Posted on by thornstocrowns

Knotted: The emotional process of un-knotting painful ties

Hello Crowned Royals, Happy New Year to you all! I hope each and everyone of you are doing your best work to attain your crowns. If you asked me what your number 1 resolution should be, I would say attain your crowns and the rest will fall into place.

I was hoping to have written this blog earlier in the year because in the beginning of the year, most people are open to change so hope I am not too late. I want us to talk about knots, not the knots you see on the features image, but the painful knotted ties within us. We continue to do life while knotted with painful ties, which we have a tough time admitting to the emotional roller coaster they put on us. I hope this blog will help you realize that it is possible to un-knot those ties, and also be well aware of the emotional process that comes with un-knotting.

If you have ever been knotted in painful ties then you know that it feels impossible to get out of it, especially if the people or situation is something that changed your life drastically. Breaking of ties while knotted can take you from feeling frustrated, to sad, to angry, to restless, but at least if you have already began the process of un-knotting, you are off to a good start. I liken the emotional process of un-knotting to my constant battle with my knotted necklaces in my jewelry box. I think the ladies can agree with me, when jewelry gets knotted it also feels impossible to pull apart. I realized from the many un-knotting I had to do with my necklaces that if my patience was short, I got angry and frustrated, which lead me to quitting pretty quickly in the process. Even though that was the jewelry piece I wanted to compliment my outfit, I quit on separating it from the other because of the process it took. why was I quick to quit? Well, I think the patience and my emotions got the best of me and did not allow me to finish what I started, which would have eventually benefited me. I know this a trivial example compared to un-knotting actual painful ties in our lives, but isn’t that what we do? We being to un-knot hurriedly things that need time and patience, and because it did not happen quickly we then begin to go through the roller coaster of emotions. Once we allow for these emotions to get the best of us, we are unable to see the many knots we missed and continue to live knotted. Why do we then settle for a knotted life?

Living a knotted life

If you have ever known a life lived knotted then you will know that it is not one you can say you are living your best life. But why are so many knotted people claiming to live their best lives? Hmm, I can give you several reasons, but the first one that jumps out of my mind is denial. We as human tend to think by denying painful ties that they magically disappear, unfortunately, those things only happen in fairy tales. What we go through and experience in our life’s is real and can not be ignored. The knotted life is a life lived in constant denial of one’s reality. What denial does is that it takes away from the person’s ability to recognize that there are painful ties that they need to knot out if they want to live a better life. I know of the knotted life because I once lived it and let me tell you, it is no way to live. It is quite sad to know that many of us continue to live the knotted life and have normalized it because not many of have taken up the task to actually got through the process of un-knotting. But if you are one that is tired of the knotted life like I was, then I think it is time to go through the process head first and not to quit when it gets hard. Because it will get hard at some point, but quitting shouldn’t be you option.

The emotional process of un-knotting painful ties

Now that we know that the knotted life is not the way to live and have decided to un-knot it all, what can we expect? Well, we expect ourselves to go through one tedious and intense emotional process that in the end will give us a life lived with no denial. If you won’t come ready for such an emotional process, then you will be quitting even before it begins. Painful ties are not just little issues that you had with a co-worker that can be cleared over a cup of coffee. Painful ties are things that come with intense emotion and pain and for some those ties changed their lives and how they live. It may be the painful ties with a memory of losing a loved one, ties with failed relationships (intimate, family and friends), and ties with guilt from a situation that was not even your fault that changed it all.

The process to un-knotting all this will take you up and down with your emotions, but as you go through it you are not to allow your emotions to get the best of you. Emotions in the process are inevitable because what tied you up in the first place was associated to an emotion. Once you allow emotions such as anger, frustration, shame etc to get the best of you through the initial process of un-knotting, the process will be much harder, but that is no reason to quit. Are you allowed to feel these emotions as you un-knot? Absolutely! But do you dwell on them? No. You step by step begins to un-knot by letting go of the emotion associated to the painful ties. For example, you were angry that your father abandoned you at a young age. In this process you un-knot by letting go of the tie associated with the anger you felt as a child when your father left. The emotional process will mostly ask for you to look back to past events, remember certain people you chose to forget, feel the pain again and almost re-live what you have been in denial of, but it is all necessary and all part of it. Because this is a tedious and intense emotional process, you can’t do this alone. who will help you through this process?

Where is God in this Process?

God is glad that you have decided to go through the process of un-knotting the painful ties in your life. If anything, God is glad you have come to the realization that living a knotted life is not as fulfilling. God has been in the process even before your realization. He is one that is always waiting on us to take that first step and commit to the process. Once committed God is right next to you even through the emotions that are associated with the painful tie. He will send you help too, people that will help you through this process. You are not alone! God knows exactly how the painful ties make or made you feel. He knows the emotional toll it took on you to be tied up in such pain. Therefore, he knows how to help you un-knot through each step of the process. How do you get help? just like any tied up wounded solider, you cry out for help and seek the help of the Lord through your prayer to him. Like I said before, he has been in the process even before your realization. Call on him! Here is some scripture to remind you that you are not alone in this process God says:

…Never will I leave; never will I forsake you

Hebrews 13:5

That is God’s promises for you and me, that even through this process he is with us. The process is indeed tedious and intense, but knowing that you don’t have to do it alone is much reason for you to take on the challenge. You can not afford to quit and miss out on a life that is filled with the peace and presence of God. A life lived un-knotted! Now that is living your best life! But it does come with a process that you must be willing to take all the way. I know you can do it! It is time for you to take you rightful place. It is time for you to trade thorns for crowns!!

Much Love,

Xholiwe

Posted on by thornstocrowns · 2 Comments

The Dangers of Hidden Emotions

Hello crowned Royals, I hope you are all doing well despite all that is going on in your personal life and the world right now. I hope you continue to take your position and stand firm knowing that God is with you through it all. For the past couple of weeks, I have been thinking of the complexity of our emotions as humans and how easily they can damage us when kept hidden from others and ourselves. You know what I mean right? Think of the times you had to hide your sadness from others because you feared being judged or maybe the time you masked your bitterness with a smile so life could feel normal for just a day. As humans, we are often dealing with our emotions on a daily basis and how we experience them can be a challenge for most of us. The challenge is not with desirable emotions such as happiness, but it is with the least desirable emotions such as sadness, anger, jealousy, bitterness, disgust, shame, guilt, fear. While it is quite easy to display happiness, joy, and laughter, the other undesirable emotions are often kept hidden. Why do we do that? Well, there are several reasons, but two main reasons are; we hope no one sees them expressed in us and two, we don’t want to see us express these undesirable emotions. The posed danger is hidden emotions from yourself, which we do consciously and unconsciously. So, what are the dangers that come from your hidden emotions?

At the very beginning: Where did it all start?

I would like to think every habit we adapt to had to start from somewhere. When is the time you began to hide your least desirable emotions from others and yourself? Let us think back to when were children for a second, we were expressive of almost all our emotions both good and bad. We displayed our face of disgust when our parents fed us vegetables, we threw huge tantrums to convey our anger when our parents didn’t give us what we wanted and cried tears of sadness when our mother left without us. So, when did it become hard to convey these emotions? Is it when your parents said you are growing up and you needed to cry less or compose yourself more? Or is it when your sad tears seemed to irritate your peers and you began to understand the complexity of other’s emotions towards yours? It had to start somewhere and where is started can be anywhere that those least desirable emotions began to be hidden. A perfect example I could think of was from the movie Frozen. There is a scene at the beginning of the movie between Elisa and her parents that we may or may not relate to. Elisa was told by her parents to conceal and not feel (in other words, not be expressive) and that poor girl was haunted with these hidden emotions for way too long. We are in some shape or form have just like Elisa concealed and not felt for way too long. So again the question is, where did it start?

Triggers

I would like to believe we all have emotional triggers. If you have lived quite a bit in this world, there are several triggers that can stir up different emotions. It can be something that someone says that takes you back to that painful experience or something that you watch that is relatable to your situation. It can happen in many different ways, but when something triggers our undesirable emotions, we try to conceal and hide. But how long can you do that before you have an outburst and all the hidden emotions unravel at one time? Sometimes it just takes one trigger to have you lost it because you have bottled up so much for way too long. I get it, been there, and done that and it only took one emotional trigger to bring to the surface all that was hidden for way too long. Was it necessary? absolutely! All that unexpressed anger, sadness, panic, bitterness, and fear had to get out if I want to be liberated from it all. I would imagine that you would want the same thing for yourself too. Nothing is more liberating than being honest with how you feel or felt from the situations you experienced.

7 dangers of Hidden emotions

What we do to ourselves when we hide our less desirable emotions can harm us in the long run. We are created to feel, and God knew exactly what he was doing when he put these emotions in us. Suppressing them only can lead to bigger mental issues such as depression, major anger issues, extreme fear and anxiety just to mention a few. Listed below are 7 of the dangers you are likely to face your hidden emotions;

  1. Immaturity: You inability to fully master your emotions and unable to identify a healthy way to express them. If you are constantly hiding them, how do you mature your expression of them?
  2. Instability: The danger of unstable decisions can lead to long term consequences that could have been avoided.
  3. Self-Sabotage: Ruining almost every good thing in the fear that you will have to expose things about yourself to others.
  4. Regret: Constantly replaying past situations that make you wish you did something different.
  5. Stagnation: Being stuck in the past, constantly unable to move forward because there are still some unresolved issues within you that you have kept hidden.
  6. Isolation: Choosing to be alone and missing out on healthy human relationships.
  7. Resentment: You resent others for things you did not communicate. You also resent yourself, which I think is more tragic.

If you have been noticing some of these dangers in your life, then it means it may be about that time that you feel what you have avoided feeling for way too long. It may be time to dig out all the hidden emotions you hide behind a smile. The good thing is that if you are not open yet to express this to others or lack healthy support, God is always ready to listen and allow you to express those emotions. Here is what he has to say to you;

10 So then, banish anxiety from your heart

    and cast off the troubles of your body,

    for youth and vigor are meaningless.

Ecclesiastes 11 v 10

Banish all anxiety that you have built up from all the hidden emotions. Cast off the troubles and go boldly before the Lord. Speak to God about it in prayer. This is a good place to start better communicating your emotions. Emotions are not a bad thing! Even the bible says get angry, but don’t sleep anger. The bible also talks about different times in the book of Ecclesiastes and emotions are mentioned too. We are human, we are far from perfect. God knew perfectly well what he was doing when giving us these emotions. Being the compassionate God that he is, he is able to turn those least desirable emotions we consider bad to good. He does however require our honesty and openness to him. I pray you see the beauty in opening up from those hidden emotions and finding liberty in finally being expressive in a healthy way. It is time for us to take our rightful place! It is time for us to trade thorns for crowns.

Much Love,

Xholiwe

Posted on by thornstocrowns

When purpose is birthed from pain

Take the blindfold off and see that there is more to your life than the pain that has limited you for way too long.
-Xholiwe

Hello crowned Royals! Hope all of you are doing great. Shame on me for being away for too long. I am back though and hopefully we can continue on our journey together as we trade our thorns for crowns. I have so many thoughts about pain and how it usually takes away from us being able to see beyond it. I am often fascinated by how pain has a way of connecting us all in very different ways. Pain almost like a universal language knows no boundaries, it doesn’t matter what religion you belong to, what race you are or your economic status, we all have felt pain. Pain can be felt from the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, a major heartbreak, divorce, molestation, rape, emotional abuse, injustice and the list goes on. Often times if ever faced with any of these painful situations, it is almost hard to see the purpose from the pain. We ask ourselves a ton of questions before coming to the conclusion that there is nothing good that can come out of all the pain. I totally get it and that is why I want us to talk about it. So the question is how can purpose be birthed from pain? Purpose is birthed from pain when we understand the reason for the pain and why it had to be us and not someone to experience it. Understanding comes from the process, which we will also talk about in this blog. So let’s keep reading

Rawness of pain and how to handle it

Pain expressed in its rawness leave much to be desired for many of us. It is a messy emotion that we often times want to silence and cover up. Pain is a complex emotion that can not be handled with simplicity. Have you every seen a serious injury only be covered up by a band-aid? Am guessing not, but that is how most of us handle our pain. We cover big and painful wounds with band-aid only to continue to feel the pain and miss out on proper healing. If we are not intentional about healing from our pain, we can get buried and blinded by the rubble from all the pain we experience. Very few of us decide to dig ourselves out of the rubble because we lose hope. We experience despair and go under to only acquaint ourselves to similar people and things in the same exact situation. I remember handling my pain wrongly, like a badge of honor I paraded myself in my pain and thought this would be my life moving forward. At least so I thought. I asked the question that most of you have probably asked yourselves too “what good can come from this pain?” To my surprise, a lot of good can come from seeing beyond the pain. The experience of pain when handled in its rawness allows for you to feel and master ways to change those feelings into purpose. You are not handling pain well if you suppress the tears, lie to yourself, avoid conversations that remind you of the pain and turn away people that can help pull you out of the rubble of your pain and in the process birth your purpose. All these examples point to honesty, be honest about you pain and that is one easier way to handle pain. So with that think about what is it that you are currently doing that is not helping you handle your pain correctly. And then think of what can you do differently to handle it better.

The process before the purpose

While we all want to live our purposeful life, a lot of us neglect the process. Purpose from pain could be the easiest to find, yet most of us have a tough time coming to terms with the the pain hence the process feels like torture. Unfortunately, life is not like that blu-ray disc that you can fast forward and skip the process and land on purpose. The process is necessary even for purpose that is not birthed from pain. Think about it, a doctor goes through the process of learning tough medical procedures just so that his/her purpose can be birthed. Another example in relation to pain is a guy that experienced pain from substance abuse, then went through the process and finally got better and later opened a rehab center for people currently dealing with substance abuse. See anything similar in these two examples? Their purpose is to help others. So here is how we can process, what from your pain triggers you to want to help others who have experienced similar pain? Dig out from the rubble of your pain and you will be surprised to see how many valuable things that will come from it. Some of these valuable things will even help you know you better. You will learn what you can and can not handle as you allow yourself to process. The process can be ugly and dirty, but you must get dirty for your purpose to be birthed from it. The process can even cause more pain and sorrow, but your job is not to quit, you are to dig deep and understand the reason for the pain. The understanding of the reason surely helps birth purpose. While you go through the process be patient and allow for God to help you through it. When pain hit you, God knew you could process and find purpose in it. If you don’t believe me then here is some scripture;

He [God] will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 1 v 8

Another version of this verse says that God will sustain you. Will you still experience pain? Absolutely! But it is surely good to know that God will sustain you! He will carry you through until all the pain makes sense to you and others. Take this from someone who birthed their purpose from pain that God will sustain you. God has held me firm and kept me from falling when I let the pain in my life almost bury me and blind me to see beyond it all. Here are a few things that I did to help birth my purpose;

How to birth purpose from pain

  1. Acceptance – accept your pain and be raw about it. Feel all the emotions and don’t deny those painful situations
  2. Forgive – You need to forgive yourself and others that caused the pain.
  3. Reflect – This can be very hard to do, but you will have to re-visit the very moment that caused you pain. Write it down! How did you feel in that moment, where were you went it happened? who were you with? etc
  4. Ask questions – Yes, those though questions you try to avoid, ask them. Have talk with yourself or a trusted person in your life
  5. Learn valuable lessons – What can you learn from the pain about yourself? this can be both positive and negative.
  6. Connect with supportive people – You can’t process this alone. There are people who have experienced similar pain that you can learn from. These people processed it and found purpose. So learn from them!

Realize that there are several way to get to birth purpose from pain, but these are just a few that helped me birth my own. My last words are keep going! You can’t quit now when you are so close to birthing your purpose. Learn the valuable lesson and expand yourself to see beyond the pain and grasp on to your new found purpose. No, you will no longer be blinded by your pain and be buried under without a fight for more. Take the blindfold off and see that there is more to your life than the pain that has limited you for way too long. It is time to take our rightful place! It is time to trade thorns for crowns.

Much Love

Xholiwe