I've seen this dynamic all too frequently. A person is on the path of growing and becoming more conscious and they begin to follow the mindset of taking the high road, letting go of what they're feeling that may be deemed negative and instantly transmuting it to a positive mindset, using daily affirmations to turn things around and create an abundant life. Don't get me wrong, this is all wonderful and has its place on the path to personal growth and consciousness. However, there is a tendency to skip the unearthing of our feelings, the potholes on the path, the churning compost breaking down our beliefs, deconstructing what once was, so something truly fertile can grow. This process must be honored as well or we find ourselves working so hard to be positive when we're feeling something quite different. And the result? Nothing changes because we haven't allowed the breakdown, the room for full expression, the power of transformation to come sweeping into our lives to create the tangible and authentic change that we're truly craving. When we honor this process in our lives, then we don't have to TRY to be positive or compassionate, we just are.
Sometimes we just need to yell, sob and scream!
We need to honor all of our feelings and the more we do, the less we'll experience the duality of good and bad feelings AND the less we'll project onto others, feel resentful or undermine what we are truly longing for. I taught my daughter at very young age how to effectively let out her feelings. We'd go out into the woods together and find a great stick to beat the ground with or when we were in the car we'd let out guttural sounds using the vibration of our voices to go deep and unearth stuck energy. It all felt great! And the truly wonderful thing about feelings that may be challenging or deemed as negative, is that they are super informative. They are our sign-posts telling us that something needs to change in our lives.
Here's the big BUT with this. Just like we can create a habit of using positive affirmations to turn things around, we can also get into the habit and/or pattern of choosing the path of anger or criticism. We can get caught in a patterned response of either smiling and taking the high road or lashing out.
So how do you know when you should be practicing positive affirmations or really going into your feelings?
One of the things that I've noticed, is that when we are continually experiencing a pattern or situation that we find ourselves revisiting over and over again, it's is an opportunity to express something that we weren't able to do in the past. And if our patterned response has been to stay positive through it and keep on smiling, then chances are we have a yell or a scream that's just dying to come out. I've even had clients that have discovered a scream inside of them that had nothing to do with this lifetime. This is particularly true with trauma. If we haven't let out all of our feelings resulting from some traumatic situation whether from this lifetime or another, we will recreate similar situations over and over again until we finally surrender to our own scream or full on sob.
On the other hand, if we have a repeated pattern or situation and we feel like we've yelled enough or have continued to go to the place of anger over and over again, then committing to experiencing a response other than anger is what this repeated situation is asking of us. It's showing up over and over again presenting us with the opportunity to respond differently. So if anger has been our go to response, then committing to daily affirmations that focus on letting go of the anger to find acceptance and/or forgiveness may be what is being asked of us.
I'm not suggesting it's okay to let out all our rage at someone or to scream at someone, but what I am suggesting is that we pay attention to what we're feeling and find a way to express it. Give that part of ourselves a voice, some form of expression. Ask ourselves in every moment, "What is this very moment asking of me? How can I best show up in a way that I never have before?" This is healthy growth where we are honoring our feelings and recognizing the moments in our lives that are invitations to a new experience.