Opening The Heart

Heart

"Feeling…
...is the language of the Soul
Hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth"

(from Neale Donald Walsh’s
‘Conversations With God’, Book 1)

All too often we hide from our feelings and try to suppress them, moving up from our heart into our rational mind instead.

But why do we do this?

This response is usually because we experienced some kind of trauma in early childhood, which caused us emotional pain. We simply didn’t want to feel that pain and sadness again and so created a protective ‘wall’ around our heart to keep people at a distance (usually with anger). This wall also suppresses the sadness that we experienced at that early time of our life.

The problem is that this strategy effectively blocks our heart's need for a two-way flow of energy, so that we can no longer express how we feel to ourselves and to others, or to feel other people’s emotions.

heart wall

We effectively separate ourselves from our feelings, and in adulthood this can lead to physical problems with the heart and mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.

I have personally experienced this process when, seven years ago, my heart decided to stop beating. Thankfully it restarted again a short while later, but this episode left me wondering why it had happened to a fit and healthy 40 year old, with no family history of heart issues.

It only dawned on me over the course of the next couple of years that my heart had stopped beating because I had separated myself from my feelings for most of my life, and I was now experiencing the physical consequences of this protective approach to life.

pulse heart beat

So how do we break down these walls and feel again?

A simple way to start the healing process is to write down how you are feeling every day. This doesn’t need to be an essay, just a couple of lines that acknowledge any emotions that came up for you during the day. They could be positive or negative feelings - it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you acknowledge that you felt them.

See if you can keep this up for 21 days so that it becomes a habit. Then re-read your entries and you may become aware of ‘interesting’ emotional patterns and perhaps even some positive changes that have occurred along the way.

notebook

You may also be shocked at what you have written and this is okay because it’s all part of the process of becoming self-aware.

This approach will help you to start the process of reconnecting with your heart. However, it is then essential to go further and heal the root cause of the issue - the emotional pain that you experienced at a very early age.

As a holistic counsellor, I help people to work through these issues and open their hearts using straightforward but effective therapies that work with the subconscious mind. As a result, their previously greyscale world becomes a vibrantly more colourful, brighter and joyful experience.

If you’d like to explore how you can move forward in your life, book me for a free online meeting with no obligation.

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