Allow, Accept and Embrace – One step at a time, we break old patterns and make more room
Most of us know by now that our past can be a drag on how we move through our lives in the present moment. We think we can push through without having to unhook ourselves from an old painful memory; or if we are just a little more careful, we can protect our tender spots from getting hurt again.
The reality is that when we can do the real work of being with what hurts, we can break free. It is a personal choice. Ironically, it doesn’t take nearly as long as you might think; it gets easier as you do it with regularity, and the positive effects are so freeing.
In his book, Contemplation, Richard Rudd, simplifies the process of personal breakthroughs (which break you free from old emotional pains), by walking us through the three stages:
- Allow — simply allow the painful feeling. It might be anger, fear, numbness, resentment, grief or sadness. You don’t have to like it.
- Acceptance – this is recognizing that emotional pain will not kill you. We simply accept the fact that it hurts and we don’t push it away, numb it or project it on to others.
- Embracing – Recognize that once you have accepted how it hurts, that long held emotional pain begins to ease. It actually gets purged from our system.
Most of us were never taught how to take care of our emotional hurts. Just imagine if we’d been educated about emotional first aid!
When my daughter was quite young, she hated to look at the scrape on her knee when she fell off her bike. She did not want to look at the damage from that fall — and she really did not want me to look at it either. But ignoring it would surely only make matters worse. We had to assess the situation and attend to it with tender, loving care – and a wash cloth, some Neosporin and bandages. Sure, it hurt a lot at first. The first aid reduced the pain and over the course of a week or so, her knee healed.
We wouldn’t ignore those physical bumps, cuts and bruises. We know that TLC and an honest assessment gets us on the road to full recovery faster. The same is true with our emotional hurts.
Since we didn’t know better decades ago, we may find ourselves in a present moment where the bandaid we stuck on an old emotional wound has fallen off. It is still hurting.
Most of us will feel that pain in the form of an emotional trigger and become very sensitive to a rather benign situation in the present moment. Richard Rudd would urge us to apply a little emotional first aid to the situation.
Stage 1 is acknowledging that you are hurting. Allow the feelings to come up. Feel the feels. Label them; are you angry, resentful, tired of being called too sensitive?
Remember that you didn’t attend to this emotional injury years ago – so it just keeps showing up. Today will be the day that you will look at it (just like my little girl who was so afraid to see the damage).
Stage 2 is acceptance. Accept the reality that this is painful. It does hurt and there is real discomfort when an old emotional injury has festered. Remember that it won’t kill you. In fact, if you take a few deep breaths and long exhales, you just might discover that the pain is tolerable. Stage 2 is emotional pain management.
Stage 3 is Embracing. Think of this stage as TLC. Richard Rudd would remind us that this is where we meet ourselves with deep self-compassion. Be a mom or dad to yourself – the one who can look at that skinned knee and take good care of it and how scared you are. The embracing stage is where we stop repressing what really hurt.
This simple three stage approach to attending to our past emotional injuries is the best short cut for meaningful breakthroughs.
We’ve all heard that wisdom that “what you resist, persists.” Well, this is case in point. How many times have you felt emotionally triggered and recoiled from something rather benign? Maybe you stuffed your emotions or projected your anger or fear onto someone else. Hours later, you admonish yourself for overreacting and wishing that you could have met that moment differently.
Just the other day, I found myself standing in the kitchen with one of my own old emotional injuries coming to the surface. It is not at all unusual to have a flashback to a moment in time when I was a young girl or a young mother. Having just read Richard’s formula for breakthroughs, I saw this resurfacing of an emotional trigger as the opportunity to heal – and lay it to rest once and for all.
I closed my eyes and imagined my younger self. The memory came back vividly. What was incredibly surprising was the swiftness with which my younger self could stuff an emotion. I was so well practiced at pushing my emotions down that I could readily visualize a tightly taped box with a bow on it!
Today, in the kitchen, I opened the box. I felt the feels. All of them. To my surprise, I could readily admit that those feelings were valid in that moment. I took so personally the snarky comments that someone had said. That person just delighted in putting me down. I never asked why way back then. And I never acknowledged how much it really hurt.
Stage 2 of Richard’s process was easier than I had anticipated. Revisiting that old memory and feeling the emotional pain I’d boxed up again and again, was not nearly as awful as I had imagined it might be. I know that I have a pretty high physical pain tolerance and I just repurposed that for my emotional pain. Turns out that I could actually rate this old emotional injury as a 3 or 4 on a scale of 1-10. I could tolerate this emotional pain. I took a deep breath and felt the hurt ease.
Stage 3 surprised me in such a comforting way. It was as if my 74 year old self could draw younger me into a warm hug. Richard says this is the grace period. It is when we can be with that younger version of ourselves and offer the TLC with deep self compassion. I whispered to my 28 year old self that it was never about her. That person who loved to cut her down and caused her pain was also hurting. Hurting people hurt people and that guy frequently projected his own hurt onto others. A game of hot potato.
All of this passing through the three stages took about 5 minutes.
Just five minutes resolved and dissolved emotional pain that I had carried with me for close to 5 decades. This stopped me in my tracks – and made me long for all the wasted hours, days and years I had been snagged by that event so long ago.
I could feel the breakthrough! It was incredible. I imagined that it felt the same way my young grandson felt when his cast came off recently. Free at last!
I offer Richard’s remedy and my personal experience as an invitation to you. The next time you feel an old emotional injury snagging you and dragging you back into pain from the past, try the 3 stages.
Allow, accept and embrace.
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