Welcome to my 11-part series of How to Transform Your Life where I share my favorite tools and resources that I implemented and improved my life with. Today is the fourth transformational tip on processing negative emotions. Enjoy!
Unresolved inner conflicts impact our health, career, and relationships. This robs us of enjoying our lives. If you are triggered, agitated, or apathetic, and depressed it could be from holding onto unprocessed painful experiences. This prolonged suffering is reflected in the body as explained by Bessel van der Kolk in the book, The Body Keeps the Score.
I realized I was an emotional hoarder of wounds after my body went into sudden cardiac arrest from buried away resentments and disappointments from decades before. There are five major wounds and fears: abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, injustice, and rejection. Not knowing how to process pain, I told myself to “get over it.” or denied being upset, or minimized my experience by saying it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t know there were methods to release it. Doesn’t time heal? When a similar situation arose it triggered me to believe another negative situation reminiscent of the past would occur and my body would have a visceral reaction.
Studies have shown we do not emotionally develop beyond the age of unresolved conflicts. Mark Oliver, explains in the book The Four Intelligences most people in the United States don’t emotionally mature past the age of eight. This explains why a grown adult can go into a fit and act childlike.
In nature, when an animal is in a dangerous and stressful state, its heart races, cortisol, adrenalin, and norepinephrine flood the body. Once out of danger, the animal has the capacity to return back to homeostasis within ninety seconds. Dr. Joe Dispenza states humans have the same capacity. When we hold onto the stress long after the experience has occurred it is possible we are addicted to those hormonal states. The good news is addiction can be overcome by processing negative emotions as a daily practice.
Imagine the light feeling of prioritizing emotional well-being by clearing out negative experiences. Do this in a safe quiet space, when alone and uninterrupted, between thirty and ninety minutes. The three great resources listed below help process negative emotions.
Emotional Map from Making Love Work by Barbara De’Angelis
This method includes writing or speaking out loud and expressing emotions in the following six steps. Each level breaks down the negative charge and leads into the next level where all emotions are resolved.
Anger, resentment, and blame
Hurt, sadness, and disappointment
Fears, insecurities, and wounds
Regrets, understanding, and responsibility
Wishes, intentions, and solutions
Love, appreciation, and forgiveness
The Work by Byron Katie
The first step of this process is to fill out a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet where you answer six questions about the triggering experience. Then there are four questions to reflect on and then a turnaround. Byron Katie hosts a weekly podcast, At Home with Byron Katie demonstrating this powerful and transformative process.
Ho’oponopono
A Hawaiian spiritual practice used to clean energy by reciting four sentences. This method is popularized by the story of Dr. Hew Len, a clinical psychologist who worked with the developmentally disabled and the criminally mentally ill and their families. He didn’t treat the patients instead he applied the following steps towards himself stating that when the data is clear within it ceases to be expressed in those around you. This method was so radical that the patients healed and the mental institution was closed.
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
The process is complete when you feel lighter, more loving, and at peace with the past. The inner conflict is resolved and all that is left is a sense of gratitude. There is power in seeing things anew, gaining insights, and inspiring a change in responses and behaviors.
Everyone deserves to experience a rewarding and fulfilling life. Take the time to clean up and process emotional wounds. It may be exhausting as memories surface to grieve, but the body will heal and so will your emotional resilience.
Do you find yourself interacting in fake or pretentious ways? Do you lie to others? Do you find yourself being highly criticized and judged? Are you wrapped up in how others perceive you? If a camera was running on you 24/7 would you be terrified by what others witnessed in your life?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, you are living in your own private hell. A place of emotional baggage, filled with lies, fear, paranoia, and so forth. One way to gain some insight is to play the mirror game. Meaning what you accuse others of you are guilty of yourself.
Are you judgmental of others? Judgmental people are afraid of being judged themselves so they deflect the attention off themselves by trying to project it onto others.
Do you have expectations for others to live up to? People don’t let us down, we let ourselves down when we handed our power to something outside of ourselves.
Take Responsibility We create our own private hell and we are the only ones who can get ourselves out of it. Stop deflecting, dig down into your own murkiness. Once you do, you realize even in your murkiness it is still OK. You are beautiful just as you are, even with body odor and bed head you are still loved and accepted. The true you transcends that, and by being comfortable with your “human-ness” (skankiness and all…LOL) you realize it doesn’t take away your value. After all, once you embrace who you really are all the murkiness begins to fall away. Stop giving power to the social paradigm that you are not living up to. No one really does anyway. Take your power back, take responsibility for who you are.
See Your Value Those layers of thoughts & habits are not who we really are and as we let them go we can shine. We are all divine sparks of God. We are here to do good and how can we shine when we are always hiding? We have a calling to greatness and our spirit is so big that we cannot be held down with such trivial baggage. As we become loving and accepting people, we become a magnet for more love. Imagine living freely, doing exactly what you wanted to do, when you wanted to do it, free of guilt. Imagine that no one would criticize you or judge you. Nothing you could do or say would cause anyone to flee from your life. If you knew no matter what you would be loved, you would be honest. You would feel safe.
Liberate Yourself There is no need to stress and become uptight, for once we do the mind and body become so tense that we cannot transmit data from the divine and we are literally squeezing the magic out of our experience. RELAX and see the real you. Let go and just be free. Let yourself out of the prison you have been confining yourself to.
Be the Example If you want openness and honesty from others, you must be that yourself. Once others feel safety in your openness their walls will go down too. As Gandhi said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” Be free, be liberated. Do not look to others to change first, it starts with you. Do not tell others how to be, be an example of what you know to be true and people will flock to you for your insight and guidance. Give them the freedom to be themselves.
Liberate Others As Marianne Williamson said so beautifully,” As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.” The best way to give back to others is to allow them to be who they are, just how they are. Love them anyway. When you are free, others will be freed in your presence. People will open and share details with you because they know there will be no judgment. None of the silly stuff matters anyway, I remember this quote, “Forever trust in who we are, and nothing else matters”. Who knew a little Metallica could be so profound? This song has been running through my head. These lyrics are the real deal. Enjoy!
Share Your Journey Let your skeletons out of your closet. I did over a year ago when I posted a video called Skeletons in My Closet. I remember being scared to post it. I had no idea what would come of it. Surprisingly, I was greeted with support and compassion. People resonated with my pain and soon the fears and insecurities that once held me down liberated me. I am so thankful I had the courage to do it. It is my desire to be free. As I let go of my silly trivial human-ness may it inspire you to do the same. I wrote out my human-ness in the blog Walking Into Knowingness. It is time to admit, “This is me now, and it is OK. I have a heart of gold and I am working on becoming a better version of myself.” It is my dream that by sharing my life publicly that it liberates you to live your life more fully. As Gandhi said, “My life is my message.” Let your life be your message as well. Be the spark that you are and shine above all this nonsense. After all, if not you, then who? If not now, then when?
Q: Hey Lori, I got a chance to check out your website and I really resonated with it since you have been through plenty of bad relationships yourself. I was wondering if you could help me heal from all the baggage it left. I just don’t want to be the old me anymore and want to stop living in my story. It seems whenever someone gets close to me it starts getting ugly hence the reason why I have been staying to myself lately, but I do like being social and eventually want a healthy sound relationship. Every time I try it seems like I am stuck talking about my ex’s big no no. I don’t know how to gain closure over all this mess.
This led me to the raw food lifestyle and have been embracing it well, but then I splurge every now and then and don’t like being addicted to cooked foods anymore either. I feel like a complete mess and need to get it all together so I can take my board exam for medical school soon. Yikes!! today I just heard my past reiterated from a male who was trying to get to know me and well it led to an emotionally messy me and then I went back down the spiral not eating well and not being able to sleep. Can you help?
A: When the going gets tough, you fall off your raw food regimen. This is a situation where you are emotionally shutting out what you are experiencing through food. Raw foods actually clear pathways and what you feel is more intense. When you are raw you are alert and clear headed. Emotional eating tells me you are holding back from healing. Your heart wants to heal, but your head is stuck on the past rather than the vision you hold for yourself. The past has no power so stop giving your power to it.
Talking about your ex’s “big no no” tells me that you are BLAMING others and you haven’t gotten over it. Take the pain you experienced in relationships and turn it inward so that you could learn to make finer distinctions in your relationships. Take full RESPONSIBILITY for where you are and what happened because YOU allowed it to happen. Nobody can do anything to you, playing the victim role only harms you and does not serve you.
I can tell a lot about a person by what they choose to talk about. If they are complaining to me about someone else I know they are deflecting the energy from their inner core and trying to project it elsewhere. They are looking outside of themselves. What they want is validation. You do not need the world to say, “Oh, look at you…you poor thing. How could anybody do this to you?” That is not what you really want.
If there is anyway I can help you heal from your baggage and gain closure it is to FORGIVE yourself. You are here to grow and learn. We are supposed to make mistakes because with each one we get a bit better. ALLOW yourself to explore and grow. You need to feel your VALUE as a person.
In this life we are faced with reflections of our internal state by our relationships, our finances, our career, our home. How do those look to you? If they look a mess it’s probably because you feel a mess internally. Remember that everything in life you are complaining about you are guilty of yourself. When you want to complain go inward and take actions to improve yourself. Start acting like the person you wish to be and soon you will be that person. Treat yourself the way you wished others treated you and soon your self RESPECT will flourish and you will find yourself around others who respect you as well. How do you expect anyone to truly love and respect you if you can’t even love, respect, and accept yourself?
You serve no one in beating yourself up. If you want to be loved…love yourself. Do all the things you want someone else to do for you and do them for yourself. Your love will illuminate and you will have that spark within you. Soon you’ll be surrounded with people who love you because the outer physical world is just a mere reflection of your internal state. I commend you on your raw food journey! You are on track! Keep eating raw foods as you go through this sticky “mess”. Feel it, experience it, grow from it, and move forward into that “new you” you say you want to be.
If you are running through life feeling overwhelmed and not really making the impact you know you want, or wishing you felt alive and filled with passion then you are going to LOVE me!
