Managing your feelings will help you gain some self-control over emotions that can be overwhelming (for example, overwhelming hate, anger, rage, sadness or shame) whatever those feelings are. Being able to cope with them as they come up is incredibly useful. What is also important is being able to make yourself feel safe whilst dealing with waves of strong feelings (especially fear). These meditations and techniques can help you positively support yourself in the face of an emotional storm.
Powerful feelings such as rage and anger can sometimes turn inwards on the self and it is important to learn how to nurture yourself as feelings come up and to counteract any self-blame with self-love. Empowerment in this context means positively supporting yourself however you feel, and especially if feelings of self-loathing come up. In the case of strong difficult emotions, empowerment means letting those feeling come up and pass through to be let go of without self-harming in any way. Learning to love yourself and be your own best friend is especially important on the road to recovery and some of these meditations will help you uncover what that means for you and encourage you to actively love yourself.
Stuck Patterns
A stuck pattern is a type of behaviour that repeats in an unhelpful way. For example perhaps you persistently criticise yourself in certain situation, or maybe you find yourself in compromising or difficult situations over and over again.
It requires courage, focus and sustained effort to make steps to move beyond a stuck pattern, to change your behaviour and to empower yourself on your road to recovery. As with other methods of recovery it is up to you to make the effort to change and grow emotionally, as unfortunately no one else can do it for you. The emphasis behind the meditations is the concept of empowerment. You are allowing yourself to increase your well-being by using techniques to enable deep and lasting change. The changes you need will depend on you, your personal experiences, your personality and ways you have coped in the past with your personal experiences. Everybody's personal healing journey is different.
An addiction is similar to a stuck pattern but if you think you are addicted to drugs, food, sex, alcohol then you need specialist treatment and/or support group local to you. Seek them out now so you can see your patterns clearly and learn to challenge and change them.
Why Empowerment?
The idea behind empowerment is the power to take charge of our own lives as women. We at Nourishment for Difficult Times strongly believe that women cannot wait for men to become healed or spiritually evolved enough to not act in violent ways. We need to take action now to heal ourselves from all forms of sexual abuse and violence. Once women have healed their own shame, anger, rage, hurt and release the fear by speaking out against paedophiles and rapist then these actions will teach our daughters to do the same by setting the example. The more we hide from sexual abuse through intimidation, fear and shame the more we allow it to stay hidden in society. With time we believe society can change so that increasingly children can find the words and the courage to speak out against their sexual predators so they can be prosecuted and thus stop other children from being harmed in the process.
This healing journey is not for the faint hearted and requires a lot of courage. If you feel you have to muster a lot of bravery to face your fears then you are right. Healing from gender based violence takes courage, but you do not have to recover alone. There are many organisations that can help (see our 'Links' page).
Photograph by Jennifer Weston ©
For a one-to-one therapy session contact us at: hmeditations@googlemail.com
women sexual abuseincest rape healing
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