The ability of the mind to control us is powerful and, at times, scary. When we allow our thoughts to control us, it can often feel like we cannot act autonomously towards our goals and ideals. Luckily, there are ways to gain back control of yourself and stop allowing your mind to hold you back through fear of what might go wrong.
Trauma is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. It is a massive feeling that disables the mind from thinking clearly. When the mind is stressed, it tends to replay the negative experiences and memories of childhood, thus halting the person in their tracks. In children whose reasons are still undeveloped, trauma may result in feelings of suicide and hopelessness, which becomes unbearable. This will manifest itself in the form of feelings of despair and the tendency to be suicidal.
Embarrassment is the feeling of shame or self-consciousness. When children face embarrassing situations, they will seek solace from their parents or deal with them independently. Uncomfortable situations may result in self-doubt, which is a crippling factor because of the power of the mind.
Guilt is the feeling of regret over some sort of offence. Guilt can be real or imagined. It is a feeling that can ruin one if not dealt with. If this happens during childhood, it starts to take control over other parts of the mind resulting in unresponsive and erratic behaviour.
Being unheard is a situation where one’s opinions are not put into consideration. When this occurs in childhood, it can leave a big footprint inside the mind as the child starts to believe that no one will ever listen to them. The child becomes a loner and forms theories of the world being against them, spills on into adulthood.
Love is one of the critical factors when it comes to mental health. It is essential, especially in childhood, as children are dependent and learning. Lack of love is one of the major contributing factors to poor mental health as a child grows. Lack of love can turn even the strongest into empty shells. It may cause intense loneliness, seclusion, shyness, and misinterpretation of what love feels like since a child may interpret lack of love as what love is.
Being labelled refers to a situation where someone describes you in a specific way. Labelling categorises a person, and where one is negatively labelled, one may think that they cannot be anything else. A labelled child is automatically negatively affected as the child cannot see himself as anything beyond the label. As a result, the mind’s development will be halted.
Fear is a distressing emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm. Fear cripples the well-being of a person and will cripple the brain of a developing child. While fear is often used as a healing technique to get over a phobia, every individual is different and responds differently. Like most emotions, fear has more effect on a child.
Being ignored occurs when one is not able to express their concerns over a situation. In such a case, a child who is ignored becomes withdrawn, tense and socially challenged. Before the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989), children had limited influence on their rights and decisions. Children’s mental and physical health as they grow is highly affected if their parents or guardians do not hear their views. These experiences of children stay with them even when they are adults.
Low self-esteem – an individual’s negative evaluation of their worth. This could be the result of self-hate and the feeling that one is not good enough. It can also result from being labelled, embarrassed, failure and isolated. Low self-esteem is draining because it makes one uncomfortable with who they are, leading to self-deprecation.
Being defeated means losing to someone else. This is a complex feeling, especially for a child. Children who experience defeat tend not to reattempt the things they have failed. As a result, these children die to expose themselves to the forgotten items in future, leading to a mental block.
Comparison to how others in terms of how they think, feel and behave can cause harm to the human mind. Every child wants to be the best at everything in their parent’s eyes. Constant comparison with other children and parents praising other children’s achievements makes the child feel worthless. The child will believe that they will never amount to anything.
Punishment of kids is meant to teach the child what type of behaviour is acceptable and what type is not. It is an essential part of parenting that can prove quite harmful if the punishment is excessive. A child’s behaviour is prompted by either negative or positive reinforcement. If either is used incorrectly and excessively, they can traumatize a child for the rest of their lives. It can cause a cycle of negativity in which they might use against their children.
The reminder of weaknesses a situation where one dwells on a person’s weak points. This can prove to be highly harmful and degenerating to the growing mind of a child. It can make the child self-isolate within their mind.
Bullying is a situation where a person seeks to harm, intimidate or coerce someone perceived as vulnerable. It constantly creates a useless feeling in the person being bullied. In recent years, people have finally realized the effects of bullying, especially its impact on the child’s mental health.
Unfair treatment will be felt in a situation where one person is favoured over another. It is a source of rebelliousness in children when they think differently compared to others in the same group. In Pakistan, for example, the treatment of females children compared to male child. A situation where the boys are the favourite, receive most of the praise and are protected. Biasness can result in hostility in children of either gender when they believe that whatever they achieve fails to get the same recognition as others.
Being rejected occurs when another person or people do not accept one. This is a fear that all humans face. Rejection influences one’s mental health when one comes to believe that they are not good enough in the eyes. Constant rejection in childhood will manifest itself into different disorders in the teenage and adult years.
Being disapproved ruins a person’s identity. A situation where every action that one does is frowned upon can be harmful. Children especially look for approval, especially their parents. In cases where there is disapproval of the child’s every action, the child’s psyche will be damaged, and they will start looking for approval in any place they can find.
Being condemned occurs when someone expresses complete disapproval over us or something we have done. All children hope to fit in with the love and attention they get from their parents and peers. When the children are condemned, they feel rejected and think they are not good enough to be in the world. It is another root cause of severe mental health problems.
Being disappointed, the aspect of sadness or displeasure following the non-fulfilment of one’s hopes, is a natural emotion that all human beings go through. It, however, becomes a problem when a child constantly fails to get what they need. Emotional disappointment is more harmful as every child naturally wants their parent’s attention and love. Constant disappointment can lead to a lack of optimism.
Being annoyed occurs when we are around irritating people. Although we do get annoyed when things fail to go as we want them to, a deliberate attempt by someone to annoy us will not go well. Teenagers and adults will end up shutting down their emotions due to people not respecting these emotions.
Being judged will be felt when one has an opinion about us based on their thoughts and feelings. Judgments can get in the way of fixing problems as they hurt people’s feelings, whether intentionally or not intentionally done. It dramatically harms a person’s self-esteem and mental health. It also creates the fear of self-expression.
Feeling unworthy is the feeling that one is insignificant or useless. No one ever wants to experience this feeling and especially not children. The development of the child depends on how worthy they feel they are of anything. A child who feels unworthy of doing or achieving something fails to try it and therefore fails to have new experiences.
Being suppressed is another form of judgment. This is the minds way of telling a person to hold back their feelings or emotions because others do not agree with it. It is the act of stopping yourself from thinking or feeling something. It happens when those around us make us feel less than them. A child will learn to suppress their feelings and thoughts due to the fear of being ridiculed. It is highly unhealthy if children cannot express themselves.
Being lied to occurs when a person deliberately withholds the truth but instead tells something different from reality. When children are constantly lied to, their brains are conditioned into thinking that lying is a form of love and a natural way of living. Such children grow up to become pathological liars or people who cannot differentiate between the truth and lies.
Being fake will occur when one is not proper to themselves and therefore try to fit in the societal image of who they are not. Affected people do not have their own identities. Growing children need their identity, which will lead to the child growing up without any idea of what their own opinions are.
Being threatened in a society where one’s safety should be guaranteed always is highly dangerous. Such a person will try to do whatever they can to be safe. When a person is threatened, their mind goes into either fight or flight mode. A threatened child will have a scared identity, and the concept she has of life go into confusion. In most cases, this leads to irreparable damage to both physical and emotional development.
Teasing occurs when someone makes fun of us in a playful way. It is an annoying habit for both children and adults. Constant teasing will result in the person doubting everything about themselves. It is pretty similar to judgement and suppression, and the aftereffects are also identical.
Being provoked can be connected to being threatened. The effects of these two are similar. When children retaliate after being called abusive or degrading names, it remains a fact that though such children may only be defending themselves, they were initially provoked.
Being mocked is being laughed at or made fun of. It is a derogatory way of shutting children down. When a child is made fun of because they are different, has different views, looks different, or stands out deemed ‘abnormal’, then the child’s development will be significantly affected.
Being misinterpreted will occur when someone has a wrong impression of us. It is a cause of concern, especially for kids who cannot effectively express their feelings. The constant feeling of being misunderstood cause delusions.
Being misled occurs when someone encourages others to believe information that is not valid. If a child is misled by someone trusted, it becomes extremely harmful because they expect a trusted person to be different from those who deceive or lie. It plays a role in negatively conditioning the child that no one can be trusted to speak the truth.
Harassment refers to aggressive pressure or intimidation by someone. It is a form of mental abuse. Stalking is one form of harassment that makes the victim very uncomfortable and scared. When a person is stalked, they feel paranoia, leading to isolation, depression, and extreme anxiety. If a child is harassed, help should be immediate because the child’s developing mind does not need memory or a feeling that can attribute to something painful or harmful. It can cause the child to lead a very isolated life.
Being fooled and being cheated are experiences that play a massive part in damaging a person’s ego. Children who are victims may later in life develop severe trust issues and view the world as full of dishonest people.
Clinical depression describes a type of mental illness. It is a type of abnormal temporally mood caused by life events or grieving. A person with clinical depression does not care about anything at all. As a result, the body is not physically able to perform the simplest of tasks such as bathing or eating.
Stress is viewed as any type of change that causes physical, emotional or psychological strain. Every human being experienced stress. How you respond to stress makes a huge difference to your overall well-being. Stress is one of the most common mental health problems. However, if this stress is managed and adequately used as something constructive, it can be a positive outlet.
All factors that contribute to the feeling of a prisoner in your mind are linked to one another, which cause chaos with mental health. The ability of our mind to control us is powerful and, at times, scary. When we let our thoughts control us, it can feel like we cannot act independently towards our goals and ideas.
Keeping one’s mental health in check is not a one-time treatment but a lifelong task. Mental health problems are very different from physical issues and are therefore quite scary because:
- They cannot be viewed from the outside.
- Specialists can only diagnose them.
- They do not have a particular healing time.
Mental health is and will always be a mystery to solve, considering that the brain is responsible for the body to function, and the mysteries of the brain are yet to be fully solved. Therefore, it is essential to work as hard as possible to not fall into the deep dark abyss.
Mental health is an ongoing battle between the person and the mind. Once your mind takes control over you, you will become a prisoner trapped in your head, thus becoming a slave to its will. It is encouraging to know that there are ways to gain back control of yourself and limit your mind from holding you back through fear of what might go wrong.
Our program offers self-development training with a guided meditation to help you deal with your childhood issues. Guided meditation sessions will allow you to express your emotions, feelings and situations in a safe place. The simple act can treat the mental health of listening. If you have experienced distressing events and feelings without releasing them, you will find it difficult to express yourself. If someone listens to you and tries to understand you, you will eventually find it easy to open and feel more comfortable, which the ultimate goal is.
Anxiety
Issues like anxiety can make us feel like we are prisoners of our minds. If you feel controlled by negative thought patterns, then you are likely trapped in what seems like a spiral of issues. Often, we make it worse by blaming ourselves, feeling that it is our fault that we are caught up in the negativity. This can quickly become an entirely overwhelming sensation of feeling out of control.
Self-judgement
One cause of negative thoughts is our ability to be overly critical of ourselves. It is not hard to do. If things go wrong in our lives, or we find ourselves being criticised by others, we can very easily switch from positive to negative self-talk. We often spiral with self-judgement, piling on complaints about ourselves gradually until we feel that we are irredeemable and unlovable people. Of course, this is not true, and we deserve to know that we are loved and worthy of good things. It takes a lot to erase the self-judgement that can trap you in your mind. Still, tools such as positive affirmations and visualizations can rework your mindset to enhance positivity and increase your ability to cope with adversity, for example, your negative self-thoughts.
Fear of the future
It is a fundamental reason that people feel trapped in their minds. If we are worried about the future, we tend to spiral into overthinking everything that could go wrong. It is an fs a ‘damned if you d
Mindfulness & Guided Meditation
The benefit of guided meditation for those who feel trapped within their mind is the change in how you analyse thoughts. By being trained in viewing thoughts from a distance and envisioning them like a conveyer belt, you will realise that thoughts are merely thoughts. So many of us dwell on our thoughts and give them the power to control us because we fail to realise that they are thoughts. They are not real, not physical, nor are they a sign or symbol of impending doom. We can very quickly fail to recognise our self-sabotage and believe that we are being held back for plausible reasons when most often, this is not the case. Guided meditation provides all the tools you need to clear your mind and start living with greater rationality and clarity.