I remember a therapist friend of mine
saying, "the right emotion is the one that shows up."
I recall thinking, really? Most of my
life people were telling me that my emotions were wrong, that I had no right to
feel that, and of course, that I should suck
it up and be the bigger person. My finally being told that my emotions were
my guide and I should feel my way through was monumental in my healing.
Submit to my feelings; wow. What if we all chose to realize that
submitting to our emotions in healthy and productive ways is a pathway to peace
and freedom?
I realize now those emotions are showing
up because they are demanding to be heard. It is our tendency to squash them, suck it up, or ignore those promptings
that enables those emotions to become repressed...the more repressed they become, the less able to feel any emotion we become. And often if our emotions are
repressed, when we do feel, our expression of our emotion is over dramatized,
over-the-top. This is because the reaction is not about this experience, but
instead the reaction is filled with cumulative emotions that have been forced
into dormancy, ejecting themselves at any open moment they can find. Repressed
emotions will not find a healthy way to be revealed. We have to choose to take
this task on and find a healthy way to reveal it. Many of those undisclosed emotions
have been buried since we were small children as this excerpt from Me and My
Shadow reflects:
There
is value in allowing ourselves to feel the pain, sadness, and anger of all
those childhood losses. All the terrible things that happened to us, the ways
we were minimized and led to believe we were small and meaningless. The feelings
of helplessness that were created for us in some of our stories can stay with
us always, until we take our power back. I don’t think we should “suck it up”
as we have so often been told. We should feel it, and then let it go. Carrying
that burden is allowing poison to live inside of us. I believe buried emotions
do not die, instead they harbor in our bodies creating illness and physical
pain. If you are sick or suffering, I believe there is likely a negative belief
driving your existence. Release your negative experiences and associated
emotions and begin to heal and Live Free.
Some
people never speak their truth. Until they speak their truth, even if it is
only out loud to themselves, those terrible experiences fester and accumulate
inside. Until they set those thoughts and feelings free, it may be like a movie
that won’t stop playing causing them to relive, re-experience, and continuously
feel the pain of that event or events. The thoughts and feelings that we hold
on to about our experiences must be released in order for us to be healed. While
merely acknowledging those memories was enough to gain insights into our belief
system, we must release the emotion associated with those experiences in order
to move forward with our new belief system.
You
will see that I am a strong advocate of journaling as a healing tool and
believe there is enormous compelling evidence of its benefits. However, you
must find the release that works for you. Above all else healing is what you
are after. Please seek how you can best begin to feel rather than avoid your
emotions. For many people songs, books, or movies can speak to their pain. I
found that if I was open to hearing or finding something that would help me
heal, it showed up. I find most often God speaks to me in songs; so I listen.
And, if it doesn’t feel right to address these potentially buried emotions at
this moment in time, don’t. At the deepest levels you really do know what is
right for you. If you will listen to and trust that knowing you will find your
way. Just begin to raise your awareness of who you truly are.
If
the person who harmed you, or you perceived may have harmed you, is still in
your life and you are okay with that, okay. If the person who harmed you is not
in your life, either because they have died, or because a choice was made that
they not be in your life, okay. Your healing, in most cases, does not require
you to actually confront this person or persons with the things that happened
many years ago. What matters is that you
confront these things. Confronting these things is really a private matter. In
confronting our experiences and the associated feelings through journaling or
speaking through the experience, you move toward freeing yourself from the
emotions and the lingering impact of those experiences. Regardless of the
ultimate truth, if you believe these experiences happened, your life is a
reflection of that belief. You must begin to heal from that place. Treat the
experience as if it is real, as it is real to you.
Yet
it is not just our childhood experiences that burden us and have us battling
with ourselves and our emotions. Our tendency is to have guilt and shame
operate as weapons to keep us small and disappointed in ourselves. Sadly, we not only do this to ourselves, we
also allow others to do it to us. Yet, this is a choice. To be truly free, we
must free ourselves from past burdens that hold us back like a rubber band tied
to our waist, keeping us from moving forward. It often boils down to the laws
we live by. Very often these laws we live by aren't even our laws! If we would
really sit back to evaluate what WE want for ourselves and what values WE have,
we might be stunned to realize that our guilt and shame is just something we
have been accustomed to carrying based on a set of rules that aren't at all
designed with a true regard for what is for THE highest, greatest good. Instead
these rules are simply byproducts of our upbringing or programming and we might
just be better served by releasing those guidelines or laws and creating our
own.
Perhaps
this excerpt will illustrate this concept for you:
As I type about buried emotions or
releasing things we are still carrying, I am reminded of an old Zen story. It is
about two monks who come upon a river where they are met with a distressed
woman. The woman explains that she is afraid of the current and ruining her
clothes and asks for help to get to the other side of the river. The senior monk
decides to carry her on his shoulders across the river. He gently places the
woman down on the other side of the river and continues to walk. The junior
monk feels that they have done something dreadful, they have touched a woman
and they have violated their “law.” He is offended and tells the senior monk
the error of his ways to which the senior monk calmly replies, “I left the
woman a long time ago at the bank, however, you seem to be carrying her still.”
Why is he still carrying her?
In his heart, do you think this monk
really feels he has done something immoral? Or is it possible that the beliefs
that have been ingrained in him, the beliefs that create the laws he is
convinced he must live by to be perceived as “good,” is precisely what is
leading him to feel “bad” about his actions? If he relinquished the concept of
laws as he knew them, as they were ingrained in him, and defined them instead
by his own inner moral system, by love, would this monk still struggle?
What if the intention or premise behind
our actions is the key rather than the law? How does it feel to use the concept
of actions for the greater good, as the tool in which to assess our
contribution to the world? By this I simply mean, are our actions out of love?
Are they for our good and harmful to others, or are they helpful to others?
It is operating within the confines of
rules out of alignment with our true beliefs that is destroying our joy and
hindering our ability to be free. We feel bound by something defined as a rule
or law, even if only in our own mind, and we become riddled with guilt and
plagued by shame if we violate that “law.” Self induction of pain due to laws
that were created by someone outside of ourselves is an overwhelming negative
pattern that, in my view, needs to be broken.
For this monk, I would recommend he
journal. “I feel guilty because…”
Through journaling, this monk could
release the guilt as he discovers and understands that the action of helping
the woman was from a place of love, to serve and not take. Be free. Don’t let
the laws that violate your goodness be the laws that damn your soul and leave
you feeling guilty and ashamed. When living by the law has you feeling bad
about who you are, then the law is probably flawed, not you. What laws that
have been instilled in you are you using as a weapon against you or others? Who
or what are you carrying out of some distorted obligatory law that has been
imbedded in you?
Imagine a life where you trust yourself
to decide which laws to live by. Imagine the freedom that comes from that
choice. It is available to you now. Every action has a natural consequence. If
you live in alignment with your own beliefs, the beliefs founded and aligned
with who you really are, those consequences will generally be acceptable to
you.
If rules are the only thing guiding your
actions or inactions, then you are not actually choosing to think for yourself
and make wise decisions for any highest, greatest good. You are simply
compliant. Instead the rule is the authority, or you feel that those that
enforce the rule are the authority, and for those reasons you feel you have no
choice. But you do.
Now
is the time to choose to Live Free. First you must wake up to the truth in your life, then stand up in whatever manner is appropriate given your
situation...and then you will begin to truly Live Freely!
Copyright © 2014 by Diana Iannarone
If this strikes a chord with you, consider buying my book:
Me and
My Shadow
Move from Fear and Control to Love and Freedom.
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