Tag: negativity

The Call is Coming From Inside the House

Published on by witchywisdoms3 Comments

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I talk a lot about beliefs versus truths here, and RuPaul always says this phrase on his podcast so I thought I’d use it as my topic for this week. When he says, “The call is coming from inside the house,” he’s referring to your negative self talk holding you back, based  on an old 70’s film titled When a Stranger Calls. The movie SPOILER centers around a baby sitter, played by Carol Kane, who keeps receiving strange and threatening phone calls. The stalker would consistently call and harass her, only to find out that when the call is traced, it’s coming from inside the house. The metaphor exists in this: it isn’t what is happening outside in reality, it is what you have held onto as your belief system that is the means for sabotage.

I recently performed a tarot spread for a reader who was frustrated with her creative blocks. She didn’t know why she couldn’t share her creations with the world. And although she reached out to me to consult my cards, the first phrase that popped into my head was “The call is coming from inside the house.” And, as I would have imagined, the cards echoed that loud and clear.

Fear is merely a byproduct of our overthinking. Yes, there are some real elements to fear, like physical danger, that our instincts will do our best to protect us from. But on a day to day basis, we mostly have constructed a belief system that masquerades as protecting us. It keeps us hidden in the house and isolated. It keeps us locked in one very accessible spot. Instead of letting us explore the options to make a systematic escape, we cower. All because of our own “truths.”

I’ve explained this before, but it bears repeating. Your belief system is constructed of things you’ve picked up throughout your life that have a significant emotion attached to it. For example, once I was wearing a dress with polka dots on it and a mean girl called me fat in an Urban Outfitters. Guess what belief manifested? Never wear polka dots.

Is that irrational? Totally. But if you don’t have the tools to separate emotion with sound reasoning (like when you’ve just hit puberty and you don’t know how to dress for your new boobs and slight pudge) that devastation will stay with you as a “truth.” So the next time you walk into Target and see some adorable polka dot romper, you’ll get a call that says “Don’t wear that, it’ll make you look fat.” And when you trace it, it won’t be coming from a mean girl. It’ll be coming from you. Because the more you repeat it, the more it becomes your own words.

There needs to be destruction, much like the Tower portends, in order to grow past these outdated beliefs. You need to trace that call back, aaallllll the way back, and have a real conversation with who’s on the other end. Why did you hold onto so tightly what the mean Urban Outfitters girl said? Why did it hurt you so much? Is it actually true? Or is it something you can let go of?

These kinds of questions and lines of reasoning can lead to the emotional security of the Queen of Cups. Holding onto fearful language and damaging beliefs only sits your house on a rocky foundation. In order to be truly rooted, your beliefs and values must exist in confidence and logic. Not on insults that you’re afraid of.

So next time you feel held back or restricted, take a long hard look at why these exist in your brain. Why have you decided to protect yourself by rehashing illogical statements? Is it still serving you? Don’t you WANT to wear polka dots???

Start tracing those calls, wear the polka dots proudly, and stay witchy ( *)

WednesdayWisdoms: Releasing the Negative

Published on by witchywisdoms2 Comments

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When shitty things happen to you, and they will through the course of your life, you have two clear routes to take. As discussed in the previous post, you can turn to whiney victimhood, or to raw vulnerability that helps you move on in an organic way.

But before you get to this fork in the road, there is a long stretch of grieving. Some of us know how to grieve, in fact, we’re seasoned professionals. Some of us others, however, would rather push the grief down or aside until it takes the wheel as an act of rebellion,  and we’re forced down the road of panicky, inconsistent victimhood.

So for all of the events, people, pets, homes, jobs, or traumas you never got to grieve, I have an exercise in purging some of the anger that leads us down the back alley of victimhood.

We’re going to write down everything we wish we could have said “no” to.

I suggest Post-it notes or index cards. You want to write each specific event on a card of it’s own. We aren’t making a list, we’re giving individual space to each shitty life event.

There is no need to journal on this either. Give your event a title, and as you write it down, imagine what it would look like if you could have said “no” to this particular event.

Then, for each card, I want you to burn it (safely!) over an open flame. As you do, say the following:

“I cannot change the past, but I can re-route my future. I accept the reality of the present, and release my anger towards ___________”

This should help to begin a revolutionary healing process. Acceptance is the final stage of grief in the Kübler- Ross Grief Cycle. But we must move through the other six stages in order to get there.

What I find people hang on to the most in grief is guilt and anger. This ritual should alleviate some of those feelings so you can continue your journey inward, and then onward. Stay strong, and, as always, stay witchy ( *)

Showing Up with the Right Attitude

Published on by witchywisdoms1 Comment

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Have you ever had a day where you dreaded going to work? Or had an event you really didn’t want to go to? Well, so has everyone else. However, if you show up with a good attitude, you might find some silver linings.

The power of a positive attitude is unsurpassed. Taking a minute for some deep breathing, concentrating on being positive, and letting the negativity go has a lot of rewards. For one, it alleviates stress. Two, it it helps you gain an opposite perspective. Going into something undesirable with a negative attitude only makes the situation twice as unbearable. If you have an (at least) neutral attitude about said event, you will have a better time because you’ve opened yourself up to it.

Much like a magician, you have the power to change your attitude. It takes a little bit of work at first, but after that, its just a little reminder. I, for one, like meditation and mantras. Those serve as my time for reminders. And they always will. Because being automatically positive 100% of the time is not only unattainable, but its fake. So to strive for that is really far-fetched.

Working on having a positive attitude one day at a time reaps a lot of benefits. People want to be around positive people, don’t you? So stay positive, and stay witchy ( *)