So many of us bury our voice and opinions and avoid those crucial conversations because of fear. We decide to remain silent for many reasons...
Fear of hurting someone’s feelings
Fear of another person’s reaction
Fear of being vulnerable
Fear of consequences
Fear of change
Fear of looking bad
Fear of conflict
Fear of confrontation
The problem with not expressing yourself is that although you may move on mentally and find ways to distract yourself, the emotion and energy of non expression is left in the body and gets buried in the subconscious mind. The residue of repressed expression causes stagnation and emotional blocks in our cells and in the subconscious mind. These emotional blocks harm us on many levels…They effect us physically as the emotion gets stored in our cellular memory. They effect us emotionally by causing stagnation in our growth and they effect us energetically by causing blocks in our chakras and energy centres.
We wrestle with the suppression within, knowing that to speak and express ourselves will set us free, but the fear of conflict and confrontation forces us to bury it all down again.
As emotion is stored on a cellular level, suppression of expression can lead to illness. For example anger creates toxicity and acid in our blood and organs, grief gets stored and stagnated in our lungs and fear damages our kidneys. There is an interesting link between non expression and breast cancer, where a large percentage of women who were suppressing their emotions were found to have more malignant tumours then women who expressed themselves easily. (Read research here)
Non expression is a habit or behavioral pattern formed in early childhood. If we were given a safe environment to express ourselves easily then we could develop an ability to communicate openly, confidently and non- emotionally. A safe environment would mean that we were supported; we were told that our opinions mattered and people would listen to what we had to say without taking things personally or making us feel guilty.
In an unsafe verbal environment parents, teachers or our significant others would have reacted badly when we spoke up. We would have been made to feel guilty, we may have been punished or we may have been brought up with the mentality that children were better to be seen but not heard. We therefore learnt that it is safer and more peaceful to keep quiet then to use our voice and assertiveness. The belief imprinted on the subconscious mind states that our opinions do not matter…what I have to say is not important… or that other’s opinions are more important than your own.
We therefore learnt that it is better to protect another person than speak up; we learnt to walk on eggshells and watch our “p’s and q’s.” This meant learning to censor everything we had to say. We learnt to be fearful and disempowered and we learnt to compromise what we thought or felt in order to please others and slowly slowly silenced the voice within. In this silence we lose our voice and ultimately loose ourselves. The body learnt to shrink and shut down in protection rather than to stay empowered and strong in order to speak up.
What is authentic expression?
Authentic Expression is the ability to speak your truth. It means expressing yourself easily with assertiveness and not aggression or emotion. Authentic expression means you honour your opinions and empower yourself with your voice. Authentic expression works like this:
The key with Authentic Expression is that our GOAL is not to be right or wrong…it is simply to express ourselves non-emotionally to clear, release and heal emotion.
Your voice will set you free
So you can see that by releasing and healing your own emotion allows you to express yourself authentically and one of the most empowering moments one can feel is in the moment of voicing one's opinion or truly expressing themselves. Staying with emotion buried within only leads to stagnation and an emotional outburst.
Here are some great tips to authentically express yourself and have those critical conversations which will set you free…
Get clear on what you are feeling and why. Write out your feelings on paper to help you express and confront your anger and frustration (you do not need to show anyone this list so don’t hold back). The purpose of this is to unblock the anger from your body and allow yourself to read back and reflect on what you are angry about or what you are feeling.
List all the feelings you are feeling; again allowing yourself to confront and identify your emotions
Try the letting go healing meditation mentioned in my previous post
Time your conversation well, ensuring that both parties have no other distractions and you are having the conversation in a space that is non-threatening or non-confrontational
Write yourself notes of what you would like to focus on
Tell the person that your intention is not to bring up the past or not about judgment, but to heal and clear emotion that you are feeling. This ensures that your intention is about clearing and releasing and not blaming
Use I Statements. I statements ensure you stay in the intention of explaining yourself and your feelings rather than blaming, judging or attacking another person. When a person hears the word YOU they have a natural tendency to defend themselves, so I statements offer a powerful conflict management tool as they help you avoid antagonizing the other person and stay clear in expressing your own reality.
Allow the other person to answer and explain their reality. This involves ACTIVE Listening where you open your heart and your ears to listening to that person’s reality and perspective. REMEMBER, our goal is not to be right but to allow clear expression and when we allow that person to express themselves back we complete the cycle and both gain understanding and empowerment through expression.
Allow yourself to forgive and let go
Remember we are talking about developing and building our essence and our empowered self which means your EGOOO (your pride, conscience, fear, guilt) may not approve of this process. However, each time you express yourself you will experience more and more freedom and emotional release, the process will become easier and the motivation to fulfill your essence will be greater than staying in the safety of your EGOOO… and there lives the place of authentic freedom and empowerment.
Enjoy!
To your truth and freedom,
Cheryne
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