Dealing With Difficult Emotions With Self-Compassion

Fear is one of our most primal instincts, and can become a source of our own power and safety, or a force of suppression. In this first lesson, you will explore and understand more deeply how fear can be harnessed to inform you and to empower yourself. You will hear some talk on the nature of fear, it's physiological roots and purpose, and also learn some tools to be able to sit with your fear and recognised the learning that it brings.

Sadness is an emotion that invites pause. We feel sad when there are changes, endings, maybe disappointments. It is a time to stop the rush of life, to release the pent up feelings of the past and the now, to make space for the next phase of life. When we honour sadness, we can liberate our state and allow ourselves to prepare for moving on. An interactive talk and shared practice.

Shame is a challenging emotion to navigate, often instilled in our deep structure from times gone past. In this session, you will explore what shame means and identify ways to face it and let it go. Shame invites a sense of responsibility, yet too often feeling ashamed is a result of someone else's abuse of responsibility. You will gain through this interactive talk an awareness of some tools to deal with shame, and some gentle suggestions to support yourself to let shame go.

Anger is one of the primal emotions that carries great energy. It is also one which receives a lot of attention socially. Anger, appropriately expressed, is one of the most pivotal emotions in change and transformation. In this session, you will find tools to support you to allow yourself to feel anger, and to express it in ways which match your intention and your values. Interactive talk with guided practice.

In this session, we take a trip around the principles and methods of what makes us happy, and you will learn tools to take with you to increase your sense of purposeful happiness. Joy is a many splendoured state, and is likely to be present in glimpses on an every day basis, as well as attached to specific events. You will find ways to increase your joy and your happiness level by making certain shifts in practices.

Oftentimes, we can find ourselves feeling an unwanted emotion about what we feel, a type of double bind. In this closing session, you will hear a brief summary of the areas we have covered followed by an active guided mindful practice, a tool which you can review over and over and which helps you to move to full self acceptance of your freedom to express.