Back to Reality and Dealing with Negative Feelings and Stress – January 21, 2012

Back to Reality and Dealing with Negative Feelings

Dreary Winter Morning

Anger, frustration, fear, worry – they do come – we are only human.  The question is what to do with these feelings when they arise.  This is a question I was confronted with once again recently.  It has been some time since this kind of swamped feeling has found its way into my life, and the truth is, until just last week, I didn’t realize it was actually happening!  The last 6 months have been filled with enormous changes in my life, and I had completely lost my balance, which is so important in my life.  But it wasn’t until my body began to rebel in many different ways, including serious knee problems (anger, fear) and a crashing immune system leading to repeated illnesses, that I began to suspect something might be seriously wrong.  Duh!!

And it wasn’t until I went for acupuncture treatment for my knees and the practitioner innocently asked me “where is all this stress coming from in your life?”, that I even began to THINK about stress.  I know from the past, that unlike many people who get migraines, or ulcers or HBP, when I am under extreme stress, my immune system just crashes.  Hasn’t happened though in about 15 years!  At first I denied it since “I no longer allow myself to get stressed by life” .But when I thought about it honestly I realized what was happening, and began to make new choices about my life situation and how I wanted to experience it.  Things have already begun getting back into order.  But as usual, I needed a good “hit over the head” to realize I had been making poor choices for several months.

I found myself in an extremely difficult place  – with feelings that I hadn’t experienced for a long time – and was at a loss about what to do regarding my reaction to the situation. Remember, we are always responsible for the way we feel and so these feelings of anger, frustration, fear and worry were not what was upsetting me, but the fact that I allowed myself to react in a way which allowed these feelings to arise in the first place.

So …what to do?

Well, it took me awhile, but I realized that first of all, the feelings must be validated, allowed to exist, and not buried.  Allow them their own freedom to “be” – find out where they are coming from and then move past them back to the balanced place.  And then make the positive choice to no longer give in to these negative thoughts and feelings, but to replace them with positive thoughts as each new situation comes up, and make the choice to experience all with complete acceptance, joy, gratitude and freedom from fear. If doing this involves a day or two of sleeping a lot, or playing computer games, of saying no to requests to baby sit, to not even feeling like cooking,  don’t beat myself up about it.  Allow myself the luxury of succumbing once in a while.  The downs only make the highs easier to relish, appreciate and be grateful for!

The relapses into bad times have a place in our lives and as such, are just as much a blessing as the so-called “good” stuff.  In the end, EVERYTHING is good, and for our own Higher Good.

And, once again,  I give thanks to God and the loving Universe for my many blessings, even when it takes me awhile to become aware of them.

with Love Light and Joy

Jane