This is Part 2 of this series, to read Part 1 click here >>

In last week’s blog post, we discussed the dangers of spells that cut you off from your feelings. These spells can’t remove emotions, no matter what they promise, so all they do is hide the emotions where you can’t feel them anymore. This causes some enormous problems! Using spells that get rid of anger, that make it so you can’t feel depression or anxiety, or that hide your heartbreak doesn’t improve your life at all, it makes you blind to the reality of your situation. When you do this, it can destroy the effectiveness of your magic, ruin your health, and keep you trapped in horrible situations.

Obviously, we want to avoid this! The problem is, just telling you not to do feeling blocker spells doesn’t solve the overwhelmingly painful emotions that you may be experiencing. You’re still stuck feeling terrible, and now you have one fewer option to deal with that. That’s what we’re going to be addressing today. When you are stuck in a painful emotion that feels unresolvable and you don’t know what to do, this is your game plan.

What You Should Do Instead

Okay, so if we should never ever under any circumstances use a feeling blocker spell, then what can we do when we’re in a situation and it feels like the emotions are unresolvable? Remember, that’s when these feeling blocker spells start to look really appealing. It’s when the emotion feels like there is no resolution, there is no way to get rid of or process the emotion in a normal fashion. Does this mean that you can’t use magic to help with your emotional state at all? What are you supposed to do if you can’t use spells to help get you out of painful situations like this?

Luckily, feeling blocker spells are not the only kind of magic that we have to help in emotional situations. And spells are not the only tool that we have in our arsenal to deal with these kinds of emotions. Here are six things that you can do if you find yourself in this situation to help find resolution with your emotions so that you do not have to resort to using dangerous magic just to feel okay.

1. Journal

I know, I know. This sounds trite and everyone says it, but there’s a reason for that. It works! Journaling on a regular basis or even just when you’re struggling with a difficult emotion can help immensely with unpacking the emotion and helping you to understand what it is that you’re feeling. Sometimes a feeling seems unresolvable simply because we do not understand it. If you don’t understand the feeling that you’re experiencing and you don’t know what’s causing it, it’s pretty much impossible for you to find an adequate resolution that will get you out of that feeling.

Journaling is always my first line of defense when I feel like an emotion is unresolvable. It doesn’t have to be neat and tidy. It doesn’t have to be politically correct. It doesn’t have to be kind. Write down what you’re feeling, get it all out, let the emotion flow onto the page so that you can look at it with an unbiased eye and get some clearer understanding. Keep in mind that your emotions are an alert system that tells you what you do and do not want. If you can identify the particular emotion that you’re experiencing, what it is in reaction to, and figure out what it is that you do not want, you are that much closer to a resolution. I know some people shy away from journaling because they don’t like hand writing, so if you’re in that camp know that it is totally fine for you to keep your journal on a computer, on your phone, or even as voice memos to yourself. Use whatever is easiest for you so that you can let the feelings out and get a better idea of what is going on internally.

2. Go into the emotion

This step piggybacks on the previous step. Often, we deal with our emotions by running in the opposite direction of the emotion. We simply try to escape it and get away from it because it’s uncomfortable and we’ve been told for most of our lives that our negative emotions are bad or wrong and that we shouldn’t have them. But again, these emotions are simply a way for your subconscious mind to communicate with you about what you do and don’t want. There’s nothing wrong or bad about having this communication system and ignoring the system or running away from it will never actually allow you to understand the message that is being sent to you. This is one of the primary problems that people with unresolvable negative emotions have. They don’t want to feel the negative emotion, so they run away from it, so this alert system now has to be louder to try to get the message across. This amplifies the emotion and makes it more painful and more uncomfortable, so the person in question runs away even more, and then the alert system has to get louder. Do you see what’s happening here?

Imagine that you have a roommate who frequently ignores you when you’re talking to them. Most of the time, it’s annoying, but it’s not a big deal, you just let it slide. Now, if the house catches on fire and you go to tell them that the house is on fire and they ignore you, what are you going to do? Well, you can’t let it slide, the house is on fire! So you say it louder. And if they still ignore you, you say it even louder. Eventually, you will be screaming in their face that the house is burning down around them until they eventually freaking listen to you. This is what your emotions are doing! They’re looking at the burning building and trying to tell you to get the hell out and if you’re constantly running away from them they’re going to have to shout it at you and make it even louder and even more uncomfortable until you get the message and take steps to get yourself the hell out of that situation.

The solution to this is to stop trying to avoid the emotion, turn and face it, and listen to what it has to say. The minute you do this, the emotion no longer has to scream to get your attention. It will be able to tell you in no uncertain terms what is wrong with the situation that you’re in so that you can process it and take the necessary steps to get yourself out of the proverbial burning building. This is what I mean when I say that you need to “go into the emotion”.

You need to stop distracting yourself, to stop keeping yourself constantly busy, to stop trying to replace the bad emotions with better feeling emotions, and to just be with whatever uncomfortable emotion you are feeling. This might look like simply closing your bedroom door so that you’re alone, sitting on your bed, leaving your phone on the other side of the room, and letting yourself feel whatever the feelings are there. They may be overwhelmingly intense and uncomfortable. They may be painful. They may be scary. But if you don’t stop and feel them and listen to what they are trying to tell you, they will only get louder and more unbearable. The minute you start to listen, the emotion becomes softer and easier to handle.

3. Do shadow work

Shadow work is such a vital part of any magical practice, but especially when you are struggling with unresolvable emotions. Shadow work is essentially a collection of tools and strategies that allow us to understand and interact with the subconscious mind. In our day-to-day practice, this allows us to root out limiting beliefs and clear vibrational contradictions that can cause problems and failures in our spell work. In the context of unresolvable emotions, shadow work will allow you to get to the bottom of these emotions and clear the traumatic imprint that is creating them so much faster. Shadow work is not necessarily a pleasant or enjoyable activity but it is one of the fastest ways for you to move through emotional blockages and to find the subconscious reasons why you either find yourself in this situation or why you cannot seem to find resolution with this emotion.

Now, shadow work is a huge topic and there are so many tools that you can use to work with your subconscious mind so I cannot go over every single possible way that you could do this. That said, here are some of my favorite shadow work tools that you can try for yourself if you are struggling with unresolvable emotions.

Parts work is probably the number one tool that I will recommend to people in terms of shadow work. The basic concept is that as we go through life and experience painful things, our mind fragments and certain pieces become our conscious mind and other pieces become repressed and get relegated to the subconscious mind. Parts work is the process of going and speaking to these individual pieces or parts of yourself to create resolution between them. This is essentially a form of channeling, but instead of channeling an external being or energy, you are channeling a specific part of yourself and allowing that part to be heard so that you can find a way to meet its needs and create resolution. Here is my preferred tutorial teaching you how to do parts work for yourself.

Another option is using shamanic journeying or dreamwork to engage with your subconscious mind. This is typically a much more surreal and symbolic experience. You may need to interpret what you see during journeying or dreaming. My favorite way to do this is to go to a shamanic journeying group, you can often find these through Facebook or meetup.com but you can also learn to do this by yourself. I teach how to do basic shamanic journeying in my Astral Traveling For Beginners course.

To do dreamwork, you would use herbs, crystals, or meditative practices to enhance your dream recall, write down your dreams upon waking, and then spend time interpreting what that dream meant using dream dictionaries and context from your own life. Dreaming is essentially your subconscious mind playing and processing while your conscious mind sleeps, so it is an excellent way to get a closer look at what is happening in your subconscious. You can use the insights that you get from shamanic journeying or dreamwork as a starting point for journaling or personal examination.

4. Use spells that are designed to help transmute the emotion

Just because feeling blocker spells are a really bad idea does not mean that you should avoid spells when working with your emotions entirely. There are two primary types of spell work that are very helpful when you are dealing with unresolvable emotions. The first is using spells that enhance your ability to understand and then transmute an emotion. Rather than trying to block, remove, or cover up an emotion, this type of spell focuses on helping you to go into the emotion so that you can receive the message and make the necessary changes faster.

The kind of spell you choose will depend on what emotion you are dealing with. For example, if you struggle with anxiety you may want a spell that helps you to caretake your anxiety while being brave enough to live your life. For this, you might use a courage spell, perhaps a spell to protect yourself, and a spell to foster compassion for your fear and anxiety. If you are struggling with anger, you might use a spell that helps you to stand up for yourself and turn that anger into empowerment. If you are struggling with sadness, you might use a spell that helps you to accept the loss and find ways to meet your needs through other avenues.

There are tons of ways to go about using magic that fall into this category, the idea is to focus your magic on helping your emotional system express itself effectively and get its needs met. This does not mean forcing yourself to move from anger straight into compassion. That would be bulldozing the emotion and trying to ignore it. It also doesn’t mean trying to make yourself fearless so that you never have to deal with anxiety again. That anxiety is there to tell you that something doesn’t feel safe. It’s trying to keep you safe! You do not want to turn off that part of yourself, to escape that part of yourself, or to ignore that part of yourself. You want to find a way to listen and to care for the emotion without trying to banish them completely.

Spells that are made to assist shadow work are particularly good for this. These kinds of spells are designed with this approach in mind. They are designed not to take you away from your emotions but to take you further into them so that you can understand them, act on them, and transmute them.

5. Use spells that will help you get into a situation that feels better

The second kind of spellwork that I would highly recommend using are spells that will help you find resolution in a very tangible way. These spells are less focused on your emotions and more focused on changing your physical reality and your life so that your emotional alert system doesn’t need to constantly go off. You want to listen to your emotions, figure out what they need, and then find a way to create that in your reality with magic.

As an example, if you have recently gone through a breakup and are struggling to let go of that person, your heartbreak and sadness are telling you that you did not want to lose that person. Now, you don’t want to try to strong-arm that person back into a relationship with you through magic because that has all kinds of negative repercussions. What you can do is identify what the feeling of loss is telling you that you want and go directly for that. If the feeling of loss is telling you that you don’t feel wanted, then use spells to draw people into your life who want you. If the feeling of loss is telling you that you feel misunderstood, then use spells to draw people into your life who understand you. If the feeling of loss is telling you that you feel lonely, use spells to draw people into your life who can connect with you.

Let’s take a second example. Say that you have a roommate who doesn’t respect your boundaries and comes into your room without asking and completely unannounced. This is likely going to make you angry because your boundaries around privacy and personal space have been violated. If having a conversation with this person doesn’t solve the problem, it may feel unresolvable and like you can’t manage your anger because the boundary is constantly being crossed. In this instance, you could do a spell to bind your roommate from coming into your room unannounced. You could do a spell to find a new roommate or to cause your current roommate to leave so that you can find someone new. You could do a spell to find new housing for yourself, where perhaps you don’t have a roommate at all.

When the situation itself feels unworkable, you can use this kind of magic to help shift external circumstances into something that feels better and allows you to move out of that negative emotion that you’re experiencing.

6. Research your particular situation

Finally, if none of this seems to be helping you resolve your painful emotions, I highly recommend doing as much research as you can into your particular situation and the emotions you’re experiencing. There are books written on almost any emotional problem that you could encounter. If you struggle to set boundaries, there are books designed to teach you exactly how to do that. If you’re stuck in an abusive relationship, there are books and resources and people who will help you learn how to get out of that situation safely. If you are struggling with anger, there are books and programs that will help you to learn to use your anger constructively. If you struggle with anxiety or depression, there are countless methodologies out there to help you work with these emotions. If you struggle with avoidant or anxious attachment styles, there is plenty of information out there about finding a way to create a more secure attachment with the people in your life. If you are struggling with grief, there are books and programs that help you find a sense of completion and acceptance so that you can move on with your life.

These resources exist, and if you are struggling, you should take advantage of every single one that you can get your hands on. If you don’t like books, try audiobooks, or podcasts, or videos. If you struggle to work through your emotions on your own, find a counselor, a therapist, or a group that can help you in that process. Many of these things can be found for free or very cheap through local libraries, the internet, and support groups. You do not have to try to fix everything yourself. You can get help in so many ways and I would heavily encourage you to seek it out if you feel that you need it.

Listen To Your Guidance System

Your emotions are an incredibly complex, finely tuned instrument that allows you to know exactly what you do and do not want in your life. Shutting off that system so that you can’t feel it and you can’t use it is such a waste of your innate capacity for creation in this world. The truth of the matter is that your only axis of power in this world is being firmly in reality. You cannot change your life if you are not willing to admit to the things in your life that you want to change.

Your emotions are your best weapon when it comes to creating real change in your world. They are the number one thing that will help you to create a life that you love and that you do not want to escape from. That’s what we’re all here for, right? We turn to witchcraft because we want empowerment and the ability to create a better life for ourselves. Do not turn off your number one tool in that endeavor! Learn to listen and work with your emotions as the incredible guidance system that they are, and you will be astounded by how quickly your magic begins to transform your life.

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