Why controlling our emotions does not work

Mindfulness shows us a better way

We try to control our emotions for a range of reasons. We may have been told that we are weak or inadequate for feeling certain emotions. We may fear particular emotions because we have seen negative outcomes from other people expressing those emotions. Some emotions may not fit with our self-imposed image of ourselves. At the end of the day, there are a wide range of beliefs about different emotions, their roles and their meanings.

Separate from the beliefs however, emotions themselves are our natural guidance mechanism system when they are in balance and are not distorted by the “stories” we tell ourselves. Emotions are derivatives from the feelings anger, guilt, sadness, fear and happiness. The stories, on the other hand, are what we tell ourselves about the emotions. It is like there are two layers of mind function happening simultaneously. The first layer is the emotional reaction, and the second layer is the egoic thought that tries to make sense of our experience. Often this is where our understanding goes awry. Our mind comes up with all sorts of ideas that in turn distort our emotional reactions.

Caught in the story within our minds

For example, we may feel anger because someone pushed into a queue in front of us. Some amount of annoyance would be natural (or adaptive) as we could justify that it is disrespectful to push in to line when everyone else had to wait their turn. It highlights our limitation of waiting in line and our frustration that someone can get away with something that seems unfair. I will not go into the situation too much, as another person may not feel annoyance but rather accept it gracefully. However, for the purpose of this point, let us agree that a small amount of anger is appropriate to the situation.

The story in our mind may intensify the emotion by thinking about all the times when we perceived unfairness and our helplessness at standing up for ourselves. We may further feel worthless and ineffective. We may remember times in our childhood when we had to put up with frustrating circumstances when we were really being hurt. We may have been bullied and unable to talk about it, or abused and unable to defend ourselves. By the time our mind is through with us, we are standing inline fuming over the injustice.

Then we may feel bad about feeling angry. We may equate feeling anger with being an ‘angry person’. We may think about angry people we did not like or how we are supposed to be nice people. We struggle and fight with our emotions of anger, worthlessness, guilt and anxiety. We try to suppress and control the emotion of anger. We push it down into our stomach and swallow it. Now our body is completely stressed.

If we suppress emotions over a long period of time then we can eventually develop physical disease. There is a wealth of evidence showing links between the nervous system and the immune system. We know that long term stress can result in a range of physical conditions. So suppressing emotion simply holds the energy of that emotion in our organs and muscles. It does not actually get rid of the emotion. Nor are we really controlling it. This is an illusion. We may keep it down for a while but eventually it will manifest somehow, and usually in ways that are completely out of our control.

Mindfulness and emotional processes

So mindfulness teaches us that if we simply bring awareness into the emotion then we can listen to it, understand what it is really about and transmute it. The emotion, whether it is anger, fear, guilt or sadness, will subside once is job is done. All we need to do is witness it. As we do this we often also witness the ego-story about the emotion. This witnessing process allows us to better see that our thoughts about the emotion are actually feeding our distress. This helps us to consciously choose where we place our awareness. If the memories, images and beliefs that are triggered from a current event are causing us meaningless distress then mindfulness practice can assist us to make different choice and re-focus our attention on our breath, or our foot or the ocean.

This process is not about control out rather witnessing what is occurring in the present moment and then making a choice to re-focus our awareness. If the choice to remain present with the emotion is helpful then this is fine too. However, in mindfulness we stay present with the emotion consciously. To be present with the emotion helps us to feel deeper into its meaning. Mindfulness combined with guided therapeutic processes helps us explore our emotions safely, rather than become stuck in the emotion or feed the destructive story or pattern.

Click here to join us at the “Embrace What Is” mindfulness group on Facebook

 

 

Join us on Friday afternoons at 1pm for an hour of mindfulness based training and psycho-therapeutic insights. “Embrace What Is” is an on-going relaxed group that will support your mindfulness practice and help you to integrate this practice into your everyday life.

Call Vanessa on 0424 507 101 to book your place in this exciting and innovative group

Bookings are essential, as places are limited

Adaptive emotions and emotional reactions

Honouring our emotions the mindful way

Mindfulness allows us to increase awareness of whatever is occurring in the present moment without thoughts such as judgement, over analysis, or self-doubt. The practice is about watching or witnessing our inner processes with our awareness. So when it comes to learning how to honour our emotions using mindfulness practice, it is all about learning to witness the raw emotion as it arises in our body, as well as witnessing the thoughts and urges attaches to those emotions.

The nature of emotion

When we witness emotion, it is important to differentiate between feelings, thought and actions. Our emotions are the actual feelings that arise in our body. They are sadness, anger, guilt, fear and happiness. There are a multitude of other emotions, however these are the core five feelings that most other emotion stems from. Emotions are not thoughts about our emotions, nor are they our behavioural reactions. This is a very important distinction, as when we practice mindfulness of our emotion, we are simply practicing witnessing the emotion itself. Yes, re-activity involves thoughts, feelings and actions, but for the purpose of getting to know emotion, it can be a great practice to witness the emotion itself, stay present with it and simply identify it.

Only when we are clear in our process of witnessing the emotions within our body and identifying the emotion, can we begin to understand what they are about. We may experience an awakening out of confusion as we gain clarity about which emotions are arising in response to different events. For example, I feel scared when I do not know what is going to happen. I feel angry when someone steals my property. I feel guilty when I hurt someone. I feel sad when I lose something important to me. I feel happy when things in my life are generally in balance. So this is a good place to start.

Adaptive versus reactive emotion

As we begin to become acquainted with our emotional processes we may come to notice that some emotions make intuitive sense and are in proportion to the events occurring around us. These are adaptive emotions. They are primary reactions to situations that give us information about ourselves in the world. Remember, this is simply the arising of the emotion itself and not our actions or thoughts about the event. The emotions are as simple as a child’s emotional response to the world. These emotions have an innate wisdom of their own.

We may also develop the awareness that some emotions are disproportional to events around us, and they may repetitively arise under similar circumstances in ways that are individual to ourselves. These are far more complex than adaptive emotions. These emotions are often telling us more about a psychological pattern which we have learnt as a child or from a trauma or a highly distressing event. As children we are generally conditioned to distort our emotional responses. These emotions are either intensified or suppressed due to messages we receive from significant people in our lives. We learn to suppress anger, or feel guilt in situations that are not our fault, or develop anxiety when we do not know why we are scared. In mindfulness when we witness our emotional reactions which result from psychological patterns, we treat them in similar ways as with adaptive emotions. We simply bring our conscious awareness into the emotion and remain present with the sensations in our body. As we do this, we may also become aware of memories, images or senses that tell us where these emotional reactions are really from and what they are about. In this way we gain valuable insight about our emotional selves and sometimes about what aspects of ourselves require healing.

So on one hand, there are adaptive emotions which directly emerge from a situation and tell us about how the situation impacts on us. On the other hand, there are emotional reactions from psychological patterns which tell us about current life events as well as our past conditioning, trauma and psychological wounding. As we practice regular mindfulness, we generally increase insight into our patterns as well as our adaptive responses to situations in the world.

The key is awareness. Our patterns may need healing, however we can do this through seeing them clearly with mindfulness and learning how to refrain from spontaneously reacting from emotional triggers. The journey of mindfulness supports our self-understanding with compassion. This results in honouring our emotional selves, as well as increases clarity and peace of mind.

 

“Embrace What Is” is an on-going relaxed group that will support your mindfulness practice and help you to integrate this practice into your everyday life.

Click here to register on the Event Facebook Page

Join us on Friday afternoons at 1pm for an hour of mindfulness based training and psycho-therapeutic insights.

Call Vanessa on 0424 507 101 to book your place in this exciting and innovative group

Bookings are essential, as places are limited

 

 

The Difference between Crystal Bowls Meditation and Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness mediation is quite different from meditations that aim to raise compassion. This does not mean that mindfulness is without compassion or kindness, on the contrary, mindfulness is at its best when it embraces compassion. By ‘compassion based meditations’ I am simply referring to meditations that help us to feel warm and fuzzy. They include guided visualisations, crystal bowl meditations, meditating to a flower or candle, sound meditation, or meditating to drums, didgeridoos or gentle uplifting music. All of these types of meditations are focused on experiences that are pleasant to our senses. They are heart opening meditations.

How Mindfulness Meditation is Different

While compassion based meditations aim to open our heart space, mindfulness practice aims to train our awareness to expand. Both types of mediation bring us into the present moment, however, mindfulness cultivates awareness to watch ‘what is’. It is irrelevant whether our experience is painful or pleasant, mindfulness is only about watching whatever is occurring with open curiosity and neutrality. Mindfulness aims to expand the mind, rather than open the heart. This is important, as mindfulness strengthens the practice of wisdom and discernment.

I have commonly witnessed people cultivate a beautiful open heart, when their lives or their psyche are not ready for it. This can intensify a “broken our heart”. Compassion is wonderful, however, any wise Buddhist will tell us that compassion is only helpful when we simultaneously develop discernment. Without cultivating the mind, blind compassion can get us into a myriad of problems. A healthy heart/head alignment requires both types of meditations, if we are to cultivate true balance in our lives.

Click Here for the Embrace “What Is Facebook Event Page

Join us on Friday afternoons at 3pm and Saturday mornings at 9am for an hour of mindfulness based training and psycho-therapeutic insights. “Embrace What Is” is an on-going relaxed group that will support your mindfulness practice and help you to integrate this practice into your everyday life.

Call Vanessa on 0424 507 101 to book your place in this exciting and innovative group

Bookings are essential, as places are limited

 

Why Happiness is not the Goal of Mindfulness Practice

A lot of people begin mindfulness practice to find happiness or inner peace. However, when they arrive they may find themselves being told that the aim of mindfulness is not to be happy but rather is simply to train the mind to remain present and attentive to what is occurring in the now. This can even be a source of disappointment to seekers of happiness. Disappointment and disillusionment are exactly why happiness is not the goal of mindfulness practice. Generally, when we seek happiness, it remains elusive.

Happiness is like love in relationships or the end of a rainbow. The more we try to find it, the more disappointed we become. The key to happiness and peace of mind is actually to stop looking for it. It is bizarre that when we finally abandon the search and get on with our lives that we are more likely to find what we are looking for. This is why in mindfulness the goal is to expand awareness in the inner moment, and not to find happiness. Ironically, when we attend to the present moment fully and forget about ourselves and our quests, that is the perfect state of being for happiness and inner peace to arise.

Join us on Friday afternoons at 3pm and Saturday mornings at 9am for an hour of mindfulness based training and psycho-therapeutic insights.

“Embrace What Is” is an on-going relaxed group that will support your mindfulness practice and help you to integrate this practice into your everyday life.

Click here for the Embrace “What Is” Facebook Event Page

Call Vanessa on 0424 507 101 to book your place in this exciting and innovative group

Bookings are essential, as places are limited

 

The Essence of Mindfulness

Most people think of mindfulness as relief from anxiety or depression, a cure for health problems or a recipe for inner peace and increased concentration. However, the truth is that mindfulness does not actually aim to achieve any of these. Mindfulness is simply an Eastern practice to train our mind. It is a practice that cultivates sustained conscious wakefulness or presence. Mindfulness is all about raising awareness of ‘what is’.

The practice of mindfulness is like training a muscle. Only rather than a muscle, we are training our mind. In the East, the mind is not about thoughts and beliefs, as we conceptualize in the West. Rather, the mind is conscious awareness itself. We may bring awareness into our thoughts so we can witness their movement. However, the mind in mindfulness is not thought, but rather consciousness itself.

The benefits of mindfulness The practice of training our mind expands our ability to detach from thought, emotion and body sensation enough to witness them. This then allows us to better regulate emotion, train our brain to think more effectively, and teach our bodies to de-stress. Ironically, when we master this practice we often do find relief from anxiety or depression, cure health problems and create inner peace and increased concentration. So while the aim of mindfulness is to train our conscious awareness to witness what is occurring in the now, the practice often results in increased balance and happiness in our lives.

Join us on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings for an hour of mindfulness based training and psycho-therapeutic insights.

“Embrace What Is” is an on-going relaxed group that will support your mindfulness practice and help you to integrate this practice into your everyday life.

 

Call Vanessa on 0424 507 101 to book your place in this exciting and innovative group

Bookings are essential, as places are limited

Honouring the Feminine and Masculine in Intimate Relationship

Boundary Confusion in Relationship Work

Inspired by my experiences at Cynthia Connop and Ernst Dams’ Living Love Workshop at the Joining Gathering 2012

My partner Paul and I attended a retreat called The Joining where we spent a beautiful couple of days learning about, celebrating and rejoicing the dance between the feminine and masculine energies. We shared special experiences of opening further into our gender potentials with another 100 amazing men and women with the same passion for connection, community and conscious cultivation of the masculine and feminine. It was here that Paul and I met Cynthia and Ernest who facilitated a couple of workshops that focused on David Deida’s work that embraces raising the masculine and feminine sexual essences.

The Basis of the David Deida Work

The whole aim of this work is to cultivate the masculine and feminine sexual essence that can become lost in our contemporary couple relationships. Deida points out in his work that there are three stages of evolution for the masculine and feminine. In the first stage, the masculine and feminine are sexually polarised but they are embroiled in control and power issues. The second stage evolves from the power struggles but unfortunately can all too easily become sexually unpolarised. Our relationships then become more like good friends than intimate lovers. In the third stage of David Deida’s work is where we aim to re-polarise our sexual essence in respectful, safe intimate relationships.

The aspirations of this work are profound! In a time of significant changes in couple relationships over the last few generations and when there are very high rates of relationship separation, this kind of work is greatly needed. Our intimate relationship could provide the glue for meaningful connection and increase resilience in a stressful, disconnected world.

My Group Experience & My Confusion

In the group, it was wonderful to have the time, focus and support of other beautiful women to re-embrace my feminine essence through dance, body movement, expression of feelings, and supporting other women into their feminine essence. However, my confusion arose when I discovered that I was not cultivating my feminine essence for my partner and he was not cultivating his masculine essence for me, but rather we were to freely give our sexual essence to any man or woman in the group.

After a challenging group experience, emotional discussions with Paul and then further discussions between Paul, Cynthia, Ernst and myself, I still swing between two camps of thought and feelings on the issue.  Does it honour our relationship to do this work largely exclusively with my partner or is it acceptable to do this work with any man (for me) or woman (for my partner). While I can see the enormous value of learning how to cultivate our sexual essence in our intimate relationship, I question how we can honour the sacredness, specialness and boundaries of the relationships while we do this work.

 


On one hand, I can see how the exercises with other people were triggering past betrayals from past relationships that still need healing. Yet on the other hand, I question how much of what I was feeling was a normal adaptive emotional response to the actual experiences in the group that required me to hear them and act on them. I question, what is right for Paul and I in our own unique relationship and more generally, how are we to really honour our intimate relationships and cultivate them while learning the David Deida work?

 

I would greatly value anyone’s input who is familiar with David Deida work with sexual polarity…

Feminine Confidence in Business

Knowing how to work with our emotions as women is a powerful ingredient in our self-confidence in business. As women, most of us are primarily ‘feminine in our essence’ [concept by David Deida] and world orientation and therefore, are emotionally based creatures. We literally see the world through our emotions. We think in terms of emotional landscapes and we process topics in context of our interpersonal relationships.  This is quite different from those of us (male or female in physical gender) who are primarily masculine in their essence. The masculine is far more physical and mental, while the feminine is more emotional.

Feminine Wisdom in Business

It is unfortunate that feminine wisdom and emotion has been dismissed, trivialised and shamed for so long in our culture. The gifts that the feminine brings to business include awareness of interpersonal dynamics in the work place, increasing profitability through acknowledging personal value of staff and customers, and workplace co-operation. While the masculine is very good at directing the team towards specific goals and achieving a vision, the feminine is a complimentary force that considers the individual and team’s wellbeing, encourages dignity, respect and fair practice, and considers people’s feelings.

Empowering Ourselves through Honouring Emotion

The key to embracing the feminine in business is through honouring emotion. This honouring process includes:

  • Acknowledging feelings
  • Hearing the message within the emotion
  • Distinguishing between adaptive emotions and emotional memories
  • Safe emotional release and self-soothing
  • Responding rather than reacting from the emotion
  • As we learn how to apply these processes into our lives, we adopt a powerful ally … our emotional self! Listing and working with our emotion gives us an edge in the world of business as we are more connected with ourselves, more able to work with and help others, and more able to attract, encourage and receive in the business context. While the masculine is an awesome giving, directing and supportive energy, the feminine is a beautiful attractive energy. Over the next five blogs I will focus on each aspect of the feminine process in honouring emotions, listed above. Each of these aspects of the emotional process is vital for surfing the emotions rather than being dumped by them or supressing them. Working with emotions is the key to empowering the feminine in business.

    Have you been side swiped by your emotions which affected your business?


     

    Attachment versus Detachment in Intimate Relationship

    I have seen many people emotionally detach in relationships under the “disguise” of practicing non-attachment. However, there is a big difference between shutting down from another person and practicing non-attachment. Personally my life has been one of flipping between destructive co-dependent relationship and detachment. “Compassionate detachment” (or perhaps non-attachment) may have been a better road to tread. However, my awareness of what these types of connections are in practice has been an on-going experiential journey of progressive understanding.

    Detachment, Emotional Shut Down & Estrangement

    My life journey started with harsh lessons in emotional estrangement and detachment. Both my mother and father were seriously emotionally damaged however, as a child I did not know that! I was conditioned to believe that I was over-emotional because I emotionally reacted to my parent’s physical abuse and the absence of emotional connection with both me and each other. It seemed that the world was incredibly cold, harsh and merciless from a very early age. My father arrived home from the Vietnam War when I was 6 months old. That was the first time he met me. He did not admit to having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) however, I now know that he did. A symptom of PTSD is “emotional estrangement”, which is the shutting down from loving or connecting emotions. All my memories of my father were of this incredibly shut down, depressed, negative, angry man.

    My mother on the other hand, made it clear that she had no desire to have children and seemed to take it out on me throughout my childhood. So detachment had to be cultivated in me to survive my childhood. I learnt to hide myself and to shut down my intense emotions because it only made things worse. In order to cope, I found my own way to shut down from the world around me!!!  I learnt the fine art of dissociation and daydreaming!

    I do not even think I was aware of shutting down emotionally as an adult in intimate relationship until relatively recently. I have been on the receiving end of punishing behaviour from men in relationships without knowing why. I now see they were reacting to their own perceptions and pain patterns that were triggered by my withdrawal. My shut down however, was an unconscious coping mechanism I learnt in my childhood to survive from my parent’s emotional disconnection. When these men either became volatile, destructive or abandoning, then my abandonment and fear patterns were re-ignited. I concluded that people simply hated me and were going to go out of their way to hurt me no matter what I did. I now see that they WERE reacting to something… my emotional detachment!!!

    Detachment & Healthy Attachment

    In psychology we have coined the term “healthy attachment bond” which means an early childhood relationship with significant others that consists of love, trust, supported autonomy, and stability. These are the building blocks of healthy intimate relationships later in life.  There are some schools of thought that suggest we can create an inner sense of love and security later in life even if we do not have these early relationships with our parents. Being of the camp of people that believes in the possibility of deep inner change and healing, I advocate that we can re-create a healthy attachment bond in adulthood. It needs to be in intimate relationship (outside of the early parent/child relationship) that these attachment bonds can be formed. A friendship can provide these to some degree, and friendships can be deep and enduring. However often they lack the everyday intimacy and affectionate connection that may be needed in developing a safe and secure attachment bond. An intimate relationship needs to be supportive, loving and stable to cultivate a sense of inner belonging and permanency within the couple relationship. Through this connection, each individual can cultivate a sense of stability and love within themselves individually.

    The biggest difference between developing inner safety and security as a young child in a healthy parental relationship and two people developing it in an adult intimate relationship, is that the adults require conscious awareness and good communication skills to be able to pull it off. As a child we are totally reliant on the healthiness of our parent. As an adult we need to constantly practice self-awareness of our already damaged emotional patterns and then communicate them with each other before a safe and secure attachment bond can form.

    The Practice of Non-Attachment in Intimate Relationship

    The practice of non-attachment in intimate relationship is yet another step forward beyond the safe and secure attachment bond. It is not possible to practice non-attachment until healthy attachments are formed, otherwise they are really only different manifestations of unhealthy detachment. The practice of non-attachment is being able to detach from our own and the people’s patterns while simultaneously being able to connect and love ourselves and others beyond the patterns.

    Non-attachment is non-reactive. It is being able to remain present and calm while allowing others to do what they do. Of course it does not mean stay around aggression or violence. Rather it is about “right action” that values self and other, without becoming caught in blame, criticism, reactivity, rescuer/victim patterns, detachment or enmeshment. Non-attachment is being able to remain in a space of compassion and respond to events rather than react. By default, this involves a sense of inner-security, self-love and stability to be able to remain emotionally centred and not become caught in the hurricane of interpersonal relationship dynamics and intrapersonal patterns.

     

    What does attachment mean to you in you relationship?

     

    Embracing the Feminine in Business

    Confidence in ourselves as women in business can be a real challenge. We often attempt to embrace a business persona that protects us and portrays a “powerful” image that we are untouchable, strong and ultra-independent. However, in creating and living this image we may be betraying our true selves and blocking off what we really need to feel and be to create a successful business.

    A False Masculine Image in Business

    Many women try to portray themselves as masculine to survive in the business world. However, this exercise can set us up for self-deceit about the fact that our dominant orientation in life is actually feminine. As women, we often look to establish love and stability in intimate relationship before we are ready to venture in to the world and establish ourselves. This is quite different for men in their masculine who try to establish themselves in the world before they are ready to give and commit in intimate relationship. This one of many differences between the feminine and masculine that impacts on women in business and can lend to role and gender confusion.

    Another difference between the feminine and masculine in business is that the feminine is relationship and feeling based while the masculine is action and mentally based. This results in the feminine being focussed on the interpersonal and values the flow and ebb of emotion between people, while the masculine focusses on getting the job done.

    Embracing the Feminine in Business

    Embracing ourselves as “confidently feminine” AND as a real asset to business in every role is important. Rather than trying to squash a circle into a square hole, perhaps the trick is to respect and value the feminine aspects of ourselves in business as women. For example, women in their feminine energy may circle around an intention to create the outcome rather than “strive towards goal”. As women we may manage groups of staff through our concern of their wellbeing rather than focussing on what is produced. This does not mean that less is produced, rather it simply means that the management is wellbeing based rather than outcome based. Finally, we may evolve in our own businesses rather than take a linear approach. The key point is that the feminine may be different from the masculine in business, however it is no less effective or appropriate in creating successful businesses.

    How have you built confidence in yourself as a woman in business?

    What aspects of the feminine could be cultivated as an asset to successful business?


    How to Process Challenging Emotions In Intimate Relationships

    Intimate relationships can bring up the deepest and most beautiful emotions. They can also bring up the most painful! We are often only concerned about the emotional intensity if we are experiencing painful emotions. However, whether the emotions in intimate connection are pleasant or unpleasant, the same awareness applies. Surprisingly pleasant emotions can lead us astray as well as painful ones! Today we will look at awareness of unpleasant emotions and next time we will focus on awareness of pleasant emotion.

    Cultivating conscious awareness of emotion is vital for participating in and creating healthy, happy intimate relationships. It is well known in psychology that intimate relationships often trigger early childhood attachment issues with significant others. We know that a lot of intensely painful emotion experienced in early childhood through a range of different situations and circumstances, can be triggered in relationships. Many of these emotional memories are pre-linguistic and have not been understood or consciously processed. Therefore, they come out in projections that we unconsciously put on our partner without even realising it. There are processes of increasing self-awareness about our emotional reactions in our relationships that can help to dissolve destructive relationship dynamics. All that’s needed is a willingness to look at ourselves rather than blaming our partner, and spending time and effort on understanding and healing ourselves.

    Bringing Awareness Into The Emotion

    To cultivate awareness of emotions in relationships we begin by reflecting on your own reactions to our partner’s words or actions that have triggered deep or intense emotion. As we remember the past events, we may witness the familiar blaming thoughts come into our head. Just notice them without needing to believe them. Then bring focus to the thoughts, feelings and actions triggered at that time. Question whether the reaction has been repetitive over time. Chose to see it as a pattern… it is not who you really are! It is a learnt or conditioned response. Then we can allow ourselves to feel the emotion and ask ourselves when the first time this emotion was felt?

    This process leads into the emotional memories that created the pattern. We need to be gentle with ourselves as we begin to see what the reaction is really about. If the emotion is particularly intense, or if those memories that emerge frightens us, then it is important to see a trusted therapist to work through them. Whether on our own or with a therapist, this process involves exploring and making sense of earlier events and memories.  It also involves learning to tolerate the emotions and safely expressing them, rather than suppress them or destructively lash out. This step takes compassion for ourselves and others, as well as validation of the emotion at that time and under those circumstances. Emotions actually do not lie! They may be disproportional to current events because they are really about the past. However, back then they would have been proportional to the event. The emotional pain is simply alerting us to past wounds. That is what it is to be “triggered”.

    Mastering Our Emotional Reactions

    As we learn what our feelings are really about, which ones belong to the present and which ones belong to the past, we begin to master our emotions. With a partner, we can begin to safely describe the emotions that surface with the mutual awareness that the emotions are triggered. Blame between partners dissipates as the understanding that we all have patterns and reactions from our childhood wounds, is accepted. No longer is it about wanting to change our partners or blaming them for our emotional reactions. It becomes about listening, understanding and loving our partner for the human being they are. Equally important, it becomes about loving ourselves for the human being we are!!!

    “Surfing the Waves of Emotion” workshop will be held on the 7th July 2012 in Coolum Beach. Don’t miss out on learning how to distinguish between adaptive emotions and emotional memories, work with your emotions, and a whole lot more!!!


    What emotional patterns have you struggled with in your relationship?