Intuitive, healer, and teacher Maryann Russell addresses the reoccurring themes she often encounters in her work an as intuitive and the ways in which she helps her clients navigate these emotional blocks. It’s through working with a specific growth mindset that we allow ourselves to become active participants within our lives, rather than victims.
One of the experiences the clients sitting across from me often face is anxiety. When we’re brought up thinking about how we should or shouldn’t behave to please those who raise us, we learn to navigate life based on the duality of “good, not bad” and “right, not wrong.”
The struggle for each of us, when we feel bad or disappointing, is for us to find a way to quickly be good and right, and in some very sad experiences, to be perfect. This feels like the child is then set up to please those who bring us up, striving endlessly for a feeling of love and therefore, safety. As opposed to the sadness of being a child who’s wrong, bad and worse, there is the feeling of routine disappointment, which can carry with it a feeling of not being loved, lovable or safe.
Therefore, the child is controlled by these dualing messages of good, not bad and right, not wrong which is a conditioned type of love. Yes, those who brought you up love you unconditionally, and yes, they also brought you up with those same messages of duality they were brought up with. They conditioned their love, without their conscious awareness, by teaching you to base your actions on pleasing for love or feeling not lovable if wrong or bad.
What happens when the child is older and feels like they’ve just done something “really wrong” and are in so much trouble? Instead of simply knowing how to navigate the mistake or accident, the child is riddled with a sudden fear of how to immediately “fix” and with it, a terror below the conscious awareness of no longer being lovable. Therefore, anxiety comes.
When our actions are based in “bad” and we’re treated with those eyes of disappointment or the messages of “go,” “sit,” or “bad,” we then begin to associate love with this message. Meaning, when I do what’s deemed “good” they are pleased with me and therefore I feel loved. When I’m told that I’m bad, their faces of anger, frustration and worse – disappointment – tell me they’re not happy with me, which to a small child feels like the opposite of love. The small child then needs to find a way to “fix” this fear of not feeling lovable because it carries with it great fear.
We do not come to this planet with the messages of duality of concerns of being good, not bad and right, not wrong. We arrive completely connected to our feelings and express every feeling easily. We pick these messages up from those who raise us. And since they didn’t bother to release their fears of duality that their own parents burdened them with, their messages of fears are passed on to us as well. We are left with this child messaging system which is then activated every time fear arrises, to either run away, ignore, or distract.
How about if we look at anxiety as our greatest teacher? Simply because it comes with one lesson and one lesson only, the lesson is to stop. All anxiety ever does is stop us. When we do stop, the one feeling we are now available to experience is fear. Fear can trigger a number of emotions.
What if fear is actually our greatest messenger? Fear comes with this one great message of fight or flight. It triggers our fight or flight button which ultimately keeps us safe if we pay attention to it. However, since no one wants to pay attention to fear, instead we invest in trying to ignore it. Therefore, anxiety comes to stop us and get us to pay attention to the fear, which ultimately will keep us safe.
Therefore, the next time anxiety comes knocking at your door, stop and tell anxiety you don’t need this lesson any longer, you’ve decided to stop all on you own and to feel the fear. Feeling brings meaning, courage, strength.
If you have additional questions relating to this topic, feel free to reach out to Maryann Russell here in the comments.
Maryann’s journey from her many years of emergency nursing to alternative healing has included Massage Therapy and Reflexology education at the Polarity Realization Center in Portland, Maine and advanced training in CranioSacral Therapy at the Upledger Institute of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. She is also a Reiki Master/Teacher and enjoyed teaching the Doctors, Nurses and Volunteers of Southern Maine Hospice Center Reiki Level l. Her greatest gifts as an Intuitive were re-awakened through her studies of Intuition Therapy and Soul Readings with renowned healer and author, Rosalie Deer Heart. Rosalie’s support and nurturance brought Maryann to an experience of awakening peacefully to her gifts, which she now enjoys sharing worldwide in her very busy practice. Visit her website for additional information.
