the first time in ages, I was getting male attention.’ But over the next three months Colette ate lots more and regained her fat.
‘I came to understand that fat protected me from a part of myself I didn’t trust,’ she explains. ‘I wanted to be with John, but being slim again took me right back to being a teenager – when I wasn’t good at saying no to advances.’ Colette’s weight gain was logical. It served a purpose in her life, keeping away feelings of shame and guilt, but it was slowly eating away at her confidence to take control of her weight and her life.
She chanted the Switchwords FORGIVE and RESTORE. Colette is working on liking herself more and trusting that she will feel safe at whatever weight she chooses to be.
Recognising self-conflict
You know when you’re in a conscious/subconscious conflict when there’s negative self-talk. There’s frustration, irritation and self-criticism, and projection of all this onto other people who make you feel bad because of their success. And then you’re more annoyed with yourself for being negative about people you know you should applaud – and so the cycle continues. The simplest way to look at this is to honestly assess if your actions reflect your goals. Do you take action, commit to a goal and do what you say you’ll do most of the time?
One key indicator of self-conflict is procrastination. When we procrastinate (becoming indecisive or reluctant to take action) it’s likely that we are avoiding not just the task, but also the feelings we’ll have to encounter if we do the task. If we begin that book, mow the lawn, turn down that job, will it lead to failure, regret or even a simple lack of enjoyment we don’t want to deal with? Procrastination keeps us safe from feelings we don’t want to feel, but procrastination also keeps us stuck. The more we procrastinate, the more the experience of procrastination itself (never mind the old experiences that might be causing it) becomes established as a neural pathway in the brain. This happens because our lived experiences cause our brain cells – neurons – to connect with each other and grow, or, as Hebb’s Law has it: ‘Neurons that fire together, wire together.’ Procrastination becomes a habit, and the more you do it – like any habit – the more familiar it becomes. As that neural pathway grows from a country lane to a motorway, busy with avoidance thoughts, procrastination becomes the reflex response when faced with a decision. It inhibits our sense of confidence and imbues us with a lack of self-trust – we can’t rely on ourselves when we need to.
Try this: Get out of self-conflict and align with your goal
Here are two Switch-pairs to help clear the block of self-conflict: RELEASE-RESISTANCE and TOGETHER-CHANGE. First, say RELEASE-RESISTANCE. How do you feel? What’s going on in your body? Did you sigh and feel a sense of release?
Now declare TOGETHER-CHANGE. TOGETHER, the master Switchword, brings your conscious and subconscious minds together as one. CHANGE clears away whatever you don’t want or need (including anxiety, pain and negative thoughts – see here). Try also the finger-muscle test to see which Switch-pair resonates most strongly for you (see here).
Seeing conflict in others – Julie and Lorna
We can often recognise conflict more readily in others than in ourselves. Julie was planning her wedding. Julie had been close friends with Lorna since childhood, and they had often joked about the far-off day when one of them would get married and how they would organise each other’s hen party. Lorna was single, and Julie, at 32, was getting her wedding.
Lorna was calling Julie less frequently than usual, but Lorna seemed to be saying the right thing when they did talk, albeit briefly – how happy she was for her friend, and what a lovely wedding it would be. Yet every time Julie asked Lorna for help, or even just asked her opinion on where to go for the hen party, Lorna changed the subject. The upshot was that Lorna did not do anything to arrange the party and gave a weak excuse not to attend just a few days beforehand. Lorna said one thing, yet did quite the opposite. Julie felt confused by the mixed messages.
Lorna was partly angry with Julie for getting married and abandoning her, which showed in her avoidance tactics. The other part of her that she expressed in words was the acceptable part, the part that wanted to be supportive. Lorna was in conflict with herself, unable to reconcile all her feelings about her best friend’s wedding – and it showed. Julie’s other friends could clearly see Lorna’s dilemma; Lorna could not. She thought she had buried her feelings of jealousy, but they were there for all to see in her actions – or lack thereof.
If I had known Lorna at this time, I would have advised her to use the master Switchword TOGETHER (although she was in such denial that the problem lay with her that she may not have been open to addressing an issue she didn’t perceive as hers). But when you are able to identify conflict in yourself or others, even if you don’t understand the suppressed feelings behind it, you can recite or intend TOGETHER. Recite it for yourself, or project it towards the person who needs it (write their name in an Energy Circle with the word TOGETHER – see here).
When you declare TOGETHER, you’ll find that you’ll become more aware of any underlying issue that’s blocking happiness or fulfilment, and be able to release it.
How Kate’s Switchwords talked back
Kate didn’t begin her Switchword practice with just the master Switchword TOGETHER on its own – she was keen to attract more wealth, so she began chanting the money phrase: TOGETHER-FIND-DIVINE-COUNT. She says, ‘I repeated the phrase to myself often – in the mornings, when I woke up with the same old dread about being old and poor, then when walking to the train station … and whenever I could remember to do so throughout the day. I felt positive about Switchwords because I’d tried REACH in the past successfully, tracking down a book I needed for my teaching practice.
‘After two weeks – and still chanting, and entering the Lottery, and checking my premium bond numbers – there was nothing. I knew I had to enter competitions and create ways for money to come to me, hence the Lottery, but I just felt I was getting nowhere. I still liked the possibility in the sound of TOGETHER-FIND-DIVINE-COUNT, though, when I recited it.
‘Then came the breakthrough. I realised that as I was chanting the phrase, I was trying to visualise scratching off the third square on a scratch card to win £100,000. I could imagine scratching off one or two squares, but not the vital third. I realised then that I believed I couldn’t win, or have a lot of money. Of course, I liked the idea of winning, but couldn’t truthfully believe it would ever be me.’
This realisation came up during the chanting because Switchwords talk to the subconscious – Kate’s subconscious had begun to talk back. And her unconscious, negative programme about money rose to the surface into her conscious awareness – into that conscious 5 per cent of our brain that has the ability to channel the 95 per cent that is usually hidden from view. This is the moment at which we make sense of a shimmery image in a bowl of water or the surface of a lake, when we look deeply into our own mirror of the self and are struck with a knowing, a self-realisation. In fairy tales, this is the moment of revelation, the culmination of all previous actions: when the Princess creeps into Bluebeard’s bloody chamber to find the corpses of his former wives, or when Sleeping Beauty awakens after 100 years in a coma – a metaphor for awakening to love in the form of the Prince.
Like a Freudian slip, when a word reveals a buried belief or emotion, Kate had an ‘image slip’: she could not see herself – and by that I mean visualise herself – experiencing life with money. This explained some of her previous actions (and inaction) around money. Partly, she had been ambivalent. Not a materialistic person, Kate had come to have a negative attitude towards money (although she still wanted it, desperately). She never seemed to have enough money on her teacher’s salary, but she comforted herself with the fact that at least she had her integrity. She wasn’t corrupted by money and it wouldn’t rule her life. But the longer she lived alone in the city on her pretty modest income, the harder it became to hold this attitude. Then Kate gave in to herself and decided she needed money (lots of it). Yet hiding underneath her affirmations and declarations