The fives steps include: Awareness, Name & Redefine, Focus, Examine, and Create a New Neural Pathway
(Audio #2 given in Week 1 thoroughly discusses each step with explanation and examples. Be sure to listen to the audio before using the written version).
STEP #1: Awareness
Maybe you have a situation or thought process in mind and you have awareness that it’s the thing holding you back. GREAT! But if you don’t, & things feel muddy, here’s how you can bring awareness to a specific area that needs healing .
Sit in prayer at a location that you feel safe (outdoors, in bed, shower). Make sure you’re taking deep cleansing breathes allowing movement in your body. Emotions are meant to have motion. In order to release the body will need a bit of movement and breath work is wonderful for this. While in prayer, ask Jesus to take you to a very specific place that needs healing. Practice being still. Just be and breathe. Listen. What comes to mind first? Whatever come to mind first go with it. Trust your intuition. Trust that you are being divinely guided to an area needing healing.
When you have an idea of the specific situation/though that a needs healing, write it down. This is where your journal comes into play. (if journaling isn’t good for your you can have a conversation with a safe individual)
(Emotions may rise during this time. Continue to breathe. Try not to swallow any emotion that bubbles up. You may need to tell yourself, it’s safe to feel this right now in this moment. It is safe to feel what I couldn’t before. )
STEP #2: Name & Redefine
Let’s put language to what emotions you are /or have been experiencing when it comes to the situation you’ve chosen.
Use this list, print the PDF, and for this step only focus on the emotion and its definition. The definition will help you deepen your understanding of what that emotion is outside your perspective.
As you read through the list, highlight the emotions and its definition you’ve experienced when considering the specific situation you have chosen to bring freedom to. (this may be many or just a few, there is no right or wrong amount to highlight).
STEP #3: Focus
Narrow your focus to two of the emotions you’ve highlighted. These are probably two emotions that affect you daily or when you feel them, they trigger you. Choosing two emotions and focusing on those makes this much more doable. You will know when you’re ready to tackle a few of the others you highlighted, and that could look like in a few weeks or months or years. For now, choosing two is being kind, loving, and understanding to yourself and how you feel.
Write those two down, and their definition, at the top of a journal page, so each has their own blank page.
STEP #4: Examine
It’s time to “get to know” those two emotions by going a bit deeper with each. Almost like a criminal / detective interrogation but way less intimidating.
Study the definition of each by letting it sink in, maye you had a different perspective or looped another emotion in with it where really it’s this one defined emotion all on its own.
On the journal pages where you wrote each of the two emotions, add in these prompts and give yourself plenty of time to dig deeper with each. Try not to fly through. It may look like thinking of the prompt all day and then journaling what came up.
PROMPTS:
How do I see this emotion coming out through my behavior and reactions?
How does this emotion come out in my thoughts & shape how I think?
Does this emotion affect how I receive and give love, compassion, understanding?
STEP #5: Creating a new neural pathway
Go back to the list of emotions. When considering the two emotions you’ve chosen, it’s time to bring attention to the “positive emotion” and “affirmation” written under its definition.
On the list Notice the positive emotion under the definition. Also an affirmation.
On a fresh page, write the positive emotion & affirmation at the top just like you did for the negative emotion and definition. Use the prompts below to dig a bit to see and understand how this new emotion can become a habit/feeling/though of yours.
Use the affirmation to create positive energy and speak it to the wound. (tips below)
PROMPTS:
Do I experience this emotion in my life and if so where at?
What needs to shift in my thought process to embody this emotion?
What does this emotion require of my behavior? My physical body?
FOOD FOR THOUGHT WITH STEP #5: Think of it this way. The positive emotion is the antidote. It energetically interupts the negative energy created by the negative emotion or thought.
The negative emotion or thought created a process in your brain, a pathway. It’s kinda a normal routine. Recognizing the positive emotion is realizing there is a way out. A way to interrupt the cycle, a way to begin to create a new path home.
Now, just by knowing the positive emotion and reading the affirmation doesn’t exactly create the new path, it simply lays down the dirt but requires you to choose to travel on it. Creating a new path takes time, it takes intention, it takes capturing your thoughts, or catching yourself in a reaction, and shifting to a new energy.
Affirmation tips: write it down on note cards and stick whenever it will be in your face. SPEAK IT ALOUD. Cover yourself in the positive energy those words create. Invite it into your mind and your heart. Invite it to your table. Usually, the timeframe/age/person you were at the time of the trauma is the part of you that needs to hear the affirmation. Speak the affirmation into that wound and receive the healing balm being held out before you.