Emotional First Aid

You know when you fall, scrape a knee, an elbow, or burn yourself while cooking?

What ‘s the first thing you do? You hold on tight, scream out,  “Ouch”  Then you reach for your First Aid Kit! Well, how would it be if you had access to a personal Emotional First Aid Kit.

An inner tool kit for those times during the course of a day, when you get consumed by those prickly, tense, and uncomfortable emotional disasters. Have anger, resentment, disappointment or frustration ever threatened to derail your day?

When heavy negative feelings shows up, they attract more of the same because the law of attraction applies to emotions…like attracts like. It can happen at your work place, with your partner, or your children. You end up hurting yourself with guilt, feelings of  “not good enough”, or you open mouth and insert foot, it doesn’t feel good. It’s like an inner “owie.”

Emotions are sensations that are felt within your body. You have a better chance of healing any sensation that doesn’t feel good when you are able to take care of it in the moment. Or, you can ignore it, distract yourself and step back on that emotional rollercoaster and re-experience your uncomfortable and painful “emotional burn” again and again.

Emotional First Aid shows you how to take care of that emotional hurt right away.

Just like you don’t want to walk around with your knee or elbow bleeding, you don’t want to walk around with your emotions “bleeding” all over the place. When you have an outer “owie”, you clean the wound, apply the ointment and put on a comforting band-aid until it heals. It’s really no different with painful emotions.

Here are the basic tools for your Emotional First Aid Kit (AAMP):

1. Attend to your wound: Give yourself the time and space to be present with your uncomfortable feelings, if only for a few minutes. Pay attention to what your body is experiencing. Clear away any outside distractions. If needed, move to a safe, quiet place.

1. Meet the sensation:  When you feel that ache in your heart, put ALL of your attention there. Close your eyes and focus inward. Mindfully breathe into the place in your body where the sensation is the most intense, inhaling and exhaling slowly and deeply.

1. Movement: Keeping breathing. The movement of your breath will stimulate the healing process. Here’s a mantra that will keep you focused on moving and releasing the sensation: “There you are, I feel you. Now here is my breath.  I invite you to clear on my exhale.” In no time you will begin to feel some relief.

1. Presence: Stay focused on the movement of the sensation. Similar to washing out a wound with disinfectant, it hurts while the solution is being applied, but then it passes. Same with emotions, it might hurt when you first put your attention there, but soon it will pass, with every mindful breath. The grasping, tense, holding sensation that comes with the “owie”, will give way to a more open, easy, in-the-moment experience.

Now, open your eyes and notice how you feel. Lighter, energized and able to let go more easily? You should begin to feel “AMMP-ed”.  As though connected to an electrical current, you should now have access to more vibrant energy. Ignoring heavy emotions will cause you to loose energy. When you Attend, Meet, Move and are Present with whatever you are feeling, you recharge your emotional energy, which is the fuel for all creative endeavors.