What to Do When Emotions Overwhelm You
By Lisa Williams, International Psychic Medium, Author, Speaker and Teacher
I’m sorry she’s gone
I think we need to divorce
You don’t fit into our organization
Here’s your 30-day leave
These are all things we have either heard, fear hearing or have had to say at some time in our life. The emotion hits us like a bullet in the stomach and in that split second, our life has changed… forever.
Grief is what we all, at some time in our life had to experience. Sometimes we expect it and other times we don’t. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. The simple fact is that every person will grieve differently and we grieve differently for many situations and circumstances.
Nothing prepared for me for my work as a Psychic Medium. I was thrown into a reading because I could speak to those who had crossed over and connect with them. I can also see people’s lives mapped out before me. I never gave much thought to the responsibility of being a Psychic Medium until I met a woman, who I’ll call Susan, about 16 years ago. She had just lost her husband in a very tragic situation.
Susan came to me to connect with her husband every 4-6 weeks and it was becoming unhealthy for us both. She relied on her connection with her husband to make her decisions in life as he had done while he was living. She wasn’t giving herself time to move through the valuable emotions that she had to face in order for her to move through this loss. She was stuck in the same merry-go-round cycle, and I was enabling her by agreeing to continue to give her readings and thinking Spirit and my ‘insight’ could help her.
I kept her stuck in that pattern, until one fateful day when her husband didn’t turn up as expected during one of our regular Friday morning readings.
The one thing that my grandmother, who was also a medium, taught me was “you make nothing up, if Spirit isn’t with you, they are not with you.” I was desperate in that reading to connect to her husband John. Where was he? What was he doing? Because I had known her for sometime, we could have a conversation and a laugh and she said something like, ‘Oh he’s such a flirt, he’s probably having fun with another woman whilst waiting for me’.
I didn’t know what else I could do and I wasn’t about to make something up. So I tapped into the only Spirit I felt could help me – my grandmother. I could imagine her looking at me with a stern look on her face saying, “go higher to the guides and they will help you”
I had heard of Spirit Guides but I didn’t really use them. However, I trusted my grandmother so I heeded her advice and tapped into my guides to see why John wasn’t connecting with Susan. I didn’t expect to hear, fell and experience what I did in that one second.
“It’s time for her to heal fully now”
“Susan, your husband isn’t here today but I’m being told it’s your time to heal fully,” I continued, “Release what has been holding you and find some joy.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant but it was amazing how spirit changed her life that day and gave her permission to move through and acknowledge the pain and find love again.
Unknown to me, Susan’s husband had cheated on her and had left her with an incredible amount of debt. She had tried to leave many times but couldn’t do it for many reasons. She started to get angry and cry and couldn’t control her emotions, which is understandable, but she kept apologizing for it all. Finally, through the tears she said, “Why is it that when someone dies they become a saint in our eyes?” She only wanted to remember the good times and wanted to sweep the hurt and the pain away. This flood of emotions had allowed her to embrace the relationship that she truly had with her husband. She started to voice everything that she had been feeling inside and the thoughts she had in the dark nights about how relieved she was. Guilt, upset, rage, love, joy, anger, disappointment, hurt, happiness, freedom were just some of the emotions she felt, until…she started to laugh uncontrollably. She was finally grieving for what should have been, the life she could have lived, the relationship she wanted to have… it all came out.
She looked intensely at me at me through her tear-stung eyes and said, “Thank you, I feel so free.” It was a beautiful moment of realization. She was ready to release the past and let out everything she had been feeling. She was getting “unstuck.” Together, we created a plan for her to continue to move forward. I continue to use a version of this plan in my work today to help others move through loss and pain. Whether it’s losing a job, a relationship, a child leaving for college or a death of a loved one moving through the grief is a hard thing to do, but knowing that you will find a ‘new normal’ in life is important. With every type of grief it’s important to be PRESENT and HONOR your feelings. It’s a dance. And you can have a plan to help you move through the stages of grief.
Life Plan for Grief
- Honor your emotions at all times and write about them in a journal
- Gather happy memories, photos, items and other things that you want to keep safe
- Make scrapbooks, picture books, photo albums and other memory items for them
- Remember the good times and the not so good times
- Honor special moments and anniversaries and holidays
- Talk or Write letters to them, telling them everything you feel
- Believe and trust in the signs you get from your loved ones
- Honor that your life will change and that each day you will feel something new
- Find something to laugh about every day, even if it’s watching puppies and kittens on social media
- Live in the present and find joy in the smallest things
One thing I have learned from my work with grief is that your loved ones want to see you smile and laugh again. In a recent reading, when the spirit was just being his normal goofy self, he said, “I just want to see her laugh and smile.”
You will smile and laugh again, the pain will be bearable, and life will go on and eventually, you will find joy in life.
When emotions overwhelm you, here are some tips to help you through your day:
- Take a moment to BREATHE and feel the breath coming into your body
- LOOK at something you find beautiful.
- SMELL something you enjoy
- TASTE your favorite food or beverage.
- LISTEN to your favorite music. Create a HAPPY playlist of music
- Hold and FEEL something important to you
- SMILE at someone and make their day
- HUG someone for at least 20 seconds
- Open your heart and share LOVE, because you ARE LOVE.
Susan moved through the grief, despair and hurt and eventually found unconditional love for herself. She accepted her love for her late husband. She fell in love with her new life and found new love with someone else all while still honoring the good times in the past that helped her truly see what love really is.
If you are looking for spiritual guidance, come see me in Sedona at Celebrate Your Life! Sedona Retreat! I’ll be hosting a post retreat workshop called Spirit World Communication and Your Own Natural Abilities where I teach you how to develop and expand your natural abilities for connecting with people on the other side. You can learn more at https://celebrateyourlife.com/sedona/.