Anger. How do we express anger so that we heal? Why is it that our anger continues to perpetuate? How do we get attached to anger?!!

Let’s lay the groundwork.

Anger is a secondary emotion. It occurs in response to any one of many fear-based emotions. Fear-based emotion could be fear, hurt, sadness, guilt, shame, attachment, abandonment, and loneliness etc. – get the picture? So, anytime we are angry it is possible to ask “What is the emotion that exists before the anger?” That is an important part of the equation of anger becoming perpetual.
Oftentimes, people can feel and are aware of their wish to hold onto their anger at another person or entity. It feels as if that anger is purposeful and warranted. There are a couple factors that are responsible for that.

First, the original anger and its cause are probably a healthy reaction to an unhealthy situation. Most people do not know how to express their anger and, therefore, do not know how to find closure to that unhealthy situation. Also, if that unhealthy situation played out repeatedly in a relationship or over one’s life, then the anger felt is built up over various experiences and is then ready to be released perpetually — over and over and over again.

Second, most people learn to use their anger not express it. Whatever the underlying emotions are that caused the anger, when you use your anger you are spewing forth the anger in an effort to make the other person feel those primary feelings. When you are expressing your anger you are expressing your primary feelings in an angry tone and, consequently, are initiating the healing of the anger. You are also beginning the effort to put closure to that which caused the anger.

Why you get attached to your anger:
As I just mentioned, most are taught to use it but not to express anger. So you want the other to hurt because the other hurt you! You may still be angry and, so, you want to hurt that person more – even if in your thoughts. Or maybe you start getting your friends to agree with your anger and maybe even further fuel it. Now, your anger is starting to get fueled rather than healed and you start to realize the other feelings that you may be feeling as a result of the original situation(s). Consequently, subconsciously or consciously, you want that other to now feel bad and to feel shame, guilt and unwanted because of everything you have felt!!!!! This causes a loop within us. Because we have to stay focused on everything the other did, in order to make him or her feel those feelings, you continue to reignite and feel the very memory of the yucky event! You inadvertently keep that event alive in order to use it. It is this loop that gets us attached to the anger.

At this point it becomes very difficult to release the anger or even feel like you want to release the anger. You have now bought into the ugliness of the pain and that ugliness is the very fuel necessary for the anger to make sure it always has food to feed upon. If this continues, you may slowly begin to use the anger to talk about the other with various others. You may find yourself using the anger with your other to feel heard about how you hurt and what you need. Some may even find that the anger fuels great humor in their conversations by using the story of the other with a sarcastic twist. Others may find this anger to be the perfect excuse to warrant abuse, or assault. Many will just lose control of their expression and find themselves lashing out physically, verbally, and or emotionally. Any or all of this and more describes the attachment to your anger!

Once you are attached to the anger, it is very difficult to release it because it now serves you. The release of your attachment to the anger is another chapter!! In the meantime, thank you so much for your time and your feedback. May you all begin to listen to your anger and what it is teaching you! If you have ANY questions please feel free to comment below, or you can write me at AskKristen@kristenbomas.com. Peace be with you!

There are all kinds of discussions about the various incidents occurring in the NFL. Even those who are not football fans are part of the talk of the aggressive and inappropriate incidents that are occurring with major athletic figures, from college to professional teams. Everyone is feeling the affects. Has the NFL allowed a culture to develop that has grown out of control? Does the money we spend on football propagate such aggression?

Most of the people with whom I speak are angry and or disgusted by the NFL and its culture. Where do you stand? I feel it is never going to change if, as fans, we need wait for the American people to stop buying NFL football tickets! We need to look at what we can do to make a change from the outside of the culture. While the NFL works on corrections inside its society. Further efforts need to be made since our college students are also being affected as they are groomed for the NFL! The level of mishaps with football players has gotten to a point far beyond that which could be attended to only by the NFL. What can we do?

There is a culture that exists in the NFL. There is aggression in that culture. There has to be. But does it have to be shown in a manner that is against family, teammates, peers, and society? NO. Everyone has anger and everyone has experienced aggression in some way. Somehow, however, the NFL seems to express the aggression in various venues: field, home, public. Why is this increasingly occurring? What could be a solution to this crisis in the NFL?

Well, first, we could urge the NFL to bring in people with innovative ideas as to how to curb the display or use of aggression so that it is expressed on the field. This, in and of itself, could have a significant impact. In graduate school, I did a practicum as a sport psychologist. I developed a way to use physical training to teach athletes how to funnel their aggression onto the field or court or ice. I continue to use that methodology with clients I see privately today. I am sure a similar methodology could be implemented with success. Add to that some research on the affects and it could be highly successful.

A second idea (please excuse the sarcasm in this one) is that we could entertain the idea that our professional football players are to be held at a significant level of integrity and performance. Along with that, the NFL would have to learn how to not be afraid of firing those players who are not a part of the new NFL culture. We know that in business, employees who we cannot train to be a part of the culture are dismissed. Furthermore, it’s always the greatest gift to the employee who gets dismissed and to the culture of the business when that person is allowed to move on.

There was a time in professional sports when our players were our heroes. I don’t want to get sidetracked, but in our culture we seem to have gotten to a place where we have no more heroes. The bad guy wins! That’s not a hero. So is it a wonder that our athletes have lost sight of being a hero? This is yet a third area that all of us can help the NFL make a change for the better.

A fourth idea is to take those retired players who are of solid integrity, values, and morality — the heroes — and create a mentoring of the younger players. Younger players meaning anyone still playing. Then, over time, the upper players really could be held to a higher level of integrity and behavior by the culture itself. The more senior players need to be bringing in the new players and grooming them to be pillars of our society.

I think if the above ideas were put into motion we would have less bullying that crosses boundaries. We would still have the NFL initiating the new players in their own way but it wouldn’t cross such significant personal and financial boundaries. It would be more targeted and healthy. An initiation process needs to be a part of the NFL. The NFL is not an easy culture. So to be a part of that culture or that society, the new players must be initiated. Initiation just doesn’t have to be crossing boundaries of personal rights, human rights, and financial responsibility.

Our players need to learn personal responsibility, social responsibility, and financial responsibility. That needs to be from the family of the NFL and fans are a part of that family. As fans and as Americans I believe it is our responsibility to open up our voice! I do not feel it is productive to complain and increase the negative focus by using judgments etc. Instead we need to be supportive of the reformation and reparation of the NFL and its culture. Let’s stand strong to support positive growth. Let’s stand strong and let them know that the more they move towards a healthier environment the more we will support our players and our NFL. They have given us decades of fantastic entertainment and we have enjoyed it, we have profited from it and we have looked forward to it. We owe it to them to help them at this time of need and abuse.

I truly look forward to hearing your comments and ideas for the healing of the NFL.

Little Bug

It’s nice to be back in touch with you all. Thank you for opening my newsletter and for being a valuable part of my life and career. It has been an unusual summer and it’s happenings are why I have not been actively writing. Yet, it is the very happenings in life that open us to the greater aspects of life. Let me share…

After 12 years of companionship, I lost my pug, Little Bug, tragically and unexpectedly. Then 6 weeks later, exactly, I lost my adopted dog, Miss Jiff. She too was a sudden loss and unexpected. Between those two deaths, I lost my Aunt, my mother’s sister. Crazy right??! I had 3 very close friends who, in those same weeks, lost their animals. Little Bug and Miss Jiff offered me many gifts in their lives with me. Consequently, in their deaths, they offered me gifts as well. Animals are here to serve us and to reflect to us what we need to heal. They are an integral part of our purpose on this plane. Death and loss are also integral to our purposes. We lose relationships from break up, divorce, and death. Each ending opens us to something new in our Self and in our life. (In order for one minute to exist the previous minute must die.)

Many, who feel loss as painful, deal with it by diverting their attentions so that they do not think about the loss or death. On the morning after Little Bug died, I was with a friend who was talking about pictures he had taken in the Everglades. Periodically, I would look out onto my patio and think of Little Bug and feel the need to cry. Then I would reconnect to what he was saying and I would feel the emotion push down while I attended externally to the story. Finally, I looked at my friend and said:
I can’t wait until you leave so I can cry! Not that I want you to go, but I can feel the need to be alone and allow this to be released. I am amazed how I look outside the window and feel the resurgence of the sadness and then when I listen to you it is pushed back down. I can only imagine that this is how the majority of people choose to “cope” with the hurt of their losses — they stay externally focused so that they do not have to “feel”!!!

For many with grief, it may appear that time helps us move through the stages and come to a comfort of some sort. But time does not necessarily heal. Our release of the pain and that which causes it does. If we stay away from the crying and the release and wait for time to pass, we do not have the opportunity to heal. That is why so often years down the road, you may find yourself crying with the very grief you felt at the time of loss.

Miss Jiff

Many people have asked me how I am doing so well with the losses I have experienced in such short succession. There are several reasons. One is because I live In a state of acceptance and because I have healed a large part of my fears of loss. I still feel the sadness but not the devastation. Consequently, the sadness heals quickly and allows for me to move into a place of enjoying the lives gifted me. Those who cross over do not want you to suffer. That is not, ultimately, why they passed in the way they did and at the time they did. Second, their deaths were in the natural order of things. Our pets and older relatives usually pass before we do. Third, I took the time to understand why. Why they passed when they did and how they did. What the gifts in their passing are and will be. Fourth, my genuine feeling they are in a great place and that their time here was complete. I am then able to let them go. They are on their journey and I am in a place where I do not want to hold them back.

There are several more magical teachings that came out of this time in my life. I will share those at another time. I have enjoyed the unfolding of life that has occurred as a result of my experiences. Yet, it feels great to be back on a “normal” schedule and to be writing again. I thank you all for joining me in my weekly ponderings.

Acknowledgements: I would like to personally thank, Dr. Nancy Keller and Dr. Ayla Akbulut for their magnificent teamwork in the treatment of my animals – those who passed and those who are still with me. I would also like to thank Dr. Kim Simons and Lap of Love for the in-home euthanasia. And finally, with all my heart, I would like to thank my family (Mom and Sister) and friends: Deborah Paiva, John Chervenak and Sue Singer, Pat Price, Michael Lynch, Mary Sol Gonzales, Melissa Knight, Milagros Castro, Michelle Worthington, and John Morales.

Healing through artistic expression can be truly beneficial to move through the blocks holding you back in life. Listen, as I speak with Mary Delaney, a local artist who has overcome obstacles in her life by reflecting on her past and expressing herself through her paintings.

The Akashic Records are a body of knowledge that records every thought, word, feeling and action of all beings that ever lived. There is no question too big or too small to gain entry into this divine, quantum field where all understanding is present.

Join me as I discuss life mastery and finding spirituality with Akashic Records reader, Kelly S. Jones.

To learn more visit KellySJones.net.

In this podcast I discuss healing through nutrition with Dr. Bill Longstreth, licensed nutritionist and chiropractor, and why balancing body, mind, and spirit is crucial.

You can learn more by reading Bill’s Blog at DrLongstreth.com.

It is not always possible to see eye to eye, but If the differences in others irritates or angers you then there is a challenge within your life that is in need of healing.

In this life we learn in a dyadic model: we know there is an outside because there is an inside; we know there an up because there is a down. Notice the word “because”. I did not write “in spite of” or “in conflict with” or “in opposition to”. Yet, in this life, often times we think that our view or belief must be “in opposition to” or “in conflict with” the other views. What if we begin to see life as a “because” rather than a “conflict” of differences? It would help us see the connection. I cannot be seen as white if you are not seen as black nor can you be seen as democrat if there is no such thing as republican. Our differences are what make us the same. It is in the multiplicity that we are one. It is in the difference of the views or beliefs that we get the entire experience. To know the outside and the inside is to complete the experience not to fight against the difference. As people, we are given a beautiful opportunity to see our Self in each other. To see the “because” that links you and your different and unique beliefs with me and my beliefs. If we see our differences as the very need we each have in order to define our Self in our unique way, then we begin to take the wrong out of life and we begin to accept that each of us is on this plane with our own journey and following our own path. No one wins with judgments of the differences or from defining differences with conflict.

May we all look toward our own healing and the consequential unity with all!

Why are you attached to seeing what isn’t good enough? Or, maybe you find your Self feeling like everyone is against you in some way, e.g., cannot be trusted, take from you, rip you off, talk behind your back? These are signs of living in a state of misery or fear.

If you are familiar with my writings you know that all emotions can be categorized as either love-based or fear-based. So, let’s simplify the addiction-to-misery philosophy. If misery/depression is a fear-based experience then it is going to need to create a fear-based environment to thrive. Make sense? Consequently, it is not just the feeling but the context within which it thrives.

So, if you know someone or are someone who is constantly sad, worried, or depressed, how might it serve them or you to be in that fear-based state of existence? Don’t say it doesn’t!! Don’t judge the answer!! Just listen to your inner voice as it starts to answer the question: How does it serve me to stay focused on the negative? The question feels like: what am I hoping to see happen as a result of this pattern or behavior or what is the wish behind the pattern or behavior?

Oftentimes, people find that they are feeling lonely and as if no one cares. They may then find that it serves them to be in misery because people try to help them or pull them out — or more! They get to the point where they feel “comfortable” in their discomfort and don’t know why. That is precisely why we ask our Self at that time, “How does it serve me?”.

We live in a fear-driven society. So, initially, people attend to the misery, pain, suffering of others. Life, however, is not experienced in the suffering but in the joy and happiness of living. Consequently, after time, people begin to pull away or create limited relationships with those who stay in their misery or pain. It is at this point of others pulling away that the pained person feels the futility of hoping for happiness and feels as if they have a right to be depressed or negative.

There is yet another level of kick from this pattern. If you or the person you know is in a state of believing others are “always” against you in some way, then you have probably developed a defensive stance that is not trusting. If someone is in a world of not trusting, how do they know trust? They don’t. Consequently, they find themselves picking the contractor, employee, or life-partner who is limited in their ability to be trusted. The outcome is again feeling the futility that there is anyone out there worth trusting.

To heal, you must be ready to feel happy. Then it is a matter of becoming aware of how pervasive the pattern is in your life. Once you have a solid awareness, you find your answers to how it serves you. Then you work on the needs that come out of that answer. Your Soulful Self or True Self is nothing but love. There is nothing to fear about love. Going toward the truth of who you are begins opening the doors to love and fulfillment. It is an expansive experience that never stops expanding. The fear that consumes you when you are living in pain, limits you and makes you feel small, insignificant. Which would you rather experience? Take the plunge. Dive into your Self and learn the experiences you truly wish to have in this life and go for it!!

Everyone is in relationship with self and others. Do you find even one of these relationships to be truly fulfilling? Do these relationships allow you to live the life you wish to share with that other? If not, let’s look at one way you can begin to create positive change in your relationships.

In this life, “we judge others in the way we are fearful of being judged”. In our closest relationships our challenges are continually illuminated. What that means is that if you are not comfortable, or aware of those challenges it can be a setup to judge your partner, friend, and/or family member as not good enough in some way. Does judgment of another help you reach the type of relationship you are looking to have? Does judgement bring you fulfillment and love? Is the judgment of the other teaching them what you need and/or who you are? Would you like to be judged rather than understood?

Judgment fragments relationships. It feeds the fear. Fear is suffering. Fear is the absence of love. If we have judgments within us, we can become aware of that which we are afraid of having judged by others.

Okay, let’s move to the relationship. If you judge the other without awareness to what your own fears are, that fear within you is being fed in the relationship. If that fear is there, no matter how the relationship grows or goes, the fear remains. Therefore, you cannot perceive change in the relationship or change in the other. The very fear that causes the judgments have been fed within you and continue to thrive. Therefore, they will continue to force judgment. Not pretty. Certainly not fulfilling. So, how do we turn this around?

The absence of fear is love. We must be willing to love our Self. It is in that love of self that we begin to heal the very fears that propagate the judgment. While doing that, there is something else you can do. Begin each day with love and compassion for the other. Shift your view of them from not good enough to a human with challenges and approach the relationship with a warmth, caring and compassion that allows you to explore the other. What is happening in the other when they do the things they do? More importantly, why do those things have an affect on you? From where do those reactions come? What did you buy into that allows those behaviors, thoughts, experiences to trigger fear-based emotion and judgment within you?

Start today, right now! Feel love and compassion for at least an aspect of your partner or a person in your life who can frustrate you. Now, think about them only with thoughts of caring, love. See them through eyes of acceptance, speak to them with words of compassion. If you do this for one hour you will see a difference. Then build upon what you learn in that hour!

Compassion breeds compassion. Judgment breeds judgment. Love breeds love. Fear breeds fear.
Love is the absence of fear and fear is the absence of love. Go forth into your relationships with the qualities that you wish to experience. Plant the seeds of compassion, fertilize them with your heart.

It’s graduation time! It is a time when many are graduating high school or college. In either situation, it is a time to say goodbye and yet a time to say hello. It is a time of letting go. Both graduations are critical life events that offer great new beginnings in our students’ lives.

For those who are graduating high school, it is an opportunity for our teens to take all you have taught and given them and embark upon this life on their own. It is a grand new beginning for all of you. As parents you can sit back and enjoy the gift of your child’s unfolding and learning. Yet, it comes with the goodbye to what was so that you can say hello to what will be. The relationships that have been will change both with friends and with family. Your child has become an adult who will forge a different type of relationship with you. They will begin exploring new aspects of life, job, career, education. So, it is a time for you to begin exploring them as they continue to change.

Some high-school students will go away and some will stay. If your child stays at home are you prepared to change the relationship to one with an adult who you are no longer parenting? How do you allow this new beginning for all of you if the living situation remains the same? It is a critical time. If the teen remains in the same relationship with you as he or she had while in high school, they may not gain the self sufficiency and confidence they need to achieve in their own lives.

For those who are graduating college, it can be a very wonderful time for parents and students and yet it is a further loss. The student is now moving into their own life outside a structured, safe environment. Some will move further away, some will stay close to the college they attended, some will return to their home town, and some will return home. Each choice is a critical choice to your student. How do we as parents stay abreast of our student’s thoughts, desires, and dreams and continue to believe in them and to help them believe in their Self. If your student chooses to move home and does not have a career position, how do you remain in an adult relationship with them and yet remain a parent who explores and guides them? What if your student has graduated but does not like their area of study? There are many changes that can occur at his time in your child’s life. There are many solutions and resources available for them at this time.

To you all, congratulations! For you are the critical component of the success in your children and their lives.