I’ve always heard terms such as “slave to their emotions” or “Let’s emotions get the best of them” and in truth I’ve never understood it. I always thought ‘why does everyone hate emotions so much?’. I received these terms from a place of fear that I had to repress my feelings. It was how I viewed the world: feelings were not acceptable.
Now, however, I’m beginning to understand what they meant: you shouldn’t let your emotions lead you blindly because they are changeable facets of your human experience; they are like water- what comes into contact with water has an affect on its state, and what state the water is in has an affect on what comes into contact with it. Therefore, a bowl of water outside that gets contaminated by dirt, will spread dirt to whatever comes into contact with it. Much like us if we lead with our emotions alone, we will be stuck in that experience loop. Without drive or action, water can’t transform it’s state. So, like how a river transforms into an ocean, we need to know what state we want to be in. We need to learn what environment we need and what it takes to get there. If you’re unhappy because you’re not an ocean, then you have no place being in a bowl in a garden. The point being, you shouldn’t lead with something in a state of change because it needs direction; you should lead in communication with it, to reach a state of holistic alignment with yourself. I couldn’t grasp this concept before; my emotions were my only guide.
I’m an emotional person, obviously, and I’ve always been proud of it; I’ve seen it as a strength. But I knew that it intimidated some, and alienated me. I am also a very creative person and believe this links in. But I was always curious: how could I not be emotional when I was? What did people want me to do with my emotions? It seemed everyone had gotten a memo I hadn’t. I think, now, I get that when we ‘spill’ our emotions or act on them, we are breeding them.
The interesting thing about emotions is they are intelligent communications between our body and our soul. I think it’s important to understand what their purpose is and what they have to say. I think, by first and foremost, treating them like a messenger, would be to view them in a healthier manner.
If I’m angry and I want to lash out at someone, I can be confused, thinking that this anger came out of nowhere i.e. I encountered the messenger; I can turn against myself and think I’m a hateful person, disgusted by what I am presented with i.e. shooting the messenger; I can act on my anger without understanding the message and do something I’ll regret i.e. assuming what the messenger came to say.
Recently, I’ve learned that my emotions are for me. I always connected my self-worth to my ability to act on my feelings. I believed this denoted courage and pro-activeness. You can imagine that this led to impulsive actions that I was unsure of with time, leading to inconsistent sentiment. I thought it was honourable of me to act on my anger because I was protecting myself, but I’d end up so much worse. I would be sorry after and guilty and confused. I would then think I was a failure for making things more painful but I couldn’t fathom what I was meant to do. I do wholeheartedly trusted in my feelings. But I developed low self-esteem acting in this way; believing I couldn’t look after myself. I was always either the bad guy or the victim- no in-between, unless I was what other people wanted me to be.
I realise though, that emotions are like thoughts and sensations; they can be passing, or they can be re-occurring. My sister who went on a yoga course abroad learned that emotions take 90 seconds to circulate the body. It is your choice to pause and listen to them, express them, repress them or release them as something transformative. If you cling to them, they will store themselves in the body. As a reiki practicer (energy healing worker), I can attest to that.
We can’t ignore our emotions because they will stay with us until we get the message. Our emotions tell us when something is right or wrong for us. The more skilled we are at speaking their language, the more nuanced and detailed their messages will be.
Therefore, we can’t immediately act on our emotions without understanding the language. Otherwise, we risk breeding more of the same. Sharing our emotions feels good because we’re releasing it from our bodies; but then what happens to our outer world which is now filled with it? It’s not inside you anymore but its everywhere else.
So if we breed our emotions, we have to think of where that offspring is going to go. Emotions are continuous. If we irresponsibly direct them outwards, the world around us will be filled with offspring. If we irresponsibly direct them inwards, then there’ll be less and less room to function healthily. What are anger’s offspring?: arguments, violence, destruction, action.
So what do we do?
We can start by listening. We can learn the language by taking the time to understand our emotional experiences: acknowledge them, treating them as messengers rather than leaders in control. I think that’s what people mean when they say “we are not our emotions” because we EXPERIENCE them. They may come with thoughts or visualisations, which seem like things we should do. But that’s the emotion talking- why does it want to do that? Is anger what you want to continue in the world around you? If not, try to reach a state of calm; learn why anger arose, and deal with the situation in a state of calm: you will then resolve a problem you definitely do not want continuing in your life! While also not making it worse by breeding calm.
As an example, I’ve once had to leave a room because my body wanted to act out aggressively- I began punching at the air to let out this energy. I didn’t understand it because I was afraid of it. If I knew then what I knew now, I would know that I didn’t feel safe; I didn’t trust the person I was with because they had betrayed my trust by crossing a physical boundary I’d set. I had not claimed my control of my protection by putting measures in place to ensure it wouldn’t happen again; instead everything continued as normal. Therefore, I was continuously in a vulnerable position despite my lack of trust. I wasn’t aware this was going on. I had so easily brushed away my feelings, showing my lack of attention to myself. I had consequently minimised my own pain. The anger was telling me, on a primal level, that I wasn’t safe. While inside this rage, I wanted to assert my power over them because they took mine from me. It should never have come to that situation. If I was more emotionally healthy, I would have realised my pain and lack of trust and not invited that person back into my life. My body would not have believed it had to fight to stay protected. I should never have put myself in a position that led to me wanting to be physically violent.
I did not act violently though, thankfully, although the emotion and the vision were compelling.
It did not come to that because I was mindful of how awful that would have been to live with; I would have been just as bad, in an endless, breeding loop of anger, power and violation. It would have been painful and heart-breaking.
If self-love was the goal, then acting in that way would have only pushed my goal farther than I could easily reach.
I am incredibly grateful I chose to be alone. However, I still didn’t know how to deal with it and again, I let things continue. I did, soon after, distance myself from that person because things weren’t right. I just wasn’t aware of exactly why until later. It was self-respect I needed; a boundary and trust in myself to look after myself. With that person, it was never going to happen.
My point is then that emotions are your friends. And they’re designed to come and go, and not be stored or grown. The healthiest way to release them is to acknowledge them, understand them and transform them into something positive for your wellbeing. Emotions are continuous, so its important they are transformed, as their life will carry on regardless of what becomes of them.
Be mindful, be kind to yourself, and be patient: sometimes, we can’t resolve issues straight away. As much as we don’t like to go to bed on an argument, you can’t always have a neat end. Accept that time is important. I should know, I lost my dad in the middle of a taut relationship, without a resolution. That’s life; time is so beautiful and it cannot be rushed. You can only honour yourself, and you can’t do that in a timely fashion because that’s not truly respecting your comfort zones or needs. Take my other example- by keeping the peace with the person who had crossed my boundary, I hadn’t honoured myself. I hadn’t told that person what I’d uncovered because I’d needed the space to heal at the time. I’m in no rush to do anything but take care of myself, and that does take time and patience.
Everything about us needs developing. It’s unfortunate that we can exclude certain aspects of ourselves like our emotions; leaving them raw and primal will leave them unaligned with the rest of us that is matured and civilised. Raise them properly.
Our relationship with our emotions is our own. We cannot help but breed as a continuous being. Therefore, how would we like to create from our emotions? Writing, painting, dancing, art, thought, exercise etc are positive examples. Or we can release them through talking and turning then into knowledge and wisdom. If we want to rant, we should consider the willingness of our receivers. Otherwise it could be a negative transaction, causing them to have feelings of discomfort or boundary crossing.
I’m sure we wouldn’t like to fill our bodies with negative emotions and cause physical illness; or pass it off to the outside world, infesting others with illness too. Now that I can now see what is responsible and healthy, I can understand Karma better. I misunderstood what people had said about giving in to emotions to be telling me to reject mine. Because I now see that to care for emotions is more complicated than I thought. For me especially, maybe not to others, but it was never a simple matter of either reject them or have them. Because either way, they exist, and you can’t ignore them or submit to their moods because that’s a lack of discipline or self-neglect. None of those methods consider your own power and control because you’re letting them happen to you rather than you happening to them. We have to be responsible for ourselves.
Wording is also everything: if you weren’t to act on them, then what were you to do with them? Is creating a dance from them not acting on them? Perhaps we need to change the wording to:
Do not recklessly breed or hoard your emotions because it will hurt you in the long run. Look after yourself by taking responsibly for your own wellbeing. By nurturing your emotions and realizing what they’re telling you about your needs, you can find a healthy solution to a problematic circumstance. Help your emotions transform into their desired state: anger wants to feel safe, sadness wants to feel valued, happiness wants to feel celebrated and accomplish things. This will make your inner and outer world a happier place to live.
Your transformations could also bring comfort to others.
So I’m learning how to be a responsible parent to my feelings! And I’m mindful that what happens in the world affects me, just like what I do affects the world.
Thank you for reading! All my love and healing.
Grace King 