Our feelings aren’t the problem, it’s our relationship to them. Emotions are energy. Energy wants to move. When stuck emotions cause stress, it’s the energy asking you to help it move.
I wish there was a simple approach… A one answer fits all, however the first step is to recognize your response. We can feel in our body an energy shift when emotions are triggering us.
Example.. think of something that makes you angry and sit with it. Where are you feeling in your body physically?
You can do this with thinking about something joyful too. Your brain will react. When you can recognize the emotion in our body it will open up to your feelings.
“Emotions are the internal felt reaction to a specific stimulus, of which there are five — fear, joy, anger, sadness, and disgust — and we experience them due to their survival value. Even though we tend to use the words interchangeably, emotions and feelings aren’t exactly the same thing”.
“Whereas we have five emotions, we have thousands of feelings,” This is due to the fact that our emotions are a gut (instinctive) response without the benefit of mental processing.”
Try to practice identifying your emotion in your physical body. It is the key to unlocking feelings.
“Feelings are a conscious subjective experience of emotion,” They typically emerge after self-reflection, as a result of judging our thoughts or the actions we take, as opposed to involuntary reactions to a stimulus.”
Once you identify the emotion you can then start to process it. When you do not focus on the physical reaction in your body it could take a traumatic and life-changing experience to catch your attention. With practice you will be able able to recognize the reaction in your body at a much lower, less intense level. This is important because then you can respond without being escalated to a huge emotional shift. Essentially, you catch yourself before you go over the deep end. This means that you have grown and shifted from living in reaction to pausing, breathing in the present moment and responding.
This practice will open up peace and space for creativity and curiosity for you. My methods to move through my emotions started with cognitive therapy, somatic therapy, writing, group therapy, studying emotions, feelings, sharing and talking. There is no one answer fits all solution.
Self-awareness may expose your addiction to certain emotions to try to create a feeling in yourself with others. In recognizing what makes you tick and how you connect will help you create firm boundaries and a healthier relationship with yourself and others. I have come to learn the power of self-acceptance, self-respect and self-love and by doing so I have learned that the road inward expanded to the road to others. To live with compassion, grace, forgiveness, courage acceptance for myself and others has brought inner peace for myself and I am now able to let others be who they are without the urge to fix them. Watch and listen yourself as you go through your day today. Don’t judge yourself for what you’re feeling and do your best to fully accept yourself. It takes honesty, openness and a desire to change to feel safe enough to feel ease as you open up to your feelings. I’m here for you, I believe in you and you are not alone. Thank you!
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