Just when you think you have something of Self figured out, it crops up again and asks for further examination and transformation. The root of feelings can be so illusive. They can be a source of trauma to us that takes some serious thought. Some of us have emotional pain that is from something like adhesions on old wounds.
When we have negative feelings, we make choices. We can let those negative feelings be part of our action or reaction. No one else deserves your negative feelings. They do not own them, deserve them, we do and what we do with our negative feelings is what is crucial.
When things feel spacy or out of alignment, we need to train ourselves to feel them, to know them, to name them. If we want a happy, peaceful life, we have to do the work to gain it. No one else can fix it for us, not even therapy. If you want healing, you can get it, but it is only you, no matter who help, that can flick that switch to gaining healthier emotional ground.
What we often forget is that every mistake, what feels like a failure, what feels like a judgment, what feels like sorrow, when nothing really has set it off, that it is an opportunity to grow. Rather than be incensed, indifferent, in denial, angered, put-upon, etc., why don’t we simply get it all out in the open to our Self and work through it. We tend to hang on to old injustices, old faults, old everything like it was something precious. It does not make us precious. It is the haunted house of emotional triggers that will always haunt us until we see them for what they are, and name the feelings. Only then can the haunted space become a haven that is worthy of the gift to the world that we are.
Our cue to knowing that we are lugging along old, negative, feelings, is that we will meet the same brick wall of negative emotions over and over again. It is like something higher than us is throwing us into a familiar flame until we douse it with calling it out. A victim personality will own the negative and see themselves in negative ways, feel negative about self, and our thoughts ill be hopeless and dreary and dark. A little light on the subject can do wonders for us. If we had traumatic events in our life, look at it as a badge of courage that you survived rather than cradle the memory like a wounded dying child.
We have choices. Make them. Choice not chance determines our future. Positive feelings lead to a positive life. Be empowered. Let the negative thought come, grab hold of it, examine it, and figure out what danged thing is triggering the negative feelings that arose. That is empowerment. That is being maternally nurturing for Self.
When we are positive, positive things come to us. We have all experienced that. And, yes, I have had a gift come in some form and then lost it and I thought more about the losing than the gift itself.
As we seek peace amidst covid experiences that go totally against our basic needs, we are given the gift of time to face our feelings, tracing the WHY of them, and stop our self-critical feelings about Self. Having a great life is facing our feelings, tracing our motives, and sprint away from the “monsters” in our closet that bring us back again and again to the door of our own trauma.
We have, always have had, the power to transform ourselves. We worry about things like vaccines and mask-wearing, but we all have “things” inside us that cause us distress and poor health in all areas of our personal medicine wheel. We all wear masks and mask our feelings, as well. We all change every single moment of every day. What makes us think we cannot change our emotional response in negative ways? We ARE what we feel. We PROJECT what we feel. We INVITE what we feel. That is powerful. That is a covid of a whole different kind. Transform. Reform. Name Them. Tame them.
©Carol Desjarlais 11.2.21
**I have said that I craved doing some painting on canvas again. This one simply happened. I put up the video of my late-night work as I drew with paint. By the time I got to the end of the video, I had emptied of feelings that I had not even been aware of. Well, I had been aware, but I had shoved those feeling aside. I worry. I have always been a worrier. And here is my worry. This morning, I finished the background. Spirals and spirals of worries that dog me, bark at the door of my consciousness and bite at my heels. I did not know what to do with the background, but, of course, the spiral of worries of all sizes and wabbling shapes. Yes, this is my worry personified. Now to dig in and figure out how to dump my worries. That does not mean I am going to deny them, for I do have things to worry about. I just did not realize how deeply I was feeling it.
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