Welcome to this 159th edition of Rachel's Reflections, the number one Internet publication providing you with practical, dynamic help to develop your emotional intelligence and communication skills.
Written and published by Rachel Green.
Visit our website at http://www.rachelgreen.com
In this edition:
- Calming emotions.
- Latest news: Your stories please - and gain a free E-book!
- Top tips on calming your emotions.
- How you can learn more at home or work, immediately and gain a free book.
- Fortnightly Feelings: "I was liberated".
- Laugh your socks off.
1. Calming emotions.
I was talking to a distressed woman recently about how awful it has been for her since she and her husband separated two years ago. He had dumped her and gone off with another woman and she was disgusted with the way he picked up women, used them and then left. She was boiling inside at what he'd done. She felt betrayed and abandoned. And she didn't see how she was going to recover. She added as an after breath, "it is so hard because I still love him". I encouraged her to let the hatred go. It was doing her no good. And I helped her to calm her emotions. How could she do this? How can you do this? Read on to the tips section to find out.
2. Latest news: Your stories needed!
The "Becoming a Skilled Communicator" CDs were so popular last newsletter that we sold out. We've ordered more and will do another special offer with them for Rachel's Reflections readers as soon as they become available. In the meantime we've been very busy ... writing 3 E-books. We've taken great steps forward with both the Public Speaking/Presentations one and the Feelings Dictionary. And the one on Relationships has been started. Now I'd like your help, please. I want to collect a wider range of stories which illustrate a big variety of emotions. So, if you have a good story to tell about a time when you felt one of the following ... distressed, happy, indifferent, jealous, ashamed, belittled, bitter, elated, cheapened, conned, cornered, deflated, deprived, depressed, frustrated, helpless, humiliated, imposed upon, patronised, peeved, uneasy, unheard, unwanted, frightened, enthusiastic ... please do send them to us: . Anyone whose story gets included in the dictionary gets a free copy of the dictionary. Start writing to us now and give us as many details as possible.
3. Top tips on calming your emotions.
Tip A. Decide you do want to manage your emotions.
Part of being emotionally intelligent is the ability to manage your own emotions, including strong ones such as stress, anxiety, hate, bitterness, anger, frustration and at the opposite end excitement. In order to be able to manage your emotions you actually need to decide that this is what you want to do. Make a conscious decision to let the emotions go. Make a commitment to learning the skills required to do it. And put time aside to do it. Another woman asked me recently for help with coping with stress. She said she'd already bought our "Happy not hassled" CD set. On enquiring about which of the meditations and emotional management exercises she'd done, she said she hadn't listened to it yet. Buying it is a great step. Doing the exercises is even more useful! Doing them repeatedly until you've learnt the skills is the ultimate step.
Tip B. Forgive.
Ouch! Forgiveness is not in vogue at the moment. What I see in the media time and time again are people rallying against the world, blaming others for everything that's wrong in their lives, and carrying resentments against things which people have said and done. Does this do them any good? Does it help them find happiness? Does it keep them healthy? I suspect the answer to all these 3 questions is "no". Instead what it does is to keep their pain alive, to raise their stress levels and to increase their chance of getting sick. And it keeps them from looking inside themselves where they need to go in order to grow, mature and overcome the problem. Instead of bearing grudges and holding things against others, forgive the person for what has happened. This doesn't mean you agree or condone bad behaviour. It simply means you don't carry bitterness which hurts you. By forgiving them you help yourself. By being bitter you harm yourself. Which will you choose? There's more details on how I did this with a paedophile who stalked me when I was six, in the book "Midlife and Happiness".
Tip C. Find a safe, constructive outlet for your emotions.
If you are full of anger, pain or hurt then find a way to release it from your system. I don't understand the mechanism involved but pent-up emotions can be stored in your body. They can eat away at you if you try to repress them. Letting them out in a safe way can help to release them and return your system to balance. By this I don't mean that you take it out on other people or harm yourself or anyone in any way. Rather express it maybe on your own or with a counsellor. For instance, I've been known to go down to the beach when trying to get rid of emotional junk inside me, and scream at the top of my voice at the waves crashing in on the rocks. No-one could hear me. Afterwards I felt free. Such a release. I could fill my lungs with fresh clean air afterwards and return to balance.
Tip D. Paint your feelings.
Another method I've used is "sloshing paint". I can hardly call it painting because then you might think I've been trying to produce artistic paintings, when I haven't. What I've done is to have a big sheet of white paper and to pick up paints (or crayons or charcoals) randomly and brush them onto the paper in whatever way came to me. There was no thinking about what I was doing - I was just going with the flow. Afterwards, I've been able to stand back and look at what I've painted. The colours and the painting often represented what was going on inside me and allowed me to release and calm my emotions without needing the words to describe them. Emotional Intelligence does not say you must repress your emotions but you should move through them skilfully. This is just one of many ways you may do this. There are more details of my tactics on "sloshing" in the book, "Midlife and Happiness".
Tip E. Seek support.
When you're in emotional pain - don't be too proud to seek professional help. Whether you go to a psychologist, a priest, a counsellor, a rabbi ... go to someone who is comfortable with emotions and emotionally mature themselves and who can offer you guidance and support. If you're having a bad time you deserve to be nurtured and supported by others.
Tip F. Meditate.
I've calmed my mind and emotions down by meditating and it's made an enormous difference to my own self-management. As my meditation teacher said tonight, "Get a piece of the peace." It's all around you if you actually stop to find it. It's already in you too, if you'll stop long enough to go really quiet and listen. And there's an excellent meditation for letting go of bitterness and being able to forgive on the "Happy not hassled" CDs; and the script for it is in the book, "Midlife and Happiness".
4. How you can learn more at home or work, immediately.
Midlife and Happiness
"Midlife And Happiness" describes the lives of 14 different people, and the obstacles they faced from separation, cancer, death of a friend, and panic attacks through to the "empty nest" syndrome, spiritual emptiness and sleeplessness. And how they overcame them to find happiness.
Order now! Only $34.95, with no extra for postage, world-wide! I hope you'll read it. It's a book of hope and inspiration.
BONUS OFFER - If you purchase "Midlife and Happiness" you'll get a second one completely free to give as a gift to a friend you think could be helped by it. Hurry and order now, as this offer closes on Thursday, 2nd June 2005.
Other free newsletters:
There are other newsletters bursting with practical tips on the rachelgreen.com website for you to read or print off whenever you wish. Click here to read them.
Tips
Benefit from other useful tips on the rachelgreen.com website. Topics range from how to talk to teenagers or elderly parents to personality types, body language and developing your emotional intelligence. Click here to read them.
5. Check your Fortnightly Feelings: Liberated.
How many feeling words do you have in your vocabulary? You need the language of emotions to understand and think about emotions and to communicate clearly. Each fortnight I include a feeling word for you to try out over the next fortnight. I'm collecting examples to go in a dictionary of feeling words I'm writing, so if you have any stories about emotions you've felt please send them in. If yours is included you will get a free copy of the dictionary.
Today's word is liberated.
When you've spent a long time carrying pain or anger from the past it's like carrying a weight in your body which drags you down. Being free of these pains can be liberating. For example, when I was in my early 40s, I started getting dreadful abdominal migraines that caused such excruciating pain my doctor was convinced I was bleeding from a gastric ulcer. As I began investigating the pain, and having Feldenkrais work on the area that was most painful, I started having dreadful memories coming up from when I was little. An air of evil had surrounded parts of my childhood and I had become dreadfully frightened ... but had held it all inside. Now it was starting to leak out. Over an 18 month period I did everything I could - meditation, sloshing of paints, exercise, crying, screaming, writing, attending Feldenkrais, going for counselling, and seeing my doctor to free myself of this dreadful time in my life. And then the migraines stopped. The memories went. And tranquility returned. Finally I was liberated.
The strength of the emotion: A very strong sense of freedom, of lightness, of release. Similar to but stronger than relieved.
Associated emotions: Set free, a burden lifting from my shoulders, light as a feather, as if I could breathe again, released, joyful, relieved.
6. Laugh your socks off.
Thanks to Rachel's Reflections reader, Sandra Goodwin, for this joke.
It was April and Tax Day was looming when an elderly woman showed up at my desk at the Tax Department. She said she required a thick stack of tax forms. "Why so many?" I asked.
"My son is overseas," she said. "He asked me to pick up forms for the soldiers on the base."
"You shouldn't have to do this," I told her. "It's the base commander's job to make sure that his troops have access to the forms they need."
"I know. I'm the base commander's mother."
If you have some clean jokes we can use, please send your contributions to
May you find contentment in your heart despite the people who disappoint you. Rise above the tide of emotions and enjoy getting a piece of the peace.
Until next fortnight,
With kindness,
Rachel.
How I can help you, now.
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Make sure you read the next Rachel's Reflections:
 | Conquering put-downs with confidence.
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Disclaimer: The information in this newsletter is of a general nature and may not suit everyone or every situation. While every care has been taken to ensure it is useful and appropriate, no responsibility can be taken for the results gained from its implementation. Please seek individual professional guidance for any difficulties you may have in your communication, inter-personal or emotional skills. Thank you.
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