Rachael Wolff, author of Letters From A Better Me, has written a new blog post on how grateful she is that she has learned to express herself in healthy ways.
Daily Aligning with Love, Abundance, and Peace #138
I’m grateful I’ve learned how to express my feelings in a healthy ways. When I was 14, I was in a treatment center. It was there I learned the, “I feel because…” approach to expressing my feelings. We would be in group therapy and have to express our grievances with others by saying, “I feel __________ because_________”. We were not allowed to blame the person we had the grievance with. We had to take full responsibility for our own feelings. This technique has helped me so much in the 30 years that have followed my time there. What I realized was that every time I blamed someone else for my feelings, I gave my power away. While I was there, I also learned never to drink to cover or suppress my feelings, because they would come out sideways and do both internal and external damage. They were absolutely right, it would be years before I took that message to heart, but I was VERY happy to have that seed.
Thankfully, many of these lessons came before a series of traumatic events. I still went through a period of being suicidal, but I had an underlying foundation to work with that helped me tremendously. I believe I learned everything I did to help me through some of the toughest times in my life. 2020 has been a challenging year and finding healthy ways to express my feelings has been essential to me. I’m so grateful I have ways to express my feelings so that I’m not keeping them inside to do more damage.
Today, I commit to expressing my feelings in healthy ways. Above, I talked about ways I express myself to others, but I also do a lot to help me through the times where that is either not appropriate, necessary, or helpful. One of my favorite ways to deal with anxiety, anger, rage, and other feelings where I can feel my heart pounding and fire burning inside of me is getting on my Simply Fit exercise board, get my weights, and listen to music with an intense beat. I LOVE the feeling. When I get off, I feel so much better. I drink a ton of water, then I will either go into a meditation or write it out. When I do this, I physically release the emotions from my body AND without hurting someone else in the cross fire.
When the feelings are more draining feelings like grief, depression, and sadness, I go for the slower release with stretching, walking, and yoga. My favorite thing to do is listen to is an audiobook. Then, I write it out. I find that when I do this, I can see my feelings in an honest way.
No matter what emotions I’m going through, I remind myself that what is really hurting me is the story I’m telling myself over and over. If I don’t like my story, I need to re-write a new one. Even to this day, I let a story in my head get to me. It happens! I don’t beat myself up about it, because that in itself is me NOT expressing my feelings in a healthy way. Self-abuse is not healthy. I spent years self-abusing and I payed a heavy price for it in my health, relationships, and finances (spending money in all the wrong places). Today, I’m going to stay conscious of where my feelings are and find healthy ways to express them, so that I don’t have to carry there weight.
With Love, Abundance, and Peace,
©Rachael Wolff 2020
Letters From a better me
How Becoming an Empowered Woman Transforms the World
THE EMPOWERED WOMAN follows the belief system that is best explained in a quote by Byron Katie: “The most attractive thing about the Buddha was that he saved one person: himself. That’s all he needed to save; when he saved himself, he saved the whole world.”
The letters work in different ways depending on the chapter and part of the book.