Often we find ourselves feeling a certain emotion, then doing something to deny the existence of it. For example, someone said something to you the previous day that upset you.
When you think about it today, you still feel the emotional sting of that event. Alternatively you may have experienced a traumatic event in your youth, for example mental, emotional or physical abuse, a life-changing accident or the breakdown of a close relationship.
These examples leave mental and emotional scars. When we don’t know how to deal with them, we may opt to try and deny their existence. We may push them down, try to ignore them or they may come out in other ways such as angry outbursts.
When emotions such as sorrow, hurt, grief, anger and other strong emotions surface our instinct may be to push them away. However, the way to process them is to do the opposite. That means to allow them to come through and to be what they are. In other words you allow the emotional you to surface in all its rawness.
This can be emotionally challenging, and indeed for deep issues that go way back to childhood, you may need the help of a trained energy therapist to assist you, such as an Emotional Freedom Technique Practitioner, Life Alignment Therapist or spiritual healer.
On a daily basis use the following strategies to help you to open yourself up to those emotions that you feel the urge to deny:
1. Allow yourself to be absolutely raw for part of your day. This could be through stream of consciousness writing, talking or opening up to a trusted friend. This time should be limited so that it does not bleed into the rest of your day. Once this time period is over, move into the rest of your day.
2. Remember that how you feel is how you feel. It is neither right nor wrong, so allow it to come to the surface safe in the knowledge that it is just a feeling and you can handle it.
3. Remember stuffing your emotions down means you never get to see them in their entirety, which means you never really get to know the real you and how the authentic you truly responds to life
4. Remember to observe how you respond to life naturally, just as you would a lab rat.
5. Remember that however hard life gets, you are always doing your best given the person you are and where you are right now. And your absolute best is always good enough.
Remembering these five strategies will not only help you to put your life into perspective, they’ll remind you that allowing your negative emotions to surface naturally is one of the most amazing ways to discover them, disempower them and ultimately dissipate them.