In my last blog post, I wrote about my new home study course, Align: Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel.
If you get stuck in self sabotage, resistance, or feelings of “You can’t make me!” when you try to make positive changes or set limits on painful habits, this course will help you soften the natural resistance that arises in the face of change.
A healthy relationship with power – a missing step
One of the reasons I created this course is because I saw how nearly everyone in my classes was struggling with power.
People struggled with:
- setting limits
- being in a space of ‘anything goes’ when they practiced self compassion
- getting caught in feelings of rebelliousness and resistance
- and see sawing between being really harsh or being too permissive
Ugh! Struggling with power can undermine our trust, our confidence in being the stewards of our lives.
Why power’s calling us to heal our relationship with her
It’s ironic, but it’s when we don’t feel powerful that we use tactics that hurt ourselves – things like:
- shame
- force
- manipulation
- self criticism
- bribing ourselves
- punishment
- and unrealistic demands
It’s so important that we nurture a healthy relationship with power. This means we need to spend some time with her – that we become intimate with how she feels in our bodies, how she feels in our hearts, and to the tender places that shy away from power or that overdo it.
Being comfortable with power is what creates gentleness
The more comfortable we are with power, the more comfortable we are with depending on our self leadership, and listening to our inner knowing.
Being fully in our power is how we’re able to respond to ourselves with gentleness (and not force or shame) when we feel triggered, anxious, reactive, or resistant.
It becomes a form of reparenting for those tender parts of our being.
Healing is not controlling the inner life
Over time, we may notice that we feel less afraid of our triggers and emotional reactions – the anxieties and resistance that can arise with change – for we trust in our ability to care for them.
This last point is really important.
Sometimes when we think about healing our inner rebel we think we have to try and control our inner life so that this part of ourselves is never triggered.
We equate healing with control, or complete equanimity. (This voice can especially pop up when we’ve, uhum, taken a class on the topic!)
But sometimes we get triggered. Sometimes looking at our inner lives brings feelings up to the surface!
These moments of being triggered aren’t wrong, but opportunities where we can really clearly see the tenderness that’s there:
Oh, there you are.
Feeling confident in caring for our emotional reactions
When we have a healthy relationship with power, we don’t take these triggering moments so personally or judge ourselves for having them.
We become curious about them – you could say we even open to them, as friends – so we can better understand what’s really going on.
When emotional reactions arise, they become opportunites to care for these tender parts of our being rather than seeing them as ‘failures’ or a sign that we’re doing something wrong.
It’s a connecting – not a fixing – process.
Over time, we may notice that we change how we see triggers, resistance, and the inner rebel itself. Rather than seeing these aspects of life as boulders in the road or brick walls on our path, we approach them as windows, openings, and doorways, opportunities to relate differently to the difficult.
Wanting more hands on help?
If you’re wanting help in healing your relationship with power, you may be interested in my free Inner Rebel mini course. In this course, you’ll learn how to soften your inner rebel, the part of you that says ‘no’ when you try to make positive changes in your life.