Permanent Zen Blog: How to Overcome Trust Issues & The Heart Chakra
The fourth chakra, also referred to as the heart chakra, is located at the center of the chest and includes the heart, cardiac plexus, thymus gland, lungs, and breasts. It also rules the lymphatic system. The Sanskrit word for the fourth chakra is Anahata, which means “unstruck” or “unhurt.” The name implies that beneath the hurts and grievances of past experiences lies a pure and spiritual place where no hurt exists.
When your heart chakra is open, you are able to experience love, trust and compassion, you are quick to forgive, and you accept others and yourself. A closed heart chakra can give way to mistrust, anger, jealousy, fear of betrayal, and hatred toward yourself and others.
Everyone has uncertainty about whom to trust and how much. It is not always clear when trust is appropriate. People make choices about whom and how much to trust every day. We are more willing to trust at some times than others. That is a good thing. Judgments about when and whom to trust help keep us safe and alive. That being said, excessive mistrust keeps us isolated and unhappy.
Signs a person may be excessively mistrustful include:
Lack of intimacy or friendships
Mistrust that interferes with a relationship
Dramatic and stormy relationships
Suspicion or anxiety about friends and family
Terror during physical intimacy
Belief that others are deceptive or malevolent without evidence
WHERE DO TRUST ISSUES COME FROM?
Trust issues often come from early life experiences and interactions. These experiences often take place in childhood. Some people do not get enough care and acceptance as children. These things may lead to difficulty trusting as an adult. Social rejection in one's teens may shape their ability to trust. Some teens are bullied or treated as outcasts by peers. Traumatic life events may also cause issues with trust and safety for adults. These life events could include: accidents, assault/rape, illnesses, theft, loss of a loved one or being cheated on.
Posttraumatic stress (PTSD) comes from exposure to severe or perceived danger. It can lead people to experience great difficulty with trust. People may experience and re-experience the trauma in their minds. Anxiety often accompanies this trauma. People with PTSD can go to great lengths to create a feeling of safety. They may isolate themselves from others or become overly dependent.
So how does one go about opening/reopening their heart chakra after being hurt by others?
Be Vulnerable
Being vulnerable naturally opens your heart to others. In order to become okay with vulnerability, the first thing you need to do is accept the fact that you're worthy to get a positive response back. If you're opening up to someone else, believe that you're enough to warrant love and respect back. You can't go far if you yourself believe you don't deserve positive results.
Also, trust that you can deal with the outcome, no matter what. It's not a pleasant feeling when you share a part of yourself and you get rejected or, worse yet, are met with indifference. While that's not ideal, have the emotional strength to deal with it. Tell yourself you can handle this.
Finally, asking for what you want helps you be vulnerable. It challenges your self-protective defense of being isolated because it forces you to turn to someone else to gratify your needs. It disrupts the self-indulgent habits that thrive in isolation and the attitude that you can take care of yourself; that you don’t need anything from anyone else. Without awareness of your basic wants and needs, you have no way of knowing what is important or meaningful to you, and therefore no way of guiding your life. Knowing what you want is fundamental to realizing yourself as an individual, and asking for what you want is crucial to maintaining your vulnerability in your relationship.
Cultivate Empathy
Know that when someone chooses to hurt you, it’s almost never about you. It’s about them.
Trying to walk in another's shoes can be helpful in fostering a sense of empathy. To help create empathy and compassion, create "what if scenarios.” When encountering a person who is being unpleasant or who has treated me poorly in the past, take your mind through a host of what ifs. For example, ask yourself, “What if that person is just having a bad day?” or “What if that person just lost his job?” or “What if she just learned her husband was having an affair?” or “What if this person was abused when they were young?” As you create these stories, you begin to empathize with the other person and his or her situation. This method takes you away from yourself and self-pity and places compassion onto the other person.
Volunteer
Volunteering increases empathy and compassion. Creating social bonds with those outside of our immediate social circle and working to enhance the lives of others helps us to keep the well-being of all people at the forefront of our thinking.
Volunteering also provides many benefits to both mental and physical health:
Volunteering is scientifically proven to make you happy. By measuring hormones and brain activity, researchers have discovered that being helpful to others delivers immense pleasure. Human beings are hard-wired to give to others. The more we give, the happier we feel.
Volunteering increases self-confidence. You are doing good for others and the community, which provides a natural sense of accomplishment. Your role as a volunteer can also give you a sense of pride and identity. And the better you feel about yourself, the more likely you are to have a positive view of your life and future goals.
Volunteering provides a sense of purpose. Individuals can find new meaning and direction in their lives by helping others. Whatever your age or life situation, volunteering can help take your mind off your own worries, keep you mentally stimulated, and add more zest to your life.
Send Blessings to Others
What Is a Blessing? Let’s define the word “to bless” upfront: “to consecrate, make holy,” “mark with blood,” “to confer happiness, well-being.” The old idea behind sprinkling someone with blood is to awaken someone and therefore, giving him energy. Blood is often a symbol for the life force or universal, godly energy that we were created from.
How do you go about blessing someone?
– Just send a “May you be blessed”, “God bless you”, or something similar to every person you meet or even see while you walk by them
– Send them some thoughts of joy, luck, love and harmony and cover them in white light.
This practice may also prove to be especially helpful on days when you find yourself overly focused on yourself, your problems, or what may not be going right for you at the moment. Shifting focus to others in a positive way often brings us a renewed sense of inner peace and greater clarity about our own lives.
Learn to Forgive
Forgiveness is simply the act of letting go of the burden that you carry from another person who has hurt you out of their own pain, ignorance, or confusion. It’s a practice of freeing up your energy to focus on things that incline toward your own health and well-being or the health and well-being of others.
There is a saying: "Not forgiving is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get hurt or die.” The reality is holding onto resentment literally keeps our cortisol running and makes us sick. Forgiveness doesn't change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
Think of someone who has hurt you whom you are holding a grudge against right now. Visualize the time you had been hurt by this person and feel the pain you still carry. Hold tightly to your unwillingness to forgive. Now observe what emotion you are feeling. Is it anger, resentment, sadness? Also use your body as a barometer and notice physically what you feel. Feel this burden that lives inside when you hold so tightly to past hurts. Now ask yourself, “Who is suffering? Have I carried this burden long enough? Am I willing to forgive?” If not, that is okay, perhaps the time will come when you’re ready.
It’s a hard pill to swallow, but the fact is that we are all born into an unjust world under unjust circumstances and in that sense, no one is to blame for their wrongs. The acceptance of that is true forgiveness and the true acceptance of love.
WHY REIKI HEALING IS EFFECTIVE FOR DEPRESSION & ANXIETY
Many individuals who are either suffering through depression or anxiety tend to rely on some form of medication. However, there is a growing number of people who are becoming aware of the fact that depression and anxiety can be cured without the use of anti-psychotics. Depression and anxiety need to be understood as energy imbalances rather than a mental disorder. Thus, in order to cure depression or anxiety, it’s critically important to treat the imbalanced energy and the behavior and mindset that proliferates the imbalance.
To overcome the root cause of depression or anxiety, Reiki in New York, as well as Spiritual Counseling can prove to be powerful solutions.
Reiki is a technique of transferring the universal energy to the patient by the practitioner to area of the body where it is needed. Turning to Individual Reiki Sessions NYC can help you regain the natural flow of energy that our bodies need to be relaxed, happy and healthy.
Namaste!