“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
If you consider for a moment that you’re a soul having a human experience, the next step is to understand that certain qualities of the soul are always present, no matter what your human experience brings your way.
Your soul is naturally resilient.
Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to challenging life experiences and adjusting to ever-changing external and internal demands.
There are four qualities of the soul that make up spiritual resilience:
Capability encompasses the skills, talents, and capacities that enable you to pursue your aspirations and contribute meaningfully to the world. It involves recognizing and honing your unique strengths while continuously striving for growth and self-development. Capability reinforces self-awareness and confidence.
Resourcefulness is the art of adapting to your challenges through gathering and utilizing the capabilities of others. It involves making the most of available internal and external resources to overcome obstacles and achieve goals. Resourcefulness fosters flexibility and adaptability.
Creativity is the innate ability to birth new ideas, perspectives, and expressions into the world. It’s not limited to artistic endeavors but is part of every aspect of life. When you tap into your creativity, you are accessing a limitless wellspring of innovation and inspiration. Nurturing your creative impulses allows you to connect with your deepest self and unleash your true potential. It is often in being creative that you feel most alive.
Wholeness involves embracing all aspects of yourself, both light and shadow⎯accepting imperfections, vulnerabilities, and complexities without judgment. Wholeness is not about striving for perfection. It’s about integrating all parts of your being into a harmonious whole. In your wholeness, you are One with all that is. Embracing your wholeness allows you to cultivate self-compassion and inner peace.
What gets in the way of your resilience? Emotional dysregulation—being flooded with the emotions that accompany grief. When you’re overwhelmed by fear, anger, and sadness—the stress reactions of grief and loss—it’s easy to get stuck in cycling through these debilitating emotions. Shutting down is another common reaction.
Processing or working with emotions is fundamentally a four-step process—feel the feeling, name it, express it, and then release it to make way for the next feeling.
Feelings are the emotional energy that our thoughts ride on. If we have a thought, we have a feeling to match it. If we keep that energy bottled up, it’s harmful. It can either come out in an exaggerated form or enter our tissue cells and become an illness or disease.
THE POWER OF WRITING
Research shows that writing down your thoughts and feelings contributes to emotional health and healing and even accelerates the process.
The tool I’m sharing with you below is a specific kind of writing designed to help you feel, name, express, and release the difficult emotions of sadness, anger, regret, guilt, fear, etc. It’s a safe space for you to process these feelings so that they don’t flare up in destructive or inappropriate ways (think road rage).
Emotional Release Writing
Doing Emotional Release Writing accomplishes two things for you. First, you’re giving yourself a safe space for healing. Also, you’re sending yourself the message, “I’m here for myself.”
This practice is a powerful container for you to access your feelings, give them a name, express them, and release them in service to freeing up the energy that is stuck there. It’s meant to be cathartic. You’re feeling the feelings now as you write rather than reporting on feelings you’ve had in the past.
Steps:
- Find a place where you can close the door and not be disturbed. You need total privacy.
- Get a pad of paper and a pen. Do the process longhand, not on the computer. The physical act of writing—the flow of thoughts from your head down through your hand and onto paper—contributes to the releasing process.
- Set your timer for 15 minutes. Write about what comes to mind, writing as fast as possible. There is nothing off-limits here. Say anything you need to say. You don’t need to write in complete sentences; keep your pen moving to match the speed of your thoughts. Write continuously until the timer beeps. Note: you may find yourself on a roll and want to continue after the timer has sounded. If so, keep going.
- As you’re writing, emotions will surface. Keep writing. If it’s anger, keep scribbling while you are fuming. If it’s sadness, keep writing through your tears.
- When the emotional energy is released, you’ll know. You may notice a change in the writing. You’ll experience a sense of release, lightness, or relief.
- At the point you’ve surrendered the hurt, anger, and upset to the page, there is often an opening through which your soul can speak words of comfort, encouragement, and faith to you. When you write from the voice of your soul, you often have the experience of telling yourself something incredibly significant that you didn’t know that you knew.
- You’ll probably be in a tender place when you stop writing. I recommend spending some quiet time with yourself to flood yourself with love—do forgiveness work, affirmation work, meditation, or any practice that is gentle and kind toward yourself.
- When you’re done with the process, take the pages and either shred them immediately or burn them. This is important. Don’t read them. Don’t leave them around for someone else to find or read.
Emotional Release Writing bypasses the logical, left-brained way of coping. It creates a sense of wholeness, of oneness with everything that is. It’s a multidimensional experience of expressing your hurt and comforting yourself at the same time.
Using this tool will help you rise from the ashes of your loss and grief and find your core of inner strength and resilience. From here, it becomes possible to create a life you love on the other side of loss.
If you have questions or want to talk to me about how to meet your grief with compassion and embrace your spiritual resilience, reach out to me. I’m here for you.
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Carrie Doubts is a Transformational Coach specializing in supporting people through life transitions. Her 9-step Program, Rebuilding Your Life After Loss, helps people to reconnect with their heart, reclaim their power, and re-align with their purpose to create their life’s next chapter.
This blog really hits home on the power of resilience and how our soul carries us through life’s ups and downs. I love the idea of emotional release writing—it’s such a simple yet powerful way to process tough emotions and clear stuck energy. Writing things out by hand feels so freeing, and the reminder to destroy the pages afterward makes it feel even more like a true release. Such a great tool for healing and moving forward! Thank you, Carrie, for sharing your wisdom.
Thank you, Janette for your comment. I am happy that you found the article and the tool helpful. Many blessings….