WHY HURT? - Expressing Emotional Pain

Expressing Your Emotional Pain

Are you afraid of your feelings?

You could have looked at this subtitle and thought one of two things:  "What's the big deal? We all know how to deal with our feelings" or "Yes. I think my feelings are too big or too many or too scary". For those with the second comment: sometimes when we find a challenge, like in addressing our emotional pain, their are benefits. Only, if we look.

I don't know what it's like in other states on other freeways but you've probably heard we have lots of traffic here in L.A.

Well, I'm scared of driving on the freeway and so  I usually don't unless someone else is driving. A couple of weeks ago my husband was driving in pretty heavy weekend traffic going south on the 405. Sometimes when we drive we chat about this and that (in between grousing about the traffic and drivers). This day we were chatting about how lucky we are to have been trained how to deal with our feelings and emotional pain when along comes a license plate saying WHY HURT.

WHY HURT  can mean more than one thing. It can mean:

• First- "You don't have to hurt" and I agree with that. We can make a choice. Unfortunately, many think they can't, but still, WHY HURT?
• Second (this is the reason it struck me so) - A reason to feel  hurt (if you are really in touch with your feelings and know how to let them flow as they were meant to) could mean you are on your way to healing your emotional pain. HURT is milder than ANGER, on it's way to having one know their FEARs and a bit closer to LOVE and FORGIVENESS.

So I ask you: "Why hurt?" you are so close to being in a place of love and forgiveness. Why not learn and move on and become that much closer with yourself?   In the pursuit of not feeling our feelings, at the very least we become disconnected from ourselves and have problems relating to others deeply and well.

Why hurt?

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Healthy Relationships – The Coming and the Going

Healthy Relationships

It is a scientific fact that healthy relationships make us healthier and happier. And this includes all different types of healthy relationships - friends, family, partners and colleagues. All different types of relationships but bottom line - no matter what type of relationships you have, when it's healthy, so are you. The healthier they are, the happier you will be and the less stress you will have in your life.

Anyone whose ever been in any kind of  relationship knows there are sometimes (or often) challenges. You might get disappointed by the other but by accepting the people that we love for who they are and not expecting them to change for you, you have a good start towards having healthy relationships in your life.

Take the time to really talk to the people in your life and actually listen to what they are saying – you know, communication - a key factor in maintaining healthy relationships with anyone.

In recent years my disappointments in relationships have been about certain people disappearing from my life. I've kind of been mourning the loss of a couple of people from my life recently and lo and behold! – I was sent this reminder by one of my clients:

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
When you know which one it is, you will know what to do for that person.
When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support,
to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually.
They may seem like a godsend and they are.
They are there for the reason you need them to be.
Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time,
this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end.
Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.
What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.
Believe it, it is real. But only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons,
things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.
Your job is to accept the lesson,
love the person and put w hat you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.

Yesterday I was talking to my husband about my feelings of loss and not understanding why these people left our lives and he said he's given this a lot of thought and this is what he concluded: friends have a certain give and take. When the give and take no longer works for one, they usually disappear. They don't always disappear forever. They may come back into your life when they see they can get what they are looking for again. Depending on interpretation of these words, that can sound very cold but, on the other hand, it takes the pain and judgment out of it. It requires a very wide perspective to be able to see that.

Remember that everything and everyone changes and although that may be scary, it doesn’t mean that it is a bad thing. Be sure to make plenty of time for yourself and take care of yourself especially because if you have been putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own. Eventually, this will become a habit until you begin to resent the other person even though you are choosing to put their needs ahead of yours. They aren't choosing it for you. Preferably do not focus your life on just one person rather than yourself and the other people in your life.

Keep your own identity as long as it is not at someone else’s expense.

Another important factor in healthy relationships is following through when you tell someone you will do something. It is crucial to the trust in relationships to do what you say you are going to do or don’t say that you will do it to begin with.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

What Are My Barriers to Personal Growth and Development?

I believe that my denial or reluctance about personal growth and development affects the balance of what I attract into my life, affects my mindset and the progress of me as a continually developing person.  If I don’t acknowledge my barriers to personal growth, I will be in terrible discomfort.

Can a friend relationship be one of my barriers to personal growth?

Here’s an example from my life: Over my lifetime in the past, I have formed powerful relationships with certain women to whom I willingly gave my power or, if I didn’t give my power away exactly, I denied the truth of some clear and subtle aspects of the relationship. I thought I was done doing that.

But several weeks ago I realized that a relationship I’ve had for 15 years had many aspects OUT OF BALANCE and I had indications and feelings for years.

For example:

• Almost all of the emotional support was going in one direction – from me to her – and had been for years
• I felt like it was an obligation to give her time and she felt like it was an obligation to give me time
• Truth be told, I no longer feel proud to call her my friend as she lives her life in ways I do not feel good about – let’s call it stagnated personal growth and development.

I could tell you stories that support the above but those stories would cloud the truth. The truth I had to be willing to allow myself to know was it was time to let this relationship go. I have done that. It was hard. I don’t like to think of myself as not loyal or a rejecting sort of person but for my own personal growth and development as a human being on Planet Earth for a fleeting lifetime, I did it. I hope it somehow has a positive effect on her but I did this for me.

I feel the peace of growth and the positive “backlash” of balance I’ve achieved.
Anything niggling at you? Take a look at your barriers to your own personal growth.

Now that you've finished reading, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

If Your Partner Is Your Best Friend, Who Do You Turn to for Relationship Advice?

Relationships are hard work and come with a lot of questions and uncertainties – hence the title. Some people warn women not to make their partner their best friend because then they have no one to talk to if they are having relationship trouble. Now what's wrong with that relationship advice? Seems to make sense on the surface but here are the fallacies:

• If there is relationship trouble between the two of you and you can't sort it out with your partner or at least feel safe talking about what's going on with your partner, you have deeper issues underlying that problem. You have a basic flaw in the communication and trust areas of your relationship.

• One of our (my husband and I) secrets is: Make Your Commitment to the Power of the Relationship I suggest making that kind of commitment so that if there is a problem in the relationship, you will not feel like running out the door away from your partner to get away from the problem. Instead you will remember that the relationship is bigger than the both of you and you will at least both be willing to find a way to work it out.


• The second thing wrong with that relationship advice is that it assumes you can have only one best friend. Friends wear different hats. I might not talk to my single friends about a problem in my relationship, but I will talk it over with a friend who's relationship skills I respect.

Many people don’t have the someone else in their lives and when things are rocky in their relationships, they may feel like they have nowhere to turn.

If you do find yourself looking for some relationship advice, be very careful. It is easy to find relationship advice all over the place. Magazines, books, the internet and other complete strangers will freely give their advice about all sorts of relationship issues. During my first really bad marriage of 15 years, people asked me for advice all the time. Now I know that's just the kind of person I am and has nothing to do with my relationship understanding at the time. I shudder to think what I might have told anyone at that time.

And, unfortunately, not everyone has your best interests in mind. They are trying to sell their magazine or book or some may even be trying to push their organization. Many churches and political organizations may offer free counseling services for people but you must keep in mind that they have very specific ideas and motives and they may be trying to convince you that your relationship should be the way they feel it should be or it is wrong, while this may be very different from what you truly want out of your relationship.

If you decide to hire a life coach or a therapist, don't be intimidated by their expertise. You are hiring them and you have the right to interview them – even on the success of their own relationships. I would think it strange for someone to hire me as a coach to help with their relationships if my own marriage was a shambles.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Life Is So Damn Much Life

I teach people how to get their emotions in order - what are they, how to get through the hard ones, how to get to the good ones and not have the hard ones always be in control. As a result their lives and their feelings about themselves change drastically and dramatically - all to the good.

So what happens to the teacher when she is having one of "those" days? Well, I'll tell you. I'm pissed off that things aren't how I want them to be. I can neither sit, stand, walk or lay down totally comfortably for very long - and it's been months - and it's really gotten to my head today. Not only that, the bank made a dumb error that I have to call them about and several other "first world" issues that I feel too embarrassed to publicly moan about. But Damn! Life is so hard sometimes.

And I don't even feel like being spiritual about it (but I will sneak in and say that Someone has played exactly the song I needed to hear this morning, the Beatles "Because" and put exactly the right book into my hands, Steve Jobs biography, and had me turn on a documentary about very emotional, very creative Isaac Mizrachi all of which reminded me that a) fame and success is no barrier to feeling upset, b) even people who have lots of emotional difficulties contribute greatly to the world and c) because the sky is blue it turns me on). But, as I said, I don't feel like being spiritual or grateful today. 

I just want to scream, complain and be downright annoying. I want to be a little baby again. Just like I was in the picture sometime in 1943.

I know tomorrow will be a better day and if I go clean my dumb kitchen, I'll feel better.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Will Life Coaches in USA Be Coaching Women in China for SelfFulfillment?

It has never seemed likely that USA life coaches will ever coach Chinese women unless it's related to athletics or achieving a gold medal for their country. But who knows? Things are changing there and we have really inexpensive long distance and even internet phoning.

Since much of coaching is uncovering what makes you happy and fulfilled, a likely question to look at is what makes a Chinese woman happy? Power, money, love, sex?

In fact, self fulfillment ranks the highest for more than 60 percent of the respondents in a recent survey conducted by the Yueji Self, a Chinese-language magazine jointly launched recently by the Chinese-language Women of China magazine and the New York-based magazine publisher Conde Nast Publications..

Self fulfillment is defined by The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language as the fulfillment of oneself, the fulfillment of your capacities or the act of consummating something - a desire or promise, etc.

"The high marks for self fulfillment are inspiring and encouraging," Li Yinhe, a noted sexologist and professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said. "It shows big progress. More and more women want to achieve their life value, which eclipses the importance of the private life for women. "When women start to value self fulfillment, they become more equal to men."

"In China, the traditional mindset is that men live for their careers and women live for love. Although only about 22.5 percent surveyed prioritized love as the big happiness maker, it doesn't mean that Chinese women no longer believe in love," Li said.

"The awareness and recognition of women's empowerment are relatively low in China," Li said. "The country has long been a patriarchal society and still is, offering less opportunities and encouragement to women to compete with men. Despite the progress made in gender equality and women empowerment in recent years, only 20 percent of the National People's Congress (NPC) members are females," Li said.

Life coaches, can you imagine yourself coaching women half way around the world? What an exciting prospect!

YOU University Coaching/life coach training and life coaching

What Is Spiritual Growth?

It has taken me years of learning and self awareness to be at the place of spiritual growth that I am at today. So, what is spiritual growth?

I'm just becoming aware, maybe at a deeper level than I have been before, the pitfalls of what is often called a spiritual bypass. Spiritual bypass- the desire to go directly to spiritual feelings, explanations and thoughts without experiencing the feelings in between.  (Much prettier and less messy - like the picture to the left. It's even decorated with a flower.)

Here are some examples of how we do it to ourselves:

• We are so scared of feelings, we use something to keep us from having them. It might be a substance or might be just a way of clenching down and keeping them out.

• We decide we are so healed and have done so much work on ourselves and our past, we don't need to go there any more.

• Since we didn't have a very rough past, we think we aren't like those others who did and we don't really have any feelings much to deal with

I think that about covers it. (You know who you are.)

Anyway, that being said, I'm going to copy what I wrote just a bit ago:

"Nobody wants to let me talk about my fears of death or let me muddle my way into acceptance. I just looked up throat in Louise Hay. It says, 'avenue of expression. Channel of creativity.' So that's why my throat hurts and I feel like I've lost my creativity like a little cat who might be in the house somewhere under a bed hiding but also might be gone - even dead. So I've been enjoying editing what I've already written and being amazed that I wrote what I wrote and expressed it so well. Maybe this fear is what is holding back my flow. Not the fear so much, but the lack of expressing it. It feels like my faucet is almost closed.

So here goes:

I am afraid of dying. What if it hurts? What if there is nothing after? What if I'm not really spiritual, just afraid of dying? What if Bart's cold body is in our bed? Who would I call? What would I say? How would I call Anna? What if I become too needy and my kids don't want to be bothered? What if the pain of Bart's dying is so sharp it ruins me? What if death disrupts my life? What if he gets sick and can't work or is non-functioning? What if I do? What will happen? I feel like I'm up against a wall of water like the parting of the Red Sea and I'm running out of the steam to keep it at bay - my positive grateful attitude is wearing thin - gratitude with feeling is hard to find. Denial is gone. Mortality is here. I can't keep walking around it like the elephant in the living room. It's bigger. More unknown. Surprising. Maybe evil. Everyone who has died in my life seemed magically gone. I insulated myself from their pain or I rode or floated on top of it. I can't do that any more. I've never really felt grief and it scares me.

I want to feel up to facing whatever is and face it dead-on, face to face. I don't want to lose my highs and lows and yet I want to stay in a positive  place. Have I confused something here? Am I trying to give myself a spiritual bypass? Have Bart and I colluded in shutting out my feelings? We don't like anger. He doesn't like mine. I don't like his. Have we overdone it? I want to fully live the human experience. Feelings are part of it. The only way is through - not around. I feel so much better."

Everyone has a different way to grow spiritually. It is affected by so many aspects of life that it is ever changing from person to person.

What is spiritual growth for you?

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching