I don’t believe there is such a thing as negative emotions. I know they can be difficult to sit with, process and… feel.
We have been taught and told in ‘western’ culture that there are positive and negative emotions.
However, issues often arrive not because of the ‘negative’ emotion but because of our struggle with the ‘negative’ emotion. A lot of times, the problem is not the emotion coming in to our systems but the reaction to that emotion. Then, the goal becomes to stop that emotion from ever occurring!
This is often where the struggle begins. The struggle is to stop the emotion, but this should not be our goal.
Let’s Work With rather than Struggle Against your Emotions!
ALL feelings are a really important guide in our lives and full of really important information. It says a lot of beautiful things about you! We need to work with our emotions, acknowledge them, appreciate them and stop struggling against them.
Sitting with your Difficult Emotions
This is probably one of the most important… and most fuckin difficult!! things we can do. It may also be a core reason for seeking help from a therapist/counsellor.
We have often not learned to deal with difficult, or intense, emotions that come up in our bodies and heads. When they arise, we often engage in distraction behaviours or bring in an easier emotion… anything to not feel that fucking feeling!! Our goal then becomes trying and stop them from coming in…
This, however, only makes the emotion stronger.
Imagine your emotion as a kid who is acting out. Your solution is to take the kid and lock them away in a small dark closet. That kid is going to go nuts or completely shut down. When you finally let the kid out of the closet, he will either be completely numb or is going to go ape-shit!
What we need to do is to attune to the kid with curiosity and compassion. And this is what we need to do with our emotions.
We need to attune to them with curiosity and compassion rather than shutting them down or stopping them from occurring.
We are built to do this. We can build up our ability to feel these feelings rather than avoiding them.
