And while these messages and patterns likely served a great purpose for you back then (keeping you safe, for instance, in a family where it wasn’t safe to show emotions), these early beliefs might now be keeping you locked into rigid emotional patterns that aren’t helping you live a life that feels as rich and connected as you would like.
If this is the case for you, you’re not alone.
It was the case for me and also for many of the clients I work with.
The good news? You’re in wonderful company.
The great news? It’s never too late to learn more about how to undo these early messages and how to fully experience and appropriately express your feelings so that you can deepen your sense of aliveness and connection in the world.
In this post, I want to share some ideas and tools with you to help you do just that.
Recognizing and Respecting the Value of Your Feelings.
As we begin the process of fully feeling and appropriately expressing our emotions, it’s likely that our stories and beliefs about feelings will be flushed to the surface.
In working with my clients, two of the most common internalized messages that show up around this are “Some emotions are good; others are bad” and “It doesn’t do me any good to feel this way.”
Let’s unpack these assumptions, shall we?
No Such Thing as Bad or Good:
One thing I often hear in my work is some version of this: “I don’t want to feel angry – I just want to be positive.” Many of us have unconsciously categorized certain emotions as “good” and certain emotions as “bad”. But actually, this couldn’t be further from the truth! Emotions are not “good or bad” or right or wrong.
They simply just are. Emotions are energetic charges in our bodies that come and go like waves on a beach, a constant presence in our lives. And, to use another metaphor, if each emotion is like a key on a keyboard, you can imagine that the goal of life isn’t to play just a few notes on the keyboard of emotions (how boring!) but rather to learn to play all of the keys to play the richest symphony of music possible. We really, truly want to be able to feel and honor each of our emotions. Even the ones that sometimes might be challenging to feel.
Clues Contained:
Another truth about emotions is that they all contain some signal value, some functional attribute of information that can yield wonderful clues for us as we navigate the terrain of our lives. Let’s take anger, for instance. Anger is a sign that we have a need that’s not being met or a boundary that’s being crossed.
