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5 Keys to Emotional Well-Being
If you are like most people, you struggle to feel happy and carefree most of your life. You yearn for this feeling you remember from childhood, but don’t know how to get back.
Below are 5 “keys” to recovering your inner sense of well-being, and coping with the emotional rollercoasters of life.
1. Live who you are. You would think this is “oh-duh” but apparently not. Most people do not know who they truly are, much less live who they are. So you are not alone, if you have forgotten your real self. This key is called “prevention” by conventional therapists. It is what you have to do on a regular basis to prevent yourself from sinking into an emotional whirlpool. This is about letting your inner child out, and doing more “self-love”. If you have trouble doing this, consider a plant. A plant needs a certain amount of water and sunlight, and a particular kind of soil in order to thrive. Self-love is allowing yourself your “conditions to thrive”. It is self-care and self-nurture on a regular basis. When you “flower”, you naturally bring more beauty and love into world. You need to live who you are, at least most of the time, in order to get your happy face back on. This is your number one responsibility in your life. It is no one else’s job to do this for you. For example, maybe you secretly want to be a dancer, but are forcing yourself to be in a “serious” bank teller job. This just might kill you, if you don’t make sure somehow to get lots of dancing in your life.
2. Use your healthy coping tools. This key is called “intervention” in regular therapy circles. We all need a few healthy coping or “intervention” strategies in our toolkit, for life WILL throw at least a few major stressful life events our way. When it does, we need to know what we can do to cope. And no, alcohol and drugs don’t count. Know what works for you that is also healthy. For example, you make sure you get in a power walk or some form of exercise at the end of a stressful day at work to allow the energy of stress to move through, and not stay in, your body.
3. Practice scaling your emotions. Scaling your emotions is a way to measure how light or heavy they are. On a scale of “0 to 10”, with 0 equals no anger or stress, and 10 equals maybe rage or panic attack, know what your “2-5” especially is. Whether irritability, frustration, annoyance, mildly worried or afraid. And know how those variations of emotion feel in your body, when they are in the 2 to 5 range, BEFORE you get to higher numbers on your scale. Begin using your coping tools then. Don’t wait.
4. Know your emotion constellations. In the night sky, a constellation is a group of stars that go together. Each of your emotions is like its own constellation. Within “anger” or any other emotion constellation will come certain thoughts, scents, visual cues, sounds, tastes, bodily sensations, physical environments, and even secondary emotions. Know what these are for you, so that you can be very conscious of your emotional landscapes. Know what your calm constellation is, for that will give your hints about how to bring your body into a state of calm. Those will remind you of many healthy coping tools you can use to prevent yourself from feeling overwhelmed. Maybe you like to imagine being at the beach, with the sounds of seagulls, the scent of salty air, the taste of coconut on your lips, and the feel of your toes sinking into the warm, wet waves. Perhaps aromatherapy helps you at work, with the scent of lavender on your desk.
5. Re-direct your body into the feeling you choose in that moment. Your body has a hard time being in calm and stress at the same time. If you are breathing slowly and deeply, you can’t breathe in that shallow fast way you do when you’re anxious, at the same time. Your body will calm because you are directing it to do so by breathing the way you do naturally when you are calm. If you are thinking thoughts that are consistent with feeling safe, in control or even upbeat, then your body will steer in that direction, which is why constructive self-talk, that you really believe, usually works every time!
Now that you have the keys to getting back the sense of well-being in your life, use them! And remember, the most important key is to “be you!”
Are You An Introvert?
Are You An Introvert?
Check out this latest article that I wrote for Your Tango:
http://www.yourtango.com/experts/valerievaran/introverts-may-be-more-highly-evolved-personality-type
On Transformation Talk Radio
Listen to the episode here:
https://www.transformationtalkradio.com/guest/valerie-varan,4394.html
Valerie Varan, MS, LPC, NCC is a holistic psychotherapist and author of the newly released book, Living in a Quantum Reality: Using Quantum Physics and Psychology to Embrace Your Higher Consciousness. After an initial career in the environmental engineering field, and much prompting from the Universe, Valerie obtained her master’s degree in counseling psychology, worked traditionally for several years, and then went into private practice in 2006. Finally synthesizing her love of quantum physics, psychology and ancient wisdom, she has come to specialize in helping spiritually awakened people embrace their transpersonal and quantum worldview; cope with their, often unexpected, holotropic states of consciousness; and pursue their spiritual visions for a more conscious society.
Mind, Emotion and Body as an Energetic Triangle for Soul Expression
When you open to who you really are at the core of your being, you find there that you are energy and consciousness originating beyond the body, expressing itself through your ego body.
The mind, emotions and body form a triangle of energies that the ego senses as itself. This is the ego body. When these three aspects of self are connected and relatively balanced, they form a container for the larger self, that many call the soul, to pour through for loving purpose.
Imagine you are at the center of this triangle. To see it in your mind’s eye, draw a triangle with a point in the middle. At the first point of the triangle, label it “physical body”. At the second point, label it “Emotion”. And at the third point, put the word “Mind”. Then at the point in the center, write the word “soul”.
Think of times when you have felt centered and balanced. Note that you will have centered your sense of self at this point in the middle of this energetic triangle. Here, you are the observer-feeler. Not a disembodied head or heart. Not a dissociated body. But from this point, you are using all three aspects of ego self, as the appendages of soul that they are in this physical plane. You feel your bodily sensations, your thoughts and ideas, and your emotional responses to these ideas and observations. You are using your heart to navigate the direction in which your soul longs to move. You are using your head to help you get there. And you are using your body for the expression of soul it is intended to be.
This state of consciousness is where you want to be to feel centered and balanced, and a vessel for your soul awareness. This is the ultimate state for mind-body awareness.
Gratitude as a State of Consciousness
Consciousness, Time and Space
Are YOU an Empath?
Check out the article I wrote for YourTango.com:
Do YOU Know Why Couples in Love Complete Each Other’s Sentences?
Check out my latest article posted on YourTango.com:
Check out my new Facebook page!
Since publishing my book, Living in a Quantum Reality, I finally decided to join the social media world. Okay, well one site anyway. Hope you can follow me on Facebook! And I could uses as many LIKES as possible, so feel free to let all your friends know about my Facebook page, as well as this ValerieVaran.com site, if they would love to hear about energy, consciousness, health, and suggestions for practical living in this quantum reality!
Do You See Subtle Energy?
For those of you who see subtle energy, you may be wondering what exactly you are seeing. Here is a recent question I received and my response, shared with you who may have similar questions. I would love for you to message me on my Valerie Varan LPC Facebook page with your descriptions of how you see or experience subtle energy.
Q: Hi Valerie, I am rereading your book and am reading about imbalances of the third eye and one is detecting paranormal phenomena. Is it an imbalance because of the vibration of the energy detected or where you are when you are able to detect it? I often detect things and also see things all of the time floating around me. The floating things are like sparkles, small circles and twisting strands of DNA. It feels a bit other dimensional. Love to know your thoughts.-Miriam
A: I’m realizing by your question that some might think that I’m saying that if we see the paranormal, that it is imbalance in the third eye. What I was referring to by paranormal imbalances, was when people start freaking out about such psychic experiences, that kind of anxiety…
Thanks too for sharing what you see about the floating things. I too would like to get this conversation going about how people see what they see in other dimensions, because it differs across folks yet there are similarities. For example, my nephew describes it, then I text him a pic of the cover of Claude’s Life Force book and he exclaims that it is exactly how he sees all the time. I told him he might be seeing at the subatomic particle level. Who knows?! You too. Your description sounds like his and Claude’s pic. For me, I have the gestalt thing going on, where I can focus on seeing the materially hard things, or I can shift my eye focus and see what appears as the wave level of all things, where I see things as waves, shimmering and sparkling. Unfortunately in my case, when I see floaters, it is the gel of my eye deteriorating with age:(
Wouldn’t it be great to hear all the different ways people see??
Here is the link below to Claude’s cover pic:
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Force-Scienti…/…/ref=pd_sim_14_1…