Home | Self Help | Emotions - what to do with them
Emotions
Emotions are often inconvenient. They can be painful, unnerving, disturbing and downright unpleasant. Sometimes they get quite addictive, not only when they feel wonderful, but also when they give us a fix of how we’ve come to feel about ourselves and the world, whether angry, resentful, bitter, lonely, sorry for ourselves, jealous, fearful, hopeless or any other form of unhappiness. Other times they are such a nuisance or so uncomfortable that we just try to bury them, deny they exist, dismiss them and get on with our lives.
Emotions are designed to be expressed. The word means literally, move out. In expressing emotions we release the energy they hold and this is what frees us up to move on. It’s actually very difficult to move on in your thinking about a situation until you’ve expressed your emotions about it.
If you simply brush your feelings aside, they disappear only from your consciousness. They remain subconsciously as a pattern in your energy field, or your memory if you prefer, until something with a similar vibration occurs that resonates with the ‘buried’ emotion (see Emotional Reactions) and brings the feeling back to consciousness in association with a current event.
We know from experience that if we collect annoyances without expressing our feelings, they build up within us until we’re ready for an outburst of rage. Or if we build up a collection of fears without releasing them, we can be overtaken by panic. Or if we collect losses without grieving over them we can become depressed.
Some people expend so much energy trying to avoid experiencing their own emotions that they are on the go all the time and can’t relax; or become so tense and rigid that they develop illnesses; or maintain an ‘I’m O.K.’ front while hiding behind drugs of various sorts; or keep moving from place to place or relationship to relationship so they don’t get a chance to meet up with themselves.
Expressing emotions is not silly or weak. It’s natural and healthy. There are natural physical outlets like crying, shaking, screaming, running. Talking to someone who understands releases the energy too. Writing a letter to someone to express your feelings freely, then burning it, is a safe way of unloading anger and other feelings. If you feel in control, then allowing yourself to feel the emotion while tapping alternately on either side of the body helps the brain to process blocked emotions (use the hands on the thighs, or the forefingers on two points about an inch either side of the centre of the forehead; stop at intervals, take a breath and then go again with whatever has come into your mind). Talking to yourself in your mind while walking and looking about you (not on the ground) helps the brain to process emotional problems and release them at the same time. You can use the Emotional Freedom Technique and Bach Flower Remedies to help neutralise emotion. Of course it's not a good idea to tackle overwhelming emotions or serious trauma without some professional help.
Once you have released the emotion, you do need to change the way you are thinking about the situation, otherwise you will simply generate the same emotion over and over again. It’s your thought about the situation, yourself or the world, that generated that emotion in the first place. You need to think again and think differently. Look at it from different perspectives, different points of view. Time doesn’t heal anything. It’s what you do with the time that matters.
If you hang on to the meaning you’ve got, you’ll hang on to the emotion that goes with it. If you really want to move on, express the emotion and then change your mind about how you see things.
