You won’t become who you want to be by dwelling on the past and getting upset about it. The things that stick in your mind and bring you down aren’t really the problem. The problem is the meaning we attribute to the events, and how these meanings get firmly entrenched in your life.
How can you change the meaning for a better working relationship with your memory?
First your memory is just that – a memory. It is no longer real in terms of anything actually happening to you today. It is simply a pattern of neurological and chemical transactions that take place in your brain. These transactions have created a well worn path in your brain, that is easy to go down again and again. Each time you go back down the path by remembering it and feeling the feelings associated with it, you strengthen the pathway by creating an even deeper groove.
How can you forget the past while it is so deeply entrenched in your brain?
The truth is you can’t, but you can change the meaning you attributed to it, and this is what really matters. It matters because it’s the meaning that we gave it that brings us down, causes us distress and gets us upset.
How to change the meaning of an event.
The way to change the meaning is quite simple. Become aware of how this memory is disempowering you right now. By this I mean notice what it does to your sense of self. Do you start to feel or think that you are worthless, or incompetent, or unable to stick up for yourself? Does this memory give you feelings of great pain and longing that it was different, or wanting that it never happened in the first place?
How to welcome our uncomfortable feelings.
If you identify for example, that your memory elicits feelings of being incompetent, the first thing to do, is to welcome those feelings. This sounds crazy but it works.
The truth is every time we don’t want to feel or think something we set up resistance that contributes hugely to the pain attached to the memory. If we can start to welcome all of the feelings associated with the event, even the extremely uncomfortable ones, we reduce a lot of our pain and stress around the issue.
This simple act of accepting how you feel in the moment has been shown, in my experience with clients, to reduce the stress surrounding the issue by up to 90% and 90% by all accounts is huge isn’t it.
Why we need to express feelings and how we distract ourselves.
Every time you feel an uncomfortable feeling or thought your general gut feeling is actually encouraging you to offer it up, that is,express it in some way. But we disallow this by eating or drinking our feelings down, or by medicating or gambling or getting some other form of distraction, any form of distractionm to take us away from our uncomfortable feelings.
Our gut feelings
We don’t want to feel these feelings and in trying to avoid them or by rejecting them, we can’t express them. However when we follow our gut feelings and allow the discomfort of our vulnerable feelings to emerge we will find the need to express them somehow. This could be through writing, painting, drawing, crying, shouting screaming, singing or sighing. And of course there are many other ways of using expressive arts and hobbies that can be used in this therapeutic way. Even going to a game of soccor or rugby and screaming your head off can be therapeutic if your preferred way of expressing your pain is through screaming.
Welcome your feelings like long lost children
The important thing is to stop editing your feelings and making them the outcasts. Instead welcome all of them like your long lost children who are needing your love and support. Your anger might be like a 2 year old in the corner screaming his head off. How would you deal with this if it was a real toddler? This is where your adult re-parenting skills come in.
Instead of trying to shut this child down, allow full expression. Get clear that if you allow these feelings to emerge while you observe calmly and don’t react negatively, the child will normally get through their feelings quickly and return smiling and ready to apologise.
But if you tell the child to shut up and make the child feel wrong for being angry, or tell them there is nothing to be angry about, the child will get angrier and angrier. It’s also the same with adults. So allow the full expression of your feelings as if they are a toddler doing their thing, and don’t make them wrong. Instead welcome them with a smile and a gentle nod and know that they will be your friends before long.
An easy exercise to accept our uncomfortable feelings.
Try this easy exercise to accept any uncomfortable feelings or thoughts of guilt, fear, anger, rage, incompetence, grief, being in the wrong, or vengefulness towards others.
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Notice what you are telling yourself about YOU. e.g. “You are useless that you can’t manage your anger” or “When will you learn that you will never get ahead if you don’t know what to say.”
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Welcome these thoughts and feelings by getting wonderfully (and quite hilariously) accepting of them. For example: “I am so happy that you can’t manage your anger. You are the best person I know at doing this. Wow you are fantastic at getting super angry, AND you are brilliant at being useless! You are the most useless person I know and you should have a medal for it! You are so brilliant at being useless and not controlling your anger, you could write a book on it. You are Fantastic!!
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Give the ‘useless’ part of yourself all the love and acceptance and encouragement you can! It will feel weird and strange but after a while you will have a smile on your face and you will find it quite amusing. You will find yourself smiling because you aren’t taking your patterns of thought seriously any more.
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Get your brilliantly useless and angry parts to express themselves fully now in the presence of the competent and peaceful part of you that accepts them unconditionally. Here you will get practice at being engaged with your feelings without judgement. Remember that self- judgment is what sets up great stress and resistance. And that can add up to 90% more pain and distress to what you are going through.
Where real healing takes place.
The process above may seem like a crazy thing to do. But the great release it gives you, places you firmly in the ensuing energy of love and acceptance. Here in this loving and accepting place, is where all great healing takes place, no matter what the problem, issue or pain.
Practice makes perfect
You won’t become automatically good at this but as you practice it, you’ll get better and better at it. Its good to do it slowly and carefully to start with, so you really get the idea of the steps. As you become more practiced you will find you start to do this automatically in situations that in the past caused you great pain and concern. All of a sudden you’ll find yourself managing to do this process within a few seconds. Each time you are realigning yourself with your present and loving self instead of your critical and judgmental self.
Separate the facts from the meaning
From this place of acceptance and self love, your entance into your memory becomes more factual. Here you can choose to progress by giving the memory a new meaning e.g. An event which left you feeling upset and angry and greatly in pain can be reframed to see it in a new and positive way. This new meaning results in a much more powerful interpretation of what happened.
Get a better idea to stick
Over time with practice, this new interpretation sticks to your neural pathway. The event is no longer remembered as something negative that stuck to you like horrible sticky goo that you can’t remove, no matter how hard you try. Instead you get the benefit of a new great stickiness of self belief. This self belief that you create through reframing, also sticks and tells you that you are able to overcome things, that you are a good learner, that you can manage whatever comes your way and that you are pretty amazing all round.
Replace judgment with enthusiasm
When you are able to replace judgment with enthusiasm for every worrying feeling or thought that emerges, you will allow yourself to accept and validate who you are.
How this sets you up to reframe past events.
This is the first step in reframing past events. When an event is reframed, you happily lose your way in a new story, a better story about the event. You reframe the patterns that result in attributing blame to yourself and the practice of self hatred and self judgement.
Why all this is important
When you get yourself smiling about your ‘not being a good girl or boy’, you get on with your life without constant judgement and demoralisation. When each part of you supports the other parts instead of criticising and judging, yyou integrate yourself and become more powerful in your life.
This is a way you can begin to place all of your less than perfect parts in a great loving circle and giving them all a round of applause. This will not make you any less in any way, or encourage bad behaviour. It will allow you to become more of yourself by understanding that by giving those parts of yourself acceptance, you place self judgement in the past and get yourself firmly placed in your potential now.
Katie Kalin is a kinesiologist who develops conscious awareness in her clients. Kate runs a clinic and also works online. She uses distant muscle testing to connect people to their own wisdom. www.katiekalin.com
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