Are you sheltering in place but have quarantined your emotions? Have you socially distanced in dazed-out zombie-mode?
During this challenging and scary time, it's all too easy to numb out emotionally. You binge-watch Netflix, imbibe various substances, or diligently measure your daily beard growth. You avoid, discount or deny your emotions as they try bubbling to the surface. Why?
Although you were taught how to read and write, you might possibly be "emotionally illiterate." The only way you learned about emotions was by observing people who had perfected 1) suppressing them; or 2) lashing out with them. Additionally, many spiritual teachings encourage you to transcend (Read: deny, vilify) emotions as you deeply breathe them off into the ether.
So, when emotions try to arrive, you're clueless as to whether they’re good or bad, helpful or dangerous. You judge yourself harshly, thinking something's wrong with you, like you're the only one feeling them. You develop sneaky ways to conceal them, or misdirect them onto other situations.
No one explained the importance of grieving, or offered understanding as to why you feel depressed. No one taught you what do during an anxiety attack, or what anger is really about.
Since you were never taught to appreciate emotions as you best teachers and inner-guides, the marvelous messages they're trying to give you flutter by, completely ignored.
In other words, no one gave you tools to see past the surface of emotions so you could discover the fear, as well as the love, disguised underneath them.
Emotions Are Friends
Emotions influence much of what you do. You're often motivated by how you feel, not what you think, even if you're proud of your Mr. Spock "That's not logical" abilities.
Especially during this global state of hyper-emotionalism.
Because you’ve programmed yourself to judge some emotions as “good” and some as “bad,” your life boils down to a basic formula: Get more of the “good” ones (love, happiness, excitement, etc.) and do whatever it takes to avoid the “bad” ones (sadness, anger, anxiety, frustration, etc.).
Those labels have you falsely believe that if an emotion feels bad, it is bad. Not only bad, but dangerous.
Unfortunately, pushing down those “bad” emotions causes them to spiral out extremely. Not accepting sadness can morph it into depression; judging fear can flip it into an anxiety attack; criticizing your anger can turn it into shame.
Even more sadly, pushing down "bad" emotions ends up numbing you to the "good" ones.
However, embracing and acknowledging emotions, treating them like master teachers simply trying to deliver important messages, helps you move through them to be completed.
Emotion Avoidance
You might be expert at ways to avoid feeling emotions without even realizing it.
You keep busy, distracting yourself. You intellectualize, downsizing them with euphemisms rather than plain ole' emotional words. You reprimand yourself, insisting you "get a grip" and not "cry over spilt milk." You force yourself to "look at the bright side" even when you can't find one. You seek reassurance, comfort and rescuing from others and external "things."
Like an energetic see-saw, when you push down an emotion, the energy has to come up somewhere. It could emerge as a health issue, or those close to you acting out on it in some way.
The incomplete, unacknowledged emotions that society has been pushing down for generations, is finally showing up to be looked at, healed and released.
Your job is to simply feel and accept emotions, get the messages they give you about fear and love, and thank them for the important reminders.
This may sound too easy, but if enough of us do so, it could truly shift the world.
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Ready to make friends with your emotions? Royce Morales teaches breakthrough self-discovery courses that get to the roots so your life can shift. She’s available for continuing group classes, an e-course and private inner journey sessions using her spiritual clearing techniques.
If you’re tired of the struggle and feel ready to jump in, or dive deeper, contact Royce for a free fifteen minute consultation to see if this work is a good fit.
Royce is the author of three books about her teachings: “Want: True love, past lives and other complications;” “Know: A spiritual wake-up call;” and “Back: Rebirth After Stroke,” all available on amazon.com Her website is www.RoyceMorales.com and she can be reached at lvsreal@aol.com.
