Befriending an Unwanted Emotion
It feels almost instinctual as a human being to avoid a negative feeling. If something from the past doesn’t feel good, it’s quite common and understandable to distract yourself from it through any number of ways such as using chemicals, overeating, overworking, etc. This may seem to help for awhile, however, the act of avoidance keeps it locked in your body/mind system, unconsciously influencing you in a limiting way. You may even to decide to deal with the symptoms of the unwanted feeling with medications or coping skills, which can be helpful. But there may come a time when you decide to heal and release the root of it. When you do, a key to releasing an unwanted emotion lies in the last place one would expect to find it…inside the negative feeling itself!
Where would you look to find the unwanted past that has a grip on your underlying feelings and beliefs? Although the past no longer exists, it can have a strong, influential hold on us. The body is a good place to look because it is a storehouse of old, outdated feelings that have not been given a chance to be fully articulated, expressed and/or processed.
In the paradigm of higher consciousness, unwanted feelings are not avoided, but instead viewed more as a small child nagging for attention because they are ready to be liberated from your body/mind system. As this happens, you become a freer human being…a clearer expression of your soul, rather than an expression of the fears from your past programming and conditioning. A negative feeling is simply a guidepost that informs us that we are out of alignment with our soul’s perspective, while a feeling of harmony and joy indicates we are in alignment with our soul’s purpose.
These days there are an increasing amount of emotional healing methods such as EFT, EMDR, Emotion Code, etc. The right fit varies among individuals. It’s important to note that healing is a process that happens in layers. A triggered emotion means you’re ready for the next layer to release. I often use a light trance method that is a combination of effective techniques called the Emotional Healing and Awakening session. It’s a process that’s best done with a guide who can keep your focus anchored in the present moment. When you permit a negative emotion to be your guide, it illuminates the unconscious beliefs it operates from, as well as where it originated. The key is to place your full attention into that negative emotion. As a result, the past is then reduced to a sensation in the body. The moment you fully feel it in the body, you have switched from thinking mode to feeling mode, and you’ve become anchored in the present moment. When anchored in the present moment, you can access the subconscious mind, thus uncovering the unconscious beliefs that this emotion operates from, as well as allowing it to point toward any situations, events or circumstances that contributed to this feeling. With your will and intent, you can send the negative energy out of your body and recover the part of you that was lost when you took on that negative emotion.
Here’s an example: A man came to me with debilitating anxiety. As he fine-tuned his focus on it, he could feel it most in his stomach. Often, I ask the client to give the emotion a voice and let it say what the feeling is. “I feel fear,” is what it said. I had it continue…”I feel most afraid because…I might make a mistake.” Again I had the feeling continue, “And that means…I’ll be judged and criticized.” “And that means…I won’t be loved, and I’ll be all alone.” In this manner we got to the subconscious beliefs which were lying beneath the anxiety, and were fueling it and locking it into place. Next, we allowed the anxiety to guide his awareness to the scenes and situations earlier in his life that caused the feeling. The scenes all related to a father who would not tolerate mistakes, thus it became imperative for him to not make a mistake. These tense energies from early events had been trapped and replayed in his body for years, creating a pressure-cooker effect that exacerbated his anxiety. As he focused and felt the feelings from the past in his body, he could then release them from his body/mind system, and bring in the part of himself that was covered up and lost when he took on the fear-based energy. After then doing healing work on the timeline of his life, his body steeped in the lighter energies of freedom, strength and confidence, and these positive emotions became more strongly embedded in his subconscious mind and in the cellular memory of his body.
Our negative feelings are not who we are, but who we are can observe, understand, release and heal them with intention. As long as we fear and avoid them, they will enslave us. But when we allow them to guide us to what wants to be acknowledged and no longer hidden within us, we can liberate these negative energies from our body/mind systems, enabling us to live from the true freedom that we are as souls, and which we can never really escape from!
