Suppose there is a moment when you do not feel well. Maybe you feel fear in your body, you have all kinds of bad thoughts, you go through an intense process, you feel down or a wave of panic comes up. How do you deal with this?

Help, I can’t control my emotions!

Usually our first primitive response is judgment on how you feel and more fear. Our mind immediately gets to work with what you experience and immediately gives it a (negative) meaning. For example: “Help, my body feels weird and I feel anxious, I’m panicking!”, or “Why am I feeling this way again? There must be something wrong with me.”

You create a downward spiral for yourself

Because you reinforce non-empowering thoughts within yourself, your body responds to it. Suppose you tell yourself that everything is going wrong, that there is something wrong with you and that you start to have a panic attack.

Your body reacts to that with even more panic feelings. Your heart rate speeds up even more, the spinning feeling in your stomach increases and it’s hard to breathe.

Your response to how you feel is transformative

In the context of ‘being your own coach/best friend’: how would you react to yourself? How do you treat yourself when you don’t feel well? What are you saying to yourself?

Become aware of the experience

So the first stage is that you experience something within yourself. Then you take a break. This is the moment when you can make a choice about how you are going to respond to it.

Be kind to yourself

Your reaction to how you feel, makes a big difference. Suppose you feel a strong emotion or fear (with or without an apparent reason), you can respond with: ‘It’s okay, everything is fine, I’m safe.’

React

Then you make the choice to do something that brings you back into balance and helps you to ground. And that doesn’t mean you suppress the feeling. You accept the feeling, and choose to do something that brings you into contact with your body (and therefore out of your mind).

Suppose you suddenly do not feel well in the middle of the night and experience intense feelings. Instead of forming all kinds of (anxious) thoughts about it, just become aware of what you feel.

Making contact with yourself

You take a deep breath in and out and wrap your arms around yourself. You connect with your body and you feel compassion and love for yourself. You say to yourself, “Maybe I am going through an inner cleansing process. Everything will be fine anyway and I will always be protected.”

Strengthening the connection with your soul-essence

As soon as you start thinking in your head in response to how you feel, you are actually cutting off contact with your soul essence (highest self). Your soul essence is that inner loving parent, your greatest guide and inspirator. So if you go through an inner process you have 2 choices.

1.
You react from your mind (fear, thought patterns and separation). So you actually create noise on the line, you feel even less comfortable and therefore you no longer feel contact with your soul essence.

2.
You consciously choose to respond from your soul’s essence. Even though you don’t always feel it and thus think you don’t know how it would respond, take a moment to consider this. How would a loving parent/your greatest friend and guide react to how you’re feeling right now? And thus choose the response that corresponds with that. By choosing this, you make it, in a way, easier for your soul’s essence to come to you and to experience this connection.

And of course it doesn’t mean that the emotion, fear or experience you are going through at that moment is suddenly gone if you choose to respond from your essence.

Suppose you experience an old emotion as a purification of an old theme within yourself, then it is also possible that you go through this a little deeper under the guidance of your soul essence. The advantage of this is that this is actually a shorter time. If you dare to go very deeply through an emotion, you will feel that you get through it faster and everything feels lighter afterwards.

So in case you keep thinking about how you feel from your mind and stick labels on it, then you don’t really go through that emotion either. Then you will linger longer in it and you will only feel less comfortable in the longer term.

Suppose there was no emotion, but an unrealistic fear, then it is possible that you immediately feel more peace and clarity as soon as you choose to react from your soul essence. Because you strengthen this contact within yourself, it can suddenly feel that the fear was not necessary at all.

Creating the foundation of safety within

In all cases it is important that you create safety within yourself, with everything you feel or experience. So, in all cases, you start with this feeling of safety. Say words of encouragement to yourself and empower yourself. An important part of this is grounding. You can initially strengthen grounding by focusing on your body. Scan your body and touch your whole body (it can even help to tap all your body parts). Try to slow down your breathing and focus on your belly.

For me personally it always helps very well to do something with my hands when I go through an intense inner process. For example, I’m going to bake something delicious or enjoy gardening. Moving, dancing or a creative expression also works very well.

And if you really experience feelings of panic, it is always recommended to stand on the earth with bare feet and then take a fresh shower. In that sense you can work with the elements to bring yourself back into balance. Always bring yourself back to the here and now and IN your body. All the while saying words of encouragement to yourself.

Of course you can always contact me if you are looking for guidance in this process. Book an 1-on-1 session or come to Sweden for a private- or small-scale group retreat.