Emotional Healing: Objectives:source: Dr. Alisa Burgess and Center for Nonviolent Communication

Improve wellness, increase motivation and achievement of goals.

Establish healthy boundaries

Objectives, continued:

Let go of energies that control or restrict your freedom, making room for supportive and nurturing energies to enter your life.

Build a solid sense of self, enabling you to transcend negative emotions and overcome addictions.

Objectives, continued:

Stay centered when triggers and assaults occur.

Transcend negativity and maintain a state of peacefulness within, and a state of acceptance towards self and others.

The origin of pain: Chapters 1-3

When you are born, all the energy is flowing freely throughout your body and energy field.

Your body and mind is a perfect recording “machine”, every experience you ever lived is recorded in your body, mind and spirit.

Each experience has a memory and emotion attached to it.

Origin of Pain continued:

If an experience occurs that is too painful or traumatic to feel at the time, the memory will be repressed into the unconscious and you will possibly disassociate or “leave your body”.

Origin of pain, continued:

After a while you will re-enter your body and the energy will flow, except for where the painful experience is stored.

Over time, you experience pain

over and over and you have

many frozen pockets in you

mind-body-spirit energy field,

leading to “dis-ease” and emotional disability.

You may have so many pockets of pain that you live “outside” of your body.

This makes you feel uncomfortable and you may feel like you are in a fog and may have difficulty concentrating, you are not fully present in your body-mind-spirit.

This may then lead to using drugs such as caffeine, cocaine, marijuana, etc. to ease the discomfort.

Frozen pockets of pain:

Maybe associated with feelings of depression, anxiety, sleepiness and other non-productive feeling states.

In order to manage these feeling states, addictions occur to overcome these feelings to manage and escape them.

Addictions to food,

Alcohol, drugs, gambling, using the computer, overworking, codependency, etc. keep us from feeling our pain.

You may disassociate, and keep disconnected from your feelings, body and soul.

Defense mechanisms, also perpetuatedissociation:

Overly understanding, becoming a doormat or pseudo-enlightened being.

Rumination, worrying. Intellectualization Obsessive, compulsive behavior Passive-aggressive (withholding from

someone in order to aggravate or punish)

Defense mechanisms continued:

Reaction-formation, acting opposite to how one feels

Somatization, manifesting bodily symptoms for emotions

Displacement-directing emotions towards less threatening persons and objects.

The healing process:

Begins when addictions and defense mechanisms are removed.

Usually some intervention is necessary: a healthy friend a mental health counselor a mentor meditation a self-help book

Interventions continued:

Massage, bodywork

Chiropractic Acupuncture, acupressure Improved nutrition Exercise, but make sure not too much

As you begin to feel the energy through the “frozen pockets” you may feel the original pain of the past.

When you feel the original pain of the past you can release it and integrate the alienated part into your being.

As you rid yourself of “frozen pockets” energy will flow more freely and you will feel more joy, happiness, motivation and creativity.

What did you read about “wells of pain”? Each frozen picture is a “well of pain”. Each well may have an addictions and

defense mechanisms associated with it, “protecting” you from feeling the pain.

Once the addiction or defense mechanism is removed, you may feel pain deeply.

It is important to use the interventions, previously mentioned and not engage in unhealthy activity.

What kind of interventions have you used in your life to decrease the pain?

Boundaries: Chapter 4

You are healthy, and at ease when you have your own energy flowing through your body.

You are “dis-eased” when others’ energy interferes with one’s energy and/or when you have frozen pockets of pain in your system.

The key is to recognize when energy is harmful to your energy field and which energies are loving and good.

Boundaries continued: Other energies can enter your space when you are

over empathetic and “take on” some one else's pain.

A better, less co-dependent way is to be compassionate but consciously say to yourself, “I am not taking on this person’s pain”.

You will be healthier and happier if you focus on your own pain.

“no”, “yes” and “Maybe” category people A “no” person is not willing to grow in an

emotional and spiritual way They get defensive and blame others for their

pain.

If you feel invalidated, judged, criticized, punished, guilt-tripped, silenced, cut off or abandoned, you are probably dealing with a “no” category person.

The “maybe” person:

This person vacillates between being receptive to your feelings and being defensive and reactive.

They are probably the most difficult to deal with because you like or love them, but they hurt you.

The key to dealing with this type of person is to close your heart a bit when they are attacking.

The “yes” category person:

Are effortless to be around, they do not drain your energy or make you feel off-centered.

They do not judge or withdraw their love from you; they want to understand you.

They may not always agree with you, but they agree to disagree and do not criticize you or invalidate you.

“yes” continued:

When a “yes” person offers constructive feedback, it is done with loving energy.

You can keep your heart open because they do not throw “daggers” into your heart.

These are the type of people you want in your life and the type of person you want to become 100% of the time.

Please describe a person in each category: How often do you interact with them? How long have you known them? What does the future look like with this

person? Describe a recent conversation with at least

one of these people?

Your personal space:

Each person has a “personal space” about 3 feet all around us.

When someone invades this space with a criticism, disrespect, abuse, etc. one has a tendency to lose one’s space.

We get our “space” back by speaking up so our boundary can be reset.

Personal space continued:

For many, it is difficult to know when the boundary or personal space has been invaded, especially if one is used to being a “doormat”.

What is the energy or feeling that you need to feel in order to recognize that your boundary has been violated?

Anger: the dignity emotion, when it is well channeled:

Is essential as the core energy of our strength when it is expressed assertively vs. aggressively, passively(implode) or passive-aggressively.

example from the book:…imagine that you are 3yrs and your older sibling takes away your teddy bear, you cry, feel angry and yell out “give me back by teddy bear!” Your mother or father say”wipe that anger off your face, you acquiesce and implode from then on because your anger has been squelched. You no longer have the dignity emotion of anger to defend your turf. This can also be done non-verbally as in some Asian and some other cultures.

Anger continued:

Stuffing anger by drinking, smoking, shopping, turning anger inwards leads to depression.

One may become so use to one’s space being violated that one does not notice after a while.

You accept that this is the way you are supposed to feel, yet you suffer from low self-esteem and depression.

Anger continued:

Anger may not be felt until someone violates one’s boundary so severly that it is so painful that one explodes.

If anger has been stored up for a long time or you do not know how to express it assertively: * first one needs to recognize where they are at on the “anger scale” (1-10,being the most severe), *read up on anger,* focus on breathing when the emotion comes up, * express oneself with “I feel” instead of starting sentences with “you are……”

Taking the lid off the “pressure cooker”, anger released:

If your anger has been stored up for a long time one has to be careful when “taking the lid off”.

One may just explode and cause damage to surroundings.

If you notice this happeningIt maybe good to get a punching Bag or release this energy.

Anger can have a lot of energy:

This energy is “control” energy and may have a lot of power over you.

The process of “individuating” is the process of freeing yourself from the fear of this energy that has control over you.

Individuation: becoming free of the energy that controls you:

Sometimes this energy comes in the form of not speaking up for yourself.

One becomes imprisoned by the fear that if one “speaks up” the other person will judge, criticize, cut you off financially, intimidate, abandon or act in any other negative way.

One becomes free when one no longer fears the reaction of others when one activates themselves

Individuation continued:

In addition, you become “free” when people no longer have the ability to threaten your sense of self and self-esteem because you are solid and can find validation within yourself.

This process can be the most difficult challenge and can present itself as an addiction, depression, dysfunctional relationship or any other outwardly visible complaint….disease, etc.

Individuation continued:

Begin to let go of people that drain your energy, are not supportive or throw negative energy your way.

If they are in position of power and you depend on them for love, affection, shelter, food, etc. this is extremely difficult.

Individuation continued:

How can you accomplish this? What if you are in a “no” category stage?

As you rid yourself of “no” category people and you become less of a “no” person, more “yes” people will enter your life.

A “yes” person will not be attracted to you if you surround yourself with “no” energy.

Individuation continued:

As you become more of a “yes” person, the “no” people may hurl stronger negative energy towards you, trying to keep you at their level. Rocket ship analogy.

As you reset your boundaries to “no” people, as they become more harsh, you must tolerate their negative energy and the aloneness that you may feel in order to escape their control and be free.

Enduring the Aloneness:

Severing a relationship can be excruciatingly painful and the aloneness unbearable.

But if we can hang in there and not try to grab another person or crutch, we will be moving towards wholeness and wellness.

Your success may depend on early infant experiences with your mother and her ability to be there emotionally and physically to sooth you.

Having had a soothing experience as a

child to separation-anxiety:

One feels more grounded and secure. The pain of present day issues is not so

overwhelming that one needs a drug or addiction.

One does not need intellectual defense mechanisms.

Engulfment, overprotection:

The opposite of abandonment may lead to a feeling of being “aloof” or having the need to distance oneself.

May lead to fear of intimacy. May lead to creating the original engulfed

state, where you do not set limits due to fear.

So both of these extremes have to do with not having a “grounding cord”:

Is it better to be oppressed by a “no” category person who offers a false sense of grounding, than to feel your own emptiness and terror?

Being perpendicular:

If you are dependent on an unhealthy person or they are dependent on you, then if one person leaves, the other person falls over.

The goal is to be self-sufficient, self-nurturing and connect with someone in a similar state so if one person dies or leaves, the other person will go through mourning and grief but will still be able to stand perpendicular.

If you find yourself still attracting chaos, bad luck, more painful relationships:

You probably have something to heal within yourself.

The energy that you attract into your life is there to “light up” the frozen past, so you can feel it, heal it and remove it from your being.