Hi Clare. Now on your stress day 7 you ask to go back to our childhood. And that situation is indeed at the origin of what I still live today. As a very young child I was honest and dared to say 'No' to my grandmother who was raising me, my sister and brother while my parents worked day and night.  I was often punished and hit by my grandmother because I was not a 'nice girl'. She convinced my mother to take me to a doctor because I was not normal in her eyes. I was too lively myself and spoke freely. My mother was very afraid herself of her own mother and could not stand against her to protect me.  So I adapted myself to others - made  me small and said 'yes', just ot be 'good enough'.. I depended on the grown-up ones to  survive; to be loved  and to be worthy of getting love and attention . Later as an adult myself, I was not able to have a healthy relationship with a partner. I had 3 broken relationships with 3 men I loved. In the beginning, I adapted to them all to be loved - afterwards I revolted and felt guilty at the same time. After too much fights I was always the first to leave , because I could not stand to be left alone or to lose my loved ones . At that time my sister past away , then my brother, my father and mother. They all died and I felt completely left alone in this world. I never, ever wanted to feel this feeling again! So I chose my present partner out of security reasons. I'm not attracted to him and his behouviour irritates me terribly. But he is safe, will never hit me and never leave me. So I forced myself to stay with him - eventhough I missed really loving someone very very much. I judged myself to be weak., and tried to believe my own lies. You will learn to love him. I'm living this inner daily fight for more then 10 years now and has cost me a lot of stress and physical pain we talked about last time. I asked myself now the same question, my grandmother did years ago: what is wrong about me? Why can't I be in love with a nice man? A was for many years mad at my grandmother and worked with therapists on this. I'm not mad at her anymore. But my inner lens through which I see life hasn't changed. Clare, I'm  sorry I didn't tell you all this details the last time I wrote. I was too ashamed to tell. Can you help me to see and honour my lens? 

I wanted to reach out to you about some changes I have noticed for me lately.

 I am really feeling confused at the moment with feeling of stress.  

 1. That said I don't know if the course is a cause of stress to me or that the way my mind is flip-flopping around.  I just can't seem to focus I seem to have gone away with the fairies, The only think that is clear is that I don't feel I know who I am anymore, sometimes its like when I hear my own voice it doesn't sound like me. 

The one really interesting thing that came up this week was something my epilepsy nurse said at annual appointment.  "On reflection Karen, you were experiencing such stress 5 years ago when this started......"  I would have said to you at the time I was very busy or had a lot on, I never thought I was stressed, yet from my accounts to her it seems that's exactly what was happening. 

2. What can be done to help people who don't recognise that they are stressed - this has just made me think of my mum and how she always says we have to "just get things done" never did I find this harsh but it could really have fed in to that thinking. (sorry that just came to me).

Have you got anything you can put on a podcast that can help me understand points 1 and 2?

This podcast is a response to a question on facebook about this comment: 'Any revelation will come in what that doing was meant to achieve for the self if anything…'

Listener question: I'm listening to the 1:1 conversations from the Change course. In one of them, you say the following:

"The stuckness of mind is reflected in the stuckness of health or body, or the stuckness of surroundings or the stuckness of relationships, it's dynamic."

I have not yet noticed a lot of shifting in the area where there's been a lot of stuckness around finances/work. There's motion but it almost seems like it's happening outside of me...unintegrated somehow. The mind is very sticky still. I don't really understand what's happening there. 

Where I have noticed a lot of shifting is with the body. I've started swimming twice a week in addition to nearly daily walks, I've managed to drink at least 2.5 L of water a day on top of tea and coffee and a smoothie. There's also been shifting in relationships where time with friends has involved more personal sharing than usual. And the movement of the body is happening despite the mind saying "I don't want to go swim" or feeling queasy or having fears "did I say something wrong" after time with a friend. 

Is this what you mean when you say that motion in one area ends up leading to motion in another? So there's freedom showing up in the body and in relationships and some of that stuckness of mind is moving too?

Listener question: I can't see my head except when I look in the mirror. So when I see someone else's face, I don't think, that's me. Is that because we learned this? We are all one  means:  we are all one in the way the systems works? Not in form. So to realise that is were forgiveness starts? You are not doing this to me, you are just doing (in form). Or there is just doing and here it is seen as done by another person.

Like someone says: you are stupid, you shouldn't have done that. That is just what there is and without making it personal, both sides, a fluid reaction will come? And if not I can see that I made it personal. And the more I see that, the more it will fade away?

What if the mind uses this understanding for sabotaging its own glimpses of understanding?

There were glimpses and openings to a more peaceful, joyful way of being in the past. And since the change course there is an observation of of relentless negative activity of the mind, attempting to destroy this loving, joyful bodymind in myriads of ways. It feels like once the mind is in its old conditioned neuropathways it’s impossible to get out of there. Especially when I’m doing things that are there to be judged by everyone.

The pure observation of these patterns didn’t dissolve them , it’s just very painful to witness.

What is not seen here that keeps these unhealthy patterns so firmly in place?

I just can’t help wondering why on earth we were designed this way?! It seems human nature has evolved (probably) to become really complicated, so that we need to spend so much time in discovery of our true self rather than that being the default. What’s anyone’s thoughts on that?

Just completed the final lesson of the Change course. Thank you Clare for a wonderful journey. The exploration of the personal identity was especially useful. It seems that as you say it has enormous evolutionary advantages. We just need to learn how defending a concept is never going to succeed. My only suggestion is that if you focus less on the construct that is our body/mind system it would be easier for some of us to see beyond it.

I was wondering if you could do a Podcast about gaining weight, food and the stress around it? 

I wish I could just eat 3 meals a day, enjoy it and not think about gaining weight. Instead I do not eat a proper meal, snack the whole day (specially now in Home Office), constantly think about food and keep beating myself up that I do not eat a proper meal. The excess calories I gain with the snacking I compensate with sports (which too is no fun anymore). The thought of gaining weight is terrible. I feel it is again one of your "Catch-22“: I am stressed about eating a packet of chips and cookies instead of a proper healthy meal - and then I calm my stress with eating more chips and cookies… 

I know it sounds like I am joking with myself - but still, I would love some insights around it! 

Can you talk about categorisations and truth?