GRAB AN EMOTIONAL LIFELINE

Guest Blog from SheCares Wellness Summit speaker Karen Fullerton. Click here to get your ticket to tune into her workshop Discover the True Power of Inspiration.

“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.” ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

 

The power of a positive mindset. It seems to work for others, so why not me?

I so admired Dr. Dyer and appreciate his teachings on the power of affirmation. I embraced the practice of meaningful intention in my daily life. I worked to reject ego and be my authentic self.

And I made progress, but…

There they were — those undesirable emotions of anxiety, anger, sadness. They took over any progress I had made despite my best intentions.

I felt like a whale ready to blow. All was calm, controlled — until something unknown triggered me, and then I’d emotionally explode in overreaction.  Then I’d metaphorically submerge again, into low self-worth, because I didn’t understand it. Feeling defeated, I wondered, “Am I the only one who isn’t able to control my emotions, in spite of my best mental efforts to change my outlook?”

Judging myself, I’d then feel worse — thinking I’d taken two steps back from any progress I’d made. This became even more evident after my mom passed away after a long battle with lung cancer. I was heading to work, still in my neighborhood, when an inconsiderate driver almost hit my car attempting to turn left in front of me.

Out of nowhere, I was triggered! Anger flooded my body —

No — it was rage!

It consumed my ability to rationalize, and I found myself getting out of the car, impulsively heading towards the other driver. I had no idea what I was going to do.

Thankfully, he just drove away. Again, I felt my emotions shift again, just as quickly, as I headed back to my car. This time to sadness and the tears flooded. Who was this angry person in the mirror? Why do some people stay calm under the same stressful circumstances when I couldn’t?

These answers eluded me for many years, even after much self-reflection, healing, and training to become a Reiki Master. Oh, it certainly helped tremendously! But there was something still missing; these practices still didn’t mitigate my triggers — some emotional reactions rising more frequently, like a guest at the door knocking louder to be let in.

You may have heard the phrase, “you need to feel it to heal it?”

Feeling and owning your emotions are indeed part of healing, yet I knew there had to be more to it. Even quantum physics tells us that “energy in motion stays in motion until met by an opposite or greater force.”  This was the missing puzzle piece! Accordingly, I learned you need to shift the energy of undesirable emotions while in those states in order to break the pattern.

Since emotions are governed by our autonomic nervous system and subconscious patterns, “controlling” them is not possible. However, instead of being bound by a pre-programmed reaction (like Pavlov’s Dog), you can evolve the mind to respond differently, which naturally guides your emotional response.

Essentially, it’s like learning to retrain our Pavlov-pattern from drooling when the bell rings to a more desired response. Because our emotional reactions are automatic, they are not conscious, so changing their patterns must first happen on a subconscious level.

My favorite way to teach this approach is via a method I became certified in called The LifeLine Technique® developed by Dr. Darren Weissman. There are other ways to evolve consciousness and patterned reactions, but this is by far the easiest; it provides the “how-to” instead of just sharing theory.  In a session, you are guided, step-by-step, through the process.

A session is communicative, but it doesn’t require or even encourage you to divulge any life stories or events. It’s not therapy, but it is therapeutic as most feel differently after one session, resulting in profound self-realization and awareness. How? Visualization, movement, and healing words leverage the ways your subconscious receives information — via the senses — reframing previously patterned reactions and offering a literal lifeline to emotional drowning.

For me? Practicing these processes had me dancing and singing along in my car only a few weeks after I started — a far cry from my car experience I shared earlier.

The truth is…

I actually felt happy, something nearly ten years of telling myself to be happy couldn’t achieve.

So yes, like Dr. Dyer suggests, changing the input will indeed change the output — but it must occur while the nervous system is triggered. This is what Certified LifeLine Practitioners, like me, are trained to determine via kinesiology, one of fourteen modalities in our  “toolkit.”

There is so much more to understanding this process, but all who I have worked with seem to say the same thing…

“It’s like falling in love, describing the feeling doesn’t do it justice; you simply have to experience it!”

(Want to learn more? Visit KarenFullerton.com/lifeline)