All in Your Head

So what are the options for our unwanted things? You might accidentally start being confident once you're feeling competent; Whether you're faking or actually summoning every last drop of your confidence: you've got this! It's 240 tiny seconds of your life! You can handle basic weather chat! Don't babble. Pretend you're on conversational rations for the day and you mustn't use them all up. Say a sentence, then stop and smile. What will feel weirdly slow to you will actually be a normal-pace conversation. Joke around. Tease and be mischievous. This spirit took advantage of my client's upbringing and original trauma, which had involved being beaten by his own drunk dad, and entered the resulting hole in my client's physical energetic field. We sent the spirit away and sealed up the hole. And presto, no more compulsion! An emerging field called epigenetics is revealing another way of looking at our physical energetics. Epigenetics is the study of the chemical soup surrounding our genes. This soup contains memories and imprints of our ancestors. If our great-grandfather lost the family farm and decided he was a failure, we can literally inherit his failure syndrome. What one generation experiences, from poverty to mental illness, can be passed on and determine which genes are toggled or turned off or on. That means that through the fields of our individual cells, our ancestors might be telling people how to respond to us.

Yet another important field of study, called microchimerism, has proven that our mother's cells live within us long after we disconnect from her placenta; The first and best result for our stuff is for it to be reused. This means somebody taking it and using it again without needing to modify it in any way. Ideally an item can be reused in exactly the way it was designed for: clothes worn again as clothes rather than being chopped up into rags, for example. Donating things to community groups and organisations that need them or can pass them on to people in need ensures their reuse, as does donating things to charity shops where they can be resold. Selling items to people who want what we have, whether online or in person (say via a garage sale), is another example of reuse. Of course, there is never an absolute guarantee that something will be reused in the way intended, but we can make best guesses and do our part. The next best use is for an item to be repurposed. This means the item will be reused, but will be modified in some way or used for a different purpose to the one intended. An old bike wheel being used in an artwork or a teacup being used as a plant pot are examples of repurposing. Community gardens will often repurpose materials to make garden beds, signage and other structures; Give him some gentle stick about something - his filthy shoes, his always running late, his coffee addiction. Playfulness is the cornerstone of flirting. Pretend you've `just' done or come from something great, even if it's just scoffing amazing salted caramel gelato from that place in the city, and, hey, has he been there? Bring up something or someone you both know, and ask how it is/they are. Finally, and this is the real power move: pretend and act like he has a crush on YOU, and you keep having to knock him back, and it's really tiresome. The power shift will amaze you, you sweet, pretend-megalomaniac. When your self-worth is high, your relationships are great. It's as simple and as complicated as that. Simple, 'cos high self-worth means you value yourself, and your time, and you have the emotional and mental toolkit to know what you will and won't accept from people.

You set limitations and you show self-respect, dammit. If these cells get along with our own, they can bolster our immune system, keeping us from getting everything from diabetes to cancer. If these cells don't jibe with our own, our body attacks them, setting us up for a multitude of diseases. In short, all types of physical invasions cause problems by initiating or furthering damage done to our physical selves and by damaging our physical energetic fields. Any or all of the seven syndromes can evolve from the cracks left in our physical energetic fields. Your Emotional Energy Boundaries: Orange You Glad You're Happy? Orange is the color of our emotionally charged boundaries, the ones that steer us toward joyous opportunities and away from unhappiness. They enable us to transform so-called negative feelings, such as fear, sadness, disgust, and anger, into joy. They prompt us to adopt attitudes and actions that mature us through all of our life experiences, the good, bad, and ugly. Emotions are beliefs joined with feelings. They can be described as orange because in the energy system, red represents deep sensations or feelings and yellow represents our thoughts. Sometimes items need to be repaired before they can be reused. Whether that means a button stitched back on, a part or component replaced or a fresh coat of paint applied, repairing something can bring an item back to life and extend its usefulness for years. It is far easier to donate and sell products that are in working order than it is a broken item. The options are to fix things ourselves or find someone that can fix them for us (a friend who knows how to sew, for example, or a cobbler who can re-heel a pair of shoes for a small fee). Broken items given to a charity shop will most likely end up in landfill. Donating (or even selling) broken items is not impossible though - the task is to find someone willing and eager to fix it. Some people love to mend things or tinker with them and will be eager to take them off our hands - and if the fixed product will have a value, they might even pay for the privilege. When items cannot be reused, repurposed or repaired, the next best option is to recycle. Recycling processes materials so that they can be reused, and then reforms these materials into new products.

Metals might be melted down, papers pulped and plastics shredded into pellets that can be remoulded. Complicated, because while worth is something we are all born with, understanding and really knowing that worth isn't always intuitive or easy. But you cannot underestimate how vital it is. Life flows when you know your worth. People treat you well, because you treat yourself well. And won't accept anything less, actually. Because we're all secretly basic and need examples, here's how a woman with high self-worth would run her relationship. Let's call her Patsy. And let's aim to be like her. Except maybe with a cuter name. She sets clear boundaries. Put those two together and you have orange, the marriage of two interdependent ways of knowing and experiencing. A belief is a perception about reality. A feeling is a message from our body. Beliefs tell us what feelings we should feel, and our feelings tell us what to do with our beliefs. When we're in reactive mode, it's pretty hard to figure out which starts the process, but all of life is easier if we have fully functioning, healthy emotional energy boundaries. At the very least, they buy us the time we need to feel our feelings, discern the vital messages our feelings are providing, and think through our reactions. This emotional buffering ensures that our responses to life's stimulations are life enhancing and not destructive to ourselves or others. For instance, imagine that your mother tells you that you can't bring your significant other to a holiday dinner. You feel angry and disrespected.

Because you have strong emotional energy boundaries, you know the anger you're feeling isn't your mother's; It takes a lot of energy to collect, treat and process materials, which is why it is preferable to reuse or repurpose an item where possible. However, recycling still keeps resources out of landfill, conserves energy, reduces demand for new material extraction and is a better option than throwing things away. Recycling isn't limited to our day-to-day household waste such as packaging. Many things can be recycled: textiles, tyres, paint, batteries, metals, timber, electronics. They might not go in the kerbside collection but recycling services for these items exist, and we can make use of them to give the materials we no longer require a new lease of life. The last resort is sending our stuff to landfill. We might have items for which there is no other option but this. However, landfill should be the solution for the minority of the things we declutter, not the majority. There are so many other options to consider first. When we do have to landfill our old items, we can use it as a learning experience. Patsy values and prioritises her needs, she doesn't expect anyone else to be responsible for them, and she doesn't assume responsibility for anyone else's. She may sound like a breathtaking narcissist, but all this means is: If your boundaries are rock-solid, you can't be bullied into stuff you don't want to do. You won't change for someone, or drop everything for them, or stay in a relationship that disregards your value system. If Patsy's partner expects her to act, be, and behave in ways that make her uncomfortable or unhappy, she will revisit her boundaries and examine what she needs in her relationship. If they ask her to dress in certain ways, or go out drinking with a bunch of skeeves when she doesn't drink, or lend cash she knows she will never see again because it's going straight to the TAB, Patsy has the strength to say NO. She knows that losing herself and ignoring her internal navigation system will not end well. You are who you are! You are AS you are!