(Introduction Music)
What to do when you are upset
Hello there
Inevitably in life,
You're going to line up
with an experience which causes you to feel
negative emotion.
We call this an UPSET.
An UPSET is essentially
your internal guiding system telling you
that at this current moment
Your
actions or words
or thoughts
are not in alignment with your desire.
It's essentially
your inner compass telling you
that you have gone ''off''
due north.
If you feel UPSET
It's critical to know
that you cannot control an UPSET
once it has happened.
You can't go back in time.
The reality is you're feeling negative emotion.
It's how you respond to that negative emotion
that makes the difference between going even
''Further off'' course
or
allowing yourself to come
back "On course"
so, that you're headed due north again.
When we don't use
an upset to cause us to become aware,
when we don't use it to awaken us that we have to become conscious of something we are unconscious of
what we do is we tend to react!
For example
We slam doors or smoke the cigarette or yell at people or take an action that we feel gives us power over someone else.
This reaction is the resistance to what's happening
and so it only serves to make matters worse!
For this reason, I am gonna give you a formula to follow to create resolution
once upset has occurred.
Step 1-
Re-arrange the order
of the conjunct words
that make up UPSET
Once you do this, you arrive at an interesting truth.
It's that an upset is infact you being SET UP
by the universe at large.
The universe is setting you up to be completely aware of something.
You are being set up to awaken.
You are being set up to integrate what is unacknowleged,
unintegrated
or heal what is unhealed within you.
Because it is a set up,
acknowledge this is not the universe working against you
this is the universe offering you an opportunity
Because the universe is alerting you
to an opportunity to awaken
you can treat an upset like an alarm clock going off
or red flag popping up
or my personal favorite, a meditation bell.
But the discomforts of the upset snap you awake and bring all of your focus to the present moment.
so that all of your conscious attention can be placed on the situation at hand.
It's best to address each upset
as if that upset is in fact completely valid.
It's not a question of whether its right or wrong to feel upset.
Its valid to feel upset.
So instead of suppressing, denying, disowning, rejecting these feelings
instead let yourself feel those feelings completely.
Two-
When you are upset, your nervous system kicks into high gear
it essentially goes into fight or flight mode
trying to remove you from what it perceives as a threat
Its really difficult to deal appropriately with an upset
when your nervous system is in that state of fight or flight.
So what I want you to do
are the following things.
Breathe in deep into your diaphragm and belly
and inhale for a count of four.
Hold the breath in for the count of two
Exhale gently counting out for eight
and finish by holding the breath while you breathe completely out for the count of two
Keep your breathing even and smooth.
What you want to make sure of is that the exhale is longer than the inhale.
Then, fill your mouth with warm water
and while seated, bend your head forward into a basin of cold water
submerging your forehead, eyes and at least two-thirds of your cheeks
for as long as its comfortable.
Breathe in and out your nose in between dunkings.
You can repeat this process for a few minutes.
Then, begin to sway or rock your body back and forth for a few minutes.
Rocking on your hands and knees or
while sitting with your arms hugging your knees tightly to your chest seems to work best.
Then, seek out deep touch or pressure anywhere you can find it.
It could take the form of firm holding, firm stroking,
cuddling, hugging or squeezing.
Perhaps, wrap yourself tightly in a blanket
potentially even covering your head so you can feel a sense of containment.
And when you feel ready, move on to the next steps
which involve facing the upset.
Before we move on, I also want to mention
that your nervous system is particularly soothed
by singing. In fact singing stimulates one of the primary nerves
which is associated with your fight or flight mechanism or your para sympathetic nervous system
So, sing! Even if you have to sing along to someone else or something else to do that.
Another idea you could use is to find music that's particularly soothing
and make a playlist and then what you can do is play that music while you are doing
that whole process that I have just described.
Three - I want you to look at the recipe of an UPSET
so that you can isolate the specific ingredients that are causing the recipe of that particular upset.
Here are the ingredients to the recipe of upset
The first - An intention or desire that is opposed or prevented
Second - An expectation that has been unfulfilled
Third - An unsuccessful communication
All upset is comprised of one or all potentially of these particular ingredients
So, let me give you some examples
Opposed or prevented intentions and desires cause us to feel emotions like hatred, rage, anger
or if you are feeling especially powerless, feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and despair.
An example of an expectation that is unfulfilled is
I expect that my husband keeps me emotionally safe
but he told me something negative that someone else said about me and it caused me to feel bad.
Keep in mind that expectations can be highly unconscious.
Expectations give rise to feelings of disappointment and grief.
An example of an unsuccessful communication is
I wanted to explain myself to my best friend but all she did was hang up the phone when I called.
Unsuccessful communication is a two way street. It can be about us communicating to them or them communicating to us.
Perhaps,we fail to be able communicate with the other person because of the way we worded something
or the fact they weren't open to the communication.
Perhaps, you withheld some authentic truth from them or they withheld some authentic truth from you.
When we experience unsuccessful communication, we feel abused, stuck, trapped, rejected and violated.
When we feel upset and we're ready to face that upset
we have to become completely aware of these ingredients that create the upset.
We have to become completely aware about what expectation is going unfulfilled
and we have to become completely aware of what we need to communicate
that is not being accurately delivered.
We need to find a way to communicate directly with our self and also other people involved in the conflict
about these deeper roots that go into the upset.
For example, I may feel upset because my husband left the socks on the floor,
But, it's really not about the socks on the floor.
Its about the fact that I have the expectation that my husband respects me instead of takes me for granted.
And when I see the socks on the floor, I feel taken for granted.
So, my expectation is going unfulfilled.
If you would like to get deeper into the actual root of any of these upsets that you have
I would highly suggest trying to find the hidden core beliefs behind the thoughts you are thinking
in these situations that upset you.
For those of you that are interested in learning this particular process, I laid it out in my video in Youtube
that is titled 'How to find a core belief'.
Four- Take a close look of what you are making the experience mean.
Humans suffer more than any other species, in this universe in fact.
They suffer because they don't just experience painful things,
they also add painful meaning to those painful experiences.
I will give you an example.
This last week, I aligned up with a particularly traumatic experience.
I looked out my window and what I saw was a deer that had recently been hit by a car.
It's leg was in fact broken in five different places.
While the other members of my intentional community basically clamored around to try to figure
out what the best option for helping this particular deer was,
I stayed completely present with this deer.
I also projected my consciousness into the perspective
that that deer was holding at that time and I was pretty surprised
because this deer was in a serious amount of pain
but it wasn't suffering emotional angst in conjunction with that physical pain
because it wasn't making the experience mean anything.
It couldn't think in that moment about the past.
It wasn't thinking about the car accident.
It wasn't thinking about the future and what this injury meant for it in it's eminent death.
It wasn't telling any stories about the fact that this means the world is against me
or that this is a harsh place to live
and a dangerous world.
It was purely in the experience of just what was happening in the now
So, anytime you have an experience that causes you upset
I want you to consider that the actual experience itself is separate from what we make that experience mean
and what I want you to ask yourself is
What am I making this mean?
Make your steps towards resolution
including your communication to other people about this actual issue that goes into upsets which is
What am I making this mean?
If you want to learn more about this
I urge you to watch my video on Youtube titled 'Meaning-The Self destruct button'
Five, Consider that the way to know whether something should be happening
is quite simple - It's happening!
What we tend to do when something occurs that causes us to feel upset
is we immediately swing into an idea that it shouldn't be happening
Infact, if you take a deep look into the world, into what causes human suffering,
human suffering is really about two things,
either we think something should be that isn't
or something shouldn't be that is.
That is a resistance to the present moment.
We cannot be in a state of allowing.
This attachment to how things should be is a rigidity.
It puts you at war with what is.
It puts you at war with the present moment.
So, when you are ready pretend you are a philosopher who must get way outside the paradigm of your current
thinking and explore the question.
Assuming this is supposed to be happening. Why should this be happening?
You can enhance this practice by trying to find and list all the positive aspects of a negative situation in hand.
Six- If an upset cannot be eased by following the previous steps,
then what you're dealing with is an old wound.
You are dealing with a trigger.
So, what's happening essentially is in that moment
whatever upset that you are engaged in is actually just a mirror of a previous upset you have had in your life,
a deep wound that is unhealed, an aspect of the self that is unintegrated
and in that moment that upset is calling you to take the light of your consciousness
into the shadow of the unconscious
in order to re-integrate the aspect of you that is fractured.
When this is the case, instead of doing any action to try to feel better,
you are going to go in the entire opposite direction and drop as deeply into that feeling as you possibly can
to get better at feeling.
From there, you're going to trace back to the original trauma which is in fact being reflected
in this particular experience,
the trauma that is blending with the current situation at hand
and you're going to find some resolution for that.
If you want to learn how to do this process in detail,
I want you to watch my video on Youtube titled 'How to heal the emotional body'.
An upset is always a call to awaken.
It is you being setup by the universe to make a change in your life.
A change to your thoughts, to your communications, to your actions or to the situation at hand.
So, answer that call.
So, use your upsets to become acutely aware of the ingredients that are going into that upset
and make your adjustments to your life accordingly.
And, remember that an upset is never here to thwart your progress,
it has only ever come to enhance it.
Have a good week!