Deal With Other’s Negativity… by Choosing Love

In April 2019, I was in Japan retaking my ThetaHealing Instructor’s training and assisting on the courses. It took my understanding of what ThetaHealing® – and all energy healing – is really about to another level.

– yes, you can make parts of your life better
– yes, you can make relationships better
– yes, you can feel more connected
– yes, you can calm emotions and thoughts

Negative Attention

My own relationship with ThetaHealing has been on again and off again since I first learned in 2009.  Amazing experiences have happened and I’ve met the coolest people. But perhaps the worst thing that happened on my ThetaHealing journey was seeing it on Newsnight (a BBC news programme in the UK).  It was made to look like some cheap, faith-healing trick that cons people out of money and makes up wild stories about healing. 

It was so unfairly painted and having only been using ThetaHealing for 2 years, I was mortified.  Derren Brown tweeted the link too and as he’s someone I really admire, it added to the dismay and disappointment.  I didn’t want to be associated with something that could be painted so badly.  I was ashamed of being associated with it. 

On the training in 2019, Josh & Raena (the teachers) and I chatted about that incident.  It was really good to talk to them about it and hear their take on it.  It only made ThetaHealing stronger and Josh’s attitude to it, in particular, made me think “wow, he’s the real deal”.  He only had love for the people behind it and appreciated all the learning and growth it inspired.  It wasn’t a spiritual by-passing kind of love, you can feel the genuineness of his love because it contains so much compassion.  You feel loved, seen and heard in his presence, like the whole of you is welcome. 

Dealing With Other’s Negativity

I guess one of my problems with ThetaHealing was that I fully expected that once you get to a certain spiritual level and you radiate love, everyone softens around you and life magically brings you everything you want.  I’d previously hypnotised myself with “The Secret” and I didn’t realise it glossed over the truth about living spiritually and manifesting.  That you can create your reality but you have to face your own mind and your fears along the way – and more importantly that we have to undo internalised oppression to dismantle systems of oppression – not just for ourselves but for all marginalised groups like BiPOC, neurodiverse, LGBTQ+.  People in marginalised groups live from completely different worldviews.  It can be uncomfortable to accept that there are completely different ways of viewing life, and some people’s reaction to that is to use shame to shut them down. 

Marginalised groups have been shamed for being who they are their entire lives, just as everything feminine is widely seen as inferior to masculine in Western society. Generally we get shamed or seen as “less than” for showing emotion, for menstruating and for having empathy.

There’s a mythical patriarchal and capitalist ideal that we’re conditioned to aspire to.  Become super successful financially, gain power over others and you won’t have to be shamed or criticised ever again – you’ll have everything that everybody wants. 

Except that diversity of opinion and experience is vital to creative thinking.  

My mortified reaction to the Newsnight programme shone a light on inner shaming that happens when an unfamiliar worldview is feared and misrepresented.  

This next paragraph is one that I wrote in 2019 in the original version of this blog, but one that I now find problematic: 

“Love and positive vibes can trigger other people’s hidden issues in a BIG way.  Love shines a light on them for others too and if they’re not connected to their own capacity to create incredible things, it can turn to envy, criticism and resentment.”

Now, this is problematic because it doesn’t take the effects of trauma into account.  In fact, I wrote it before I properly did the trauma healing work on myself and before I truly understood what shame and internalised oppression does in the psyche.  The biggest problem with these 2 sentences is my lack of awareness or of acknowledging white, able-bodied, cisgender, straight privilege.  Or how trauma works and creates protection mechanisms in the psyche that can use shaming and criticism as strategies to manage pain.  The words were coming from my own protection mechanisms – defensive parts that fought against critical parts. 

Empathy and Compassion

Coming from a place of “look at how spiritually evolved I am and how wonderful my life is – all negativity in my life comes from others” isn’t empathetic and it isn’t compassionate.  It’s feeding into the very systems that we need to dismantle from the inside.  I have to admit that the attitudes that I had were problematic and I’m truly thankful that my business and impact stayed very small while I held those views.  

I was writing from a place of hurt and defensiveness.  For the previous 3 years, I’d felt attacked, criticised and shamed by numerous people around me.  People who were unwittingly tuning into parts of me that were attacking, criticising and shaming me from the inside.  Parts that were attempting to protect me in their own weird way.  For sure, while they were activated, I couldn’t feel buried emotional pain, traum and overwhelm, so they were semi-successful in protecting me.  But unfortunately, they created more emotional pain.  What seemed to be attacks and negativity from the outside were really internal attacks and self-criticism.  That doesn’t mean that how they spoke to me was acceptable and I didn’t have to stick around and take the bullying, but it does mean that as I faced my own inner critics, attackers and shamers with compassion, they could eventually soften and people around me stopped treating me in that way.  

Facing Our Own Prejudice

A lot of us white folk faced a reckoning after the death of George Floyd in 2020.  We couldn’t unsee the abject racism that went on.  Without video footage of the incident, as a white person, I’d have doubted black bystanders’ versions of events and believed the white police officers’ version of events.  

With my own self-criticism and inner shaming going on, I didn’t have space to face my own racism.  I prided myself on being open minded and curious about other cultures, not realising that for non-white people living in Western cultures in particular, that ignorance is harmful and feeds into the systemic racisim and oppression that they face.  The small traumas that happen regularly over time and that go unseen by us white folk (who never have to live with it) only add to the suffering.  

Instead, empathy and compassion – the capacity to suspend centring the world around our own familiar culture and experience and REALLY listen to the experience of another human – not only is vital to softening our own inner overactive protection mechanisms, but necessary to be able to fully hear the experiences of another fellow human.  Especially one that is suffering from the unfair man-made systems of society.  

 One of the things I’d had to learn in business building is to let go of trying to please everyone and to be able to deal with people being critical or judgmental about what I do – especially family.  I care about what people think, but I care more about the difference I’m here to co-create with people like you.  It’s hard but their criticism, envy and resentments aren’t about me.  It’s their stuff and it’s my job to see it through it to the wounds behind it.  

Moving to Love

The main goal of ThetaHealing and all spiritual practices is to get to a place of unconditional love.  A place where you can see what’s going on for yourself and for people without getting involved in the drama.  Instead, you dwell in compassion. 

With compassion and empathy, you can get beyond judgments, criticisms and shaming – both your own and others to a place where your mind, your heart and every single cell in your body are so strongly connected to love that they help others feel truly seen and heard. 

Jacqui xx