Managing Emotions
Have your emotions every taken control of you? It feels like you're caught in a tornado and can't get out.
How can you manage such emotions?
I have found that people understand the concept of managing thoughts better than the concept of managing emotions. I certainly had a difficult time with this idea that emotions could be managed. I thought they “just were.” In fact, isn’t that what we have been told for years, “Feelings (emotions) are neither good nor bad, they just are.”
From an energetic perspective everything, including feelings and emotions, are nothing more than energy. Energy is neither good nor bad. The judgement we make about the energy gives it the label of “good” or “bad.” Perhaps we could look at this like a math equation. (You math-phobes don’t run away here and you math aficionados, please, don’t judge me harshly!)
Energy + Motion = Energy in motion = E-motion
E-motion + Judgement = Feeling
Compare a frightful experience you have had with a wonderful experience.
Compare a time you were in an accident with a time you were infatuated with someone. If you examine the way the body responds to both of those experiences, you will find some similarities. Adrenalin rises, the stomach feels heavy, there is a hyper sense of alertness as well as many other physical symptoms.
When a judgement is made about what is happening, death vs. love, then other physiological forces come into play. With love endorphins rise and with fear T-cells, which support our immune system, decrease.
Now the complexity of judgement comes in. What if being in love (or infatuation) also brings a fear response.
Perhaps someone had been hurt badly in a love relationship. There might be a judgement that being in love represents danger. The physiology of fear is activated rather than the physiology of love. Another person has strong positive feelings about being in love. The physiology of love is now in place. The only difference is our judgements about the event.
To examine the aspect of judgement and feelings, let’s take an example of someone leaving an abusive relationship and the reaction of various people. (The person doing the leaving could be male or female.)
One person could see the event as an empowering situation. Another could see the event as a failure. Still another could view it as dangerous. The person doing the leaving could feel empowered, fearful, excited, angry, peaceful or all of them.
How s/he is feeling at the time depends upon what the mental focus is and the judgement of that focus. A judgement about the financial situation regarding leaving might be different than the judgement about being out of the abuse.
The point is that we, individually, get to make the judgement about the situation. We can change that judgement.
Fear, which is the basis of any feeling that is not love based, is not about the present. Fear takes an experience of the past and projects that onto the future. What would happen if we stayed totally out of the past and made a judgement about how things are RIGHT NOW.
Go back to the person who left the abusive relationship. S/he is walking down the street and suddenly the thought about finances comes to mind. S/he panics for whatever reason. The future looms ahead.
STOP the image of financial insecurity!
Go into the heart. Stay there.
Now ask: “What can I do now that would help the situation?”
Listen to the answer. You might get something you hadn’t thought of before because fear was blocking clear thinking.
One thought might be “Nothing.”
Well, do nothing, keep walking and tell the fear to go away. I mean that literally.
Sometimes you might even yell at the fear to go away. Choose to feel something else. Choose to go back to a good feelings. Choose to feel the peace of not worrying about an abusive relationship.
If you want to read more on managing emotions read the following books: The Power of Now by Eckard Tolle (I reviewed this book last newsletter)
Walking between the Worlds: The Science of Compassion by Gregg Braden (This is a great book for all of you who want science and logic behind what you do. Gregg is a scientist and a mystic)
Freeze Frame by Doc Lew Childers (Another book for those who enjoy science as well as excellent for all of us.)
The wisdom found in these books come into my work with people every day.
by Cathy Chapman, PhD -
