BLOGS

Paying it forward.

What does it mean to pay it forward? What are you truly paying forward? How do you pay it forward?

Join me as I discuss what it truly means to Pay It Forward and send out positive energy.

Anger. How do we express anger so that we heal? Why is it that our anger continues to perpetuate? How do we get attached to anger?!!

Let’s lay the groundwork.

Anger is a secondary emotion. It occurs in response to any one of many fear-based emotions. Fear-based emotion could be fear, hurt, sadness, guilt, shame, attachment, abandonment, and loneliness etc. – get the picture? So, anytime we are angry it is possible to ask “What is the emotion that exists before the anger?” That is an important part of the equation of anger becoming perpetual.
Oftentimes, people can feel and are aware of their wish to hold onto their anger at another person or entity. It feels as if that anger is purposeful and warranted. There are a couple factors that are responsible for that.

First, the original anger and its cause are probably a healthy reaction to an unhealthy situation. Most people do not know how to express their anger and, therefore, do not know how to find closure to that unhealthy situation. Also, if that unhealthy situation played out repeatedly in a relationship or over one’s life, then the anger felt is built up over various experiences and is then ready to be released perpetually — over and over and over again.

Second, most people learn to use their anger not express it. Whatever the underlying emotions are that caused the anger, when you use your anger you are spewing forth the anger in an effort to make the other person feel those primary feelings. When you are expressing your anger you are expressing your primary feelings in an angry tone and, consequently, are initiating the healing of the anger. You are also beginning the effort to put closure to that which caused the anger.

Why you get attached to your anger:
As I just mentioned, most are taught to use it but not to express anger. So you want the other to hurt because the other hurt you! You may still be angry and, so, you want to hurt that person more – even if in your thoughts. Or maybe you start getting your friends to agree with your anger and maybe even further fuel it. Now, your anger is starting to get fueled rather than healed and you start to realize the other feelings that you may be feeling as a result of the original situation(s). Consequently, subconsciously or consciously, you want that other to now feel bad and to feel shame, guilt and unwanted because of everything you have felt!!!!! This causes a loop within us. Because we have to stay focused on everything the other did, in order to make him or her feel those feelings, you continue to reignite and feel the very memory of the yucky event! You inadvertently keep that event alive in order to use it. It is this loop that gets us attached to the anger.

At this point it becomes very difficult to release the anger or even feel like you want to release the anger. You have now bought into the ugliness of the pain and that ugliness is the very fuel necessary for the anger to make sure it always has food to feed upon. If this continues, you may slowly begin to use the anger to talk about the other with various others. You may find yourself using the anger with your other to feel heard about how you hurt and what you need. Some may even find that the anger fuels great humor in their conversations by using the story of the other with a sarcastic twist. Others may find this anger to be the perfect excuse to warrant abuse, or assault. Many will just lose control of their expression and find themselves lashing out physically, verbally, and or emotionally. Any or all of this and more describes the attachment to your anger!

Once you are attached to the anger, it is very difficult to release it because it now serves you. The release of your attachment to the anger is another chapter!! In the meantime, thank you so much for your time and your feedback. May you all begin to listen to your anger and what it is teaching you! If you have ANY questions please feel free to comment below, or you can write me at AskKristen@kristenbomas.com. Peace be with you!

Shame! Public Shame! It has driven many to suicide. Yet, not too many know the pain of it like Monica Lewinsky. Tomorrow her story breaks through Vanity Fair. I hope we will all read it to understand what the media, the internet, and gossip can do to destroy a life. None of us would want our mistakes to be made a public laughing stock.

Every person knows shame. When you feel the ick inside it feels intolerable. You can’t imagine anyone accepting that part of you. You try to keep it inside, secret. You fear severe rejection as a result of the shame and then the loneliness is felt. For many, it is a wave of loneliness in which you feel you are drowning. It is in this lonely emotional place that the suicidal thoughts become eminent and the possibility of suicide can become a probability. Why would you ever wish that experience on another human being? If someone has made a poor decision, they are already experiencing and living with the shame. To make it public is an atrocity that is murderous. Many of our students, athletes, entertainers, and more have had to endure, or have not been able to endure, the public shaming of their indiscretions.

It is a formula or blend of the media, the internet, and the people. The American public seems to have found themselves entertained by others’ suffering and so the media feeds off of that interest. Why? Because people “Judge the way they are fearful of being judged”. That means that because a person fears the shame within their Self they judge the other person for their shameful behaviors. Suffering begets suffering. The more people suffer, the more they live in fear. The more people live in fear, the more they follow. The more they follow, the more they do not think on their own. The media figured this out a long time ago. Now, we have exponentially exploded this with the internet.

I ask all my readers to think twice before ever engaging in the gossip that it takes to propagate the public shaming. Think, inside your Self, that each time you share the shame of another you have harmed another person, whether indirectly or directly. Gossip destroys others. As you read the stories of others’ sufferings, ask your Self what you would need if this happened to you. May you all move one step closer to happiness by clearing your thoughts of others that are destructive or negative.

Why do you watch the news? Why? To be informed… Wherever you are sitting at this moment, turn off any TV or radios that may be on. Ask your Self, “How does everything I gather from the news affect me at this moment?” Is your mind going to: “Well it allows me to stay safe; or it allows me to know what is going on in our government; or it tells me about the strife in Venezuela…” Stay right here in this moment. How does it affect you right now!? The people who are in the tragedy are not in your experience. How is it affecting your minute, your now?

Lets move away from that and look at something else. Some of what happens are important facts. We are a free country and are able to vote, so some of what we could gather could be factual information. Then, when we do need to make a choice, it is in our best interest. But that is not what we gather from the news. The news preys upon the fear. They have researched the tone of the news to be sure it catches your fight or flight response and, consequently, your attention. So lets back away. The issue isn’t factual information because we all know we can gather our facts from reliable sources via the internet, readings, etc. The news we watch, or the biased newspaper we read, are a gathering of opinions! So how does all of that affect your moment right now!? If you are sitting in a park and looking out over trees and a pond, how does it affect that experience? If you are sharing a beautiful evening with the one you love, how does it affect that experience? If we take those beautiful experiences and we find ourselves talking about the news, have we lost the moment?

In conclusion, I hope you all think twice before allowing your Self to be seduced into the fear-based news shows and newspapers. They are not always factual. They eliminate those blocks of time from you experiencing your life. Be sure of the truth of why you watch the news. The news and media can sensationalize, so it important to do your own research. What are you truly gaining from the information? Does it truly better your life? Take one week. Turn off any news media and gather your information from factual sources. Watch how you start to see more roses on your path of life!

Have you noticed that when you are dating, the beginning of the relationship seems so free and fun? This is due to a variety of reasons but today I want to talk about a simple piece. At the beginning, you can be closest to the truth of who you are if you are having fun dating and not feeling desperate. That openness allows the other to see you and experience you with clarity of who you are. There is a sense of unity and closeness. It is that portion of the relationship that allows the two people to enjoy each other enough to want to pursue a continuous (and maybe monogamous) relationship with one another.

Then something happens! Because the relationship has been “defined”, the fear of loss (or more) encroaches. That is when many people begin to worry about what the other is thinking or doing. That is when many fears are able to enter because of the initial fear of loss. Now each of you has brought your challenges of this life into the relationship. It feels very different. There is now a bit of a distance between you whether you are conscious of it or not. That break from the unity, because of the fear, alters your fun and playfulness. This is the point at which your ability to communicate to grow the relationship may falter. Consequently, fear, which feeds upon itself, starts to push and pull in the relationship. It is that very break in separation that, when severe, leads to feelings of loneliness. Consequently, the subtle or gentle fear/worry that quietly separates the relationship also ignites a hidden fear of loss and loneliness that begins to filter your perceptions in the relationship!

So, how do you keep the new, playfulness alive? Simply? Embrace the fears. Do your best to not let the fears influence your choices. Instead, tell the person who you are dating that you have those concerns and ask what the two of you might do to help move beyond them. Once fear or worry is brought into the open it loses it’s force. It becomes more manageable.

For those of you with interest, here is a life mastery twist to the above conversation: Once worry enters the dating relationship, it interrupts the unity and joy that was defining the experience. That fear/worry creates a break that mimics and symbolizes the initial fear of separation felt upon entering life. It is subtle but real. It is that fear that separates you from Spirit, the One, God… It is what allows the ego to think it needs to know!

Please share your comments on the blog OR if you have any personal questions please send me your question at AskKristen@KristenBomas.com. I look forward to hearing from you all!

Have you, or anyone you’ve known, ever said you would never let your heart get broken again or let your Self get hurt again? How did you think you were going to DO that? Keep your Self out of a relationship that may hurt you or may end? Or end relationships before the other does? There are myriad ways people choose to TRY to avoid hurt!

Inadvertently, these efforts extend the suffering in this life. Why? Because ultimately, in this life, everyone looks for love, joy, fulfillment. Furthermore, humans are a group animal not independent. Consequently, everyone is looking for someone (I think that’s a song!). So, if someone is trying to avoid hurt then they are also avoiding relationships in some way. Even if they are avoiding intimacy, they are avoiding significant aspects of relationships.

What makes you or others go through such suffering to attempt to avoid hurt from loss or rejection? In some people, it can be that there was a loss in their life that was traumatic and they are trying to avoid the terror of the trauma that was. They are the few. For most, it is just not wanting to hurt. What about healing the hurt so that you can enjoy all relationships without needing to worry about where they are headed and if they are going to last?

Many are fearful not just because of the hurt, but because of hurt associated with other emotional experiences. Hurt, when caused by loss, can also bring up abandonment, loneliness, shame, and more. It is important to be aware of what you are experiencing so that you can heal and so that you can create the experiences you do wish to have. For example, if you are avoiding relationships because of hurt stemming from the rejection or abandonment then maybe you want to look at how to develop a relationship that grows rather than dissolves. In the meantime, you could work on healing the challenge of abandonment or rejection.

As you can begin to see that you cannot “do” this avoidance maneuver. It only causes the fear of the hurt to stay quite alive within you which will perpetuate the need to isolate which will perpetuate a loneliness. Avoidance will bring about the suffering in a different way while keeping the original pain alive in the background (so that you can avoid it!). Once the wound/challenge is healed you will not feel the same hurt you felt in the past. In fact, if you choose, you can heal to a point of not feeling hurt when a relationship ends – IF it ends!

Please share your comments on the blog OR if you have any personal questions please send me your question at AskKristen@KristenBomas.com. I look forward to hearing from you all!

Since the mid 1970’s, we have appeared to grow to be a predominantly litigious society. So much so that liability appears to be more important than life! We no longer think of the child or the person first. We are trained to think of the liability first and the person second. For example, we are told NOT to physically help a person in a car accident because we could be held liable! We have been trained to think “liability” so much that we no longer trust (although this is only one of several components). Furthermore, the “liability” mentality appears to have aided in the fragmentation of our society and culture! “Liability” positioning also seems to have aided in the entitlement that appears to be a dominant characteristic of our people. It is a fighting mentality: a me-against-you mentality.

Anyway, I have digressed. To me, the most painful of all of this is the reality of liability overriding human welfare. It is no longer a community raising the children. It is the community staying away from someone else’s child. Thereby creating an environment with an absence of safety for the child. Think about it. A child who plays with friends in the neighborhood and knows all adults are watching him or her to be sure he or she is ok, feels very safe. A child who walks “empty” streets to a friend’s house (because they know no other adults), feels greater aloneness and fear. So, fear begets fear! Fear fragments! So, here we are — a culture where we are increasing the fear and mistrust.

Is it starting to make “sense” why we are so mistrusting and litigious?! Can you see how, if we are untrusting of one another, we cannot have community and if we do not have community, then we are going to become self-centered, -serving, and -contained?! It is from that point that the “paranoia” of litigation begins. I have known many professionals in the health-care industry who do the least possible reporting of child and spouse abuse. In other words, if another reported the abuse, they document that in their notes and keep moving forward like they are not responsible. But what about when they have information that could decide the case? Many times, a health-care professional sits quietly in the background due to fear of litigation if they come forward with their proof. Often times, there is a person who suffers as a result of that choice to refrain.

It is no longer ok for a physician to tell the spouse what is going on with their partner without formal ok. I have witnessed a situation where a violent parent was visiting with their adolescent child. The child was scared about the parents intention. Yet, when I asked the charge nurse to dispatch a behavior technician into the visitation room to quietly observe the interactions, I was met with a resounding NO! I was informed the facility cannot be liable. What about the welfare of the child?! An adult person, in a seriously abusive relationship, cannot get support until there is “physical evidence” (physical harm) — because of liability. We cannot seek support in an abusive relationship until the physical abuse has taken over to a point of visibility??!! How does a culture allow this to get so out of control?

With the absence of community and family, and the absence of trust, the more fear in which we will live and therefore the more litigious we will become as a people. The more litigious we become, the more we will fear one another and the less apt we are to feel apathy, altruism, and responsibility to protect or warn. A great example is one day I was a passenger in a car of 7 adults. We passed a new accident. I said, “call 911”. The response I got was, “No, I’m sure that’s already been done!” So, I pulled my phone out and called and everyone got upset that I wasn’t obedient. Here’s why I wasn’t. Years ago on an Easter weekend, I was on Alligator Alley in South Florida. Two cars in front of me I saw the smoke of an accident and immediately called 911. I described the accident as it had just unfolded and gave the mile marker 45 for reference. I was one of MANY passing cars and yet was the first to call emergency services. So, why was i the first? Why do people not want to get involved? I believe that we have lost our sense of community and altruism. I believe that, in part, we are thinking too much about protecting our Self from litigation to respond to the welfare of our people.

For today, notice at least one thought you will have that is aware of liability. Then allow yourself to answer the question, “Where did I learn to think this way?” If we can move beyond this mentality one person at a time, we have the hope of creating change in the way we each help one another.

As a people, we seem to be defining ourselves as entitled. There are many examples. People don’t vote, but they want things to be in their favor. The father is handicapped, so it is ok for the adult child to use the tag for parking. Because someone has money, he or she feels they should get preferential treatment. Because the other has more money, a person feels deserving of that other paying for something. Even though the policy says one thing, a person who feels entitled feels he or she should be given special variance to that policy. There is the entitled thought that if a person yells loud enough and makes enough commotion, he or she will give or get money back or get their way!! A cop has numbers to make, so he or she dishes out a DUI to a person who makes a traffic error because he or she can (no care for the impact on that person). And so the stories go…

Until we stop thinking from this point of reference, we will not take responsibility to make the change needed on this plane. We are not entitled to all of Mother Earth’s resources or each other’s resources. In fact, we are not entitled — period. Many articles talk of entitlement synonymously with narcissism. While there is a cross over, they are each separate and distinct. Entitlement seems to have various characteristics.

Entitlement is a fear-based experience. It comes, at least in part, from the fear of not having or the fear of not being ok or good enough. Somehow a person learns that they do not have to work for what they are receiving. They do not have to earn the experience or object. They do not feel the personal ownership that comes with the earning. They think they deserve things they haven’t earned and may develop contempt for people who work to earn things. That suggests they are lacking in confidence and may feel contempt for themselves if they have to work to earn something. Yet, any time a fear-based experience is in our life, it is an opportunity to heal. Our fear-based emotions and/or experiences are in our lives to show us that which we are not. In other words, they are opportunities to heal and unveil our True, Soulful self.

As long as entitlement is acceptable or fashionable, we will see a vanishing of

As those qualities dissipate, the blame mentality and attitude of indulgence and anti-responsibility are fed. It, therefore, affects the way we treat each other, animals, objects, and Mother Earth and her resources. Concurrently, it holds the individual back from their

So, where do we begin? With our Self and then our children! In life, there is no entitlement, there is no blame, and there is no expectation. There is only you. So, the true antidote is in the personal acceptance of responsibility for the actions, thoughts, and beliefs that you may have bought into. It takes introspection and a sense of being humble to be aware of where you may be feeling entitled. Once you can be honest with your Self and acknowledge those places where you are feeling entitled, you can begin to unravel the snarled web of all you gathered in this life that lead to the entitlement. It is then that you can begin your healing. As you pay attention to the cords that make up that snarled web, you then can begin to heal your children and redirect them to a life that is absent of entitlement.

Anxiety!! What can I do to make it stop and go away! Anxiety feels like a helpless state of suffering but there are things a person can do to heal and transcend the suffering. This article will give a feel for what can be done. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list or suggestive. It is meant to open the possibilities of treatment and healing of the suffering of anxiety. The article will look at western medicine, and then will focus on self help, therapy, and all other medicines.