Did you know that whenever we experience something, there’s actually “layers” of emotion involved?
Something my energy teacher taught me, and which I think is so insightful is:
“Before you got really angry, you were really, really hurt”.
Most of us don’t realise it but whenever someone does something which hurts us/ our feelings, our immediate response is generally to:
- play it over and over in our head and get really upset and sad about it- swallowing ourselves into a black hole of fragility; OR
- if we’re more used to being strong and stoic, we’ll feel the hurt for a split second before stuffing it down into the furthest corner of our minds/gut/body and withdrawing completely into a contained, seething ball of resentment: “That was so mean, now I’m furious—I’m never going to talk to him/her again”.
I’m sure there’s more than two types of reactions, but they’re probably the most common ones we’ve come across. In both instances, we need to ask ourselves in the gentlest way possible: “How is holding onto the hurt/anger actually helping me?”
When you ask yourself this while giving yourself a supportive back rub, you realise that staying angry at someone and not being able to let it go:
- actually takes up heaps of energy
- leaves what you want to say to them unspoken, which robs you of your power
- causes us to stay in a constant state of: “I actually can’t make myself feel better about this.” Before you know it, weeks have passed and the opportunity to raise it with the person who hurt you, has long passed.
Sometimes it’s really hard, but if we can talk it through from a space of forgiveness: “That was unacceptably mean, but I’m going to let it go and not invest anymore of my energy being angry at them anymore”, and imagine the anger as crunchy, multi-coloured glitter which we blow out from our outstretched palms, into the wind– dispersing it far far away into some starry, starry sky– then in that moment, maybe we can let it go 🙂
Happy Monday, folks.
