I know a "happy place" sounds corny. How many times have you seen a character on a sitcom close his eyes and say, "I'm going to my happy place. I'm almost there. Up, I can't find any parking. Hold on, I think I have a handicap sticker I can use...."
But there's some legitimate wisdom here. In the bestselling "Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child" John Bradshaw explains a technique for swapping traumatic scenes from our childhood with happy ones from our adulthood. He says that our lives are filled with old anchors, the result of neurologically imprinted experience, that keep replaying when a situation resembles our childhood. However with some meditation and what he calls anchoring, "we can change the painful memories from childhood by putting them together with actual experiences of strength acquired in our adult lives."
The first step to do this is to create a happy place, where you re-experience those moments in your life when you were accepted, welcomed, and loved, and you swap them for the bad memories. Most of my happy places are outside because I can better access the good stuff when I'm in creation. But I did designate one corner of my home as my happy place. There I greet my inner child and try to let go of some of the fear of my past so that I can be a loving adult.
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Therese,
One of my favorite movies to cheer me when I am blue is "Happy Gilmore". Sad, huh?
But there is a whole sequence in it about going to a happy place. I have always found that cheering, and think of my own happy place..... usually on a beach somewhere with a handsome cabana boy giving me a diet Coke!
And of course, I have the figure I had when I was 20- and (no stretch marks!)
My "happy place" also comes from a movie. It's the movie "Hook" with Robin Williams and it's about Peter Pan. There is one particular scene in it where Peter Pan (Robin Williams) looks at his adult reflection in a pool of water and before his eyes, his reflection turns into the little Peter Pan he was as a boy. Another child in the movie says in a cute little British accent, "It really IS you, Pee-tah."
It just makes me so happy because in the movie, Peter Pan is no longer in touch with his "child side" or the little Peter he once was and because of that his life has been busy and so full that he is unable to spend quality time with his own children and unable to have the childlike qualities that we all need to get in touch with periodically. And at that moment, when he sees the reflection of himself as a child and that comment is made, it's like an "Ah ha" moment for him and he is able to reconnect with that "inner child." Fun movie--watch it sometime. It is NOT animated but it's a great movie for children as well. Valerie
Until seeing your video I did not realize there were happy places. I found it interesting. I already have been practicing going to one. It is a rocking recliner in my living room from which I can look out to a pond with rolling acre's filled with roaming cows. Sometimes I watch birds play. It is my happy place because I have rocked five of my grandchildren there. When either they or I am having a bad day I sit there and rock and sing gently. Most of them are past the age of rocking but I rock on singing if only to myself. I recieve an inner sense of peace. Thank you for helping me see "my happy place".
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