Searching for your joy?

Do you ever feel not quite right? Not quite good enough? Have you ever had a feeling of low-grade anxiety, but you are not sure what is causing it?

Me too… and we are far from alone.

We live in a culture of positivity – positive thoughts, positive feelings, and a perpetual striving for happiness. What if this striving is making us feel worse? The rates of anxiety and depression in the Western World are stratospheric and on the rise.

What if this desire to feel good is stopping us from the very thing that grows and supports us? What if chronic avoidance is actually keeping us small?

Research from the University of Melbourne (Brock Bastian, Professor, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences) has shown that the social expectation to feel good leads to increased depression.

?Do we judge ourselves for feeling bad?

?Research has also shown that how we are treated as children, whether we are fully accepted, whether we are encouraged to feel and express our full range of emotions, good or bad, happy or sad, impacts our emotional health as adults.

?If we were;

-????shut down or discouraged from feeling negative emotions as a child

-????not unconditionally loved and unconditionally accepted

-????not encouraged to explore and make mistakes and fail,

then, research shows, that as adults we will carry shame.

When we don’t accept our feelings and instead judge ourselves for feeling the way we do, this is shame.

?If it’s not okay to feel bad, we feel bad about feeling bad and push these feelings away. We create distractions, avoid with addiction or bury ourselves in a mountain of positive thinking. The problem is that when we suppress one feeling we suppress all feelings. That’s just how the human psyche works.

Without doing healing work around this Original Pain, we become emotionally blocked and left with anxiety, frustration, anger and sadness.

?To fully express our creativity, joy and bliss we need to learn to feel comfortable with our pain, to learn to deal with our pain not push it away. And this starts with facing the pain from childhood - when so many of us did not have our needs fully met to allow optimum development at those stages.

?Herein lies original pain, and emotional trauma. There is a growing movement of people who now fully accept that much of the physical illness and disease in society has at its core unexpressed emotion and childhood trauma.

?The work of Gabor Mate covers this brilliantly.

?So what can you do? After all, we cannot roll back the clock and change our childhood…

?No, we can’t. We don’t want to, and certainly don’t need to.

?You also do not need to carry this pain, this shame, this trauma that blocks your life and creates physical illness any longer. You can heal from the past. I know.?I have.

?Sound scary…? I promise you, it’s not. I know. I’ve been there.

You, like me, can go back to the you-as-a-child and allow yourself to connect with these (until-now) unfelt-feelings. You, like me, can release these renegade emotions holding onto your happiness,

…and access your Joy, your Creativity, your peace.

?Remember, avoidance of pain is avoidance of self-esteem & personal power.

?Is it worth considering this? Is it time to stop covering up painful emotions with positive thinking - the very thing that may be harming and stifling you from experiencing the best of yourself and the best of life? Only you can know…

Where can you start? There are many books and videos that will guide you. It is work you can do alone. But to fast-track your growth a compassionate and experienced professional can guide and support you to meet the Future You, helping you befriend the Original Pain that just may be holding you back. Together we can clear the path to the needs that were unmet in childhood. You deserve to be cared for. You deserve to have your hand held and you deserve to have access to joy, peace and creativity every day.

?If this message resonates and it’s TIME you reclaimed you whole self .

I am a ?I a coach and founder of Frog Empire Coaching, with 30 years working in the Creative Industries -- so I know a lot about shame, pain, joy and creativity. I have witnessed the power of this work, and would love to offer 3 people each an absolutely FREE, no strings-attached 45 minute session to help you discover whether you have hidden pain holding you back from your best creative expression and joy, and together we can begin to release it.

?To claim your free session simply email me at [email protected].

?There is no restoration without feeling.

?Avoidance of pain is avoidance of self-esteem - a pathway to su?ering. Please don’t avoid your pain any longer – feel it and it will pass.

?And remember, you do not need to be alone with this. Reach out and ask for support.

?I did.

?Someone shone a light on my path…and now, I want to do that for you. You are worth it!

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