Having Compassion for Ourselves Can Set Us Free
We are often told we cannot love others unless we first start to love ourselves.
The same can be said for having compassion. What is compassion for ourselves? It is opening up to looking at a story in our life with new eyes if, for a long time we have condemned our real feelings and emotions around a story.
Maybe we are engulfed with a sadness, but that sadness is expressed through anger. We are so afraid to let the sorrow out that we protect it with anger.
Anger as an emotion tells us our boundaries are being attacked, our personal boundaries that we have full control over but, maybe we don't realise this.
If we experience a real deep sadness, that has lingered deep down in the bowels of our core we may not even know it is there. This sadness may have been due to a personal attack of our boundary a long time ago; maybe we feel we were not protected as a child, maybe we sought love and got knocked down; maybe we trusted someone and they let us down. Whatever the story behind the sadness is, it is a real feeling and a real emotion that deserves its’ recognition.
To protect our feelings and emotions around our sadness we may have built a wall of anger around ourselves unconsciously. If our old sadness story gets stirred up, whomever stirs us may well be hit with that wall of anger. It is a natural trigger that stirs our sadness but our energy body reacts with the protective anger.
When we develop, what I consider to be the skill of compassion, then we can decide to acknowledge this sadness that is deep inside of us.
When we shine a light, illuminate or look at this sadness we give it a chance to breathe again. We allow the feelings and emotion itself to come to the surface for release. We can look at the old story around it and accept that it is there. We may find that we didn’t even know we still held those wounds of sadness from something that we may not even remember.
Or maybe we do remember but would rather forget.
When we look at our sadness with compassion, allow ourselves be vulnerable around it, accept it as a piece of energy and, acknowledge that sadness is not us but rather a piece of energy inside of us, we can form that distance to allow the change come in.
When we shed light on the sadness the anger boundaries can melt away or at the very least, we can realise them for what they are. A coping mechanism but not one that is built on a strong foundation.
A good personal boundary is based on our core beliefs and values. It comes from a place inside of us that knows what we will and will not accept from others. If we are a sensitive person we may want to look at our boundaries often and make sure they are surrounding us each day. Remember we are in charge of our energy body and we alone can allow what we want and don’t want into it. We can protect ourselves from taking on the angry outbursts of another, we can protect ourselves from taking on others' stories and we can allow ourselves just be. Most importantly we can allow our emotions to be what they are and see them for what they really are.
The first step to freedom is awareness …..
You can join me for a 7 week on line journey through the energy centers of our body where we look at our awareness centers and find out where we stand in relation to each one.
We look at how we feel around belonging, we delve into how we deal with our emotional realm, our personal power, self-love and our ability to love others. We look at how we communicate in the world and what legacy we are creating by our communications. We delve inside and learn to trust our gut instinct rather than the judgements of others. We realise we alone are the drivers of our life, that our emotions are our motivators and that we can shift and cause very real change in our lives by being led from within rather than without!
Until next time … keep the faith, Dolores Andrew-Gavin, Founder Global Emotional Health Summit, Founder IrishHealthHour, Soul Care Practitioner, Energy Therapist, Author and Mum.