Overcoming Difficult Emotions
Do you ever feel your emotions building? You can feel them piling up yet you're unsure what to do about it. Do you ignore them? Do you replay a situation over in your mind 1000 times, reliving whatever emotion you're struggling with but not doing anything constructive with it? How about shoving your feelings so far down that nobody could find them if they wanted to. Or maybe distracting yourself, if you're busy than you can't feel right?
What happens to the emotions that we don't take the time to feel or even acknowledge? Do they disappear into the ether? No, I don't believe they disappear, but manifest inside of us. In our bodies and in our minds, and we reflect and project these emotions outward. So despite the fact we may feel like we have a "handle" on our feelings because we shoved them so far down inside of us, in reality we don't. Those feelings are bubbling up and expanding outward whether you are aware of it or not.
I believe our feelings contain energy and that energy has to be converted or transferred somewhere, it doesn't just disappear. This realization has made me acutely aware of how my unacknowledged feelings can greatly affect my outward interactions and my overall energy.
I recently felt some huge waves of emotion. In this case, I was dealing with sadness and lack. I was feeling void of security and fulfillment in a certain area of my life. When these feelings began to really linger, I realized they weren't just a fluke. I understood there must be some deep seeded reasons why I was feeling this way.
Intuitively, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to SIT with my feelings. Not avoid them, distract myself from them, or shove them down into the depths of my soul hoping they'll never surface again (because I know, and you probably know- they will eventually ALWAYS surface.) So that's what I did, I sat with my feelings. I leaned into the uncomfortableness. I let my curiosity and intuition guide me. I sought answers and my own truths to find the WHY behind my emotions.
The universe is always guiding us, I believe this to be true. During the midst of my struggle to process and understand my feelings, I was led to a beautiful episode of Super Soul Sunday. The episode was an interview with Brene Brown, one of my favorite authors. Low and behold, the whole interview was about recognizing your emotions, leaning in, and overcoming. Basically the exact process I was trying to create for myself. This solidified to me that I was on the right track to healing and progress. We are being guided by the universe, god, the divinity within, (whatever you choose to call it) to learn and grow from each experience and each relationship. When we begin to look at things this way, we not only learn a whole lot about ourselves, we begin to transfer our emotional energy constructively. We become more aligned with who we truly are and live more harmoniously in relation to ourselves and others.
Maybe next time you feel overwhelmed with emotion- you'll lean in, sit with it, and let the universe guide you through it. I have a pretty good feeling your results will be astounding.