New Leaf Mentoring … new thought. new health. new life.

Posts tagged ‘vital’

Emotional Responsibility


In the healing business you can expect to hear a ton of stories about the pain, suffering and abuse people endure. It’s a vital part of the healing process for people to share their stories and release repressed and suppressed emotions out of their bodies and energy fields . Many alternative and complementary modalities are based on doing precisely just that; releasing repressed emotions out of the body. Held in emotions of shame, anger, grief, worry, fear can play havoc on a body’s immune system and eventually lead to a whole host of physical problems. And although it is shocking to hear some of the outrageous things people are capable of perpetrating against one another it never fails to amaze me how easily and willing we are to hurt someone else. It’s not just the act, but the desire to cause hurt comes so easily to so many people.

It seems to be human nature that when we hurt we need and want others to feel the same pain. It’s that old adage: Misery loves company. But bottom line it is grossly unfair and spiritually irresponsible to draw others into our negative emotion cycles. We don’t have the right to make others miserable because we don’t want or can’t find the way to resolve our own emotional pain. If your intention is to heal your wounds and you are willing to trust another to guide you back to the land of the positive then share as honestly and as openly as you can. But if all you really want is to feel validated in your misery and insist on recruiting sympathies against the person you are mad at you are abusing your confidant. Of course in that moment you don’t really get how abusive it is, all you’re focused on, in that moment, is the need to spread the grief. Wallowing in pain however is a dead end street. It gets you nowhere. And you will find that eventually you will be standing nowhere all alone!

Depression is one thing, but spinning in a bad mood and trying to take every one else down with you is another. We have a moral and ethical responsibility to others, especially the ones we love, to try to stay as positive as possible. I don’t mean being cheerful when you feel angry, worried and confused. Using negative words, being argumentative, picking fights, goading others into being nasty, demeaning others just to vent your aggravation is cruel and harmful for all parties concerned or bitterly trying to convince others to gang up on another. We live in an over stressed society, to add to another’s stress level is incouragable. We need to try harder to be genuinely nice to people. They deserve it. Strangers we meet out on the street don’t deserve to be treated with rudeness, disrespect or aggressive bad behaviour no matter how they treat us. Be the bigger person! We need to treat others with kindness, respect and friendliness.

Another old saying is ‘if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all’ but let’s face it, how can you find justice without complaint? So if you are truly looking for justice ask yourself this; ‘can this person I’m talking to help me understand what’s going on and am I truly looking for resolution – or am I just bitching to anyone who is too polite to hang up the phone or walk away from me while I rant?’ Words and emotions have energy. We use them to create effect in other people. Before you go shooting off your mouth hold some awareness about the power you are wielding. Loose tongues cut deeply – and in the end it will be you that falls with greatest pain.

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Healing

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There’s nothing like a good story!


Isn’t it true? Don’t you love them? I love to hear stories.

I hear them all day long, everyone I meet tells me one. Never mind…everyone I meet I tell one to! I think stories – both the hearing and the telling of them, are vital to living a healthy life. Sadly it’s becoming a forgotten art. Weird eh? You’d think that in this age of telecommunication devices that we would be more able to communicate stories better. But this isn’t so. Everyday I meet people simply dying to tell me a piece of their story. Even though most people have difficulty getting started it doesn’t usually take very long before the flood gates open and, well, then anything is liable to happen!

We tell stories for all kinds of reasons, to share, to uplift, to inspire, to create empathy, sympathy, pity. We tell stories to create fear, to intimidate, to cause worry but mainly we tell stories just to be heard. We want someone to witness the exciting and the mundane happenings of our lives. When I meet a client in pain, physical pain or emotional pain, I can guarantee you they have a story they’ve never told anyone! Or maybe even more importantly, a story that hadn’t been heard yet.

In my work I often tell stories to encourage people to tell me theirs. Life matters. The experiences of our lives matter. What we think, what we feel, what we do  – it all matters. We are all connected, what happens to me affects you. None of us is separate. We are more the same than we are different. Hence, hearing a story can be a cathartic experience. Every story triggers another.

We sit in a precarious place in our society today. We are ambitious, fast paced and busy. We don’t sit around the dinner table (what’s a ‘dinner table’ again?) telling stories very often. Our culture is not founded in story telling like in generations past. Historically, around the globe, cultures were established and held together by their stories reflecting religious, spiritual and ethical belief systems. Generations of people and their stories have been lost around the world through genocide, persecution and war. Through the loss of their stories entire cultures disappeared from our history books, when the story chain is broken we all suffer.

Today we risk losing touch with one another; polite inquiries, courteous answers, no depth, no attachment. We lose sight of what matters. So let me remind you; our humanity matters, our empathy for our fellow man matters. In the rush to get on our way to do something we forget how to just be. In the isolation caused by running in different directions we forget to tell stories and quietly shift into keeping secrets. When we forget that our stories matter to the people we love we start believing that we have nothing important to say. When we keep all our business to our selves we start believing that we are entitled to our own private, isolated lives. We start behaving as though our actions have no impact on those around us. But this is impaired judgment. Our actions always have ramifications. Keeping the secrets doesn’t prevent hurt from happening – it just causes confusion, doubt, anxiety and frustration.

Telling our stories – about anything, and listening to stories allows people to feel worthy. It creates connections between souls. When stories are told from the heart with genuine interest and emotion they can build bridges. People feel safer in the world when they can tell their stories. They feel they belong to something bigger. We all  – everyone of us  – just want to be understood and witnessed. Repressed stories, feelings, or emotions create a bottle neck of energy that eventually let’s go in a torrential out pouring – often causing immeasurable harm. Tell your stories before someone gets hurt. Listen to the stories of others.

Today I went to a women’s business networking group – I heard many great stories, and told a few myself. It was a great day!

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