Happy New Year!
This year I want to help you get started on doing the mental and emotional work needed for shifts to happen. I believe in order to have these things happen, we have to believe first that it is possible. Next, we must be willing to release the patterns in our lives that are creating conditions we say we do not want. We do this by choosing to do the inner work each day. To jumpstart the new year our wellness workshop post will discuss how to overcome emotional stress and the next three will offer positive affirmations to help you start building a positive mindset and fill your mind with nurturing thoughts to get your year started off in the right direction.
Read post two here
Read post three here
Read post four here
Let's jump in.
"IT IS SAFE TO LOOK WITHIN"
I've been supporting women on their journey to healing from past wounds, sobriety and building a stronger sense of self since 2008. During my journey of counseling women I've come to see that everyone deals with painful emotions from time to time but not everyone understands how to bounce back after the pain. You might struggle with anger, envy, fear, or guilt. These emotions might be related to a current experience, or they might be emotions you have struggled with for a very long time like me and my clients who are recovering from fear of abandonment anxiety and childhood emotional neglect that cause us to emotional eat and struggle with codependency people pleasing. But, you may be struggling with toxic emotions because you are stuck in a bubble of lower vibration due to your environment, the company you keep or even the thoughts you tend to dwell on for instances all the things that are not working in your life. Regardless, it’s possible to engage an emotional healing process on your journey toward wholeness.
"EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW IS REVEALED TO ME."
Learning the steps of an emotional healing process is vital to growth in emotional health, or what professional within the wellness industry call emotional intelligence. It doesn’t mean you stop having emotions. In fact, emotions are a excellent aspect of who you are. But, it will help you experience more calm and clarity inside as you care for your emotional well-being. And, it will benefit your relationships with other people especially for business owners whose main focus is building and maintaining relationships with their clients.
Within my own journey what I have come to learn is that If you don’t heal painful emotions, they can fester like an open wound both in your personal life and business. They might hide away outside of your conscious awareness for a time, but they will wait for a moment of vulnerability and make themselves known. For example, when you don’t engage an emotional healing process, emotions tend to:
Project themselves in sarcasm or bitterness toward others
Cause you to react to minor incidents
Unresolved pain can cause resentment and make you experience an unexpected flood of anger, fear, or loneliness that you take out on those around you
Make you feel powerless or hopeless
Negatively impact your view of yourself and the world
On the other hand, when you heal painful emotions, you experience more freedom and calm emotions. Instead of being at the whim of your emotions, you learn how to lead your emotions with care rather than feel hostage to emotional outburst and feelings that you haven't took the time to deal with or process.
Folks like us who experience abandonment and childhood emotional neglect weren’t taught an emotional healing process to self regulate. As a result, we’re afraid of the power of our emotions, or we don’t know what to do with them. So we deny our shadow traits and experiences of pain or put on a mask so that others won’t see what we are really feeling.
I see this in my counseling practice all the time, and I have struggled with it myself. Many women don’t know how to manage disappointment, loss, loneliness, sorrow, envy, anger, and fear. We get very good at telling ourselves and others that we are always “just fine.” However, at some point, those walled off emotions will erupt if not cared for with compassion.
Instead of burying emotions or numbing them with addiction like food, you can learn how to understand and care for them by engaging an emotional healing process to release the suppressed pain. You can heal painful emotions and learn to make emotions your allies. For example, loneliness can become a cue for you to cultivate connection with others or to forgive those who hurt you. Sorrow can help you slow down and make space for healthy grief. Healed anger is a helpful warning that you may need to set some boundaries or find your voice and speak your truth. And, fear, when tended well, can help you stay humble and connected in healthy ways to others and reconnect with God for strength.
The secret to an emotional healing process is to pay attention to your emotions with compassion—not shove them aside. Here are some ways to begin that process.
"I GENTLY GUIDE MY MIND TOWARD TRUSTING MY OWN INNER WISDOM"
3 Steps of an Emotional Healing Process
1.) Become aware of the emotion.
Becoming aware of an emotion helps you name it for what it is. As you name the emotion, you gain distance from it, a process psychologists call differentiation. Here are some examples of how to take this step:
Take a few minutes to notice what you are thinking about.
Grab your shadow work journal and write down some of those thoughts or simply become aware of them.
Ask yourself what emotions are connected to those thoughts
Name the emotion or emotions as best you can.
Next write down a brief sentence to describe the feeling.
Becoming more aware of what you think and feel is a skill you can practice each day.“Mindsight” is a term coined by Dr. Dan Siegel to describe our human capacity to perceive the mind of the self and others. It is a powerful lens through which we can understand our inner lives with more clarity, integrate the brain, and enhance our relationships with others. Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds. It helps us get ourselves off of the autopilot of ingrained behaviors and habitual responses. It lets us “name and tame” the emotions we are experiencing, rather than being overwhelmed by them. According to Dr. Dan Siegel by simply acknowledging the fact of what you feel—”I feel disappointed” or “I feel ignored”—soothes the brain’s limbic system and helps you gain access to other regions of the brain. (For more on how the brain works with emotions, check out the work of Dan Siegel).
2.) Get curious about the emotion.
Once you have become aware of a strong or painful feeling, get curious about it. Ask yourself questions like:
Where do I feel this emotion in my body?
If it was an image, what would it look like? Grab your shadow work journal and draw a picture of what it would look like.
How familiar is it to me?
Has it been with me for a long time?
Is there an early memory of when this emotion first showed up?
Can I extend compassion toward this emotion?
As you get curious about your emotions, you’re moving into the stage of self-acceptance and compassion. Instead of judging yourself for having the emotion, you accept it for what it is and decide to learn more about it. Criticizing yourself or beating yourself up doesn’t help you in the emotional healing process or embracing your shadow traits—in fact, it heightens the tension and turmoil you feel inside!
3.) Reconnect to God to obtain the strength you need to do this inner work.
Remember we are first spirit living on earth having a human experience. We all are emotional, thinking, and spiritual beings. You can access the tremendous spiritual resources at your disposal by inviting God to guide your steps as you do the inner work to process unresolved pain in your life. The reality is negative experiences affect us more deeply than positive ones, and if you're like me, you may feel emotionally stuck and need divine assistance. The key is to not run away from pain. We have to feel and face them- if not they can weaken and paralyze us from taking the action required to move forward in life.
Becoming aware of emotions and getting curious about them helps you begin the shadow work emotional healing process. Inviting God into that experience magnifies the power. Working through this step-by-step process brings a deep-down, grounded sense of calm, confidence, and clarity. You’ll learn that you can face your emotions with compassion. And as you do, you’ll discover that you can feel and face your emotions, and not allow them to overwhelm or paralyze you. As a result you will also recognize when your personal vibration is lower which may have an affect on how you feel.
Signs of Low Vibration
According to Spiritvibez, a person who is vibrating at a low frequency is in a negative headspace. Signs of a low vibration person include:
Moody, including feeling depressed and anxious
Insecurity and fear
Quick to respond with anger
Ungrounded
Complains a lot
Fatigue and little energy
Ungrateful
Unhealthy with little self-care
Feeling stuck in life
Make a lot of poor choices
Feelings of always being the victim
On the other hand, signs of a high vibration person include positivity, happiness, inner peace, good energy, and healthy!
"I RISE ABOVE ALL LIMITATIONS"
As you practice following these three steps you’ll learn to calm yourself when overtaken by a painful or troubling emotion. You can then move into unburdening painful memories associated with emotions and integrating those emotions back into your life in healthy ways. You’ll gain compassion for yourself, others and learn how to respond intentionally to a difficult situation and even begin to show mercy and begin the forgiveness process of those who hurt you. You’ll learn how to advocate effectively on behalf of yourself and others, without doing harm, but responding with mercy and love. Your emotions will become your allies not something to avoid or escape from with food or other unhealthy addictions.
For more information about the emotional healing process:
Check out my book: The LonerWife Diairies Book 1: Shattered and Lost...Who Am I
Join the conversation. Leave a comment below:
How are you doing on your journey of emotional healing? Which of the 3 steps for healing do you find the easiest to apply? Are you aware when your personal vibe is high or lower?
Got a question for Dr. Nikki LeToya White?
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Resource:
All affirmations belong to Louise L. Hay, taken from the book Trust Life, Hay House, Inc.
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