nursing/feeding the baby.

LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN. Then offer to call tomorrow to listen some more.

Offer sympathy with their experience, acknowledging that their experience is important.

Remember that what they say is valid, even if it sounds “wrong” compared to your experience/feelings.

Know how you can help and don’t be afraid to ask for specifics if you are unsure.

Watch for signs of PPD and offer love and help if mom needs it. Be delicate and gentle here but don’t be afraid to speak up.

Moms need us to start listening, asking questions and speaking up for their well being. The first step in doing this is identifying any personal prohibitors we may have and addressing them fully. Through our own emotional awareness we make space for others to find themselves. So next time you catch yourself thinking or saying “all that matters is a healthy baby and healthy mom” Stop yourself and instead say “Your experience matters and I am here for you.” You never know how big of a difference that could make in the new families early weeks.

Did you feel free to mourn your birth pain or birth trauma? Have you ever found yourself saying “all that matters is healthy baby and healthy mom”? Why do you think you said this?

References:

1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12581038

2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16808083

Tag: consciousness

5 Steps To Pursuing Self Awareness