Are you afraid of your feelings?

You could have looked at this subtitle and thought one of two things:  “What’s the big deal? We all know how to deal with our feelings” or “Yes. I think my feelings are too big or to0 many or too scary”. For those with the second comment: sometimes when we find a challenge, like in addressing our emotional pain, their are benefits. Only, if we look.

I don’t know what it’s like in other states on other freeways but you’ve probably heard we have lots of traffic here in L.A.

Well, I’m scared of driving on the freeway and so  I usually don’t unless someone else is driving. A couple of weeks ago my husband was driving in pretty heavy weekend traffic going south on the 405. Sometimes when we drive we chat about this and that (in between grousing about the traffic and drivers). This day we were chatting about how lucky we are to have been trained how to deal with our feelings and emotional pain when along comes a license plate saying WHY HURT.

WHY HURT  can mean more than one thing. It can mean:

• First- “You don’t have to hurt” and I agree with that. We can make a choice. Unfortunately, many think they can’t, but still, WHY HURT?
• Second (this is the reason it struck me so)- A reason to feel  hurt (if you are really in touch with your feelings and know how to let them flow as they were meant to) could mean you are on your way to healing your emotional pain. HURT is milder than ANGER, on it’s way to having one know their FEARs and a bit closer to LOVE and FORGIVENESS.

So I ask you: “Why hurt?” you are so close to being in a place of love and forgiveness. Why not learn and move on and become that much closer with yourself?   In the pursuit of not feeling our feelings, at the very least we become disconnected from ourselves and have problems relating to others deeply and well. Why hurt?

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If something keeps happening in your life it is time to learn from it. If a pattern of bad habits or unrealistic expectations keep coming into your life, ask yourself what kind of emotional healing do I need to exercise?

As I have been life coaching it has become a clear pattern: some people will not face old feelings. Some of those say they will go work it out with a therapist but they don’t seem to do that. They go find a therapist who doesn’t actually have them express the feelings but rather talk about them.

Talking is good. Talking is fine but unless the old, scary, yucky feelings are EXPRESSED through emotional healing (like written down or verbalized or gotten out some constructive way) they may still be in charge of your life.

Recently, I may have lost another client. It’s a shame. It saddens me that she is gone but her loss is so much greater. She has once again walked away from an opportunity to relieve herself of some of the emotional burden she has carried around for over 50 years.

What am I learning? that the work I do with people which includes teaching them how to let go of feelings really scares some of them and they may run. That’s why I consider courage an important attitude to cultivate if you really want to transform your life.

I have been given gifts and knowledge to help others and myself with emotional healing.   I know the benefits of relieving myself of the emotional burden from my past and I’d lose my integrity if I just tried to come up with some surface kind of program that would not scare anybody and sell well.

Don’t worry. That won’t happen. It would be way too boring for me.

I love my (former?) client. I love me and I love you too much to cheat anyone.

Maia

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Here’s how the rap was going in my head: “I’m 67 and I still don’t have the money I want to have at my age. I’ve figured out how to have a successful relationship; I’ve done all this work on myself. I teach Law of Attraction, for goodness sakes but somehow this learning seems to still be eluding me. Blah! Blah! Blah!” My bad attitude was so thick I was almost unable to feel gratitude except as a head exercise I assigned myself in an attempt to get out of and not show my funk.  YUCK!

But all of a sudden when I was playing John Denver’s “Tenderly Calling” in order to drown out the sound of screaming of two of our 4 little kid neighbors, I heard the words of the song, “tenderly calling me home” and “after the tempest is over”, and I realized, “Oh, this is anger. I’m pissed at God.” And even that awareness was enough for  me to start  feeling better.  (I was in a workshop led by John Gray of Men Are from Mars fame in around 1983 where a room full of people did an anger process at God for all our personal disappointments and the mess of the world and it was one the most freeing, loving, spiritual experiences I’ve ever had. That’s how I know God doesn’t care if I get angry. God certainly wants me to feel love but I can’t get there until the anger and all the other gunk is out of

me.)

Now I know that God doesn’t really care if I get mad at Her/Him but I do know that if I

express my feelings fully – anger, hurt, sadness, fears, guilt -  through tools to life I can finally feel love, gratitude and freedom!

\Note: Notice how the other Grandmas picture is bent over holding her back and the difference my 10 year-old grandson sees in me! Motivation enough to stay healthy!

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

The First 37 Years – Covered in the Movie

I guess I’ve learned to make a story out of my life. This movie is the story of a part of my life. Making it into a story, has helped me learn what was good about the hard parts. Writing and producing it the way I did felt like giving birth to my 5th child. That child has taught me many things about life and myself. It is said, “from the mouth of babes”.

The Fifth Child Is Born as We All Are – as a Result of Pain

Twelve years ago my husband and I found ourselves living in Las Vegas, a very unlikely place for someone who hates heat and always said she never would want to live there – me. Some people experience the results in their lives that have people saying to them, “Be careful what you wish for” but I seem to have to stay away from “I never…” kinds of statements because then they seem to happen.

So we had just gone through one of the hard parts in life. For 5 years we ran a workshop training company for John Gray, the Men Are from Mars guy and that company ended abruptly and kind of crazily. Many things changed in our lives including no longer being able to afford our lovely home in N. California. Fortunately, my husband was offered the job in Las Vegas and to Las Vegas we went.

So since I had to do something in Las Vegas out of the heat, I decided to see if I could write a book. It was a sometimes frustrating journey but I did it! I learned that I have creative talent that I had no idea I had.

The Fifth Child’s Frustrating Years

I also had no idea how to market the book, so it sat in boxes in our house until along came the idea of making it into a Powerpoint presentation with movement and music.

That also took many, many months only to find out that Powerpoint files were really hard to show on the internet. Eventually I had it made into a flash movie which took a whole year long journey in itself and was fraught with much drama between me and the gentleman who was making it for me.

Meanwhile things got way better in our lives. We were back in Los Angeles, crazed and then uncrazed over the loss of all of our money but life kept improving as my husband found his fifth career at age 70, teaching high school Physics which he does until today, seven years later, and I am about to start training my thirteenth coach.

The Fifth Child Grows Up

Yesterday I was able to convert that flash movie that took a year to be done into a movie I can easily post anywhere from youtube to facebook or right here on my website. For that I am exceptionally grateful. At the same time in this my 70th year on the planet (I will have my 70th birthday on January 4, 2013) I am now known as the Wise Fairy God Mother and I finally believe it is the most appropriate title for this formerly very low self esteem woman, the Woman-Who-Was-the-Girl-Who-Was-the-Light. And I am grateful.

Note: If you want to find out who the Woman-Who-Was-the-Girl-Who-Was-the-Light and the Wise Fairy God Mother are, watch the movie. It’ll take you about 11 minutes and put your speakers on.

hate

1)      Am I carrying resentment because of behavior in the relationship that has gone unaddressed?

2)      Do I feel I hate the person I also love because we have issues and they aren’t being dealt with?

3)      Is this relationship about failed expectations?

4)      Am I always in a love hate relationship? (Is it because I like the drama?)

5)      Is this relationship very similar to my parents relationship or my relationship to either of my parents?

There are serious issues underlying the questions above. The first three questions have to do with communication in the relationship. If one is to have a healthy long term relationship that succeeds, communication needs to happen. Yelling is not the kind of communication I mean. I am talking about expressing appropriately the feelings and emotions that occur when one is in close connection with another person. Feelings get hurt. Mistakes happen. Misunderstanding happens. Bad days happen. Big and small events happen. Other people and situations impact what is happening between the two of you. If children are involved, everything is multiplied. And all problems have a solution but if the reason you call it a love hate relationship in the first place is because communication is poor, it is likely it will eventually end up becoming a totally hate relationship and end.

If your answer to question 4 is yes, I’m betting the answer to number 5 is yes also. If this is the case, it might not be enough to just express emotions appropriately within the relationship, it might mean you will have to deal with your relationships with your parents before you can turn your love hate relationship into one you’d call a love relationship, there’s a lot of healing work that needs to be done. With large and unresolved issues from the past, it is most likely that every relationship you ever have will continue to create problems until you realize that you are worthy of a love relationship and do not need to settle for love hate.

Husband Wife Relationship #1

We were 18 when we met, 22 when we married and we didn’t have a clue who we were or how to have a functional relationship – with ourselves or each other. I came from what is politely called a dysfunctional family and I wore all the hallmarks – low self esteem, poor self image on a physical and personality level. I thought I was defective and not good at anything and so would never find another partner. That’s why I married who I did. By the time we were dating for 6 months I already experienced his mean and controlling ways. He experienced my victimy and wimpy emotional untruth. I never stood up for what I thought or felt. I was too damaged and immature. This mess that we created together lasted for a total of 19 years. We split a couple of months before our 15^th anniversary.

Husband Wife Relationship #2

By this time, a short 2 ½ years a nice man who I had been dating asked me to marry him. He was nice; not scary in any way and had built in grandparents and family for my four children. I can’t say I particularly cared about being married but he was nice…..

I had had a couple of years of 12-Step programs and had figured out that I could at least support me and my family and there was no longer abuse in my life so why not?

Six months later I ended it. I had become  bitten by the personal growth bug and was choosing to live a very different way then I had ever before – one with me telling myself the emotional truth – stepping out of denial and finding that I couldn’t give another chunk of my life to another albeit milder form of dysfunction in a husband wife relationship.

Husband Wife Relationship #3

We met in a personal growth workshop where we learned and practiced emotional healing and telling the emotional truth. We were friends for two and half years and knew each other very well before we began our relationship. We had relationship tools that I never knew existed and that worked to keep us from ever harboring resentments and being inauthentic or dragging our past into our present relationship. For 25 years and counting we have a wildly successful and happy husband wife relationship.

Fears in Control?

Allowing fears to stop you from accomplishing what you want in life might be one of the most significant barriers to personal growth.

• Say you want to stop spending your life working for others, doing a job that is largely uncreative and unsatisfying to your soul. But you know how much money is coming in every month.

• What if you don’t know what you do want to do or you know but have never been in your own business and don’t know how to start or all your old messages of incompetence arise? Hire a coach.

The right life coach will help you sort out your talents and skills and brainstorm with you on possibilities.

The right life coach is in their own business so they certainly can teach and support you to do the same.

The life coach will help you deal with your negative self talk.

Many people have various different fears and no matter what they are about, they can be so strong that they are completely debilitating. Many life coaches will help you with tools and techniques to overcome your fear so you can follow a clear path towards your future.

A coach will give you tools and techniques to help you over come your barriers to personal growth, of course, but the most important thing that they can give you is the confidence in yourself to know that whatever your fear is, you can handle it. Sooner or later, as you progress with your coach you will suddenly feel so strongly that you can face that fear and do whatever it is you are so scared of,  you will just jump right in and do it.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!