May 26, 2017

3 Big Emotions That Keep People Stuck: Grief

In Part one of this series, we looked at how as a society we do everything possible to avoid feeling painful emotions: we ignore, push away, numb, deflect, project, anything to avoid the pain.  We also saw how unresolved emotions can manifest in unwanted conditions and keep us from feeling the joy, happiness, and gratitude that is potentially waiting for us on the other side.  We looked at the hot, fiery emotion of anger and ways to process it through the body, and today we are going to look at grief.

Grief

While anger is red hot, fiery, powerful and protective, grief is heavy, wet, and oh so painful.  It can feel like an arrow in your heart.  Whenever you lose something important in your life, it is natural to suffer grief.  You may feel sad, devastated, lonely, lost, empty, weak, helpless, depressed, or even suicidal.  All of these are faces of grief.

While grief is most strongly associated with the loss of a loved one, there are many other possibilities for loss.  It can be helpful to acknowledge specifically what you are grieving.  For example, at the end of a relationship, you might not just be grieving the loss of the person in your life, but the loss of your home, your future plans, your financial security, your status as a couple or family, or time with your kids.  In the case of a job it might not just be your livelihood but your purpose, your work community, your status, etc.  The individual losses may be big or small, but it helps to name them.

While you may have been taught somewhere along the way that crying is a sign of weakness, it is the body’s natural way of releasing grief.  Often in EFT sessions, clients quickly become in touch with sadness and tears spontaneously flow.  Many are surprised and some are at first embarrassed, especially men who have been given the message that real men don’t cry.  After a good cry, however, most everyone experiences a tremendous sense of relief and is surprised at how much the tears help. 

While anger likes powerful, strong fiery movement, water is grief’s natural healer.  If tears do not come, water can still be used to soothe sadness.  Here are some ideas:

  • Soak in a warm bath, Jacuzzi, or float tank.
  • Rest a warm water bottle over your heart or wherever the sadness feels stuck.
  • Drink lots and lots of water to hydrate your body and allow the sadness to flow through.

When you are grieving a loss and saying good-bye, it is also good to find healthy closure. Here are some ideas:

  • Write a good-bye letter to all that you have lost: your love, your home, your livelihood, your community, your future plans, etc.
  • Create an altar and/or light a candle to honor who/what you have lost
  • If you are on decent terms with someone you are separating from, create a ceremony of closure. My ex-husband and I had a ceremony where we returned our wedding rings to each other and put them in little boxes I had bought for the purpose.  It was not the joyful occasion of our wedding, but it brought a peaceful sense of closure to our marriage.

While on the other side of anger is passion, joy, enthusiasm and a zest for life, on the other side of grief is connection, compassion, and peace.  As we connect with and move through our grief, we learn to embrace our vulnerability, which opens us up to experience life more fully. Deeply processing painful feelings can be uncomfortable, but the benefits are well worth the effort.

In the next post we will look at the darkest emotion: shame.

May 25, 2017

3 Big Emotions That Keep People Stuck: Anger

Nobody likes to feel painful emotions.  As a society we do everything we can not to feel them: we numb them with substances, food, the media or other addictions, we block them out by over-scheduling, we deflect them, project them, anything to avoid the pain.  But what happens when emotions don’t get processed?  They can get trapped in the body and manifest as a physical pain or illness, they can fuel dis-empowering habits such as emotional over-eating or smoking, or they can keep the nervous system stuck in ongoing problems such as insomnia, anxiety, or depression.  In fact, I strongly believe that behind any unwanted condition lies unprocessed emotions.  Furthermore, our efforts to numb or avoid feeling painful emotions also keep us from feeling love, connection, gratitude and joy. 

As an EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) practitioner, I help clients process both current and long-held emotions so they can move out of unwanted conditions and into a life of freedom and joy.  EFT is a powerful technique that meets your feelings exactly where they are in any given moment and by deeply processing them through your body’s energy system, allows you to transform them in a relatively short period of time.  In this 3-part series I am going to talk about three big emotions that keep people stuck – anger, grief, and shame – and give some ideas on ways to process them through the body.  

Anger

Anger is a loud, bold, fiery emotion designed to protect you.  It yells, “Fight!”  It displays power, sets limits, and holds boundaries.  It can be BIG and SCARY, but the flip side is passion, focus, enthusiasm, and joy.  If you suppress your anger, you suppress your aliveness along with it.

Most of us are not taught to express anger in a healthy way.  I cannot tell you how many clients I have who report they were not allowed to be angry as children.  Some needed to tiptoe around alcoholic or otherwise volatile parents so as not to set off the dragon, and others were told to go to their room when they were angry until they could behave properly. I know I had a lot of judgement around my anger because it didn’t feel “spiritual.”  Consequently, I did my best to deny it, which only created more problems for me to deal with later.

Let me assure you that it is not only natural and human to feel anger, but healthy to be in touch with it, so you can process it and let it out.  All that energy it takes to contain it saps your health, vitality, and enthusiasm for life.  If you are currently feeling angry, yet have a fear or aversion to feeling or expressing anger, the first step is to acknowledge and recognize that you are angry and that this is acceptable and part of being human.  If you are not currently feeling angry, but suspect you might have anger buried within, this is also a valuable step.

In addition to the EFT/Tapping work I do with my clients, I suggest moving anger out of the body with some powerful physical activities.  Here are some possibilities:

  • Exercise of any kind, especially ones involving vigorous movements that get the heart rate up: running, swimming, kickboxing, aerobics, hiking, etc.
  • Find a secluded place and beat a pillow with a baseball bat or riding crop, slap a piece of an old garden hose on pavement, or throw rocks at a tree. The thuds or slaps can be very satisfying.  Just be sure the area is free of people and animals, so you don’t accidentally hurt anything living!
  • Go to a secluded place (possibly an empty parking lot in your car) and scream and shout as loud as you can.

Anger can feel scary and out of control, but the rewards of transforming its power to fuel your purpose and goals is well worth it.  Tomorrow we will look at another strong emotion with amazing potential on the other side: grief.