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Permission to Have Your Feelings

 

Understanding Shutdown

In Chapter 3 we focused on self-communication. If you incorporate what you learned from those exercise into your everyday life, you will learn to feel your feelings "real time"! In other words, in each moment be aware of what you're feeling. Be in touch with yourself. You have to practice self-communication until it becomes free-flowing and spontaneous. Then your inner child will be confident in bringing you his or her truth without fear of rejection.

The next step in you emotional healing process is gaining access to all of your emotions. Yes, I said all of your emotions! along with repressing parts of yourself, you have repressed emotions. Most families have their own rules about emotions for example emotions 1, 2 and 3 are allowed, but emotions 4, 5 and 6 are strictly forbidden. It may be that someone in the household cannot tolerate the expression of a certain emotion. Perhaps it makes them feel too vulnerable. They will herd you away from expressing it. The herding may take the form of rejection, emotional over-reaction, disregard or just a look. We learn very early on which emotions are permitted and which ones are not.