Steps to healing and complete recovery. Relax, if you can and take a slow breath and allow yourself to feel. Invite a feeling that you find unacceptable and notice what happens in your body. Feelings like shame, a sense of weakness, inadequacy, terror, sadness, hate, or shyness are few examples. The feeling that is right to begin with will come to the surface. Trust this is the right one.
Make sure you allow this feeling to be felt, and then felt some more. Remember? feelings express by being felt and felt some more and not by being talked about or explained. Instead of recoiling from it, establish an attitude of strong intent to get to know this part of yourself! This is INTENT TO HEAL and it is what will set into motion deep profound healing.
Remember, every feeling is trying to tell you something, maybe something of great importance ... but it might be in very bad shape because of your constant rejection of it. So you need to nurse it back to health. Just feeling this friendlier attitude toward this feeling might bring a few tears or even sense of hope. Allow tears and do not let your mind distract you from the feeling. Stay away from judgement! Be open to feel more. Step back and for once let the feeling lead the way
Try this several times with the first feeling that comes up that you judge as negative or unpleasant.
Step 1
Talk to it.
Once you determine what the feeling is begin to establish honest communication with it. Do this out loud and for a while ... Allow yourself to notice any discomfort.
It might feel ridiculous and uncomfortable, but don’t let this stop you. Say "Hello" to the feeling, just to break the ice. “Hello, shame. Hey. I want to be your friend”. Imagine you meet a stranger and you are determined to get to know him/her. Sometimes this can have a startling effect on you, since this feeling has never before received any acknowledgement, love or acceptance but rather much rejection, nonacceptance and avoidance. No wonder it’s in such bad shape. Make sure to stay with this particular feeling for a while, maybe a week or two until this feeling begins to feel very comfortable with you and you with it.
Step 2
Accept the feeling’s responses to you.
Ask yourself: Can I accept this feeling? Let the answer arise spontaneously . Be honest. Saying a real “NO” is often more honest then saying a fake “yes”. You need to determine what feels truer but if you don’t love this particular feeling ever so slightly saying “no I don’t don’t have acceptance for you” is more healing that say; “of course I accept you” when in your true self you don’t accept it.
If the answer is NO ask yourself again, "Is it OK that my true response is “NO” … and again… wait for the reply. This reply must emerge from deep within so do not make the old mistake of getting quick answers from your mind. If the reply is another “No”, continue to ask: is that OK? You can ask, “Is it OK that its not OK that is not OK” and so on. NO might come up endlessly - just continue asking until you get a real YES. YES is a form of acceptance that this feeling desperately needs.
At times a person trying to be “spiritual” will say, “Of course I accept this feeling” while in truth they don’t. This will get them nowhere.
Feelings don’t evolve without acceptance. Most people don’t have true acceptance for their feelings. But they also have nonacceptance for their nonacceptance. This locks the feelings into a prison. They begin to rot. They turn ugly and scary as they continue to be denied.
The way to heal is to say to yourself: “I may have a feeling of nonacceptance at the moment but I accept this in myself.” See if you can. Seeing one’s level of nonacceptance with clarity leads to unconditional acceptance but not before.
True healing depends on seeing how deep the nonacceptance of feeling goes. Revelation of this fact is shocking yet most healing step because without acceptance feeling can’t evolve or move. Feeling the same feeling of for example shame over and over means it has not had a genuine chance to evolve. Once you achieve true evolution of feeling you will know that the rest of the healing will naturally follow.
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