Author: ratnadyer

It is helpful to be conscious of how we relate with our own anger.

Do we judge it?
Do we judge ourselves if we have it?
Do we resist it?
Are we afraid of it?
Do we deny it?
Do we repress/suppress it?
Do we skip over it as pointless?
Do we use it to avoid our deeper hurt and sadness?
Do we blame others angrily so the focus is on them and not on what we might need to change in ourselves?
Do we turn anger inward towards ourselves which then becomes depression?
Do we use anger to stay identified as a victim?
How was anger role modelled to us by our parents?
What messages were we given when we showed our anger?
Do we know healthy ways to acknowledge and express our anger?

How well do we really know ourselves?

Some things are beyond our control. We can do our absolute best, and beyond that our learning is to lean into trust, kindness, letting go and surrendering.

“I can do nothing for you but work on myself… you can do nothing for me but work on yourself.”
Ram Dass

When we each do our own work on ourselves, this is the best thing we can do for our relationships.

If we are growing and following the call of our truth and our partner doesn’t like it or grow in their own way with us, sometimes the relationship will need fall away.

We can then in time come more into alignment with people on a similar wavelength and direction.

It’s very hard to face and trust this transition. But what choice do we have other than to follow our deep heart and soul’s call.

We each need to find the capacity within ourselves to hold our own hurt, to hold and bring love to our emotional turmoil and pain.

The heart of compassionate loving awareness is not an emotional space, it is an expansive, allowing, stable, safe, unchanged and unchanging openness.

We are more ourselves than ever when we are full in and as this loving, open emptiness. This space within which all emotion can arise, be held, and pass through without a trace.

What we hold out from is the feeling we fear something will bring. We can hold ourselves captive here for a long time.

We have to feel to heal.
Let the feelings come.

Some need to connect with and acknowledge more of their feelings.
Some need to learn how to regulate, balance and gain space from strong emotions.

In both cases, the body is the key.

If you need to learn to regulate and balance strong feelings…
Learn to find stability by anchoring strongly into body, the five senses, present moment awareness; reality.

If you need to connect with feelings more…
Listen to how your body is speaking and holding your feelings. Is your chest tight, your breathing shallow and your stomach gripped?
Are you hot or heart rate up?
Does your chest ache with a kind of lump or sadness?
Learn to lean in to the presence of your emotions.

The body sensations speak and are a doorway for self connection and stability.

The most important thing in life is to love and to learn to love more.
Love is freedom on the inside.

Anxiety and other emotions are fed by our thinking. We can get caught in a thinking feeling thinking feeling loop. Thoughts make more of the feeling and the feeling then makes more of the same vein of thought.

To step out of this loop we need to remember we have a body. We need to step out of thinking and inhabit our direct, present moment body experience. We need to anchor ourselves deeply in it. We need to come out of our thinking and into our breath, into our sensations, into our physical senses.

This way we slow the mind, have our focus outside of the narrative, which creates space and eases the feeling.

When we can simply and without judgement, focus on our body sensations, emotion can be safely expressed and released. Like a wave it can pass.

If your body’s experience with intense emotion is too difficult to be with, practice alternating between the not nice sensations and a neutral or even pleasant sensation in the body. Find a part of the body that feels ok/nice. Focus your attention there for five breaths, then go back to the difficult emotional sensation for three/five breaths. Pendulate back and forth.
This gives us a way to gradually feel more safe with yucky feelings, to regulate their intensity and gain some control.