It is one thing to feel a sense of personal power when things are going well for you, but it is when you know how to keep personal power during traumatic life events that you are able to surf the ups and downs of life with more grace and ease. Being able to do this is actually a type of maturity. Learning the skills associated with how to keep personal power under any circumstances is both grounding and liberating.
When we face any kind of trauma in our lives –the loss of a loved one, an illness, a major setback, etc. -we experience intense emotions associated with the events. This might be grief or anger. These heavy negative emotions are a normal and healthy part of the traumatic event, but, over time, can begin to warp our perspective and impact our ability to move forward. It is necessary to feel and honor these emotions as well as connect to a deeper sense of personal truth and faith.
The question then becomes about both – how to keep personal power and emotionally experience our trauma
Emotions associated with traumatic events need time, space, and holding. We can recognize that they come in waves. That we need to be willing to sit with them, or thrash with them, or whatever else, depending on the requirements. That we need to make sure to give them the time they need to be felt and honored and to run their course.
We benefit from putting ourselves in situations and around people who can be with us and our emotional experience, so that we do not run the risk of re-wounding ourselves. This support helps us avoid the pitfalls of a lonesome mind that might convince us that we are alone or unlovable because of how we are feeling. We also benefit from recognizing when the emotional process needs to come to a close and allowing ourselves to rise up again.
Regardless of what is going on in our emotional process, we are in a simultaneous process of the further refinement of our personal power. The two are not separate. They are intended to influence each other. However, we often get stuck in the emotional processing and fail to see the opportunities for growth and power that are inherent in the circumstances we are facing. We lose contact with our own sense of personal power.
To access our personal power we need to begin to believe that all events in life are conspiring to bring us home to ourselves. That, regardless of circumstances, our own heart and truth is able to be revealed to us. That we can take deliberate action to move towards what we most deeply want.
How to keep personal power, strengthen your power, and live from it
Clarify how we want to feel: When all is said and done, what matters more than outcomes is how we feel before and after we achieve those outcomes. By figuring out how you want to feel on a day-to-day – or even situational – basis, we deepen our personal power in our life.
Envision what we want to create: While how we feel in the now is of infinite importance, it is still helpful to know what we are moving towards. This does not mean that we need to be ready to take action to move ourselves in that direction (we may or may not be). Just knowing where we are headed is often enough. This shows us that our circumstance is temporary and a larger unfolding is imminent.
Foster these states: To fully claim our personal power, we can foster the states of being that support our intended outcome, or take action in that direction. These actions give us a sense of agency in our lives. The results of our efforts teach us about how much power we have to create what we want in our lives.
Pay attention to where we are going: There are numerous signs along the road of life. When we start to pay attention to what is going on around us, when we begin to move in the direction of what feels good to us, when we claim the things that align with our vision based on these signs… we remember that life is on our side and that, no matter the current challenge, we can find our way to something better.
Are you looking for a way to let go of the heavy emotional baggage of trauma and step into your path?
The Group Healing Intensive is designed to help you accomplish, in one weekend, the amount of personal transformational work that would take years of traditional therapy to accomplish.
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