Loving Detachment.....

We are successful teachers, lawyers, parents, entrepreneurs, administrators, social service agents and highly functioning contributors in society in many different forms. Internally, however, we sometimes suffer from emotional challenges in our personal relationship with others and in relationship with ourselves. External appearances are easier to maintain for some of us, than doing the emotionally challenging work of internal self-awareness. Emotional sobriety, however, does require that we do some of this internal work. We do it to learn about the behaviors we engage in that we don't want to repeat. We look within to try and understand why we simply can't keep our weight under control or why our relationships seems to have the same challenges again and again with us as the common denominator. Here are some tips for attaining emotional sobriety in our own lives:

1. Breathe Deeply. Learning to be present in the moment begins with breathing deeply and allowing our own awareness to inform us of our emotional and physical states. When we breathe deeply, we are able to meet ourselves in our current emotional state and give name to our emotions.

2. Naming our emotions: sad, angry, fearful, joyful or shame, allow us some facility over the emotion. When we notice we are fearful, we can then connect the emotion to something in our lives and use wisdom and discernment before taking an action. If we do not acknowledge and name the feeling, we will often act it out without the wisdom or discernment needed to choose our action with intention.

3. It is essential in developing Emotional Sobriety that we have support circles in our lives that assist us in our own personal and spiritual work. We must have designated environments to participant within that allow us to separate our old emotional reactions and traumas from our present day living. If we have places that guide us in doing our own grief work, release our trauma from past experiences and hold us accountable for our actions, we are able to live, think and feel more freely in our present day lives. We are able then to make clearer decisions and choices about our lives and not let these old emotional reactions unconsciously run the show. Vibrant support circles that focus on healing old trauma are vital to our continuos commitment to emotional sobriety and maturation.

Blessings on your journey,

Sally