Past Life Regressions are a great tool to feel, express and release messy emotions. I’d had a cathartic moment while I was hypnotized with a very skilled guide who let me sob my guts out for about ten minutes. It felt wonderful and so safe and an incredible relief to release something that had been stored inside since my toddler days. But all emotions are not leftovers from childhood. Some of them are brand spanking new. I suppose I could be on call for each time one of my clients feels an emotion, like sadness or anger, outside of the safety of a session, in case they need a place to express it, but that’s not really practical. In my own journey, I’m realizing that it takes time to learn how to feel and express emotions in a healthier way.
I’ve been pondering this for weeks now—this idea of allowing messy, uncontrolled emotions to happen rather than stuffing them away deep inside. In fact, I’ve done a ton of personal work around emotional issues over the past decade and have made huge strides in healing childhood wounds (and past life ones, too). But I haven’t given up methods of blocking and stuffing emotions—behaviors that are old friends.
This past week, very mindfully, I allowed myself to recognize, name and sit with each emotion that came up, as it came up. This went pretty well—but then again—for the first three days of the experiment I was home alone. I did have an alarming burst of rage that made my dog whimper. The dog forgave me once I let him outside and my anger, once expressed, dissipated quickly.
Then my husband returned home, my son came back from college, and my dad came out to visit. Yesterday I had an opportunity to attempt anger again. Without going into details, there was some tension in the household; politics were involved and voices were raised. I thought—great, I’m feeling something—must be anger and I should express it. Well, short story short, I’m sure there is a tidy, satisfying and elegant way to express righteous anger. Unfortunately, I do not possess this skill. I ended up feeling like a total idiot and sounding like one. The anger, I realized, wasn’t really anger at all, but something more like fear of conflict. By the end of the day, I’d resorted to my old friend “Treats” to soothe the hurts. Treats don’t work so well as she used to, either.
This morning I sat in meditation, just allowing myself to be with the Divine who holds me through it all. Emotions came up, although they felt a bit remote, as though I were forcing them. So I just sat with that, too. My calm center restored, I can perhaps give this another try. I might fail again, but maybe I won’t.
In any case I am beginning to realize my choices: 1.) See if I can’t get that stuffing-it-all-down-with-a-bag-of-chips to work again. 2.) Do extensive research digging for examples of elegant anger and perhaps even write a self-help book on how to be an emotional mess and still look great entitled “The Put-Together Girl’s Guide to Elegant Emotions” or 3.) Practice sitting with my feelings and emotions, allowing them to pass through, and relying on the Divine to sit with me and help and comfort me. In other words, be with my shadow side.
I’ll get back to you on which one I choose. I wonder what kind of advance I might get for that self-help book….
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