Angry At The Right Things

When we choose to not feel one feeling, we lose the ability to feel them all -- including empathy. Empathy guides us to live in ways that lead to life and flourishing, but this can only result when we dislodge all shame.

Uniting to others can cause us to lose a part of ourselves. The litmus test of a safe-enough person is if they are willing to bend when we push back.

Trigger Warning: includes topics of rape and incest. What makes humans inclined to transfer shame onto others, in the most horrific of ways? And how can we reclaim our our souls in spite of this propensity? Realizing our worth makes impenetrable.

A beautiful conversation between Bronwyn and MaryLayo from Beyond the Smile podcast about anger and resentment. The good, bad and the ugly about anger -- including it's multifaceted wisdom, when we start to listen to it. 

Reactive anger is rooted in shame and designed to fight truth. The reactive anger of others wants to intimidate us and make us second-guess ourselves -- but we can stand our ground and trust ourselves, even if we have to close our eyes to do so.

Many of us were conceived to fill a void within our mother, and that same inner emptiness was passed along to us. We may attempt to fill it with food, approval-seeking or connection, but only we can complete ourselves. Bronwyn leads us in an Integration exercise to that end.

Wisdom from Sarah's story: how codependency and enmeshment led to her death, because she never learned what constitutes healthy attachment. Learn how to be a secure base for our children, and for ourselves.

Trauma stems from a fracture in our brains, in which external phenomena causes an internal splitting - of our rational mind from our emotions. Feeling our feelings - no matter how illogical they may seem - is necessary for the processing of the events to be made complete.

Why is it that the people who could most benefit from therapy are the least likely to go? A good therapist is a good mirror, and many people are terrified to look in a mirror.

Newton's laws of physics give us profound insight for relational dynamics. Even a small change can create a cascade of beneficial results. Inertia also shows up in relationships -- until an outside force changes it for the better.