Women, Stress and Inner Healing
by Priscilla A. Bright, MA

Women have naturally strong nurturing and healing abilities. In an infinite number of ways every day they bring their warmth and compassion to family and friends, and to those they help through professional care-giving. However, when it comes to caring for themselves, they can tend to disregard their own stresses and needs, and over time can become depleted and feel overwhelmed by their inner struggles and stress.

The majority of women who ask to work with me do so because they are feeling this emotional depletion. Often they report feeling out of touch with their inner selves and emotions, and feel that their energy is diminished or blocked in some way. These women have a strong longing to get back in touch with themselves, and a need to rebuild their inner energy.

My work combines counseling and inner energy healing, and focuses on helping my clients to connect with their own healing abilities. The purpose is to ease their inner struggles, and to reconnect them with their sense of inner balance and fulfillment. The sessions themselves include an integration of counseling, inner journeying, energy healing, relaxation and grounding, with each client's work being a unique expression of their healing path. My job is to be their ally and guide on this very personal and sacred journey.

An essential quality of our work together is that it is done from a place of deep relaxation and embodied presence. This allows the client's stressed nervous system to let down the chronic vigilance and defenses that contribute to stress. In this way the client can address her inner resistances and struggles, not with logic or strength of will, but with self-compassion and inner healing essence. From this embodied state of being, she is able to be more present with herself and her internal experience, and to open to the wonderful healing energy within.

By integrating my knowledge and abilities as an energy healer into my behavioral work with stress, I have been able to considerably enhance the depth of my work. This is because energy work takes place on a deep level of intuition and inner knowing. My clients learn to drop into a deep inner awareness of emotions and issues as energy within the body, instead of relying primarily on their minds to "figure things out."

Women, with their strong intuitive ability, are able to connect deeply and powerfully with this subtle level of work. For example, if I ask a client to close her eyes and sense where she feels her energy to be flowing or blocked, or where she senses more light or less, or where in her body her emotions are held down or full, she is very able to perceive this inner environment. Women have a great capacity to perceive different qualities of energy within their systems. Once they begin re-connecting with their intuition, they go on to become the gifted architects of their own unique and amazing healing journeys.

A primary challenge for women along their healing path is that, as natural caregivers, women are more practiced at directing their healing energy outward to meet the needs of others. When a client and I are working on internal healing, we sometimes discover an actual inner resistance. Clients may experience feelings of selfishness or guilt about taking too much nurturing for themselves, or uncover inner images about not being loved or accepted if they don't give out all they have. They may have a sense that they must keep themselves "small," and not savor their own essence.

The danger of this diminished attention to one's own needs is that over time it can result in a serious disconnection from inner feelings, and this disconnection can contribute to emotional burn-out. Clients have often told me that they feel out of touch with their own inner wisdom. For women, who often guide themselves by their intuitive compass, this can be a scary place to be.

Another contributor to women's stress that I want to mention is patterns of thought. Women, it turns out, are especially vulnerable to getting caught up in "rumination," the process of thinking and rethinking events and feelings. This tendency to keep turning over an event or feeling in one's mind is a stress factor for women. Indeed, when combined with a tendency towards self-criticism and perfectionism, it can be a form of continual self-inflicted stress that can cause both mental and physical exhaustion.

In my work, all aspects of women's stress are recognized and addressed with compassion in our healing work together. Self compassion is very important because so many women have been negatively affected by constantly hearing that they are "too sensitive," "too intense," or "worry too much." They may even become ashamed of their our sensitive and intuitive nature, when in actuality these abilities are some of women's greatest gifts and strengths. Gifts that need to be embraced and engaged fully for the healing journey.

To close, I want to say that I am continually in awe of the power of the hearts of women, and their natural healing gifts. Getting to the place where they can hold unconditional love and acceptance for themselves is the task before them, and one that I am honored and inspired to be a part of. Just as we experience a flower, bird or tree, we need to open to receive ourselves as the miracles of creation that we are, and from this place begins the journey home to ourselves.

Priscilla Bright began her work over twenty years ago with nurses, social workers and other professional women caregivers. In addition to her private practice with women, she has conducted numerous self-healing workshops with corporations, professional associations and the staff of hospitals. Ms. Bright holds a Masters of Public Health from Boston University School of Medicine, and completed a four-year training program in energy healing at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, where she is now a member of the faculty. Her offices are in Kingston, New Paltz & Poughkeepsie. For additional information and questions on her work, call (845) 688-7175.