The way we see ourselves, and the things that happened to us, are not true reflections of reality. They are merely constructs that our mind has pieced together.

Yet those constructs are believed, and they influence what we do, how we see ourselves, and our relationships with others. Thus, they’re very, very powerful, for they influence everything.

For example, if I think that you don’t like me … that you’re tolerating me … that the lovely things you say are really fake and insincere… then this will shape and influence how I feel and act with you.

It will become my embodied experience.

Mostly likely …

I’ll feel bad about myself. A bit unsure and insecure. And I’ll start to feel quite anxious when I’m hanging out with you. Perhaps I’ll stutter and I’ll stammer, and I’ll say some stupid things … for I can’t be my real self …

Unhealed trauma can sometimes look like:

1. An inability to relax and feel safe in relationships. Always being afraid that the relationship will end, or you’ll be supplanted by someone else. Having a deep fear of abandonment.

2. Having a deeply ingrained sense of shame. Believing there is something badly wrong with you. Believing you are deeply flawed at your core.

3. Having a fragile self-esteem. Never feeling you are truly good enough. Believing you don’t deserve to be wanted, loved, respected, valued, and treated as well as other people.

4. Craving external validation. Needing constant reassurance from others.

5. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Being afraid to relax in case things fall apart. Living with high levels of anxious. Feeling you are always on high alert.

6. Feeling you have to change yourself for other people (in order to be loved, or accepted by them).

7…

Armistice Dayis commemorated every year on 11 November to markthe armisticesigned between theAllies of World War IandGermanyatCompiègne,France, at 5:45 am^[1]for the cessation of hostilities on theWestern Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven in the morning—the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918. But, according to Thomas R. Gowenlock, an intelligence officer with the U.S. First Division, shelling from both sides continued for the rest of the day, ending only at nightfall.^[2][3]The armistice initially expired after a period of 36 days and had to be extended several times. A formal peace agreement was only reached when theTreaty of Versailleswas signed the following year.^[4]

The date is a national holiday inFrance, and was declared a national holiday in manyAllied…

“Beautiful has nothing to do with looks. It’s who you are as a person, and how you make people feel about themselves.”

Today is Remembrance Day: a sad and painful day for so many people as they think about the losses they’ve experienced due to war.

Some people were maimed, and some were scarred and changed forever by things they heard and saw, by the traumatic memories.

And in the last two months, I’ve experienced loss as well. I’ve lost two family members who had meant a lot to me. And I’m sure that you’ve lost people, friends and family that you loved. Their death has left a void, a space that no-one else can fill.

And when we think about these people, we don’t think about their looks – for we all know, in the end, that kind of beauty’s just skin deep.

But the beauty that endures is…