Tag Archives: inner child

Why am I getting so upset? Dialing into triggers and the truth behind what they are really about. 🧯

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Emotional triggers can be difficult to understand and even more to influence because they tend to be automatic, meaning they happen in the heat of the moment before we have a chance to see them coming or intervene.

For example:

When our boss admonishes us at work for something we have done incorrectly… we are cut to the core: the wound is visceral, and we might weep.

Equally, if a waitress is short with us, or a bus driver bemoans us for not having the correct change: we might freeze, losing our voice or else shrink inwards in shame.

These reactions are exaggerated. We are having a large response to a small event. On the physical plane, at least, the trauma is minor. In our minds, however, and energetically, it is immense. It has snatched us up and taken us hostage to an earlier time; an instance where we were treated in a way that didn’t feel safe. This could be being disciplined as a child in a setting where we were forced to be silent. Or the constant daily repetition of being told we aren’t good enough.

Emotional triggers are serious because they rob us of our composure and when we lose it, our foundations are weak. We are strong only when we are ourselves as a fully integrated adult, when we are calm and reserved and grounded in our sense of self and place.

We all have people and things that cause us to lose it. And sometimes we are more than justified in our response. Perhaps we need to stand up for ourselves and exert our boundaries, because if we don’t no one else will. Perhaps we are on the path of learning to treat ourselves with more respect and love. But perhaps, too, this response is harmful, filling us up with excess cortisol and adrenaline, causing our nervous system to go into overdrive.

With all things, there is a balance and getting it right is a skill that constantly needs to be tweaked. Nobody is perfect. Even after years of therapy, I still unravel when the circumstances are right. What we can all do though is learn to see more clearly and endeavour to be more conscious, because the clearer we see and the more conscious we are, the less likely we are to shape shift in the heat of the moment.

The King of Pentacles reveals how we want to experience the world and how we would like to be treated by others.

In this world: we are king. We own a sizeable kingdom, over which we have control. We have everything we need: its presence guaranteed. As such we are comfortable and secure. And we feel protected and provided for.

It’s kind of like how our inner child envisions our life. Or how we wish it was and are always working towards achieving. We get upset, therefore, when we are challenged (our actions, choices, opinions…) because anyone questioning us and our ability threatens the foundations. We do not have deep roots. Any sharp breeze or medium-strength gust could uproot us.

This card indicates that what we most strongly desire – home, sanctuary, love, status, financial security, etc., still eludes us. And suggests that attempting to hold onto what we have managed to accumulate: a property we rent, a job that’s unstable, a partner who we don’t like or who might leave us, etc…? is causing us conflict. In many ways, we feel like an imposter because we are trying to balance two things – what we want and what we have – and it is dividing us, and this is where the triggering occurs. The King of Pentacles reveals this and shows us that we need to make a choice. Do we play it safe and stay where we are, or do we opt for transformation and adventure?

And this is where the Two of Wands comes in. In this card we see a man holding two poles, grappling with a decision. Does he choose the left, representing staying put, or the right, representing action? This here is our trigger. We are unhappy with where we are in our lives. We are tired of all of the compromises. We want mastery and to be in control. We are old enough, surely, and wise enough. We have worked hard thus far. But we are like this man: a peasant standing guard over someone else’s kingdom.

This card is a call to action. Decide to stay put and choose to accept what you have now and where you are and put down all complaints against it, surrendering your free will. Or act, walking away from everything that you know and have built in order to start again.

The Four of Swords is how we move towards a revolution and how we lend support to our triggered parts. In this card we see a tomb inside a sarcophagus, inside of which, we presume, there is a man. This card is suggesting that we allow a part of us time to rest, laying him or her aside for a period. In this sealed and protected space, we can drift into sleep, away from anxiety, worry, fear, concern, drama and conflict. A part of us can take a break, going on an inner retreat. This part isn’t dead, only sleeping, and once he or she is done, rested and recovered, they can be returned to us and our world.

The King of Swords offers us an alternative to the King of Pentacles energy: a new throne, and suggests we work to own it. In this picture the wealth we possess is knowledge and the kingdom we have mastery over is truth. If we can understand that our learning and what we choose to do with it is our power, far more than money ever will be, then we can have freedom from our triggers. Because no one can take the wealth of what we know and choose to believe away from us unless we permit it.

Are you ready to walk this path?

Are you brave enough to make some decisions?

This reading is a call to action, if ever there was one, but if you are here you are ready.

🧯

If you would like to know more about what is going on right now and would also like to hear more about my thoughts… I discuss the things that are coming up for me and how I am attempting to mother, manage, navigate and clear them in my own life on my YouTube channel in a section called A Little Light.

There are also lots of tarot card readings covering topical issues, as well as love, relationships, career, health and life, etc.

🧯

Have a browse, give me a thumbs up, subscribe and leave a comment if you have anything you would like to share, ask or add. 

Thank you for reading and have a brave and beautiful day. x

The past relaxed (instead of the past tense)

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Introduction:

So I’ve relocated to Palma de Mallorca for a while, having been granted a stay of absence after serving out my time in Central London, England. Twelve months for my sins!!! Did I really commit that many wrongs??? Or was it more that those wrongs were wrongs from a past life, or all of my lives long-since-gone before… and, as I have often felt; even more so recently: in this life it was my choice, my destiny, to attone for and fix them all?

I’ve sensed since way back, since when I could first remember… that I came here to resolve; that I am the one to put a stop to the continuation of a great many things:

• the things that impacted me growing up,
• and the things that impact me still…

And I’ve tried to, as much as I could.

Yet there are boulders that remain, walls that will not fall; patterns and behaviours that, consciousness and open, actively working upon, even I am guilty of repeating. We are all, to some extent, mini-me’s of those who made us. They mini-me’s of those who made them. And if the ‘me’ who planted the seed of your family tree was a ‘me’ beset by complex and neurosis: it stands to reason hundreds of years on, you too are a ‘me’ beset by complex and neurosis. But we can try. And there is both peace and joy to be found in the process and the journey of trying.

~

Action:

1. What are your emotional blocks, triggers and issues…?
2. What would you most like to resolve?
3. What stressful bad or ugly would you – if you had a magic wand
   like Hermione Granger… like to erase or make go away?

Personally, I can think of many… But this is about you.

So have a think, write it down, make it solid: so that you can then (with it as a point of focus, a thing to still and then fixate upon) take it and dissect it and pull it into pieces. Apart things are easier to face than those that remain rigid and solid, containing less ferocity in their energy than those left untouched. And dissecting is the first part of the process of unravelling and healing.

There are those who would protest to this level of detail and perhaps protracted length of analysis, asserting that it is better to heal in blindness and ignorance, claiming that pain, instead, can be removed simply by painting by numbers: this problem requires this solution, that problem that… And it can. Only in my experience – accumulated over many years with the help of both my own curiousity and exertion and the help of many experienced practitioner and therapist – pain removed without clarity and dialogue, without knowledge of ‘what’ and ‘why’, is pain that leaves leaving a root. A garden can be weeded, sprayed with chemicals, ploughed, etc… but unless the source of the thing you are trying to remove is found and then extracted, the bit that’s left is inclined to recover and, shortly thereafter, regrow. How often do we tend to a headache only to have it return? Or treat an aching limb to a massage to have it feel equally as bad the following day?

Only recently I addressed a pain in my chest, a tension and a tightness that had no business being there. And, because I attempted to appease and release it a novel way, a way that was different to anything that I had read about or experienced before (part of a personal experiment, an experiment to further growth), it went and then returned, reduced but not (as desired, as required for the continuation of my emotional wellbeing and overall physical ease, entirely absent. Roots are stubbornly inclined and have a tendency to remain hidden in order to re-emerge, putting forth shoots that effortlessly grow back into bushes and trees.

So:

• find it, name it, own it, claim it,
• reach out and touch it,
• pick it up and hold it in you hands,
• look down upon it and smile, thinking only of gentleness and feeling only love,
• speak to it as if it were a child… and, in a journal or a notebook,
  write down its reply.

Then, if you can:

• place that book over your heart and press it up against your chest with
  both palms facing down,
• then sit or lie comfortably and close your eyes and still your breathing,
• inhale and exhale deeply – visualising white light entering, black light
  leaving, focusing your thoughts on cleaning and clearing, letting go of
  all undesirable things.

I like to see the white light as Heaven-sent, the black as a long but obedient serpent (Harry Potter style). With my mind’s eye concentrated on connecting – to God, to Angels; to fairies, friendly spirits and other benevolent beings – I draw down the power of the Universe and fill myself up. Think of it like a download of unconditional love, with enough magic and mojo thrown in to completely heal and clear you of everything that is antagonistic to your essential nature and highest good. If it helps, you can picture the white light as water or rain and (if you are good at visualising), even feel it as it pours onto and over you, covering you from head to foot.

This is a great daily exercise which:

• with practice and devotion,
• with focused attention and genuine desire,

…yields big results. Especially if combined with other techniques:

• music
• essential oils
• crystals
• flower essences
• herbal infusions
• light
• movement and breathwork
• smudging…

Music can do wonders for the soul and, alone, be excellent therapy.

Smell is a powerful stimulent, different essential oils shifting and releasing unwanted emotions and energetic imbalances.

You can use crystals to address specific concerns, like exhaustion, grief, anger, anxiety, pain…

A stick of incense, palo santo wood or sage can clear negative energy from either you or a space, removing anything that has become stuck. We collect energy from every interaction and experience. Both good and bad, it all impacts us and, if ignorant to that fact or else dismissive of it, we can become anxiety-riddled, sick, toxic and polluted, without ever reaslising that it’s got very little to do with us.

I like to put essential oils on my wrist points, inhaling as I draw my attention inwards; using them as an aid to relaxing and slowing down, as well as a tool for inward focus and an awareness of how each separate part of me feels.

I also like to light a candle and dedicate it to specific guides, asking them to protect me while I work.

And I have a prayer blanket, created with love, that covers me.

What you choose is up to you and it will be different for every person.

Trust your intuition and follow what you are drawn towards. Your body knows best. Listen to that ‘belly’ brain, the one just above your navel, combining it with what you hear and feel in your heart. And don’t overthink, because it’s that brain, the thinking brain, that got you into trouble in the first place. No offence to the ego (bless it and all that… it means well), but most of what ails us is there as a result of that conscious part attempting to control and maintain authority over the older, deeper, more authentic soft and squishy parts underneath.

So:

• honour your inner baby and talk to your inner child,
• love your difficult and often overwhelmed adult,

…picking up the crumbs of potential and possibility and following where they lead, remaining, as you do so, open and receptive to all manner of majesty and magic.

To be healed is having an awareness that you were never broken

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Learning to dance again

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Opening a closed heart can be dangerous;
especially if you have not adequately prepared.
Just look at Pandora and what happened to her!
In the end though, there is no other way:
denial only prolonging what will one day find a way out.

Navigating extreme feelings –
emotions that threaten to overwhelm
the casing in which they reside –
I battle the urge to run backwards,
something external holding me to the floor.

Placing hands on parts I have for years now
happily suppressed – suffocating, starving,
ignoring… until they appeared to die –
I listen as they wake back up:
hungry, angry, needy.

Tears fall, sobs escape, screams wrench
and I keen like a mother grieving an infant: open, raw, exposed.
And while it might take a while,
for the denial runs deep:
even this small freedom is a respite.

by Rebecca L. Atherton

To be healed is having an awareness that you were never broken

To keep up to date with my progress and receive love and light in your inbox, send me your email address.

• Ask me a question or book an appointment
• Buy remedies, healing aides and helpful accessories
• Check out my Etsy Shop to see what else I do