Timelines: Exploring the stories within

Today I want to speak about Timelines. The Timeline is a popular tool in coaching & I love to use it as a way of exploring the path of our history & opening up to our stories as a route towards making sense of our present.

I love the way timelines encourage us to get curious about the stuff – visible & invisible - that makes us tick right in the here & now. When we can become aware of the stuff that is sitting behind; the stuff that may be the spark that’s igniting our behaviours even now, we open up opportunities for self-understanding & self-compassion & we create space & opportunities for making different choices.  

So, what is a Timeline & how do you use it?

When we create a timeline, we are drawing out our personal history.

• This can be used to locate identify & explore key moments in our lives – not just the life-changing moments but also the accumulation & attrition of moments & experiences that gathered to form & inform our behaviours & actions then & now.

For me a timeline doesn’t just look at what happened chronologically. Just as importantly it should

• Draw out how we felt at particular moments – what we felt at the time, if we can remember & also how we feel about this event now, with the benefit of time’s perspective. 

• Explore the message we took away from those experiences & how those messages made us feel & how these feelings affected how we chose to act & manage our behaviour & relationships going forwards.

All too often we were not conscious then or even now because we were just reacting to events in the moment & the very pace & everyday overload of our lived experience means that, of necessity, we are often just reacting & we generally have to rely heavily on our learned behaviour & our unconscious mind just to function.

Yet in truth so many of the those key moments & decisions made when we reacted in the moment & their impact on us even today are invisible – silent informers – because we simply couldn't function if in every moment we had to pause to think about our history & our emotions then & now before we could decide how to act – we simply  wouldn’t get anything done.

But those thoughts feelings & attitudes are sitting beneath the surface informing & steering our experience & our behaviours today & a timeline is one of the ways that we can begin to tease them out - identifying what they are & when they were laid down & reflecting on what we took away from the experiences & how this is informing our responses & our understanding of our lived experience in the here & now.

When we create a timeline, we open up to this calm, reflective space that allows us opportunities to notice, explore & reframe the rhythms & shifts that have emerged from those significant moments & turning points in our lives along with the layering of daily lived experience.

Because the person we are today - physically energetically emotionally & spiritually - as well as the wisdom we are working with – the thinking that is informing our attitudes towards & our understanding of the events that are happening today - has been formed & informed by the lessons & learning we have stored & held out of those layers of key & humdrum moments in our lives.

So, in the first instance a timeline literally involves chronologically breaking our life story into 5-year chunks where we write down what happened & any key moments we remember.

0-5

5-10

Etc

From this simple chronological timeline of what happened & when we can begin to add layers of meaning –

• What we may remember of how we felt in those moments

• What we feel we learned from these experience

• How this may have affected the way we related to the next or other key moment we remember.
  

Over time as we add deeper layers of understanding & meaning to our timeline it can become a rich & multi-layered tool that we find we return to over & over drawing out deeper & more profound layers of information & opportunities for healing each time.

When we identify what happened we can begin to attach what we felt or as significantly where we notice that we didn't feel or can’t attach what we felt or feel.

Crucially, those moments when we notice we can't attach feelings to the experience - either then or now - are key moments where we may have learned to reject invalidate ourselves & our feelings, developing the capacity to emotionally bypass in order to stay safe or to emotionally survive a moment of overwhelm.

These are moments that will have remained held within us - emotionally physically & energetically - & they have become the ligaments & cartilage of the functioning wisdom we are working with today. If there are raw, unheld overwhelming moments where we had to shut down emotionally to survive, these are sitting within us today, narrowing the range of our capacity to experience & respond to our world.

These are the moments that can create imbalance within our Chakras leading them to become unbalanced – either over or underactive

These are the moments that led us to trust or distrust or even disassociate from ourselves, from our gut & from our intuition.

These are the moments where emotions caused chemical surges to flood our body, moments that may have laid down the tracks that are feeding into the symptoms & sensations we may be feeling within our body – physical, emotional & energetic – in the here & now.

The more we begin to make these moments visible, the more we can open up the avenues & pathways of information that deepen our self-understanding. They help us understand the stories & narratives we have developed about ourselves & they can begin to make visible the layers of adopted & adapted behaviours we’ve developed & as we tried to make sense of our experience.

This unfurling of our story can be so helpful when we want to think about the tools we might want to use to support our healing.

• eg If our timeline helps us to draw out a period of childhood bullying or abuse & we notice that can only describe this factually & we can't describe or access the emotions we may have felt or those emotions are like a tumult we struggle to articulate separate & explain then this brings us valuable information on the age when our inner child has been wounded & overwhelmed & this can help inform the kinds of support she may need to heal from these wounds

• eg If we notice that there were moments that felt like a life or death for us, we can draw from this that we are holding trauma wounds & this can inform the approaches that we may use to try to move forwards eg through Emotional Freedom Technique or Eye Movement Desensitisation or Reprogramming etc

• eg if we identify such trauma wounds, we can also be trace their impact on our Chakras & an accumulation of these moments can help understand where we may be experiencing blockages or issues within our Chakras. The ways we have responded to those wounds can help understand whether we are experiencing over or under-stimulation in this area & this can help us consider how to engage with rebalancing this Chakra.
  

As we explore our timeline if we notice an accumulation & repeated recurrence of experiences & emotions - felt or numbed – this can help us to explore the ways physical & emotional symptoms have become laid down & inlaid within us & for me, knowledge is power.

As Alex Howard says

‘When you can see it, you don't have to be it’

If the idea of a timeline interests you, you may choose to experiment by yourself or you may choose to seek out the support of a coach or counsellor to do so. Depending on your lived experience, creating a timeline can call up some difficult emotions & recall traumatic memories & so I would suggest that it’s always advisable to have a trusted support network whether friends or family or a counsellor/coach network to help you to hold & process what may come up.

I like to have a toolbox available to support myself or anyone I’m working with - an instant relief support & self-soothe kit - like a holistic first aid kit to reach for when strong & challenging emotions come up & feel overwhelming.  I find that TIPP – techniques I learned when I trained in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy - can really help with big emotions so I just want to highlight these.  

• T is for Temperature. In moments when we feel intensely overstimulated, inducing a sudden change to our body temperature using cold water can help shock our mind-body back into synch. Filling a sink or bowl with icy cold water & plunging our face in 3 times for count of 10 seconds will activate our Dive reflex. As we dive face first into water our trigeminal nerve in our face is shocked. We also cool our body down & slow down our heart rate & metabolism. We cannot manage the shock & hold onto the intense emotion simultaneously & so this will immediately force our overwhelming symptoms of anger, frustration & anxiety to reduce so that we can cope in the moment. Holding an ice cube in palms of hand/portable ice packs can also work. Please however don’t use this technique if you have heart condition.

• I is for intensity– Emotions can be very intense & so when we feel our emotions rising & we notice we are just getting caught up in the feelings, match that intensity. Intense exercise will counter intense emotion – it helps use up our body’s stored energy & allow the emotion to shift within us once again bringing our mind & body back into synch. Whether we choose a brisk walk or run or play music or do housework or gardening – whatever - the movement will help us change state. In trauma therapy shaking out the body is used to help to shift stuck emotions so even shaking out any area of our body that we can shake will help shake out the feelings within.

• P is for Pacing & breathwork that can help us to come back to calm. Paced breathing can help us reduce states of high emotional arousal. If we have reached a place where we are feeling emotionally triggered breathe in for 5 out for 7.  For every inhale, we expand our chest, diaphragm & belly for 5 seconds then on every exhale we release for longer than we have inhaled - try 7 seconds.

• P is also for Pairing & another great technique is Paired muscle relation where we pause & focus our attention on our body. This again helps to create calm & synchronicity in mind & body so we can step back from the moment of high arousal. In this focused activity we breathe in & tense muscle then breathe out & relax that same muscle, scanning through our body from the feet upwards. Remember to also include the muscles of our face & mouth because these muscles hold a lot of tension & can easily get forgotten.
  

If the idea of a timeline or any of the other tools I work with interests you, do reach out to me & if you would like to know more about the all the different kinds of support I offer, you can find out more at https://lbrucetherapies.com

Big wordy hugs

Laura xx