A tragedy can turn out to be our greatest good if we approach it in ways from which we can grow.
Releasing Anger in Positive Ways
Everyone deals with anger at one time or another in their lives. Anger is an honest emotion. When it is not expressed or processed outwardly, it will be processed inwardly, in the body, and usually develops into a disease or dysfunction of some sort.
Like criticism, we usually get angry about the same things over and over again. When we are angry, and we feel we don’t have a right to express it, we swallow it down, which causes resentment, bitterness, or depression. So, its good to handle our anger when it comes up.
There are several ways to deal with anger in positive ways. One of the best ways is to talk openly to the person with whom you are angry and to release the pent-up emotions. You can say, “I am angry with you because_____________.” When we feel like screaming at someone, then the anger has been building up for a long time. Often, it is because we feel we cannot speak to the other person. So, the second best way to let the anger out is to talk to the person in the mirror.
Find yourself a place where you will feel safe and will not be disturbed. Look into your own eyes in the mirror. If you find that you cannot, then concentrate on your mouth or nose. See yourself and/or the person who you believe has done something wrong to you. Remember the moment when you became angry and let yourself feel the anger come through you. Begin to tell this person exactly what you are so angry about. Show all the anger you feel. You could say something like:
Get all your feelings out. If you feel like expressing yourself physically, then get some pillows and start hitting them. Don’t be afraid to let your anger take its natural course. You have already kept your feelings bottled up too long. There is no need to feel any guilt or shame. Remember, our feelings are thoughts in action. They serve a purpose, and when you let them loose from your mind and body, you allow space inside for other, more positive, experiences.
When you have finished expressing your anger to the person or persons, do your best to forgive them. Forgiveness is an act of freedom for yourself because you are the one who will benefit from it. If you can’t forgive someone, then the exercise is just a negative affirmation and is not healing for you. There is a difference between releasing and just rehashing old angers. You may want to say something like:
“Okay, that situation is over. That is in the past now. I don’t approve of your action, and yet I understand that you were doing the best you could with the knowledge and understanding you had at the time. I am done with this. I release you and let you go. You are free and I am free. “
You may want to do this exercise several times before you truly feel that you have gotten rid of all of your anger. You may also want to work on one anger issue or several. Do what feels right for you.
There are other methods we can use to release the anger. We can scream into a pillow, we can kick pillows, we can beat the bed or a punching bag. We can write a hate letter and then burn it. We can scream in our cars with the windows rolled up. We can play tennis or go to the golf range and just hit balls one after the other. We can exercise, swim, or run around the block several times. We can write or draw our feelings using our nondominant hand—the creative process is a natural release for emotions.
One man at my seminar said he used an egg timer as he began screaming into a pillow. He gave himself ten minutes to let out all his frustrations and anger about his father. After five minutes, he was exhausted, and every thirty seconds, he would look at the egg timer and realize he still had a few more minutes to go.
I used to beat the bed and make a lot of noise. I can’t do that now because my dogs get frightened and think I am angry at them. Now I find it very effective to scream in the car, or dig a hole in the garden.
As you can see, you can become quite creative when releasing your feelings. I recommend that you do something physically to release charged-up emotions—in a safe way. Don’t be reckless or dangerous to yourself or others. Remember, also, to communicate with your Higher Power. Go within and know that there is an answer to your anger and that you will find it. It is very healing to meditate and visualize your rage flowing freely out of your body. Send love to the other person, and see your love dissolve whatever disharmony there is between you. Be willing to become harmonious. Perhaps the anger you feel is reminding you that you aren’t communicating well with others. By recognizing it, you can correct it.
It’s amazing how many people tell me how much happier they have become once they release anger towards another person. It is as though a huge burden has been dropped. One of my students had a difficult time letting her anger out. Intellectually, she understood her feelings, yet she couldn’t express them outwardly. Once she allowed herself this expression, she kicked and screamed and called her mother and alcoholic daughter all sorts of names. She felt a tremendous weight lift from her. When her daughter visited her afterwards, she couldn’t stop hugging her. She allowed room for love to come inside where all the repressed anger had been.
Maybe you have been a person who’s been angry for a major part of your life. You have, what I call, habitual anger. Something happens and you get angry. Something else happens and you get angry again. Once more it happens, and you keep getting angry, but you never go beyond getting angry. Habitual anger is childish—you always want your own way. It would be helpful to ask yourself:
In other words, why do you believe that to get your way, you need to get angry? I’m not saying that there are no injustices, and there aren’t times when you have a right to feel angry. However, habitual anger is not good for your body because it lodges in there.
Notice what you focus on most of the time. Sit in front of a mirror for ten minutes and look at yourself. Ask: 'Who are you? What is it that you want? What makes you happy? What can I do to make you happy?’ Now is the time to do something else. Create a new space inside yourself for loving, optimistic, and cheerful patterns.
People often get angry while they are driving their cars. People often express their frustrations about the other lousy drivers on the road. Long ago, I got over the fact that I was going to be upset because of someone else’s inability to follow the rules of the road. So the way I handle driving my car is: first, I put love into the car when I get in. Next, I know and affirm that I’m always surrounded by wonderful, competent, happy drivers. Everyone around me is a good driver. Because of my beliefs and affirmations whenever I’m on the road, I have very few poor drivers around me. They’re off bothering the person who’s shaking his fist and screaming.
Your car is an extension of you, just like everything and everyone are extensions of you, so put some love into your car, and then send love out to everyone around you on the streets and the highways. I believe, that the parts of your car are similar to the parts of your body.
For instance, one of my workers felt that she had “no vision,” she could not see where her life was going or where she wanted it to go. One morning she woke up and found her windshield smashed. Another person, an acquaintance of mine, felt that he was “stuck” in his life. He was not moving forward or moving backwards but was not moving at all. His tire became flat and he couldn’t move anywhere. I know it may sound silly at first, but it’s fascinating to me that the terminology that these two people used to describe their current mental state also related to their car. “Having no vision” means that you can’t see in front of you. The windshield is a perfect metaphor, likewise “being stuck” is a perfect example of a flat tire. The next time something happens to your car, make a note as to what you feel the broken part represents and see if you can connect it to how you are feeling at that particular moment. You may be surprised at the results. One day I will write a little book and call it Heal Your Automobile.
There was a time when people did not understand the body/mind connection. Now it is time for us to expand our thinking even more and to understand the machinery/mind connection. Every situation in your life is a learning experience and can be handled so that it works for you.
There is nothing new or unique about anger. No one escapes the experience. The key is in recognizing it for what it is and taking that energy in a healthier direction. If you get sick, don’t get angry over it. Instead of putting anger into your body, fill it with love and forgive yourself. Those of you who are caregivers for sick people can remember to take care of yourselves, too. If you don’t, you won’t be any good to yourself or your friends and family. You will burn out. Do something to let your feelings out as well. Once you learn to deal with anger in a positive way that readily benefits you, you will find many wonderful changes occurring in the quality of your life.
Resentment Causes a Variety of Ills
Resentment is anger that has been buried for a long time. The main problem with resentment is that it lodges in the body, usually in the same place, and in time, it seethes and eats away at the body and often turns into tumors and cancers. Therefore, repressing anger and letting it settle in our bodies is not conducive to good health. Again, it’s time to let these feelings out.
Many of us were raised in families where we weren’t allowed to be angry. Women, in particular, were taught that to be angry was something bad. Anger was not acceptable, except for one person, usually a parent. So we learned to swallow our anger rather than express it. Again, we can now realize that we are the ones who are holding on to it. Nobody else is involved at all.
An oyster takes a grain of sand, and it builds layer after layer after layer of calcite over it until it becomes a beautiful pearl. Similarly, we take our emotional hurts and nurse them over and over again, by what I call, running the old movie over and over in our minds. If we want to be free from our hurts, if we want to get out of them, then it’s time to go beyond them.
One of the reasons women create cysts and tumors in the uterus is through, what I call, the he done me wrong syndrome. The genitals represent either the most masculine part of the body, the masculine principle, or the most feminine part of the body, the feminine principle. When people have emotional episodes, usually in relationships, they take it to one of these areas. With women, they may take it to their female organs, their most feminine part, and nurse the hurt until it becomes a cyst or tumor.
Since resentment is buried deeply inside us, we may have to do a lot of work to dissolve it. I received a letter from a woman who was working on her third cancer tumor. She still had not dissolved the resentment pattern and kept creating new tumors in her body. I could tell she felt very self-righteous about her bitterness. It was easier for her to let the doctor remove the latest tumor than to work on forgiveness. It would have been good if she was able to do both. Doctors are good at removing growths, only we can keep them from re-appearing.
Sometimes we would rather die than change our patterns. And we do. I have noticed many people would rather die than change their eating habits. And they do. This is very disturbing when it happens to someone we love and we are aware of alternative choices they could make.
No matter what choices we make, they are always right for us and there is no blame, even if we leave the planet. We will all leave the planet in time and we will all find a way to do it at the right time for us.
Again, we don’t have to blame ourselves for failing or doing it wrong. We don’t have to feel guilty. There is no blame. No one has done it wrong. A person does the best he or she knows how to with the understanding and awareness that is available. Remember, we all have the Power within us, and we have all come here to learn certain lessons. Our Higher Selves know our destiny in this lifetime and what we learn in order to move forward in our evolutionary process. There is never any wrong way, there just is. We are all on an endless journey through eternity, and we have lifetime after lifetime. What we don’t work out in this life, I believe we will work out in another.
Suppressed Feelings Lead to Depression
Depression is anger turned inward. It is also anger that you feel you do not have a right to have. For instance you may not feel it’s okay to be angry at your parent or spouse or employer or best friend. Yet you are angry. And you feel stuck. That anger becomes depression. Far too many people today suffer from depression, even chronic depression. By the time we feel that depressed, it is very difficult to get out of it. It feels so hopeless that it becomes an effort to do anything.
I don’t care how spiritual you are, you have got to wash your dishes every now and then. You can’t let the sink pile up with dirty dishes and say, “Oh, I’m metaphysical.” The same with your feelings, if you want to have a mind that flows freely then clean up your inner mental dirty dishes.
One of the best ways is to give yourself permission to express some of your anger so that you don’t have to stay so depressed. There are now therapists that specialize in anger releasing. Having a session or two with one of them could be most helpful.
It’s my personal opinion that we all need to beat the bed once a week whether we feel we’re angry or not. There are some therapies that encourage you to get into your anger; however, I think they often keep you immersed in the anger process too long. Anger, like any emotion that surfaces, lasts only a few minutes. Babies move in and out of their emotions very quickly. It is our reaction to the emotion that causes us to hold and repress it.
Author Elisabeth Kiibler-Ross uses a wonderful exercise in her seminars, she calls externalization. She has you take a piece of rubber hose and some old phone books, and you beat them over and over again, letting all sorts of emotions emerge.
When you are releasing anger, it’s okay to be embarrassed about it, especially if it was against your family rules to get angry. It will be embarrassing the first time you do it, but when you get into it, it can be such fun and very powerful. God is not going to hate you for being angry. Once you have released some of this old anger, you will be able to see your situation in a new light and find new solutions.
Another one of the suggestions I would make for a person who is depressed is to work with a good nutritionist and really get your diet cleaned up. Its amazing how that can help the mind. People who are depressed often eat very poorly which adds to the problem. We all want to make the best choices so that the food we are taking in is good for our body. Also, many times we find there is a chemical imbalance in the body that is further aggravated by the intake of medication of some sort.
Rebirthing is another wonderful process for releasing your feelings because it goes beyond the intellect. If you have never had a rebirthing session, I recommend that you try it. It has been very helpful for many people. It’s a breathing modality that helps you connect with old issues so that you can release them in a positive way. Some rebirthers have you repeat your affirmations as you are going through the process.
Then there is body work, such as Rolfing, a process of deep connective-tissue manipulation, developed by Ida Rolf. Or Heller work, or Trager work. They are all excellent ways to release restrictive patterns in the body. Different processes work differently for each person. One process may be good for one, yet not for another. We can only find what is best for ourselves by trying different avenues.
Self Help sections in book stores are excellent places to read about different alternatives. Health Food stores often have bulletin boards that list meetings and classes. When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Fear Is Not Having Trust
Fear is rampant on the planet. You can see and hear about it in the news every day in the form of wars, murders, greed, and more. Fear is a lack of trust in ourselves. Because of that we don’t trust Life. We don’t trust that we are being taken care of on a higher level, so we feel we must control everything from the physical level. Obviously, we are going to feel fear because we can’t control everything in our lives.
Trust is what we learn when we want to overcome our fears. It’s called taking the leap-of-faith. Trust in the Power within that is connected to Universal Intelligence. Trust in that which is invisible, instead of trusting only in the physical, material world. I’m not saying that we do nothing, yet if we have trust, we can go through life much easier. If you recall what I said earlier, I believe that everything I need to know is revealed to me. I trust that I am being taken care of, even though I am not physically in control of everything that is happening around me.
When a fearful thought comes up, it really is trying to protect you. I suggest that you say to the fear, “I know you want to protect me. I appreciate that you want to help me. And I thank you.” Acknowledge the fearful thought; it’s there to take care of you. When you become physically frightened, your adrenalin pumps through your body to protect you from danger. It’s the same with the fear you manufacture in your mind.
Observe your fears and recognize that you are not them. Think of fear the way you view images on a movie screen. What you see on the screen is really not there. The moving pictures are just frames of celluloid, and they change and disappear very rapidly. Our fears will come and go as rapidly as those pictures, unless we insist on holding on to them.
Fear is a limitation of our minds. People have so much fear about getting sick or about becoming homeless or whatever. Anger is fear that becomes a defense mechanism. It protects you and yet it would be much more powerful for you to do affirmations so you can stop recreating fearful situations in your minds, and love yourself through the fear. Again, nothing comes from outside of us. We are at the center of everything that happens in our lives. Everything is inside—every experience, every relationship, is the mirror of a mental pattern that we have inside us.
Fear is the opposite of love. The more we are willing to love and trust who we are, the more we attract these qualities to ourselves. When we are on a streak of really being frightened or upset or worried or not liking our selves, isn’t it amazing how everything goes wrong in our lives? One thing after another. It seems it will never stop.
Well, it is the same when we really love ourselves. Everything starts to go on a winning streak and we get the “green lights” and the “parking places.” All of the things that make life so wonderful—the big and the little. We get up in the morning, and the day flows beautifully.
Love yourself so that you can take care of yourself. Do everything you can to strengthen your heart, your body, and your mind. Turn to the Power within you. Find a good spiritual connection, and really work on maintaining it.
If you are feeling threatened or fearful, consciously breathe. We often hold our breath when we are frightened. So take a few deep breaths. Breathing opens the space inside you that is your power. It straightens your spine. It opens your chest and gives your heart room to expand. By breathing you begin to drop the barriers and open up. You expand rather than contract. Your love flows. Say: “J am one with the Power that created me. I am safe. All is well in my world.”
Cleaning Up Our Addictions
One of the primary ways we mask our fears is through addictions. Addictions suppress the emotions, so that we don’t feel. However, there are many kinds of addictions besides the chemical ones. There are also, what I call, pattern addictions—patterns we adopt to keep us from being present in our lives. If we don’t want to deal with what’s in front of us, or if we don’t want to be where we are, we have a pattern that keeps us out of touch with our lives. For some people, it is a food addiction or a chemical addiction. There may be a genetic disposition for alcoholism, however, the choice to stay sick is always an individual one. So often, when we talk about something being hereditary, it is really the little child’s acceptance of the parents’ ways of handling fear.
For others, there are emotional addictions. You can be addicted to finding fault in people. No matter what happens, you will always find someone to blame. “It’s their fault, they did it to me.”
Maybe you are addicted to running up bills. There are many of you addicted to being in debt; you do everything to keep yourselves over your heads in debt. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the amount of money you have.
You can be addicted to rejection. Everywhere you go, you attract others who reject you. You will find them. However, the rejection on the outside is a reflection of your own rejection. If you don’t reject yourself, nobody else will either, or if they do, it certainly won’t matter to you. Ask yourself, “What am I not accepting about myself?”
There are plenty of people addicted to illness. They are always catching something or worrying about getting sick. They seem to belong to the “Illness of the Month Club.”
If you’re going to be addicted to anything, why not be addicted to loving yourself? You can be addicted to doing positive affirmations or doing something that is supportive of you.
Compulsive Overeating
I receive a lot of letters from people with weight problems. They go on diets that last two or three weeks, then they stop. They feel guilty about falling off their diets, and instead of recognizing that they did what they could at the time, they get angry at themselves and feel guilty. Then to punish themselves, because guilt always seeks punishment, they go out and eat foods that are not good for their bodies. If they could acknowledge that for the two weeks they followed a particular regime they were doing something wonderful for their bodies and stop laying guilt trips on themselves, they would begin to break the pattern. They could also begin to say: “I used to have a problem with weight, now I allow myself to be the perfect weight for me, “ and the pattern would start to shift inside. Yet we don’t want to concentrate on the food issue too much for that is not where the problem lies.
Overeating has always meant a need for protection. When you feel insecure or frightened, you pad yourself with a layer of safety. Weight has nothing to do with food. Most of you spend a lifetime being angry at yourselves for being fat. What a waste of energy. Instead, realize there is something going on in your life that is making you feel unsafe and insecure. It could be your work, your spouse, your sexuality, or your life in general. If you are overweight, put the food/weight issue aside and work on the pattern that says, “I need protection because I’m insecure.”
It’s amazing how our cells respond to our mental patterns. When the need for protection is gone, or when we start feeling secure, the fat will melt off. I have noticed in my own life that when I am not feeling safe, I will gain some weight. When my life is going so fast, and I’m doing so much, and I’m spreading myself all over the place, I feel a need for protection, a need for security. So I say, “Okay, Louise, it’s time to work on safety. I want you to really know that you are safe, and it’s okay, and you can do all this stuff, and you can be at all these places, and you can have all that is happening right now, and you are safe, and I love you.”
Weight is only the outer effect of a fear that is inside you. When you look in the mirror and see the fat person staring back, remember that you are looking at the result of your old thinking. When you start to change your thinking, you are planting a seed for what will become true for you. What you choose to think today will create your new figure tomorrow. One of the best books on releasing excess weight is The Only Diet There Is by Sondra Ray. It’s all about dieting from negative thinking. She shows you step by step how to do it.
Self Help Groups
Self Help Groups have become the new social form. I see this as a very positive move. These programs do tremendous good. People with similar problems getting together not to whine and complain, but to find ways to work through these issues and improve the quality of their lives. There is now a group for almost every problem you can think of. Many of them are listed in the phone book under Community Services in the front of your Yellow Pages or see Appendix B in the back of this book (page 233). I know you can find one that is right for you. Many churches now hold group meetings.
You could even go to the local health food store, one of my favorites, and see what is listed on their bulletin board. If you are serious about changing your life, you will find the way.
The 12-Step Programs are everywhere. 12-Step Programs have been around for some time and they have developed a format that really works and bring about wonderful results. Their AÍ-Anon program for people who live with, or were raised by, addicted people is one of the best groups for all sorts of people.
Feelings Are Our Inner Gauge
When growing up in a troubled or dysfunctional family, we learn to avoid conflict whenever possible, and this results in the denial of our feelings. We often do not trust others to meet our needs so we don’t even ask for help. We are convinced that we must be strong enough to handle things ourselves. The only problem is that we fail to be in touch with our own feelings. Feelings are our most helpful link to our relationship with ourselves, others and the world around us, and they are an indication of what’s working or not working in our lives. Shutting them off only leads to more complex problems and physical illnesses. What you can feel, you can heal. If you don’t allow yourself to feel what is going on inside of you, you won’t know where to begin the healing process.
On the other hand, many of us seem to go through life always feeling guilty or jealous or fearful or sad. We develop habit patterns that keep perpetuating the same experiences that we say we don’t want to have. If you keep feeling angry, or sad, or fearful, or jealous and don’t get in touch with the underlying cause, you will continue to create more anger, sad, fear, et cetera. When we stop feeling like victims, we are able to take our power back. We must be willing to learn the lesson so the problem can disappear.
When we trust the process of life and our spiritual connection with the Universe, we can dissolve our angers and fears as soon as they appear. We can trust in life and know that everything is happening in divine right order and the perfect time-space sequence.