Witness

An episode of the MindHealth by Sara Stevens podcast, hosted by Sara Stevens, titled "Witness" was published on July 22, 2021 and runs 6 minutes.

July 22, 2021 ·6m · MindHealth by Sara Stevens

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Summary

Our negative pasts can sometimes weigh heavy on our hearts, but also can have a massive impact on how we live our lives in the now. Because we all have past experiences, we have a part of our inner mind that we call our inner ‘Observing Self’ or the ‘inner witness’ and this part of you is always doing just that. It observes and records what you think, feel, say and do moment to moment. It doesn’t decide if what you are doing is right or wrong, it just observes and records. It is a bit like our own internal videoing system whereby we can go back and walk through the experiences that we have had in our lives. We can pause and take a look in more detail about what happened, how we felt and how we reacted and also follow through the experience from A to B.  Let’s use having relationship issues as an example, let’s imagine that you had a hard relationship in the past that negatively affected you on many levels. You have left that partner now but can still feel it negatively impacting you in your daily life. Your new partner says, “Come on, we are going to be late”, and suddenly you find yourself enraged and screaming at them or you find you're feeling anxious and tearful. So, what happened there? You’re not in that old toxic relationship. You love your new partner so why are you responding in these ways? It can’t be the now so it has to be the past impacting the now and this is where you can use your inner witness to help you uncover what happened and get to the bottom of this...

Episode Description

Our negative pasts can sometimes weigh heavy on our hearts, but also can have a massive impact on how we live our lives in the now. Because we all have past experiences, we have a part of our inner mind that we call our inner ‘Observing Self’ or the ‘inner witness’ and this part of you is always doing just that. It observes and records what you think, feel, say and do moment to moment. It doesn’t decide if what you are doing is right or wrong, it just observes and records. It is a bit like our own internal videoing system whereby we can go back and walk through the experiences that we have had in our lives. We can pause and take a look in more detail about what happened, how we felt and how we reacted and also follow through the experience from A to B. Let’s use having relationship issues as an example, let’s imagine that you had a hard relationship in the past that negatively affected you on many levels. You have left that partner now but can still feel it negatively impacting you in your daily life. Your new partner says, “Come on, we are going to be late”, and suddenly you find yourself enraged and screaming at them or you find you're feeling anxious and tearful. So, what happened there? You’re not in that old toxic relationship. You love your new partner so why are you responding in these ways? It can’t be the now so it has to be the past impacting the now and this is where you can use your inner witness to help you uncover what happened and get to the bottom of this...