Connection

What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?

There are several aspects to negative feelings.

• The emotions created by the life you’re living.
• Unpleasant actions of others that result in feeling that we’re worthless, useless, or undeserving.
• Aspects where our life wasn’t in our control when we were young, and that’s having a negative effect going forward. Ask any person who went to a really ‘bad’ school with lots of violence and gangs, and they will understand that. Ask children of broken relationships. They’re the kind of aspects I mean.
• Real things. Such as the loss of a loved one or pet. Being made redundant from your career, especially past the age of 50. Buying a new home where estate agents and solicitors are involved. During our last house move the other side’s solicitor actively lied to us about the sellers, when they’d done everything right.
• Struggling with your mental health for any reason.
• Being taught by anyone that negative feelings are bad things. They’re the natural opposite of good feelings. Sometimes the spiritual field can be a bit bothersome on this matter, if you don’t have a smile on your face or aren’t happy with something you’re being negative and need your aura cleansed or repaired. If something drives you nuts it does.

There are obviously more this is just a broad-brushstroke list.

Not strategies

• Blaming yourself. Blame blocks change. Firstly make sure you are to blame. If you are acknowledge the feeling. Then move past it.
• Sitting in a heap. We all make mistakes, they can only be countered with action of some sort. That can mean a change in our internal attitude or mindset, or our external behaviour. The two mostly go hand-in-hand.
• Staying anywhere that makes us unhappy. Give whatever it is three real attempts to make it work, if it doesn’t plan your exit.
• Saying yes when you mean no. If you don’t want to go somewhere hot for a holiday as the heat makes you feel ill, don’t say yes, dread it, and hate every moment. Say that the rest of the family are more than welcome to go and you expect a great gift, but you will not be going. And mean that.
• Say what you mean and mean what you say. Pretence doesn’t work everyone can see it and you know it. The example above would have to be done with complete acceptance that you’re doing the best for all concerned including you.
• Reaching for props such as food and alcohol. I know how much those things can appear to help, but when you’ve eaten or recovered from the headache, those emotions are still there, still doing their thing. I say this with no judgement. I don’t know you or your life. I just do know that props tend to knock you down eventually.

These are just a few general ideas of things we shouldn’t do when we’re struggling with our feelings, or that cause us to struggle. Your own personal list of ‘not strategies’ is the most important. You must always act in a way that is authentic to you. Some people do need to sit in a heap for a bit, but they get up.

Strategies

• I try not to live in my head all the time. I know that mindfulness is a thing, but I’ve found it better to try to keep an empty mind. Not letting it think too much.
• Obviously switch my focus to better thoughts.
• Be relaxed about where my life is. I am where I put myself, at the moment I don’t have the power to change it. So I work to be completely content where I am in what I’m doing. Bring the sun out and I’m feeling better immediately.
• Be in a state of gratitude. This is a much underrated state, but if you can genuinely start to feel grateful for what you have then life looks a lot better. We used to say ‘count your blessings’ but you may feel that you have no blessings in your life. That doesn’t mean that a roof over your head, food in your belly, a job paying the bills, aren’t something to be grateful for. Psychologically blessings can feel like big things, whereas gratitude can be the feeling when you see your first butterfly of the year and lose yourself in thinking how beautiful it is.
• We talk about being in touch with nature too. That always sounded a bit woolly to me. I was born in a city, go figure. However, if you can see and connect to the beauty of this world, even just an amazing sky it helps. When I got my first pair of hearing aids I felt so old, then I went out into the garden and just stood there for ages, my husband asked what I was doing. I was transfixed listening to the birds I hadn’t heard in years. Those ‘ageing objects’ became something to be grateful for in that simple moment.
• Don’t aim too high. We often have huge dreams. The big house. The fast car. The great job. The lottery win. When those dreams don’t materialise it sends our energy plummeting. We can feel that we’ve failed. Failed to get the well-paying job that would buy the house and car. Dream all week of the lottery only to be let down again at the next draw. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with aiming high, it’s just good to have both a lower and mid range of things that make us genuinely happy. These are the feelings we can build on to create the big things.
• Be true to yourself. For most of us the things that get us down are where we feel that our lives have gone wrong in some way. This often means that we compromised to help those we love. If you’re honest with yourself you may find a way where everyone can win. If you pretend to yourself it’s okay when it’s not, then you are the only one that will lose. Try for a win/win at all times.
• Don’t feel that you have to know best at all times, that you know what you think and who you are, and ain’t no one gets to change that! The more flexible your mind, the more you believe in the infinite potential and ability to learn that comes with the human condition. The more you believe that you can change, the more likely you are to change. I don’t have a stubborn bone in my body, and I’m profoundly grateful for that, I’ve seen the damage. Flexibility of mind rocks!
• Don’t need to be right. That’s a fear-driven emotion that often causes chaos. Need to be authentic and effective in your life.
• Finally, you have a right to be happy. If you make happiness your guiding light it makes it much easier to create the right life for you, and much less likely that you will need to control your mind.

Connection

The list above covers some of the ideas that have helped me. But the most important thing in my life is my belief in a higher power and life everlasting. Beliefs that have proved themselves to me to my personal satisfaction. Where I’ve seen the results in my own life.

When I reach out to Source (God) in my mind, I feel immediately calmer and completely supported. When I reach out to my Guides (Guardian Angels) I feel the same. That actually stops my mind running around like a rat in a trap, tying itself in knots. If you’ve ever tried to escape the knotted mind you’ll know how tricky that is. Like being in a Harry Potter maze that keeps changing shape.

That’s my main strategy. Meditation doesn’t always work when I’m wound up, but that reaching out never fails.

Deb xx