Part II: How to Rise Above Negative Emotion

This is a continuation of Part I: How to Rise Above Negative Emotion.

First, let me say, that a huge part of rising above negative emotion is to feel your frozen feelings. You must allow yourself to feel all the repressed feelings that you hold inside from degrees of abuse you experienced as a child. Once you've completed that process, you will come to a place where you're ready to take the next step in rising above the negative feelings you hold in your heart.

The next step in rising above negative emotion requires that you do the following:

Separate from the Negative Emotion

You must see yourself as who you really are, who you were meant to be, and you must see the negative emotion for what it really is. Negative emotion is a part of you that believed a lie that is contrary to your divine truth. Negative emotion is felt when your beliefs are out of alignment with the truth of who you are.  

Negative emotion is NOT YOU. It may FEEL like you, you may have thought that it was you, but it is NOT YOU. It has nothing to do with you, it is separate from you. It is false, it is something that is "out-there," not "in-here." Once you start depersonalizing the emotion, you can start to separate those parts of you that are true, from the parts of you that are false, not yours and that need to be disposed of little-by-little.

The Truth is... You are love, you are accepted, you are wanted, you are love. Any time you hold a belief that you are anything less than the divine soul that you are, you feel negative emotion. You feel badly. These negative emotions are energy-in-motion which send vibrations out into the universe and return to you more of the same, thus proof that you are right in feeling badly. It's a vicious cycle that must be stopped if you ever want to move ahead in your life and rise above it.

1. Know Who You Are
2. Know Who You're Not
3. Stop Taking Negative Emotion Personally

Stop Taking Your Bad Feelings So Personally 

If you're like me, you have feelings of negative emotion and immediately associate those bad feelings with who you are as a person. This is the epitome of feelings of worthlessness, unworthiness, low self esteem. These feelings would dwell in my heart and cause all sorts of thoughts to crop up about why I wasn't good enough, less than others, undeserving of the goodness that life has to offer. It was a spiral. I took every negative, sad, depressing, hopeless, shameful thought directly to heart. I believed what my emotions were saying about me as if it were my truth.

I've since learned to call a spade a spade. No longer do I incorporate bad feelings into my truth. I see bad feelings as something that is separate from me, and I do not allow it to touch my feelings of self worth and value. Just because I have a bad emotion doesn't mean that I am a bad person. Just because I have bad thoughts about my worth and value doesn't mean I have to act on those thoughts or believe those thoughts. I can stop myself in the midst of a spiral of negative emotion and subsequent negative thoughts and begin the process of fighting for my truth.

What a breakthrough!!! When you can stop yourself in the places that typically cripple your heart, crush you, cause you to fall back, sabotage yourself and beat-yourself-up, and you can begin taking a stand for your truth by arguing with the negative thoughts, thus changing your very opinion of the situation... That's when you start reprogramming your mind to believe new things about yourself. Whatever you believe about yourself is what you manifest in your life. You get what you feel you deserve.

When you reprogram your thought processes, rethink your thoughts, you cause new feelings and emotions to emerge. These new emotional vibrations are more empowering and beneficial to you and will bring the equivalent match into your life in terms of success and the things you want. These new thoughts, feelings, emotions (vibrations) will spur actions in you that are in alignment with the truth of who you are, not who you falsely thought you were to be. It's a beautiful process!!!

Once you recognize the negative emotion, realize that the negative emotion is NOT YOU, but actually the epitome of what YOU'RE NOT, which is why it feels badly, you will then understand that the negative emotion is separate and can be dealt with when you're operating from a place of knowing your truth. Your truth is that you are good, you are love and the world is on your side. You are a co-creator on earth with God. You have power to overcome situations. Your thoughts matter. You get in your life what you believe you deserve AND you have power to change your beliefs.

That's all for now... More next time on taming the negative emotions and bridging the gap to attaining higher level feelings more in alignment with your divine truth. Stay tuned!!! XO

Why Do We Hold Onto Self Hatred That's Not Ours?

Usually we receive this hatred when we are vulnerable and lacking in boundaries, and before we have an understanding of Self vs. Other. So we often don't know that this hatred does not belong to us. In addition, if we live with constant abuse, then we are also imprinted with the belief that we MUST NOT FORM BOUNDARIES or say NO to the abuse, that we must stay open to "what we deserve". Our Belief System then says we deserve this, and that we must continue to accept it and hold it. Staying open to another person's hatred then, becomes the pattern for our lives. We may not have always known how to hold against this hatred. We may not have been able to form boundaries or say no to it. But we can change this now. We CAN give the hatred back. We can form boundaries to prevent ever taking in more hatred again. And we can heal the wounds the hatred created in our soul.  The Patterns of Self Loathing

PART 1: How to Rise Above Negative Emotion

Wow. This is a difficult article to write. Why? Because there is not one answer to it. Rising above negative emotion that stems from the root of childhood abuse and neglect is a complicated process, one that requires everything you've got--and more.

The biggest issue is that being neglected, abandoned, abused or mistreated as a child causes your identity to be wrought in SHAME. The opposite of love, affection, attention is shame. When a child does not get its developmental needs met, the natural by-product is shame. Shame is a horrible, disgusting, terrible feeling that broods beneath the surface and shapes everything you say and do. I can't tell you how badly shame makes you feel. If you're reading this article, you likely know--though you may not have a handle on it.

Parts of me that I thought were me, the parts that made me feel worthless, I found out through my healing journey were not me at all.  It was shame. The revelation changed my life forever. There were so many ways I was held back by an intense feeling of shame--that I never knew was there, until I rose above it by being mindful of every feeling and thought that I felt.

Shame. I'll never forget when I first came face-to-face with this unruly beast. I'm not talking about your normal shame, that for feeling badly for something you've done in the presence of a social group--that kind of shame is reasonable, manageable and normal. No big deal. No, I'm talking about the kind of shame that rots you out to the core--makes you sit down when you should stand. Keeps you locked behind closed doors, handcuffed in a world while crying cause it's passing you by. TOXIC SHAME.

Toxic Shame is a type of shame you don't deserve. It's the type of shame that is the by-product of neglect, abandonment and abuse of childhood. If you experienced a bad childhood and you know it, and you haven't dealt with your shame, I feel very sorry for you. I know exactly how you feel and it sucks and it hurts and you may not even realize it. Pain hides in such strange ways. It makes you kick yourself... little do you know, you don't deserve it. It's shame that's not yours.

Anyway. Toxic shame is what occurs when a parent acts shamelessly by passing their shameful behavior (that of neglect, abuse or whatever) onto you without remorse. It's a long story. Whenever someone passes that stuff onto you, your caretaker--who DOES NOT REALIZE what he or she is doing... they are only reacting and re-enacting their own abuse--they are passing on shame that does not belong to you. IT'S NOT YOURS. But, as a small child, your only recourse is to take the blame. You believe you're worthless. You embrace their shame as if it is your own. Why? Because ...

You're tiny.
You're vulnerable.
You have no protection.

You're mind is protecting you from realizing that you are being raised by incompetent people.

Our minds are pre-wired to protect us from the harms of poorly functioning adults. In order to protect us from the realization that we are unloved as children (unloved in the sense that we're not loved with true, adequate love), our brains internalize the flaws of our parents. Our brains internalize the flaws that our parents can't face. Our little, developing brains internalize the projections of our parents. Stuff they can't deal with, we, as little vulnerable children gulp down. We take all the stuff they can't because we MUST BELIEVE THEY ARE PERFECT in order to develop psychologically.

You see, believing that we're worthless is a defense mechanism against insanity. Evolution tells us (or whatever that is) that our brains are wired to protect ourselves from the lack of love. Babies who don't get adequate love can die--ACTUALLY DIE. Therefore we are hard wired to become delusional if our primary caretakers are incapable of giving us the real love we need. We pretend in our little minds that the abusive caretaker is perfect, and we, believe that we--instead of them--are the devil personified. We take on their shame. This is TOXIC SHAME. It is not ours, but we put it on. We don it in order to delude ourselves into thinking that they love us, when in fact they do not, cannot and will not. It is not their fault, nor is it ours.

SHAME. I'm trying to write an article about how to overcome negative emotion, but I cannot do so unless I describe to you the presence of shame, and help you to know what it is. In order to get rid of the most troublesome emotion of all time, you must first know it is there.

I found shame in places I never knew it could be found. I still find it from time to time. Look for it. It's lurking. It's hanging out around every corner. Every time you feel badly, shame--toxic shame--is the culprit. So much to say. My fingers hurt. Next time, I'll share more. Much love. Good luck in your journey. Rise above shame by first recognizing it.

Awareness is Key


If you want to rise above the negative emotion, you must first recognize it is there. You may uncover negative emotion in a million ways, just under the surface. I love this article by another writer which defines it well regarding the patterns of self-hatred. Feelings of unworthiness may hide beneath the surface and be tricky to find... but once you open to learning the truth about your feelings, to honoring and respecting your feelings and to start being mindful of your self-talk, you will start to unravel your feelings and find the root of its cause.



More later....

Outline of Personality Modes

I love this graphic! How helpful. Getting to know yourself, becoming aware of your different moods, thoughts, feelings and behaviors is the pathway to self love. This diagram stems from Transactional Analysis, a way of defining different modes and schemas that people follow when they've gone through hurt, pain and/or trauma in childhood, or been raised in any type of dysfunction. A great preface to this chart is the book, "Games People Play: Handbook of Transactional Analysis" by Eric Berne. Excellent book! I've read it a few times. Highly recommended.

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