Meet Barley! Our 10 week old miniature Australian Shepherd. It’s been a giant wave of emotions the past couple of weeks with him. I felt an abundance of joy, laughter, love, pride, care and companionship.
I also felt frustration, anger, hostility, guilt, regret, pain and outbursts of sadness.
This is a story of how painful emotions from our past can resurface from time to time, trigger current situations in life without you knowing until you observe your thoughts and reflect.
My hopes is for you to find comfort in knowing that feelings that we’ve buried from our past truly never go away until we work through it and the best thing we can do for ourselves is to acknowledge the emotions, observe the situation, learn to change in order to rise up next time and let the emotions go.
Yes, it’s always easier said than done, but the key is to know that you deserve freedom from past emotions and like anything in life, it will take investment of your time, money and energy.
WHAT HAPPENED?
As we would expect from ANY puppy, PUPPIES LOVE TO PLAY! They love to play tug-of-war, fetch, perform tricks and most of all… THEY LOVE TO BITE your clothes, your hair, anything they can get their teething gums on!
After a few days of ‘Honeymoon Phase’ with Barley, he and I were having a great game of rope tug-of-war. All of a sudden the game turned into tug-of-war with mommy’s pants!
With each bite, the hold strengthened onto my pant leg and his growling turned into barking louder and LOUDER.
I felt a rush of feelings of frustration. I felt I was being attacked and hurt.
My frustration then turned into anger.
I started shouting back at him and tried to get him off me.
When I finally got loose, I did what I had learned from the many YouTube training videos, I turned away to leave the ‘play area’ and let him know that play time was over.
I continued to walk away and cried my heart out.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF FEELINGS & THOUGHTS
I was feeling so defeated, guilty and sad. Who am I to own and train a dog? He’s not going to listen to me. He’s not going to respect me.
OBSERVATION OF THE SITUATION
To Barley, mommy’s pant leg was the same as the rope.
He was maybe thinking “in the game of tug-of-war, there is no letting go. You’re supposed to tug till the other side gives up! I’m barking at mommy because I want her to continue playing with me but now she’s barking back at me. This must be the new game, BARKING!”
But that was it. It was supposed to be ‘PLAYTIME’!
My own energy went from positive to negative FAST!
Pets have no hidden agenda to hurt or attack you unless they felt like they were in danger.
As soon as I walked away, Barley was onto the next game with Papa. He was being present with the situation. He didn’t turn around and mope in the corner as I had done.
OBSERVATION OF THE EMOTIONS & THOUGHTS
My anger and shouting were reactions to my thoughts, that I was being attacked and hurt by a cute adorable puppy that only wanted to play with.
Why did I cry?
I thought I was unworthy and not good enough to try and raise a puppy.
The emotions escalated when I thought about what I had done and felt guilty for shouting at him.
Diving deeper, I didn’t want to raise our new companion in the same environment as I had growing up. I already did that once before. I ‘disciplined’ my brother the same way I had learned from my childhood.
My shouting, the pain and anger I had towards Barley resurfaced from my past.
I realized that this was my second chance to learn from that past experience and make it better.
I also realized that there are thoughts and beliefs that I’m still holding onto from my past that I need to work on letting go. I now understand and feel compassion for my father who was just doing the best he could with what he knew and learned from his own past. It doesn't make what he did or what I did right, but it was just what we knew best.
I'm grateful for the blessing of self-empowerment to grow by reading books and learning from those with abundance mindset.
SIMPLY BE HAPPY DOING YOUR BEST IN THE PRESENT AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE HAPPY REGARDLESS OF THE OUTCOME.
CHANGE THE THOUGHT
I can be better.
I can be a great pawrent.
I am patient.
I am not my past.
I am who I am NOW.
I can do this!
I am up for the challenge again and again! Bring it on!
Over a week later now from that situation. My relationship with Barley has grown stronger. He understands that I don’t appreciate being bit and I try to find him something else to bite on. Anytime he’s barking, I know that it’s because he’s trying to tell me something that I don’t understand. I just need to go within and find patience to understand him.
CAN YOU RELATE TO THIS STORY?
If you were to replace Barley with someone you love in your life and think of a time you were shouting/barking at them only to feel shitty after.
Was it worth the pain and suffering?
Would you be willing to do the work, spend the time and energy to make positive changes?
