Affirming Life

I am a deep feeler. Meaning, my emotions come and I feel them in my entire being. They need to be seen and acknowledged before they can pass. They require attention. They give me information about beliefs I hold, boundaries that need to be set, insecurities I have, and where my priorities lie.

I have spent a lot of my life trying to understand exactly how to work with them. My sensitivity can shut me down. And I have spent quite a bit of time either fighting against my emotions, or allowing them to take over. They can keep me in a constant state of self-reflection that, quite honestly, can become self-absorption really quickly.

Feelings give us immediate feedback as to what’s happening within us. But it’s easy to see the darker ones as having more value than joy and satisfaction. “What?! But I want to be happy!!” Of course you do. But when we hold onto old patterning, our actions speak differently. How many of us, when someone asks us how we are, focus on all the hard things in our life? Or, we say fine, while really feeling like shit? We see joy and happiness as a reward for all our work with the hard stuff. And, too often, that reward is fleeting.

We are used to having pain and suffering as our default mode. We are used to focusing on what’s wrong with our life.

Maybe this is due to beliefs around worthiness, being good enough, or victimhood. Maybe we believe we need to suffer in order to grow. We all have valid, inherited, cultural limiting beliefs that can keep us in a place of struggle.

Believe me, I really get it. For me, I see the amount of spiritual bypassing* that can happen with focusing on feeling good. There can be heavy avoidance of the work you’re here to do. So it’s always felt more “real” and “authentic” to talk about the hard stuff. But at a certain point, the hard stuff becomes all that’s talked about. And who does that really help?

Learning to shift our focus when our old brain patterns want to kick in can be a bit like stopping a freight train moving at full speed. It's totally possible, and takes time and attention. So we learn to be patient with ourselves, catching it every time we can, and reframing our perspective. We become our own cheerleaders, reminding ourselves that we get to decide how we want to live, that we are getting better and better at this, and that we can already see improvement. We learn to acknowledge and soothe ourselves when things feel hard. This is the daily work that integrates the healing sessions in a powerful way that strengthens our empowerment on a cellular level. 

I believe in you. I see and acknowledge the pain and suffering that comes from trauma and hard things. They are real. And I believe in your power and resilience to choose your life. I believe in your ability to heal. I believe in your willingness to do hard things. I believe in you.