In A Room With Your Rejections

08 Apr In A Room With Your Rejections

What do you push away? Have you ever noticed or thought about that?

It’s a huge scary question I know, but we can only feel self love, wholeness and our true Self if we begin to acknowledge what we reject about ourselves. And then the big question arises, HOW do I accept and maybe love those parts, those emotions, this body?

There is so much talk about self compassion and self love…blah blah blah. Most of us feel too far away from authentically feeling that way towards some things, and it is just too big a leap from where we are now. I remember years ago feeling so frustrated about how to love feeling ill and struggling a lot…it turns out I was aiming too high and that the whole idea of getting rid of those feelings is not a reality for many of us. And eventually I realised that it’s not about getting rid of fear, anger, or loving the struggle! …

It’s not about getting rid of the hard, the uncomfortable or the stuff we don’t like because guess what, that doesn’t work. It’s about doing what is counter intuitive – and allowing those things to exist within us at the same time as the good stuff.  

When you begin to explore what you are pushing away or rejecting, some difficult and frightening thoughts, feelings or awarenesses can come up. In this process we are looking at what we keep hidden and bringing it out into the open, maybe what has resided in our subconscious for a long time or feelings we know are there but don’t know why or know how to navigate. This is a good time to maybe work with a coach or therapist, especially if there is past abuse or trauma.

If you are beginning to try to initially do this on your own, there is a little visualisation that you could use which allows the rejected parts or emotions to come more into your awareness and in a less threatening way.

Imagine a room, and make the room a safe comfortable space for you – what does that look like? Large, small, with chairs,            cushions, what colours is it? Once it looks how you like, gently invite a/multiple rejected parts or emotions in to your room and adjusting the size of the room as you need to eg. Maybe once those parts slowly come in you might want to increase the size of the room so you have more space between you and those parts or emotions. Be aware you can change this visualisation as you need – if it feels too overwhelming, only permit one rejected part to enter at a time. The idea is that you let yourself be curious about these parts and there is no pressure to interact with them yet, or know what to do with them. You are just in the same space, of your creation and you are in total control. Notice how this process feels and maybe take some notes without creating a story or narrative – that is, just notice how it feels to be in that space and slowly becoming more aware of the rejected parts or pushed away emotions.

If this process feels all too much, you get the parts to leave the room and you bring in what you need to feel safe, comfortable and ok. This means that you may need to do some more work with introducing a felt sense of safety in your body through somatic practices before entering this kind of process, or that you also may want a coach or therapist to help assist you with it.

Most importantly be kind and look after yourself, looking at what we push away or what has been rejected is a brave endeavour and can feel a little or a lot frightening.