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To be effective as a massage therapist it is important to be able to manage your own feelings.
Managing your feelings doesn’t mean that you stuff them down and repress them. It means that you become aware of what’s going on inside of you, own your feelings as your own, heed the message that they have for you, and act responsibly. It means that you are able to have your feelings but not let them have you.

Managing your own feelings will allow you to remain present for your client and will also help give you insights as to what clients might be going through when they start to have feelings on the table.

Our emotions are very much a reflection of our beliefs about life events.

Say you are working in a spa setting or clinic setting and you suddenly are fired or let go for one reason or another. you are likely to feel an incredible amount of fear, as you perceive your very identity, much less your survival, to be at stake. If you are secure in allowing yourself to feel your feelings you will let yourself feel the sadness and pain of being let go. If you are not able to let yourself be vulnerable and feel those feelings, the feelings that are repressed are often released as anger or even rage and you may even feel like lashing out at someone verbally or even physically – you will be projecting these feelings onto another to relieve the stress that the feelings are causing.

When feelings of anger or even rage arise -while they are very real – they are a big sign that it is not the event or other person that is causing any feeling – it is your own beliefs that are the source of your emotions. If you find yourself lashing out, it is usually a result of you repressing another emotion such as feeling hurt, rejected or abandoned. Over-reactions are an indication that it is not about the current situation but from a repressed feeling from a very long time ago. You project that feeling onto another to try to relieve the stress it is causing you. You can tell when you are projecting a feeling by your reaction to it. If it is simply informing you than it is not a projection.

If on the other hand, you are a person who views your job simply as one aspect of your life, and you know that your inherent value lies in your unique skills and qualities, then your feelings and response to losing your job will probably be a whole lot different. You may just view this loss as an opportunity to explore a whole new path for yourself.

The bottom line here is this: how you feel in any situation corresponds exactly with what you believe about yourself and the situation. Master your beliefs, and you’ll master your emotions.

When we let our emotions run us, we miss the message that they carry. When we stuff them down for fear of what they might cause us to do, they simply lie in wait to emerge with a vengeance later on. Emotional mastery is the ability to process our emotions so that we receive their message and use their energy for appropriate action.

Being able to master your emotions will allow you to be more available to create a healing container for someone else to feel their feelings. The idea of a healing container comes from the psychology profession. As a massage therapist, the task is to create a safe place where people can learn to feel themselves. The therapeutic relationship often recreates our early patterns or blueprints that are embedded in the drama of your family of origin. Touch in the therapeutic relationship has profound ways of healing these patterns without the client even having to speak a word.

Peer Supervision is one way of becoming more aware of your challenges in dealing with your emotions and the challenges of staying present with a client. Getting regular massages also help you to understand what your clients go through when you touch them and assists in the process.

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