Your Beautiful Power to Heal
Every emotion has a function. A strength and a weakness. An inner expression, and an outward one.
You can learn to study your emotions. Observe, track, and acknowledge how they work.
With time emotions become important guides.
Emotions are quick to move, fluid and sometimes erratic, which can make them tricky to observe.
I remember as a young adult having a lot of anger. It was largely misunderstood and more often than not I would be working to cover it up, hide it, suppress it. It wasn’t until my 20s that I came to recognize my anger had something to give back to me.
Now, after years of working with emotions, I witness how anger has a unique protective energy. It is usually defending something very important for the client. It feels hot to the touch, its restless, impatient, and it can stew or boil over.
Anger has a volatile quality to it, an energy that reminds us there is pain somewhere nearby, perhaps some grief along with a missed step that has gone awry - a feeling gone unrecognized for some time.
When I encountered my own rage and grief for the first time I was searching for a way to release it. I was ready, truthfully exhausted by it. It scared me as much as it frustrated me.
But like the instinct of a wild animal I knew that the emotion of anger had something to teach me.
We cannot rush the process of repair. Repair comes when we have received the lesson of the rupture.
Emotions, like anger, offer us openings into what has suffered trespass, a misunderstanding that led to conflict, a disconnect that is somewhere longing for justice and peace within the self.
Emotions, when we regard them with respect, have a great deal of wisdom to offer us. I find that anger is the entry point to reclaiming that wisdom by accepting the power we have within to heal.
When we befriend our emotions, we regain a whole body of self knowledge.
Working with emotions sets us free in relationship, not just because we have received insight and clarity, but because we have allowed the emotion to MOVE.
We have allowed ourselves to be expressed in some way that for a time was on some level forbidden, forgotten, or disowned. With respect, kindness, and wakefulness we become able to transmute unruly energy into decisive, passionate, and clear action.
Anger, when truly understood, is an energy that liberates us. Instead of being consumed by it we can be freed by it.
When I’m sitting with someone in their anger I have tremendous respect, not only for my clients courage, but for their willingness to be honest about their feelings. Sometimes it takes all of their strength just to say it aloud. For their feeling - their valid, precious, tender feeling - had been silenced for too long.
Understanding, communicating, and expressing our emotions in a way that is self-honoring, constructive, empowering and transformative includes looking at where we have been hurt by misuse of of power.
This type of looking within takes practice, guidance, and a feeling of inner safety.
It is a process that is dedicated to your freedom. It comes with time as we develop our ability to hold a wider range of experience with patience, presence, and perseverance.
Please join me next week as we explore the wisdom of emotions in a 3-part series Obstacles to Love: How Working With Emotions Sets Your Free In Relationships. To find out more about this class series and to RSVP please click here.
When we can meet ourselves honestly in our feelings, openly and presently with one another, we have an incredible opportunity to transmute the overwhelm of emotion into clarity, compassion, and much more self-acceptance.
Your for the journey,
Andrea
