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Being Real is about reconnecting with the true essence of your being, restoring your balance and managing patterns and behaviors that you needed to survive in early to mid childhood that no longer serve you. Being real versus unreal is not black or white. There are mixtures and combinations that surface in the most subtle way. 

Chronic Pain is highly correlated with trauma and dissociative states. Reconnecting with yourself by being authentic and truthful about your feelings, needs and fears can help release and shift unhelpful patterns in your life that keep us stuck in physical and emotional pain.

Below is a useful guide to get started

A. Yes indicates being connected to your authentic and real self.

  1. Am I being clear about what I want and not manipulating?
  2. Do I know what I am feeling?
  3. Am I expressing what I am feeling?
  4. Do I have any way of knowing who I am right now?
  5. Do I feel similar to times when I knew I was being real, honest and authentic?
  6. If I am afraid, do I know it?
  7. Am I in the present?
  8. Are my negative feelings coming in waves?
  9. Do I have positive feelings towards myself and others?
  10. Do I feel in control of myself versus trying to control others?
  11. Am I aware of how my unevolved (wounded) aspects are involved?
  12. Am I free of rigid positions and attitudes? Am I flexible and open?
  13. Are my intentions aligned with or congruent with my motivation?

B. Yes indicates being disconnected from your authentic and real self

  1. Am I inappropriately in the future or past?
  2. Am I avoiding, or trying to avoid fear?
  3. Am I avoiding, or trying to avoid, from myself, others, unpleasant things about myself?
  4. Am I withholding in order to control or manipulate?
  5. Am I in reaction?
  6. Am I being greedy, self deprecating, self destructive, arrogant, impatient, stubborn, or self-sacrificing?
  7. Am I chastising, criticizing or blaming myself or others?
  8. Is my sensory awareness, seeing, hearing, or feeling diminished?
  9. Am I trying to live up to some unrealistic ideals?
  10. Am I functioning in old and familiar patterns?
  11. Is there any part of me that is working of “shoulds”?
  12. Do I feel unreal, ungrounded and/or disconnected?
  13. Am I going too fast? Too slow?
  14. Is the fear getting worse, and perhaps turning into terror?
  15. Do my feelings continue even after expressing them?

Healing the Emotional Body

What helped us during acute or developmental trauma is often what hurts us later in life. It keeps us from knowing and connecting with ourselves and others. Healing the emotional body is about releasing all denial, even if that means beginning with releasing the denial of the denial, and feeling completely and fully every repressed feeling that was not able to run to completion at the time it was being experienced. Uncovering the fear aligned with the pain is a necessary part. Underlying the fear and pain are beliefs, conclusions, images, assumptions, judgements, etc. that need to be released in order for complete healing to take place and reclaiming your energy and full potential.

The following guidelines are not a rigid procedure but a generalized format that you can modify in any way necessary in order to make it work for you.

  • Do this work either alone, with a therapist, or with a friend in a safe space.
  • When stirring up repressed emotions and fears for healing, only with them for short periods of time to avoid overstressing your system. It can be anywhere from 2-15 minutes.

Helpful Hints

The following guidelines are not a rigid procedure but a generalized format that you can modify in any way necessary in order to make it work for you.

  • Use your breathing when you find yourself stuck in your thinking
    No emotion will be too much to feel even though it may feel that way. If you remain in your feeling body you will be able to handle it.
  • However, if your mind buys into the fear or pain, distract as soon as possible to help regulate yourself.
  • Accept your feelings as real,but not as truth.They were the truth during your woundedness, but have little to do with your present day.
  • Under all negativity there is fear. Go for the fear as soon as possible.
  • Every active emotional session needs to be followed by passive, quiet, soothing session with complete detachment, if possible from the emotional condition. This will feel natural if you were able to ride the emotional wave to it’s completion.
  • If you had to distract out of it, this quiet time will be more difficult to settle into. In this case, select a more active state of calming and relaxing like walking, dancing, yoga etc. If this does not work and your mind still seems negatively engaged in the emotional process, do anything that it takes to shift your attention off your mind like a movie, calling a friend, cleaning, going out, warm bath etc.

The Procedure

  1. Set your intentions to feel fully and completely any and all feelings needing to be expressed, released and healed.
  2. If you are aware of the feeling go to 6.
  3. If not, begin by getting in your body, whatever that takes.
  4. If you now feel the feeling go to
  5. If not, imagine a situation that would generate the suspected emotion, remember a past situation when you had that feeling, play act and get dramatic, write about it, draw, or sit quietly and ask that the feeling be brought to you. Do whatever it takes, whatever works. Be persistent but patient with yourself. If after a little while you are unable to access any feelings, appreciate your effort and go on with your day. Try again another time.
  6. Express the feeling out loud verbalizing any and all appropriate dialogue without censoring your language. Keep your breathing going.
  7. Let your body act in whatever way it wants to in order to express the feeling. Again keep your breathing going.
  8. Don’t believe what the feeling is telling you about yourself, your life, or life in general Stay out of your mind, and in the feeling and your body. This is the most difficult part.
  9. Accept the feeling, embrace it, allow it to be. Don’t judge it, react to it, or split off from it.
  10. Don’t mentally comment about it or create images of it. Stay fully immersed in the feeling and allow yourself to expand. Let go of control. Bring your focus to your breathing if you get stuck in your head.
  11. You don’t need to understand it. Clarity comes later.
  12. Surrender to the feeling if you can for as long as you can. Totally become the feeling.
  13. Experience it as if it is all there is. Block all escape routes and momentarily live in the painful reality as if it were forever. Again, coming back to your breath will pull you out of your mind.
  14. Check to feel if this particular feeling is the deepest one or even the correct one. If not, attempt to go deeper and feel the truer one.
  15. Feel what you are believing.
  16. If the intensity is too much, distract yourself to bring yourself out of it.
  17. If you get caught by your mind believing and reacting to it, again distract yourself in any way possible.
  18. After the wave recedes, or you distract yourself, then think about it – the whys and Healing the Emotional Body wherefores; learn.
  19. Release, if you can, the underlying belief involved with the emotion. If not, accept that belief as temporary and live with it.
  20. Think about what the truth is. If you know the truth, remind yourself of that, or accept whatever source you need to find the truth intellectually. This step comes only after the emotional release. At no time do you use what your mind knows to override your feelings.
  21. After working the emotion as much as you can without exhausting yourself, or terrifying yourself unnecessarily, begin some meditational practice setting aside the entire matter. Healing music, inspirational music, spiritual music, chanting, meditating, deep relaxation, entrainment tapes, or guided meditations would work here.