by Amy B. Scher
There is one simple question you can ask yourself to help determine which choice you are making: Will this action, language, or behavior deplete my healing energy or fuel it? That’s it. New rule: If it will deplete it, delete it.
Consider making a pact with yourself: Don’t have conversations (with yourself or others) that support this pattern. Simply refuse to let yourself go there. Instead, when you catch yourself talking about your life in a way that makes you feel powerless, sit quietly and try to figure out why you have a need to do this. Are you seeking support and confirmation? Do you need help but can’t ask for it? Try instead to use this as an opportunity to clear energy around these issues.
Energies to Consider Clearing
Often, there are unprocessed experiences lurking behind this victim mentality. It is wise to identify and clear experiences in your past that are contributing to this mindset.
These types of experiences might include experiences where …
• you felt like people didn’t “pay for” the way something impacted you.
• you felt overpowered and had “no say.”
• you feel like life wasn’t fair to you.
Beliefs are also likely behind this pattern. Going to work on clearing beliefs that put you in a place of powerlessness will always be extremely helpful. Here are a few examples:
• I can only move on if those who hurt me are sorry.
• Other people are responsible for fixing me/this issue.
• I need to blame others to feel secure.
• I need to be rewarded for what I’ve been through.
• Life isn’t fair to me.
• I always get the short end of the stick.
• People owe me (sense of entitlement).
Taking Things Personally
We were all born as wonderful, self-centered works of art. As human beings, we tend to be self-focused, and that’s okay a lot of the time. But it can get us into big trouble, too, because we tend to interpret everything as if it is personal. It’s all too easy from our human vantage point to see the opinions and actions of others as direct reflections of our own wrongdoing.
I used to be the queen of “it’s my fault” syndrome. If someone I loved or cared about seemed “off,” I felt a heavy sense of fear that I had somehow inadvertently caused it. If someone seemed upset with me, I quickly jumped into action to fix it, at the expense of my poor, overburdened soul. To this day, I have no idea where this originated. Growing up, I was never blamed or ridiculed, although now I can definitely see my mom’s own pattern of self-blame for things.
It wasn’t until my early twenties that I thought to examine this pattern in my life. Most of us think that the whole wide world revolves around us, and that’s just a big ol’ problem. Becoming aware of how this affected me changed how I perceived everything. Up until then, I lived a life being paranoid that others were angry with me, or upset because of me. But for the first time, it occurred to me that the world doesn’t revolve around me at all. I began to see that each of us reacts from our own emotional space—of simply having a bad day, feeling insecure, being frustrated with someone else perhaps, and so on.
My days of taking things personally started to change ever so slowly. When I would fear that I had upset somebody or I would become angry because of how I thought they were treating me, I would ask myself, usually while laughing, “What makes you think that the whole world revolves around you?”
Let’s do a quick exercise here. Look back at some of your recent personal interactions—times when someone in your life seemed grumpy or irritated. How did they make you feel? Did you assume you had done something wrong? Did you try to fix things immediately? Did you apologize when people were being impatient with you? If so, you likely had the mindset that it was all about you. This can cause us to tiptoe around others and be afraid to be our true selves. And we already know what a big impact that can have on us, right? That’s why this is a very important pattern to work on.
Forest Fire Visualization
I also use the visualization of a burning forest fire when I’m having difficulty with taking things personally. I imagine the person whom I am being upset by as a burning fire in a large wooded area. In this visualization, I draw a circle around the fire with a stick. I then know that I can be anywhere in that forest (symbolic of my own life and my own energy field) and be safe from the heat and sparks. I allow the fire (symbolic of the person in this specific situation) to be angry or do whatever it needs to do to burn out or dissolve. However, I don’t allow myself to be affected. This is very helpful for me in staying grounded when others are upset, either in general or specifically with me.
With the pattern of taking things personally, it’s very helpful to ask yourself, “Where could this pattern have come from?” In other words, “Where did I get the idea that I was responsible for everyone else and how they feel?”
Energies to Consider Clearing
Unprocessed experiences from your past could be playing a direct role in this pattern of taking things personally. You might want to think back to experiences where …
• you felt blamed or shamed.
• you perceived that someone else’s happiness was your responsibility.
As always, harmful beliefs are likely contributing to this pattern as well. Here are some examples of harmful beliefs to consider releasing:
• Something is inherently wrong with me.
• When someone else is unhappy, it’s my fault.
• I am always wrong.
• Keeping the peace is my job.
• It’s my job to fix things for others.
• If I’m rejected, it means there is something wrong with me.
Negative Thought Loops
It can be easy to get stuck in a negative thought loop, which not only makes us feel a little crazy but also causes stressful reactions in our body, which can show up as symptoms.
As we know now, thoughts are pure energy. This next technique, Throwing Stones, is one that was created during a time of desperation for me. It is based on “throwing” energy from the body. It’s a great disrupter of unhealthy thought patterns.
A few years ago and for no obvious reason whatsoever, right before a trip to the infamous and spirited city of Sedona, Arizona, I started to feel extremely unsettled. I was flooded with fear and uneasiness, which made me want to jump out of my own skin. Negative thoughts were looping around in my brain at what seemed like warp speed.
People travel from all over to visit Sedona and, specifically, its vortexes, which are thought to have highly concentrated energies conducive to healing. Sedona has been known as a sacred place for hundreds of years. As we prepared for the trip, I used all my best tricks, but in true Amy style, they weren’t working instantly. They do work extremely well for me, but sometimes not as fast as I’d like. Sedona, a place known for healing, turned out to be, for me, just a place where I was having a serious freak-out. Very spiritual, right? I was in a location where miracles are known to happen, and I didn’t want to leave my hotel room. I couldn’t stop crying.
After a few days, though, I surrendered to what I was feeling and stopped fighting it so hard. I knew I just had to let all of the energy work do its thing. Something inside of me shifted, as often happens when we stop fighting so hard. I calmed down just enough to try to enjoy a short hike along a beautiful creek. The water was dotted with different-size boulders. While sitting on one of the giant ones for a rest, I dipped my still-shaky hands into the water to play with some of the smaller rocks. That’s when I had a thought: What if I could “throw” or “wash” away the energy of whatever was coming up for me and send it hurling down the creek?
With each rock I picked up, I closed my eyes and imagined transferring a single thought, feeling, or emotion I had into it. I said a silent statement to the rock, asking it to please “carry away the energy” of each one: fear of what was happening, anger, uncertainty, nausea, the feeling of “not being good enough t
o fix this,” and more. And then I threw the rock into the rushing water, watching it skip along the bottom until it was gone from my sight. One by one, I went through this process: assigning each rock an energy I no longer wanted, throwing it, and feeling my energy come back into balance. Energetically, I was transferring the feelings, thoughts, and emotions into those rocks to be carried away and washed clean. I felt massive relief from this process, and you can too.
Throwing Stones
This is easy to do and you don’t have to use rocks. You can use coffee beans, pebbles, snowballs, or anything else that won’t hurt the earth if you toss it into a body of water. You can also use a bucket of water if you don’t have access to a beach, pond, or other body of water.
When you have a decent little pile, pick them up one by one, assigning each one a thought or emotion you’d like to release. Simply focus on infusing that thought or emotion into the rock or other object. Take your time, but when you’re ready, throw the object into the water using as much force as is comfortable, and let yourself release all that is associated with it.
This had already become one of my favorite techniques when I read an article about a similar concept. In a study at Ohio State University, 15 researchers found that when people wrote down their thoughts on a piece of paper and then threw the paper away, they mentally discarded the thoughts as well.
I believe this works as an energy technique because we are signaling to the subconscious mind to release the energy of the thought or emotion. So throw to your heart’s content. All you have to lose is some energy that you didn’t need anyway.
Energies to Consider Clearing
Negative thought loops often stem from a belief or unprocessed experience that we haven’t let go of. In order to release this, it’s helpful to pay attention to those thoughts and address the core of them. What are you ruminating about? Is it an experience that can be cleared? Is it something you believe that’s creating the negativity? Digging deeper into these thoughts can produce big, positive shifts.
3 Hearts Method
You’ve learned four main techniques up to this point, including Thymus Test and Tap, Emotional Freedom Technique, The Sweep, and Chakra Tapping. As I mentioned earlier, these techniques can be used to help you release the various unhealthy emotional patterns you’ve learned about in this chapter. The 3 Hearts Method is another technique that I consider to be very important. It’s the fifth (and final) main technique you’ll learn.
The 3 Hearts Method was fed to me through some higher guidance during a difficult time. I was lying on the couch one night, my head hanging off the ottoman (a typical pose for me), and I spontaneously began tracing, with my hands, three upside-down hearts on my face. It almost seemed involuntary. I had no idea what I was doing, but I could feel energetically that I was most definitely doing something.
As I started to explore and use this new technique, it proved to be extremely powerful for releasing stored emotional energy associated with those incessant negative thoughts. While emotional processing happens in the brain, the expression of emotion is limited primarily to the face. Muscle movements that happen under the skin cause expressions. Certain facial expressions are associated with specific emotions. And emotions, as we know, are just energy. Because our cells and muscles have “memory,” it is logical that some of the energy that causes negative thinking could easily become stored in the place of the most expression.
3 Hearts Method
The heart shape, symbolic of love, has an extremely high healing vibration. When we trace lines around the eyes and mouth, we are addressing the major emotionally expressive areas of the face. We are essentially “erasing” or “tracing over” whatever is behind the negative thoughts, with love. It is critical that the hearts be traced upside down so the “point” is always directing the old energy away from the body. With the third heart in the sequence, we are specifically tracing it around the head where emotions are processed and then finishing the sequence at the back of the head. Here again, the direction of the point is crucial, because we are sending the energy behind us, which is symbolic of moving those experiences and associated emotions into the past. This is where, in the energetic body, memories and thoughts—even negative ones—are stored in a healthy way.
In order to demonstrate this technique, I’ll walk you through it using the example of a negative thought loop. Later, I will give you some tips on revising the 3 Hearts Method for clearing other energies, such as unprocessed experiences and harmful beliefs.
Step 1: Rate Your Intensity— Close your eyes and focus on the negative thoughts. On a scale of 0–10, give it a rating as far as how intense it feels for you, 10 being the strongest. If you can locate where you “feel” it in your body, also take note of that. It doesn’t matter where you are at this moment; it’s just good to have an idea of your starting point so you can gauge your progress as you clear.
If you have many upsetting thoughts and they’re not just on one topic, you can let them all run through your mind, or you can focus on them one by one and go through this process for each thought pattern. You may have to try it both ways to see what works best for you.
Step 2: Trace the Hearts— As shown in the 3 Hearts Method illustration, keep your eyes closed and your focus on the upsetting thoughts as you trace, with medium pressure, three upside-down hearts on your face, as shown in the illustration. Use both hands. You will do the same movement on each side of your face simultaneously.
While you’ll be tracing the hearts three at a time (this will be one “round”), you will want to continuously trace for four rounds, or a total of twelve hearts. I don’t have a logical explanation for why we trace a total of twelve hearts, but through much muscle testing I discovered this was the magic number!
For the first heart, start with all your fingertips at your bottom lip point. Drag your fingers down toward your chin, around, and up your jawline, finishing at the second point—the bridge of your nose. For the second heart, starting at the bridge of your nose, scoop down around the eyes and up to the top center of your forehead where your hairline is. For the final heart, use a similar scooping motion down your forehead and then back along the sides of your head and past your temples, ending in a point at the back of the head. All three hearts should be traced consecutively in one fluid motion.
You want to really sink into the issue you are trying to clear. Let all the emotion come up, and allow yourself to review the issue in your head, noticing any details of the experience.
Step 3: Check In— Take a break, open your eyes, and take some big, deep breaths. Close your eyes and reassess how strong the negative thoughts are now. Do they bother you any less? Do you feel any more detached? Re-rate your thoughts on a scale of 0–10 to gauge their intensity.
Step 4: Keep Going— Repeat the process for several more minutes. You can continue this as long as you’d like, taking a break after every few rounds and making sure to take deep breaths and give your body time to process the energy.
With negative thought loops, it can often take a bit of time to notice a shift. You may want to just go about your day and see how things play out. With negative thought loops, I’ll often wonder if the clearing has done anything, but then later I’ll suddenly become aware of how much it has actually helped.
While this technique may seem too simple (yes, I’ve actually had that complaint!), it’s extremely effective. Don’t worry that it’s “too easy to work.” This is good practice in letting life be easy.
Tip: Remember that most unhealthy emotional patterns are linked to harmful beliefs or unprocessed experiences. For example, if you can’t stop thinking about that mean thing your boss said to you last week, you would benefit from working on that experience, or earlier experiences that you were reminded of with that one. Or perhaps it would be beneficial to identify and clear a belief that is creating a trigger for you, such as “I am worthless at work.” In addition to using techniques that you already know can address unprocessed experien
ces (EFT) and beliefs (Chakra Tapping), you can explore using the 3 Hearts Method to clear them.
To use the 3 Hearts Method for unprocessed experiences, simply alter steps 1 and 2 to focus on an unprocessed experience instead of specific negative thoughts. Try to use the glass-capsule analogy that we talked about earlier, making sure to focus on all of the details (sights, sounds, smells, and more) connected to that experience.
To use the 3 Hearts Method for beliefs, use a similar process to Chakra Tapping, but instead of tapping the chakra points, trace the three hearts. Remember to ask through muscle testing—just as you would when clearing any belief—if you need to go back and find an unprocessed experience to work with first. If not, you can use verbal cues like you did for Chakra Tapping as you trace the hearts, or you can just try focusing on the belief itself without saying anything at all. Again, make this method your own.
Next, we’re going to talk about a serious game-changer: addressing fear.
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15 . Jeff Grabmeier, “Bothered by Negative, Unwanted Thoughts? Just Throw Them Away,” Ohio State University (Nov. 26, 2012), http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/matthoughts.htm.