Can We Allow For HEALTHY Emotional Expression – In Ourselves And Our Teachers?

Hello Friend!

If you missed it, you can read part one of this post here.

Now onto the way forward!

What Would It Mean To Have HEALTHY Emotional Expression?

I also believe that we can and in fact NEED to learn how to be with and process our emotions in a way where we can express them in MATURE ways. Because in my experience, our emotions hold information. Our emotions can show us things our logic would never have been able to identify. Our emotions can be the FUEL that motivates us to venture into the unknown, to push against systems that are NORMAL and seem FINE to our conditioned selves, but that in reality aren’t working, to inspire others to connect with their humanity over an issue so that we can work together to create change. Our emotions aren’t bad - anger, sadness, fear, rage - all of these emotions again are arising for a reason. 

When we learn how to HARNESS these powerful emotions, they can be, and will be, guiding lights that help us create meaningful change. 

We aren’t feeling anger, sadness, hopelessness or any other negative emotion for no reason.

We are responding to stimuli.

We want to take the time to figure out WHAT the stimuli is.

Is it a mindset? A false perception? A view of ourselves and reality that isn’t true? Is it an injustice we’re seeing? A pattern of behavior that’s harmful? A system that needs dismantling? A relationship that needs boundaries? A part of self that needs expressing even though we fear it will get us rejected? A traumatic experience we need to process and then see where we need to change our lives with what we process? Is it a painful experience that’s simply painful that we need to love ourselves through? There are SO many stimuli that cause pain - and exploring what our negative emotions have to tell us is an ongoing evolution and expansion. Life will never be perfect - and thus we will always experience pain. True emotional intelligence is learning how to WORK WITH the messages our emotions are telling us, to help us navigate this life never ending change. Where is the PAIN coming FROM and what is it POINTING to? And from this place of seeing where the emotion is coming from, how can we use the POWER in that emotion to help us take new action? To question our thoughts? To find a new way of being? How can we use the emotion to drive us to a NEW place? A better place? A more evolved place? A more aware place?

THIS is a mature emotional expression.

Taking the time to get to know the emotion, then letting it be a power source for where we want to go. When we don’t allow for this - when we rush to treat the SYMPTOM - ie when we rush to get rid of/change/fix/alter the EMOTION - we miss the message. We may be able to positively think/meditate/pray/dissociate our way into feeling ‘better’ and more balanced/rational - but oftentimes all this does is actually immobilize us. It keeps us learning how to ‘be ok’ with what ‘is’ rather than seeing that we’re having the emotion because what is - either internally, externally or both - is harmful. It’s hurting us. There needs to be a shift on some level.

Anger is the fire that allows us to be brave to set a boundary when we fear the repercussions.

Sadness is the medicine that opens our hearts to ourselves and others.

Anxiety is a protector trying to get us to make ourselves safe.

Depression is looking to numb the pain of not being ourselves.

AND so much more. This isn't by any means an exhaustive list of what these emotions can be saying. This is just ONE example of what each of these emotions COULD be. No emotion is ever ‘this’ thing all the time. Each new emotional experience - even if it’s the ‘same’ emotion we’ve experienced before - has new information.

All Emotions Are Trying To Help Us GROW:

ALL emotions are trying to HELP us see where we’re being harmed/living out of synch with reality/needing growth/needing compassion - and learning to connect with them allows us to continually GROW in this life towards our potential. To see beyond our conditioning into what’s possible for us BEYOND what we’ve seen. Emotions are power. Power to step into a reality we’ve never experienced or been in before.

I often see people who rush to always be in a state of neutrality, love and light, emotional poise getting stuck. Getting caught in loops of pain and stagnancy in their personal lives and in their teachings. They are innocently trying to find that happiness they seek in fixing THEMSELVES, quelling the symptoms that are negative emotions - and in this they never really see WHY they are feeling how they’re feeling. 

They’re in a constant battle with the messenger.

The messenger keeps showing up. 

The anger always returns. The anxiety shows back up. The sadness takes over. They work SO HARD to be centered, use their practices, become ok - and this is much like continually taking a painkiller when your hand is on a burner. The painkiller will always wear off. The practices will always wear off. The pain of the burning hand will always return until you remove the hand. Removing the hand will come through FEELING the pain and letting that pain MOTIVATE you to - sometimes violently - take the hand off of the burner. 

Being poised, controlled and numbed out while the hand is on the burner isn’t spiritual. It’s a learned coping mechanism in a world where we don’t really see that the hand is on the burner, and we don’t know how to get it off and how to heal it. We blame the pain in the hand, looking to fix, become ok with, not feel it - never realizing that if we let ourselves feel it, if we saw it as a symptom, we could actually find the PROBLEM - the burner that’s destroying our hand. That pain will guide us, if we let it, to taking a life saving action we would fully NOT take if we kept trying to be poised and controlled. Our emotions aren’t to be controlled. They’re to be HARNESSED. Listened to. Given time to speak. 

They will point us to where our needs aren’t being met, where we’re being abused, where we’re hurting - and where the world at large needs changing - and in processing the emotion, we will find it SHOWS US how to take new steps. The emotion WILL motivate us - anger, sadness, loneliness - these emotions will MOVE us - in a GOOD direction. Once understood. We don’t want to learn to accept what’s hurting. We want the pain, the symptom, the emotion, to guide us to SEEING what’s hurting (which we usually don’t see because what hurts most of us is the conditioning we were raised to believe is ‘normal’), so we can SHIFT it. It’s not spiritual to be ok with destructive things - to learn to suppress your reaction to that which is harmful. It’s spiritual to be able to digest this pain, process the reaction and then use the emotion to guide you in shifting what needs shifting so that actual harmony can be created.

Emotions are a response to that which is out of balance and out of sync with truth. To that which is harmful or hurtful on some level. They are not bad. They are not immature. They are not to be transcended. They are teachers and tools and experiences we will have.

Denying them keeps us stuck. Trying to be ok when we’re not ok keeps us stuck. Pretending we don’t feel how we feel means we don’t get the information from the feeling and thus can’t alter what’s hurting.

True Taking Responsibility For Emotions Looks Like:

Taking responsibility for your emotions does NOT always mean NOT expressing them. It doesn’t always mean going away and journaling or talking to a therapist until you’ve settled and THEN can come and speak or share. It doesn’t always mean having everything wrapped up in a pretty bow before you’re open and honest - and expressing from an emotional place is not automatically disqualifying in terms of being able to HELP and OFFER something in the direction of transformation and growth. Growth doesn’t only happen when we’re poised and not all good solutions come from perfectly centered, processed, rational people. I know this can be hard to imagine, but it’s fully born out in reality. Sometimes it’s in the PROCESS Of working through an emotion that we take the STEPS we need to take in the direction of change - we’re not going to have it all figured out before we start, and we’re going to cycle through several emotional states with several different action steps motivated by those emotional states on our WAY to where we want to go. The expression, the moving from where we are - it’s the PROCESS and the JOURNEY. This is how we make change. Not when we’re DONE feeling the emotion - sometimes we won’t be ‘done’ feeling the emotion UNTIL we’ve made the changes that emotion is drawing us to make. The anger won’t go till we’ve set the boundary. The sadness won’t dissipate until we’ve expressed the thing. 

We NEED to DO before we will feel differently.

We need to stop, figure out what the emotion is saying and not act on trigger or impulse - yes. But this doesn't always mean we will FEEL better before we ACT. Sometimes we pause, the pain is there, it gives us the message, we MOVE - THEN the pain stops. The anger goes AFTER we set the boundary. The sadness ends AFTER we learn to express. Waiting for peace FIRST means we won't take the requisite action and thus can't GET TO peace. If how we are responding to our emotions isn't moving us forward and changing our lives on some level - we're misperceiving the emotion. We're incorrect in what it's telling us. We need to investigate more. Not force peace.

When we say we’re ONLY going to move from peace - we block ourselves. Sometimes peace isn’t available UNTIL we move from the anger, the sadness, the rage. Just like we can’t say ‘I’ll take my hand off the burner once it stops hurting.’ We have to take it off, and THEN it will stop hurting. We must be INTELLIGENT - what is my emotion telling me? What action do I need to take - internally or externally - and in THAT we will see a shift. Anything else is just learning how to be ok with our hand on a burner. Moving FROM the emotion is a GOOD thing. Not from trigger. Not from what we ‘think’ it is. Not projection or internalization. Study the emotion. See the root. Move from what you know. THIS is how we emotionally process.

Also with this we can’t always totally change the situation that’s causing us to feel how we do. We won’t always have the space and time to witness our emotions and express them healthfully. We won’t always understand the message. We’re humans. This is normal. Working with emotions is an ongoing, life long learning process. We’re never going to ‘master’ it - but we can learn to learn from our emotions more and more - and THAT’S the key here. Sometimes we must learn how to be with ourselves in our emotions. Sometimes we are going through things that are simply inherently painful AND unavoidable/unchangeable - and in that we want to learn to ride the emotional waves. To take the power we have, and to soothe where we don’t. Life hurts sometimes. We can’t always be happy. BUT we can be present, loving and gentle with ourselves as we move through the emotions. And when we CAN’T - we make that ok. We learn that we have limits and we honor those.

BOTH AND.

We Will Always Have Negative Emotions:

We’re never going to be fully blissed out all the time. Life will always be happening. The goal shouldn’t be to get rid of the human emotional experience, to demonize or vilify any emotional state or expression. To only ever move from peace. Rather we want to be pragmatic. We want to learn how to be with ourselves in our emotions. We want to learn how to be with emotions so we can process their messages. We want to learn how to move from emotional states in a MATURE way. We want to learn to have a better relationship with the negative emotions - knowing they will always be a part of life - so that they don’t have to be so devastating when they show up. We want to heal our own relationships with our emotional states. With the emotional states and expressions of others.

Let’s grow together so that we no longer ask our spiritual guides to be fully emotionally centered before sharing. Because we LOSE SO MUCH in this. We lose the human connection. The passion. The view of what’s not working. 

Let’s let emotions help us learn how to work WITH anger/sadness/rage instead of asking that they hide theirs in order to help us feel safe.

Never let a spiritual teacher/teaching convince you that you shouldn’t have human emotional responses to circumstances. 

Let’s normalize having human emotions and knowing that happiness isn’t always possible. That suffering exists no matter how strong our mindset is. That we are human and we’re going to have human emotions and all of them are going to play into the experience of being alive - and rather than labelling, judging or trying to purge ourselves and our leaders of any of them - let’s learn how to healthfully integrate, express and process THROUGH them. Let’s let them be the messengers they are - no longer looking to suppress the symptom, but rather looking to understand the message so we can be informed and empowered by it.

THIS is true emotional maturity.

Learning how to harness the emotions for positive change or deeper self love.

This starts by NORMALIZING the human emotional experience.

It’s normal.

It’s natural.

Emotions aren’t good or bad.

They don’t harm us - our reaction to them can - but the emotions themselves will never harm.

We can be with them. We can get curious. We can feel. Slowly. One step at a time. Let it unfold.

Let’s normalize emotions, so we can learn from them.

 <3