Krissy Hodges 
Healing – Transformation – Empowerment 

Emotions ~ Crystals and Forgiveness

I have decided to write a series of blogs regarding crystals and emotions. From the end of July through to mid September, we are entering a phase of high emotional energy, particularly regarding relationships ~ both with others and our relationship with ourselves. This may trigger unresolved emotional issues from the past, or could present us with new challenges in the present.

Many emotions are extremely hard to process: guilt, shame, forgiveness, acceptance, anger, anxiety, stress, depression and love are just a few.  At the bottom of any page on the website, there is a Blog Category List and this series of blogs will be filed under the heading ‘Emotions’ for easy access in the future. If we aren’t dealing with emotional issues ourselves, we often know someone who is and could benefit from looking at things from a different perspective.

The wonderful medical intuitive, Caroline Myss, coined the phrase ‘Our biography becomes our biology’ and this is so true.

If we suppress or ignore our powerful emotions for longer than a short period of time, this emotional energy has to go somewhere ~ it must be processed, accepted and released. Negative emotional energy that is ignored will usually reside in our body, eventually manifesting in disease or illness. This is not the case for all illnesses, but it is interesting to look at our core issues and see if we can heal from the inside out, whilst treating any external symptoms with conventional medicine. That is the holistic approach ~ to treat the ‘whole’ person inside and out. 

We will know if we have suppressed emotion because our intuition will keep telling us. Memories will surface and we’ll bat them away. Emotions will come up during interactions with others that we either don’t understand or don’t want to feel. Or we’ll blow like a pressure cooker because the act of keeping emotion suppressed weighs heavy on our nervous and energy system, making us tired and highly sensitive. Just like a pressure cooker, we’ll bubble over at inappropriate times and then sit and wonder where on earth it came from.

It takes a lot of energy to keep the lid on that pressure cooker. Often when we become ill, it is our system’s final way of indicating to us that something needs to be addressed ~ something that we have been ignoring for some time. Think of suppressed emotion like an infected wound ~ until we clean out the wound and heal it, it’s going to cause us problems. If left for a long period of time, it could eventually poison our whole system. However, once healed, we may have a little scar to remind us of the experience, but it no longer affects us in a negative way.

But how? How do we deal with emotions that may have been suppressed since childhood or that have come about due to traumatic experiences we’d rather not think about? It could even be a long term situation where we have had to keep swallowing down anger or guilt, over and over again, in order to cope. We may not register it that much at the time because that is just how life is for us. We are all energy however…..and it stays in our system until we process, accept and release it.

Forgiveness is a difficult one. If we have been hurt, damaged, traumatised, abused, betrayed or let down, it triggers the fight or flight response that is present in every human being. We either become angry & lash out, or we become fearful and shrink away. We may be able to physically remove ourselves from a situation, but we’re not able to remove our own mind when a memory occurs. If we haven’t processed the experience at the time, a memory will bring the suppressed emotion to the surface again, meaning anger or the fear is still present.

forgive-yourself-small

So the core emotions we’re dealing with for Forgiveness are anger and fear. The standard model for Forgiveness from a psychological and emotional point of view is called REACH. The following protocol has been adapted from the works of E. L Worthington (2003):

What Steps Do I Take To Forgive?

R = Recall the Hurt

  • use a pen and paper, a computer document or journal entry
  • work small to big (choose a situation you can manage to forgive successfully)
  • choose a specific event
  • prepare to re-experience negative emotions like hurt, sadness or anger
  • precisely describe your experience and your feelings (e.g. “I was upset” is too vague)
  • include the offender in your description (e.g. their motivations, actions, feelings, statements)
  • recall with your heart, using feelings so that forgiveness is not just in the mind

E = Empathy (this can be hard but push through!) If you’d like to read my informative blogs on Empathy, please Click Here

  • Empathy is vital to forgiveness – it allows you to think and feel differently about the person
  • Empathy = seeing things from another’s point of view (3 emotional levels)
    • Level 1 – understand – what were the thoughts and emotions of the offender?
    • Level 2 – emotionally connect – feel and think with the offender
    • Level 3 – compassionately respond – develop compassion for the person who hurt you
  • Think of empathy as:  “I will not forget, but I will remember differently.”
  • Good questions for the E step might be:
    • I wonder why they hurt me?
    • Could they be responding to fear, stress or pain in their own life?   Such as…
    • Maybe someone has hurt them in a similar way in the past?
  • One way to practice empathy is to write a letter as if you were the person that hurt you.  Talk from their perspective.

A = Altruistic (others-focused) Gift

Remember that forgiveness is a gift for both you and the person that hurt you.  Empathy gets you ready for this giving this gift.

  • Consider a time when you were guilty of offending or hurting someone and they gave you the gift of forgiveness.  Did you experience humility or gratitude?  Consider a time when forgiveness was given begrudgingly or manipulatively? How did it make you feel?
  • Not ready or don’t want to forgive:  What is blocking you? (e.g. I want an apology from them first.)
  • Give The Gift of Forgiveness. You can do this verbally with the offender or privately with the support of others.
  • If you are not ready, consider retracing steps of empathy with compassion and love.
  • Consider other needs: support from others? More time?  More information?
  • Still not ready…choose a smaller event that you can work through successfully and keep this event in mind as a “forgiveness goal”.

C = Commit To Publicly Forgive

  • Sharing your decision to forgive helps to cement your forgiveness process.  This also helps to prevent a barrier when old feelings bubble to the surface.
  • Anticipate & accept that wounds already forgiven will still hurt sometimes
  • You can also “share” with yourself – a journal entry, a written letter to your offender, in a public chat forum.
  • Symbolize your forgiveness:  a certificate of forgiveness, a rock or crystal placed in the garden, a planted seed that grows into a beautiful plant or any small token that has a personal meaning for you and represents your forgiveness progress.  Since forgiveness is a process, you can return to these acts of commitment when old feelings of hurt or anger resurface.
  • You might want to review your first steps in this whole process as reminders of how you have already addressed this situation and your feelings.
  • When you have shared with someone else about your forgiveness, you can return to this person to talk about what you are experiencing.
  • Good reminders:  Life is full of encounters with people who will hurt or wound us, stressful or painful events and losses. Practicing forgiveness helps develop a lifestyle of empathy and openness.

H = Hold Onto Forgiveness

  • Without the weight of negative feelings like resentment, bitterness, fear and anger – flashbacks and memories pack less of a punch.
  • Ways to hold onto forgiveness:
    1. Pain remembering an event is not the same as unforgiveness.   Acknowledge your own progress.
    2. Work through negative emotions – don’t suppress them.  Do not start a cycle of negative feelings brewing or if you catch yourself doing this, STOP and focus your mind on something else.
    3. Contact someone you shared your forgiveness with.  Get the support you need to continue making progress with forgiveness.
    4. Remind yourself that you have forgiven.  Be specific.  Use your notes to refer to how you were empathetic and acknowledged why you were hurt and any role you played in the event.
    5. Go back to your symbols – the letter, the certificate, the rock, the plant. Recall what the symbol represents.
    6. Read journal entries or personal notes you made to remind yourself of the healing work you have done during this process.

forgiveness

Throughout the above protocol, which is successful for the majority, the crystals that can be used should address the base emotion of either Anger or Fear. These crystals should be carried on you, worked with regularly or worn throughout the process of Forgiveness. Some can be placed around the home or in the quiet space where you mainly sit when working through issues or to write in a journal. Have a look at the below suggestions and see which crystals you are drawn to. Click on the crystal name to read blogs & see pictures. You may be drawn to just one or several of them and most will work together quite well. Your own intuition will tell you if a combination doesn’t feel right ~ you’ll just know.

Crystals For Anger

If you’d like to read my informative blog on Anger & how to identify where it’s coming from, please Click Here

  • Howlite ~for angry outbursts that are hard to control
  • Black Tourmaline ~ for anger towards the self
  • Carnelian ~ for anger towards a family member
  • Sugilite ~ for anger towards a current or ex-partner
  • Dioptase ~ for anger stemming from childhood trauma/issues
  • Malachite ~ for releasing anger from the physical body
  • Blue Kyanite ~ for releasing anger held or stuck in our energy system
  • Selenite ~ to place around the home to cleanse space where anger has been released (combine with Black Tourmaline)

Crystals For Fear

  • Black Tourmaline ~ for protection from negative energy
  • Blue Lace Agate ~ for fear, nerves & anxiety when expressing ourselves
  • Fluorite ~ for calming energy when releasing fear of any kind
  • Peridot ~ for releasing irrational fear (irrational fear is worrying over things we can do nothing about & have no control over)
  • Lepidolite or Lithium Quartz ~ for fearful thoughts that go round and round in our mind
  • Larimar ~ for self love, easing of fear and support ourselves during this process

A crystal I would use throughout ANY process whereby we are challenging ourselves to do uncomfortable things is Natural Citrine. This crystal boosts and supports our solar plexus during times of change, strengthening our trust in ourselves, our trust in the bigger picture and also our taking responsibility for our own happiness. It is still one of my absolute favourite crystals as it works so well on supporting us during any experience we may have in life.

I hope you’ve found the above article useful and please do share if you think it may help others. Thank you and have a wonderful day 🙂

With brightest of blessings

Krissy XXX

6 thoughts on “Emotions ~ Crystals and Forgiveness”

  1. Anne Morris

    Hi Kristy, Thank you for this blog. Very interesting. I think we all, in the main, suppress lots of emotion and anger to retain a calm and unflustered countenance and also to not be judged and appear confrontational. Also, we want to be “liked” and giving out a negative emotion which generally, won’t be well received, keeps our feelings “under wraps.”

  2. Birthstones

    Hello. Thank you for this article. I am interested in crystals and crystal healing and found some interesting information here, that are quite new to me.
    I will recommend your website to my FB friends and Twitter followers if ou don’t mind.

    Wish you all the best!

    1. What a lovely message to receive, thank you very much! Feel free to share far and wide and thank you for such positive feedback. Have a wonderful day 🙂

  3. Pingback: Emotions ~ Crystals and Self-Confidence

  4. Pingback: March Energy Forecast 2016 ~ Transformational Times!

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