Annie Kaszina - Annie Kaszina

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15th July 201911th February 2007 by Annie Kaszina

This week I was talking to my dear friend Shoshana
Garfield about selling my house. 5+
years after ejecting the Horrid Ex-Husband from my life, I’m still living in
the ex-marital home. While very
grateful to be left with a roof over my head, I have looked forward for years
to the day when the house would sell.

Why has it taken so long? In the last 2 months it has gone from being ‘too small’ and ‘ill
favoured’ in the eyes of the viewers, to having ‘good sized rooms’ and being
‘delightful’. What’s changed? Physically, nothing at all. No redecoration, no clutter clearing – I’d
done all that ages ago.

Only two things have changed about the house.

The Past Is History, The Future’s Mystery ….

15th July 20196th February 2007 by Annie Kaszina

Never underestimate the abusive intelligence. It is geared to break your spirit and your dreams. An abuser carefully programs into you the belief that you cannot have the things that are available to others – except through him. We all know that script. Reduced to its essence it goes essentially: ‘without me, you will be an outcast. You’ll eke out a wretched existence in a cave somewhere, coated in mud, dressed in rags, scratching around in the dry earth for roots to eat.”

What makes your heart sing?

15th July 201929th January 2007 by Annie Kaszina

For me the New Year started in Venice Italy, the place I
love most in the world and the place that has wrought the most far-reaching
changes in me.

Now, I do not believe that change is linear or even
regular. Change, as far as I can tell,
happens in fits and starts, twists and turns. There are, additionally, two kinds of change: the change that is thrust
upon us and the change we choose for ourselves.

The change that is thrust upon us is, almost always,
awkward or painful, dramatic or alarming, because it takes us out of our
familiar comfort zone. The change that
we choose for ourselves can be exciting, empowering. Only as a general rule
we don’t know that, because nobody tells us that.

No regrets – “Je ne regrette rien”

15th July 201925th January 2007 by Annie Kaszina

This morning, I found myself unexpectedly with extra time
when a colleague didn’t call as planned. As I pottered off to vacuum the carpet (that’s extra time stuff rather
than top priority) I heard Edith Piaf singing, “Je ne regrette rien” on the
radio and I was blown away.

I’ve always loved that song* – hasn’t everyone? It has always struck me as being a personal
statement of courage and faith in the future. Today it did so more than ever.

Now, you could argue that Edith Piaf was doing pretty
well, at least by the time she sang that. But in the end it’s all a matter of perception.

Start With The End In Mind

15th July 201921st January 2007 by Annie Kaszina

A young woman I know fell in love about 10 days ago. ‘Falling in love’
may be a slight overstatement or it may not be. She saw him quite a lot
for a few days and she was certainly very taken. He’s tall, dark, very
good-looking, dresses well, he’s courteous, affectionate, he rushes to
open doors for a woman and does a nice line in gazing deeply into her
eyes and making her feel special.

They made a great couple. Everybody said so; all her friends and the cast of thousands that young people have around them.

The romance was as beautiful as it was brief. The first evening she
couldn’t spend with him she asked: “What are you doing this
evening?” He replied:

On Shame

15th July 201919th January 2007 by Annie Kaszina

A bright, funny, professional woman I know struggled with a personal dilemma
she could hardly bear to name. She was paralysed by shame. There were new
directions that she wanted to pursue in her professional life, but she felt she
could not because it would have meant owning the skeleton in her cupboard. That
skeleton was a bad relationship.

Bring Back The Cilice Belt

15th July 20193rd January 2007 by Annie Kaszina

Among Dan Brown’s many accomplishments is bringing the cilice belt
to popular attention. Silas, Brown’s tonsured hit man in "The Da Vinci
Code", wears one and also flagellates himself with The Discipline, a
knotted rope. The image of this tall, albino monk performing ‘corporal
mortification’ is a shocking one that stays with the reader.

Curiously,
it was the image that sprang to mind yesterday when I was talking with
a woman about the issues she is facing right now. Yvette (not her real
name) is not, fortunately, at risk physically, but the situation in
which she lives is spiralling out of control.

The Power of Hope

15th July 201922nd December 2006 by Annie Kaszina

It’s easy to underestimate the power of hope in a relationship.

A sense of hopelessness keeps women in a bad relationship long after they should have left.

Comfort eating – is it really that comforting?

15th July 201915th December 2006 by Annie Kaszina

Last week a client was
talking about how impossible she found it to give up sugary foods. In her time she had been a smoker and a
drinker and had managed to give up both of those addictions. Yet she felt she lacked the strength to ever
give up sweet things.

Now, at the logical
level my brain refused to accept this. Alcohol and cigarettes have been shown to be seriously difficult habits
to kick. If she could successfully beat
those two addictions, overcoming a craving for sweet things had to be perfectly
possible.

Still, it wasn’t about
my beliefs but hers and unless I could help her to change her belief about the
power that ‘sugar’ had over her, she would prove herself right. Because we always do; what the Thinker
thinks the Prover proves. This is why
we may not feel happy about our perceived limitations, but we sure are right
about them. (Without realizing it, we make ourselves right.)

Kick The Cat Syndrome

15th July 201910th December 2006 by Annie Kaszina

Have you ever suffered from ‘Kick The Cat Syndrome’?

I’d love to say that I never have but, of course, I
have said: “I am only human”. That’s
one of the key refrains of “Kick The Cat Syndrome”. I’m sad to say that at one stage in my life both the refrain and
the syndrome felt quite familiar.

One reader describes this syndrome more tellingly than I
could. Like many of us, after an
abusive childhood she fell into other abusive relationships. She writes:

“I’ve had so much anger bottled up in me, and
recently it was me who lashed out in anger at someone else .. mostly because he
wasn’t being honest with me .. but even so, I don’t want to end up being an
‘abuser’ !”