Emotion come from the Latin verb movere, which means to move. Emotions are things that move us, that set our body in movement and motivate us to act. They are brief affective states characterized by a physiological, physical and mental activity. While emotions are not good or bad, we can still categorize them as positive or negative, depending on their purpose and the way they make us act. Positive emotions broaden our attention and they help us explore and engage, which are essential for adaptation. On the other hand, negative emotions narrow our attention and give us the energy to fight or escape, which are essential for our survival. Negative emotions become an issue when they are too intense and appear too frequently¹. When we were young, we needed the support of an adult to learn how to express and regulate our emotions. However, depending on our education, we may not have learnt how to effectively regulate them. Throughout our life and conditioning we may also have learnt that some of them are bad and that they shouldn’t be expressed. Along the way, we may also have mistaken suppression for regulation. Even though emotions are very short-lived and disappear quickly, we often give them meaning by linking them to their cause, which creates feelings. The latter are long-lasting affective states corresponding to our own personal representation of a situation, thing or person and we love holding on to those feelings. An example depicting the difference between emotions and feelings is feeling angry (emotion) when something bad happens and feeling resentment (feeling) long after the said thing happened.
Every time we suppress an emotion, it is stored in our body and creates tension. But we also all know that we cannot just go and hit someone when we’re angry, right? So, let’s find a new way of living our negative emotions. The key concept here is that we shouldn’t suppress our emotions but we should manage our reactions.
Pausing and observing is a good first step as it helps us identify, acknowledge and create distance with our emotions (name it to tame it). Pausing will also allow us to act rather than automatically react to these emotions. While pausing, we can use breathing techniques to bring back calmness to our body. Then we can act skillfully and decide what is best in this situation. We maybe need to excuse ourselves from the situation and go outside to take a breath of fresh air; go to the bathroom and cry; … Sometimes this is not possible, or not enough and when we think about this situation or person it still triggers us. Our body still reacts to it, and it makes us angry, sad, anxious all over again.
What we can do is actively create safe space to release our emotions even (long) after the event has happened. Then we need to recall a triggering event and become aware of the negative emotion that is still in our system. Think about it, feel it and then let it out using one or more tools mentioned below. The aim is not to do these things to take your mind off the situation and your emotions, but to let you feel and express these feelings so that they can leave your system.
Tools:
Intuitive dance session with a supportive music for this emotion.
Paint or draw something to express what you are feeling.
Sing or shout (maybe in a pillow or somewhere where you won’t scare your neighbours).
Go do some sports (boxing, running, spinning, …)
If you’re sad but can’t make yourself cry, watch a movie that normally makes you cry and cry your eyes out.
Don’t hesitate to share if you have other tools that work for you!
¹If this is your case, letting your emotions live is not exactly what you need, but rather find a way to change the way you think. (Greenberger & Padesky, 2016, Mind over Mood, Guilford Press, New York.)
We love control. It gives us a reassuring sense of safety and stability. Who doesn’t love safety and stability, right? There is nothing wrong about wanting to feel safe. But how much control becomes too much control? Well, the answer is when this need for control prevent us from living a flourishing life. It’s time to let go.
I don’t want to feel this again
On an emotional level, this need for control often comes from a harmful combination of our fear of feeling certain emotions and our lack of trust in our ability to cope with those emotions. Most of the time, the dreaded emotions come from previous experiences where we were not able to regulate them either because we were too young or because the event was too intense. So, we control everything we can to avoid feeling again what we perceive as awful emotions. In the event that the “awful” emotions arise despite all our arduous efforts to avoid them, we often restrict and suppress them.
We don’t actually suffer from our emotions but from all we do to avoid feeling them.
There is no other way
On a mental level, our need for control comes from our love of being right, our desire for things to be exactly the way we want them to be and our need to stay in a known territory. We are obsessed with life fitting the reality we have created in our mind and we get attached to this ideal reality, which is based on our beliefs. We are determined to prove ourselves (and others) that our beliefs and imagined reality are true. So, we control what we want to see, looking at the evidences confirming our beliefs, while filtering out the contradicting ones. We choose to act in a way that will impact other people’s beliefs about us and then their behaviours towards us. The latter are very likely to reinforce our initial beliefs (this can be totally unconscious). This is called the Pygmalion Effect, also known as the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
This is a great effect when the beliefs are positive, but not so much when they are negative. By trying to avoid feeling a certain emotion, we create situations that will likely end up supporting our negative beliefs and make us feel that emotion again. This self-sabotaging cycle hinders our own growth, happiness and success. Not only this cycle proves us right, but we also benefit from it by staying in a well-known territory, not facing our hard truths, not feeling some difficult emotions, … These benefits are called secondary gains. This is why we are so reluctant to change.
We just love when things stay the same, even if it means living a miserable life.
Example:
I once felt a lot of shame and then I believed that I wasn’t not good enough. I want to find a partner but I am scared of being rejected because I’m not good enough. That’s why I keep postponing my dates to when I’ll have lost 10kg. I try to lose the weight, but it does not seem to work. What I gain from not losing this weight and staying in this self-sabotaging cycle is that I will not have to face an eventual rejection, I can stay in my comfort zone. That’s probably why I cannot lose the weight. All this proves me once again that I am not good enough because if I were, I would be able to lose the weight.
Honey, just let it go!
We read it everywhere, we understand the concept but oh how hard it is to actually let go. All we want is things to stay the same because we are so afraid of change.
The world is chaotic and ever-changing.
Getting attached to how it used to be and how we expect it to be just hurts us and keeps us stuck.
Choosing to let go is a vulnerable and courageous act by which we gracefully (or not) relinquish all control. As always, nature is a magical teacher: autumn and the menstrual cycle are beautiful reminders to the life-giving power of surrendering and releasing. As the trees and the wombs cleanse by shedding their leaves and lining, we are invited to shed what does not serve us anymore.
Releasing what does not serve us anymore makes space for something new to sprout, grow and blossom.
Awareness
The first and main thing to do is to become aware of our beliefs and their patterns. Without awareness, we cannot break the cycle and let go. We want to deconstruct the cycles as much as possible, so that we know what to look for during our everyday life. Moreover, being aware of our emotions and where they come from will allow us to express and release them. (c.f inner child work).
Acceptance – Release – Compassion
To help us accept, release and have compassion for ourselves, we can find inspiration in the ancient Hawaiian practice Ho’oponopono. It is a great forgiveness tool, either to forgive others or to restore self-love. It can be used like a mantra, which is a prayer that you repeat over and over again to let the words sink in your body, mind and soul so that they slowly heal you. Ho’oponopono roughly translates to “move things back to balance” and it is a powerful way to cleanse your body, mind and soul from difficult emotions, such as shame, anger, but also to cleanse haunting memories and beliefs. Ho’oponopono invites us to go through this process of letting go with compassion.
Compassion and love are the root to all healings
The Ho’oponopono prayer says:
I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.
I’m sorry
By saying I’m sorry, we are holding ourselves accountable for the situation and our experience of it. Consequently, it allows us to move away from defending, deflecting and blaming thoughts and behaviours and allows us to simply accept the situation for what it is. Even though we often meet a lot of resistance to accept our part of responsibility, it actually empowers us to act upon this situation. It gives us the opportunity to make things right with ourselves.
Please forgive me
The second pillar is the one where we let go of the burden, the emotions, the beliefs and the behaviours. We let forgiveness wash away our emotional, mental and physical tensions and consciously decide to release their weight.
Thank you
Expressing gratitude by saying thank you allows you to fully appreciate the release that came along the forgiveness. You invite gratitude for this new space and the lightness inside of your mind, body and soul. You invite gratitude for the learnings that this experience has brought you, for the feeling of expansion it has instilled in you.
I love you
We close the prayer by saying to ourselves I love you. Love is the greatest healer. Sending love to ourselves, holding ourselves in this difficult moment with compassion. Telling ourselves that we are loved no matter what.
Baby me is a tad more lovable
It may be hard for us to hold ourselves with compassion and forgive ourselves. A great tool to invite more compassion is to imagine ourselves as a young child: the cute young child we once were. Imagine that this young child still resides inside of us. Imagine that whenever we are talking negatively to ourselves, we are talking to this young and cute human. For even more support, you can get a picture out of your photo album (the cutest picture you have of yourself) and tape it somewhere very visible. You can also use this picture as your phone screen.
Inner safety and trust
As explained above, one of the main goals of control is to create a sense of safety. We need to train ourselves to feel safe within our body and mind rather than finding safety without.
Safe in your mind
To invite more safety in our mind, we can observe and explore our thoughts about the situation. This will help us assess whether there is a real threat right now or if our mind is being super creative and inventing stories. Every time we catch ourselves feeding a negative belief, spiralling down a self-sabotaging cycle, self-shaming and getting stuck in our heads, we need to consciously choose to shift the narrative and break the cycle. By changing the narrative and choosing to speak kindly and wisely to ourselves, we will change our emotional state and lower the stress response in our body, which will change how we feel about ourselves and the situation.
The stories you create in your mind are perceived as the reality by your body.
Tell yourself positive stories.
I’m feeling scared right now, but I am safe. I can do scary things. I can handle this. I’m doing the best I can. I am enough.
Safe in your body
There are many techniques to bring back safety in our body, which all aim at regulating our nervous system. Breathing, EFT tapping, mindfulness meditation, yoga, martial arts, qigong, tai chi and even rhythmical drumming are some example of techniques that help regulate our emotions as they all involve physical movement, breathing and/or mindfulness.
We must also create trust in your ability to feel and hold space for these emotions. We need to practice feeling these emotions, letting them live and letting them go.1Check February’s growth to learn more about emotions and tools to let your emotions live.
1 However, if letting these emotions out may hurt you or someone else, seek the help of a professional.
Come into a high plank position. Turn the inside of your elbows forward.
Imagine that your tailbone wants to touch your heels. This will help activate your lower belly and protect your lower back.
Shift your weight forward so that your shoulders go past your wrists.
Gaze down and keep your neck long reaching forward while imagining your feet pulling back. This helps keep some of the weight on your feet.
Slowly bend your elbows and squeeze them into your body, sliding your shoulder blades down your back. Shoulders away from your ears.
Bring your shoulders in line with your elbows.
Modify the posture going down on your knees and using blocks. Start with the highest side of the blocks. Try to work at engaging your core and squeezing your elbows.
