Category: Emotional Resolution

General information about emotions and how work with them.

Rebounding from Daily News stress

Sue Siebens

Natural Disasters, Economic Recession, Cyber-Attacks, Mass Shootings, Political Divides, Global Warming, and more

The vise of stressful news

The news feeds are filled with some much information about what it “going wrong”. It can throw us into fear, anger, sadness, helplessness, exasperation, and distress. Most of the time we can’t actively do anything in response to the news and become frozen in our emotional response. Many people get so upset that eventually they avoid news and social media all together.

There is another way…

We might think it’s breathing, meditation, go for a walk or to the gym, have some wine or chocolate, pray or other popular techniques to control overwhelming emotions. But these techniques just control the emotion temporarily; they don’t get rid of the emotion. The next time we watch a news show or read a twitter feed, the emotion is BACK! and we are crushed again.

Why would you want to get rid of the emotional response to the news?

Don’t we want to stay shocked and horrified when we see these things? If we lose those emotions, how do we remain compassionate to someone else’s loss or be moved to lend a helping hand when a need or cause calls to us?

It turns out that the “negative”, stressful response to news does exactly the opposite of what we think. It keeps us from being as compassionate as we could be and taking action where we can.

When we have a stressful reaction to the news or anything else, in those moments, our mind is flooded with emotions. Our mind is a simple machine, capable of processing only a small amount of information at any given time. Emotion can easily drown out our ability to think clearly, find a solution or bridge to action.

Beneath our awareness, the “disturbing” news has stimulated our subconscious to create physical sensations in the body as precursors to emotions that the brain will act upon. When the emotional volume gets high enough, it acts as a veil or cloud, slowing/preventing some higher brain functions, if only because the emotions chew-up all available capacity.

When we resolve the disturbing emotions, the emotional veil is removed. Our mind, cleared of distracting emotion, has so much more space in which to operate. Now it can engage in a volunteer opportunity, arrange a donation, join an action committee, find a larger context for the news byte or simply take in the information and calmly wait for the next news cycle to unfold.

But how do we release the disturbing emotions?

Emotional Resolution (EmRes) can remove the emotions that are prompted while watching the news. Thru EmRes sessions (EmRes-Session) or on your own (Self-EmRes) you will be able to watch the news, stay informed, but not on the edge of your seat.

EmRes is the emerging technique for emotional resolution that will soon be on everyone’s lips. It’s a simple process that take place in a very short time and can be easily learned. There is no triggering, no personal information need be shared and the original trauma does not need to be known or shared. It’s truly amazing how well such a simple process works.

Learn more about EmRes

Removing stressful emotional responses to the news actually opens up more compassion in us for other and ourselves. We can stay in touch with our community and world without the shock and horror routine.

Change your life by to taking in the news information and acting on it if you can… letting go if you can’t.

Are you ready for stress-free news?

Book an EmRes Session or EmRes-Self training

Your Feelings are Real

Sue Siebens

I’m a guest blogger on the Emotional Health Institute website 🙂 and this blog is one I posted there.

We’ve all heard the advice about how to deal with emotions

  • A good friend’s favorite advise is “Don’t forget, feelings are real, but they don’t necessarily reflect reality.” Whether he was telling me or I heard him telling someone else, I would smile. Knowing its truth from easily recalled memories where my emotions got the better of my understanding of the current situation and I went off the rails, in the moment, or stoked down the immediate explosion to vent later.

Read More

Healing Now, a podcast

Sue Siebens

Hello friends,

Instead of writing my own thoughts in post, I want to share a Visionary Souls podcast with the founder of the Emotional Health Institute and teacher of Emotional Resolution in the US, Cedric Bertelli.

Note that there is lots of intro and the meat of what I’d like to share with you starts around 8:30.

Their discussion is a great intro to Emotional Resolution (EMRES) and help you understand the mechanisms behind how our emotions happen and how they can be tamed

Enjoy 🙂

Are you ready to let Emotional Resolution work for you?

Book an free consulation or an EmRes Session

Taming Your Inner Critic

Sue Siebens

How do you make peace with that inner chatter that contributes negative self-talk to the flow of thoughts in your head?

Some small portion of it may be helpful and keep us on track and noticing necessary details. But sometimes, it just amounts to an internal beating and bullying of our softer side, that really does want to do things right.

According to Jay Early, PHD, there are seven types of Inner-critic self-talk

  • Perfectionist – provoking the highest, maybe unobtainable standards, this critic drives performance, behavior and production to very high levels. It can result in projects that never seem to end since they can never reach a perfect state. It can also freeze a person into inaction, as they become convinced their work will never be good enough.
  • Inner Controller – tries to control impulsive behavior perceived as “not good for you” or even “dangerous”. Failure to comply results in harsh bullying and shaming from that same critic voice.
  • Taskmaster – like the perfectionist, the taskmaster forces hard work and a workaholic attitude to reach success thru discipline and laser focused production and an “at all costs” avoidance of shoddy and insufficient results.
  • Underminer – works to sabotage self-esteem and self-confidence to avoid risk and failure as an absolute imperative, even if the result is inaction. It also attacks any efforts to assume a role that is too powerful, responsible or “big” to avoid attention and drawing attack from others, even if it is unwarranted. It’s goal is a feeling of worthlessness.
  • Destroyer – uses shame to suck out any self-worth present. Its convinces the person they shouldn’t and don’t have the right to exist.
  • Guilt-Tripper – exerts pressure based on some specific action or repeated behavior that was harmful or crossed a personal value boundary. Weaponized guilt assaults the person and they feel like they will never be forgiven.
  • Molder – has in mind a specific way of being, acting or looking, that originates in cultural or family norms. If the person veers out of this very narrow standard or if it just doesn’t fit and never did, then the person is made to feel inadequate. It is quiet when living up to the standard, but blitzkriegs when not. [1]

The Inner Critic can be a Terrorist!

With the volume turned down, like a reasonable notice from the conscience, our inner voice may be keeping us safe or funneling our efforts to the best advantage, keeping us from social faux pas and taboos, etc.

But when the volume gets too loud or hypercritical, with “You’re stupid”, “You’re not attractive”, “You’ll never get it right”, “He doesn’t really care about you”[2], then it becomes your own worst enemy and it’s time for a change!

How the Inner Critic expresses itself comes from internalized trauma and social patterns and negative attitudes that were picked up as early as infancy. They continue to expand as we grow and learn how to conduct ourselves in our families, schools, jobs and other social groups. [2]

Emotional Resolution(EmRes) is a protocol or technique that addresses the emotions that trigger the Inner Critic’s voice. EmRes is a tool that everyone MUST have in their back pocket.

Through a combination of one-on-one sessions with a professional and learning to conduct mini-session in the moment, EmRes clears away the embedded emotions that are triggered in a person’s life. By tackling each triggered situation as they come up, “the voice” will quieten as they are resolved. With some work, but in an amazingly short time, it will stop completely.

EmRes sessions with a professional are calm, restoring and reassuring. EmRes-Self mediating are immediate and effective.

By removing the emotional triggers, EmRes clients and practitioners say they have “learned how to be happy with themselves“, they “get more done” and they “feel comfortable in their own skin“.

Learn more about EmRes

Are you ready to Tame Your Inner Critic?

Book an EmRes Session or EmRes-Self training

References
1. What Kind Of Inner Critic Are You?
2. Critical Inner Voice

Emotional Help for College Stress

Sue Siebens

With High School complete, the next life step for many graduates is college which includes new responsibilities, financial pressures and scholastic expectations. Many college students are not emotionally equipped for the challenges they will face.

Freshmen, in particular, must adjust to the interruption of old school relationships, inciting a sense of loss, grief and loneliness. New friendships take time to develop and it’s easy to make poor choices in the desire to connect socially. This can be complicated by any existing difficulties in connecting and bonding with others. Being in an ocean of new students all looking for connection doesn’t overcome those emotional intelligence deficits. [1]

On top of social pressures of finding a new tribe, students find that they must shift up to a new level of performance. They need to compete for grades with classmates who were also at the top in their own high school class. High costs of secondary education can bring financial pressures requiring an extra job, cutting back on housing and food expenses, resulting in a tougher life and sleep schedule, which also affect performance in class.

It’s a high stakes gamble that all the money and hard work will pay off in an increasingly competitive post-graduation job market — no pressure!

” A 2013 survey of over 123,000 students across 153 campuses confirmed that over half of students feel overwhelming anxiety, and about a third experience intense depression, sometime during the year.  Almost a third report that their stress has been high enough at some point to interfere with their academics—lowering their grades on exams or courses or projects—and 44% say that academic or career issues have been traumatic or difficult to handle. The majority of college students don’t get enough sleep, and half say that they’ve felt overwhelmed and exhausted, lonely or sad sometime during the year. “[1]

“According to mental health research conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI):

  • One in four students have a diagnosable illness
  • 40% do not seek help
  • 80% feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities
  • 50% have become so anxious that they struggled in school [2]

The five most prevalent mental health issues are: depression, anxiety, suicide, eating disorders, and addictions(drugs and alcohol)

How can we help them? How can we ease the pressure in our universities and colleges?

Arm Them with Emotional Resolution Skills!

Emotional Resolution, EmRes for short, is a simple technique that can be performed on the Self in the moment of the emotion (EmRes-Self) or in a session with a trained EmRes Professional (EmRes Session). EmRes uses the body’s own innate capacity to resolve negative and dysfunctional emotions.

Many studies have shown that times of very high stress and/or disruptive trauma, emotions are literally embedded into the body, where even vague similarities to the original event can trigger the trapped emotion to come rushing back, flooding the senses and disturbing any chance of a “normal” response or behavior. Results can range from anxiety and depression to rage and PTSD.

EmRes starts with the triggered situation and works back thru the limbic (emotional) center of the brain to access the body memories-the physical sensations that represent the emotion. Once accessed, the body does the work to eliminate the embedded emotion and it’s situational triggers. And voila! it’s gone forever!

EmRes Sessions are quick: 15-30 minutes. EmRes-Self is quicker, 8 sec to 30 secs is normal. Usually people use a combination of both in the early stages of the work.

Added Bonuses: no reliving or triggering; don’t need to know or understand the original trauma causing the problem; fully conscious, aware and in control at all times; don’t have to tell story or personal details.

Best thing: EmRes Sessions can be done in-person or over the phone. EmRes-Self can be taught in-person or over the phone.

If you or someone you love is in university or any other high-pressure situation where performance, social and financial pressures all collide with any emotional issues, you or they would do well to work with and learn Emotional Resolution.

Are you ready to let Emotional Resolution work for you?

Book an EmRes Session or EmRes-Self class

References
1. Why college freshmen need to take Emotions 101
2. The Top Mental Health Challenges Facing Students

Childbirth Trauma

Sue Siebens

Pregnancy sets up many expectations. Its an time of expecting that’s full of hopes and dreams for the baby: what kind of childhood and life is in store, how can the parent support her on her path to a bright future?

As part of the plan, some new mothers anticipate a relatively, calm, natural and fulfilling labor. Childbirth is the gateway to Motherhood. It is common for moms to use the birthing experience as a base for their sense of motherhood and it can shape their relationship with the baby.

Birth Trauma puts a serious wrinkle in those expectations, to say the least. It’s a very real issue and very common. 1 in 4 first time mothers sustain significant injuries. And only about 25 percent of women have a non-traumatic normal vaginal delivery that has not done serious damage to their pelvic floor or their anal sphincter.[1]

Trauma can be the result from labor and childbirth and can also be a consequence of how the mother is left feeling about these experiences. She might have experienced pain or physical distress while giving birth. Or her labor or childbirth may have required medical intervention (actions taken by the attending medical professionals if the health of mother or baby is considered to be at risk) that she wasn’t prepared for. [2]

It is common for women to describe their labor as ‘normal’, even if they are left with confusing, on-going symptoms such as anxiety – including for the health of the baby – or low mood. A mother’s fear for the well-being of her baby or herself following interventions or a life threatening situation can be very traumatic. These fears and anxieties can interrupt the mother’s ability to be available to and bond with her baby. [2]

some of the factors that make birth trauma more likely are:

  • Lengthy labor or short and very painful labor
  • Induction
  • Poor pain relief
  • Feelings of loss of control
  • High levels of medical intervention
  • Forceps births
  • Emergency Cesarean section
  • Impersonal treatment or problems with staff attitudes
  • Not being listened to
  • Lack of information or explanation
  • Lack of privacy and dignity
  • Fear for baby’s safety
  • Stillbirth
  • Birth of a baby with a disability resulting from a traumatic birth
  • Baby’s stay in the special care baby unit or neonatal intensive care unit
  • Poor postnatal care
  • Previous trauma (for example, in childhood, with a previous birth or domestic violence)[3]

There are four main symptoms of Birth Trauma- PTSD:

  • Re-experiencing the traumatic event through flashbacks, nightmares or intrusive memories. These make her feel distressed and panicky.
  • Avoiding anything that reminds her of the trauma. This can mean refusing to walk past the hospital where she gave birth, or avoiding meeting other women with new babies.
  • Feeling hyper-vigilant: this means that mom are constantly alert, irritable and jumpy. She worries that something terrible is going to happen to her baby.
  • Feeling low and unhappy (“negative cognition” in the medical jargon). She may feel guilty and blame herself for the traumatic birthing. She may have difficulty remembering parts of the birth experience.[3]

Not everyone who has had a traumatic experience suffers from PTSD, but many do. It’s a completely normal response, and not a sign of weakness. It’s also involuntary: brain scans show a difference between the brains of people with PTSD and those without. PTSD is not something that can be cured by “pulling yourself together” or “focusing on the positive,” despite what other people tell you. [3]

This mis-understanding of what is going on with the new mom is isolating, leading to loneliness, feeling weak and depression. To be clear Birth Trauma PTSD is not the same as Postnatal Depression (PND), although they can overlap.

What can a Mother do?

Emotional Resolution, or EmRes, can be key to helping mothers with Birth Trauma PTSD to release the emotions that were trapped before, during and after their birthing experience. It works with PND as well.

Using both EmRes one-on-one sessions and learning EmRes-Self to use on their own, the traumatized mother can turn the corner on the emotions that are fogging their maternal time and lead to better self-care for herself and more wholesome relationship with her new family member.

Book EmRes one-on-one sessions

EmRes-Self class description and schedule

References
1. Birth trauma impacts go beyond women
2. Childbirth trauma
3. What is birth trauma?

Fear is a Fearsome Thing

Sue Siebens

I think everyone has, at one time or another, had a fear or phobia of some kind. Some fears are not as bothersome, especially if you don’t encounter the fear trigger very often. Like the duck-watching-me fear, anatidaephobia, if you don’t encounter many ducks, or are in environments where duck are likely to pop up, then may be relatively manageable. Well…it turns out that anatidaephobia is not a real phobia, It was created by “Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larsen and went so viral that it was included in a commercial advertisement for Aflac, an insurance company that has a duck “watching over” its customers.

BUT, Fears and Phobias are very real and very debilitating to individuals in the presences of their fear trigger. Specific phobias are described by The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5) as an excessive and irrational fear of a specified object or situation. The DSM-5 categorizes specific phobias into 5 categories:

  • Animal Types (dogs, snakes, spiders, etc.)
  • Natural Environment Types (thunder storms, floods, earthquakes, etc.)
  • Blood-Injection-Injury Types (seeing blood, getting medical treatment involving blood, witnessing medical procedures, etc.)
  • Situational Types (elevators, airplanes, small spaces, etc.)
  • Other Types (fears of contracting an illness, fear of choking, etc.)

These are anxiety disorders that include a persistent, irrational fear. When exposed to the feared item/situation, the person has an extreme anxiety response (panic attack, screaming, freezing, etc.). The person may avoid the feared stimuli at all costs and it may impact their daily life and overall functioning.

The person may know that the response is irrational, but that does nothing to calm the panic brought on by the trigger/situation. For them, in that moment, it may feel like life or death to get away from the fear trigger.

Traditional therapies use treatments that gradually expose the person to the trigger, which helps them overcome the fear by reeducating the brain to reduce the panic and anxiety until they can tolerate the trigger.

Sometimes we do, but often we don’t know where the phobia came from. It is either too concealed in the past or can be the result from a number of small-ish but seemingly unrelated frightening events. And, even if we did know the cause, is unlikely to be helpful in removing the phobia.

With Emotional Resolution (EmRes), the client is asked to recount the triggered event. The practitioner leads them thru a protocol of physical sensory awareness which releases the triggered emotion that is buried in the body causing the phobia.

Recalling the event using the Emotional Resolution protocol is not triggering. It is a calm recollection of the story about what happened. This is enough for the limbic system to recall the body memories of the emotion that incited the phobic reaction. The client remains calm, lucid and present during the session. The limbic system accesses the physical sensations, the emotion’s signature, which are used to release the emotion.

Fears and Phobias can be debilitating if they prevent you from “normal” activities. Help is available using Emotional Resolution. The results are immediate.

Are you ready to release your fears and phobias?

Book an Emotional Resolution session today

Grief and Mourning

Sue Siebens

Grief doesn’t happen in a vacuum. it happens along side of and mixed in with all these other emotions.


Nora McInerny

Grief and mourning are the emotional feelings we experience when someone or something in our life is irretrievably lost to us. Most commonly we think of a family member or close friend who has died.

Its when someone we love deeply is taken away from us and we don’t know what to do with those love feelings anymore. They have been literally torn away from us and we are fractured, oozing from our broken hearts.

Death and grief are something we all experience in our lives. If we are lucky enough to love fully, we may experience it many times. It is as inevitable as death itself….the companion emotion to death.

Because it can be so uncomfortable and it is an emotion, you’d think that grief would be something that we could resolve using the Emotional Resolution (EmRes) protocol. But in fact that’s not true. Grief is a process. It is a series of emotions that must be navigated. There are 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. By working thru these emotions in mourning, we will once again reach an emotional equilibrium when it’s complete. The mourning process usually takes 3-4 months. There is way to short-cut this healing.

These experiences of grief, that mark us and make us are just as important as the joyful ones and just a permanently. Grief is a multitasking emotions where you will be sad and happy, you will be grieving and able to love in the same year or week, the same breath.


Nora McInerny

At the same time, grief is not a form of depression
“Some people conflate the terms grief and depression. They are not the same. Both infuse our lives with sadness, and both cause disruption, but the similarity ends there. Depression is a mental disorder. Grief is not. Bereaved people are sad because they miss a person they love, a person who added light and color and warmth to their world. They feel like the light has been turned off and they aren’t sure how to turn it on again. Depressed people are sad because they see themselves and/or the world as fundamentally flawed, inadequate, or worthless. They feel like the world has no light or color or warmth. There is no light to turn on.” [1]

Grief can inflate other emotional conflicts and issues that are already present in a person. Existing anger, abandonment, loneliness, self-doubt, fear and depression compounded with mourning can work to overwhelm any emotional processing. Put in terms we are more familiar with: think of a cut on your finger being grief and existing anger being an infection on the skin. The body/emotional system could handle either alone, but together, we’d have an infection in the cut. This situation is more complicated and both contribute to the slower overall healing. Usually we take care of the infection first and the cut will take care of itself.

The unresolved emotions that predate grief can slow down progress thru the 5 stages. As mentioned before, grief is not a candidate for emotional resolution, BUT those preexisting emotions are definitely contenders.

Working on preexisting emotions is an excellent way to allow the grieving process to move along it’s necessary path more normally.

It’s not a hard and fast rule, but if grief extends beyond 6 months there are other emotions complicating the mourning process. Do your self a favor: find a professional and a resolution them with Emotional Resolution. You will be glad you did.

I want to end this blog with a client story: Betsy [not her real name] had lost her dearly beloved husband 2 year before. Within 2 months of his death, she also lost her precious dog. One would have been a lot, but two so close together was overwhelming. Two years later, she was still crying every time she looked at their pictures. She had pictures around her house because she wanted to remember them. She didn’t mind the crying. She wanted to remember her husband and dog. But her friends thought it was too much and constantly bugged her about it, that she needed put away the pictures and move on. We resolved her crying when she looked at the pictures. At her next visit, she came in all smiles. She hadn’t cried at all since her last visit. Now she could happily look at the pictures and remember the good times and how much she loved them. She was so happy 🙂

Obviously this is my favorite grief client story. I’ve worked with other clients and their emotions that are holding up their mourning process. Usually it takes more that just the one session that Betsy had. But every time, they get relief from emotion that is troubling them.

Are you ready to put grief behind you and happily remember the good times?

Book an Emotional Resolution Session

References
1. Grief and mourning gone awry: pathway and course of complicated grief by M. Katherine Shear, MD

Getting Along with Difficult People

Sue Siebens

You know who they are….those aggravating individuals. They range from rubbing you the wrong way to openly critical or aggressive toward you. They are in our families as the ornery sibling or the obnoxious in-law, sometimes it’s our friends that get an attitude, cross a line or demand too much from us, at work it’s the boss who is too demanding or a co-worker who shirks responsibility or points fingers at everyone but themselves, at church they are the shamers and judgers with no room to talk, at restaurants it’s the loud table in the middle of the room or the arrogant staff member, and it is those strangers in line with us at any store or event that takes us out of our comfort zone experience.

They can be anywhere. And they show up with a regularity that is freakishly amazing.

When I was working in the corporate world, it seems there was that one person at every job that got under my skin. They were different people, in different organizational positions from me with different agendas at each job. They showed up as a boss, a co-worker or a representative of another department that I had to work with. And they thought I did things wrong and I thought they were a$$holes.

I wish I had known about Emotional Resolution (EmRes) back then! Because I now understand that my fears and angst where projected onto my antagonist. In working with Emotional Resolution clients, I’ve found that the old axiom holds very true:

It takes two to tango.

If you need an adversary to hold up one side of an argument for you, someone will show up and carry on the other side of the dispute. As soon as you let go of the difficulty–the anchoring emotion, the other person will “lose interest”. This all happens at a subconscious level, of course, the undercurrent of conversation below speaking and listening.

You just have to break the cycle by letting go of your side.

I’ve seen this work time and again with spouses and pairings of all sorts. The client is “going crazy” when “they do that“, “they know I don’t like it, so why do they do it?” The client has a Emotional Resolution session to work on this specific antagonistic situation. And things change.

The client no longer has the embedded emotion that is “clinging to the story”. It’s almost like they forget about the recurring problem until I mention it at a later time. And the spouse “just doesn’t do it anymore,” is commonly in the result. At first I thought the anecdotal stories brought back to me by clients were small coincidences, entertaining to be sure. But they have happened with such regularity, that now I expect to hear them.

Letting go of emotions that power disagreements, that we brush off as “part of dealing with other personalities”, may seem trivial in the grand scheme of things. But imagine having a home, workplace, school, church, etc where you didn’t have that someone(s) that drives you crazy with their arrogance, controlling attitude or whatever. It would take so much stress out of our lives.

Emotional Resolution uses your situation, the scene of interaction with your antagonist, as its entry point. With this mental image, the emotional memories that are trapped in body are accessed and resolved. You don’t have to know where or how the emotions got trapped there. You don’t even have to name the emotion. You just have to know the situation that you don’t want in your life anymore, and the specific and precise protocol for Emotional Resolution does the rest. It is literally a reset button.

Are you ready to release your side of the story?

Book an Emotional Resolution Session today

Emotional Merry-go-rounds and other spirals

Sue Siebens

Its that situation again. That person or group is present. This conversation or action will trigger my feelings. I’ll spiral into my “go-to” emotions. and I’ll be back in my misery, again. It takes to much energy and time to climb out of that wheel. Time to get off the scary-go-round!

PTSD, depression, substance abuse and other disorders are commonly associated with emotional dysregulation.
Its the inability to manage the intensity and duration of negative emotions such as fear, sadness, or anger. When caught off-guard by some triggering event, clients are plunged into overwhelming emotions and behaviors that may be difficult to recover from.

Traditionally emotional regulation skills are based on cognitive and behavioral interventions, using conscious thought and behavior to regulate emotions.

But what if we can address the emotions directly? Resolving them, in the moment they are occurring? ..and just get rid of them permanently?

Think about it. If you have a nose bleed, you wouldn’t just let the blood run down your face, onto your shirt. No. You would stop what you are doing and take care of it with a tissue, tip your head back, maybe add a cold compress. You and everyone around you will understand that your body needs some attention. It is a necessary and immediate need.

It’s the same way with emotions. If you are experiencing an emotion or feeling, that is anywhere from uncomfortable to overwhelming, it is time to stop and take a moment to deal with that emotion…. just like its a nose-bleed.

How do we loosen emotion’s grip and get control back? How do we stand in our emotion, face it head on, in the moment of crisis and “conquer it”?

We must all learn to resolve and balance our unwanted emotions on the fly, and we can do it quite simply.

Emotional Resolution on and for the Self (EmRes-Self)

  • IN THE MOMENT, while you are still in the emotion, Close your eyes. turn your focus away from the outside source of your disturbance and look in.
  • Scan your body and notice at least two physical sensations, like throat tight, hands sweaty, hard to breathe, stomach tight, etc.
  • Allow the sensations to change, without control or expectation. Don’t do anything, just watch.
  • Be present with the physical sensations until they are gone, for up to 2 minutes
  • When you are calm, open your eyes. the emotion will be gone.

It sounds ridiculously simple. How can something this unpretentious work?

Well, if you don’t embellish the routine, it works fabulously. Here are a couple guidelines to curb your desire to “make it better”.

  1. This process works with the current emotional difficulty your body is experiencing. If you are angry at your co-worker now, then you must resolve now while you are still angry at him, not after you’ve cooled down and are recalling your anger. The timing can be tricky in this regard. But immediately excusing yourself to a restroom and resolve there, will usually keep you in the emotion enough to resolve. Excusing yourself to tend a fake “important text” on you phone, also allows you to covertly bow your head to your phone and close your eyes for a few seconds–its surprising how socially normal this is.
  2. Emotions are experienced by the body as physical sensations. It is the body that has the embedded/trapped emotions that keep coming up via triggers, flooding your mind and overwhelming thought and reason. When you close your eyes, you are shifting from the mental brain/memory to emotional brain/memory.
    The body has an innate ability to metabolize the emotional memories, the physical sensations, if you give it the time and space to do so.
    And that is just it–You must give your body time to do it’s work!
    Remember: Power goes where you focus.
    You can not be in your mind and your body at the same time. If you gently focus on your body, it will resolve the physical sensations and release the emotional imprint. If you let your focus return to the mind, recalling the situation, trying to make sense of the physical sensations, focusing too hard on the sensations, trying to control or change the shape, form or intensity of the sensations, then the body stops its “resolve the emotion work”. Just watch the physical sensations and allow them to change. The sensations can be uncomfortable, but even “breathing into it” is a form of control that will derail the whole process.
  3. Allow the physical sensations to change, grow, move, pop up in another location as you passively watch, until all physical sensations are gone and you are calm… for up to 2 minutes. Many times it can take only 8-20 seconds! After 2 minutes, which feels like a long time, open your eyes and recall the emotional situation that disturbed you. We are not changing history here. You will still remember being mad, for instance, but you will most likely not feel mad about it any more. If you do feel a little emotion is left, then close your eyes again, go thru the resolve again. It will be completely gone after the second time through.

It really works. It works for me. It works for everyone that has learned it. And it will work for you.

In one of my advance Emotional Resolution classes, I met a woman who was in New York on 9/11, a hotline operator, who watched the buildings fall from close range. She had PTSD for years as a result. She shared that most of her healing was finally accomplished by using the ER-Self protocol, when she was triggered, in the instant that she was in the emotion. She was adamant about the power of Emotional Resolution on the Self (EmRes-Self).

After I recovered a little from the impact of her story, I reflected on my own use of ER-Self. Every time I had the presence to [stop, close my eyes, let go of my mind, feel the physical sensation in my body, allow them to change, observe them lightly until they were gone], it worked. My troubling emotion, present in me at the time, was gone.

You can practice from the instructions in this blog and get it right. But sometimes we have questions and need face to face time with an instructor. I teach classes in ER-Self, both to groups and privately in-person and on the phone.

Please learn this amazing act of Self-Care. Just like a nose-bleed or cut on our finger, we need to take care of ourselves when our body demands attention, whether it shows up as actual blood or as a troubling emotion that affects our ability to effectively navigate our life and world.

Are you ready to take Self-Care to the next level?

Learn ER-Self with a group (In Dallas, Tx)

Learn ER-Self individually, on the phone or in-person