What are our emotions telling us?

When we are in the midst of chosen change, when we are changing a personality trait, a behavior, a belief system, or a lifestyle there is a part of the process where we have to let go of something in order to create something new.

The letting go can be painful and emotional. It can come with sadness, depression, anxiety and/or fear. All of these emotions are telling us something and it is important that we allow the process of emotions to happen so that we can move into the new with as much ease as possible.

It seems feeling our emotions would be more difficult but in actuality feeling them is easier and gives us vital information.

As Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Embrace the glorious mess that you are.” Yes, yes, and yes!

Most of us have learned to dissociate from our emotions because we were taught to.  When we were young and we cried, our parents tried to fix it right away, saying things like “don’t be sad, how can we fix this?”  In school, if we got angry, we were sent to the principals office which taught us that anger is bad.

And yet these are relevant human emotions that are part of our human experience.  But because we were taught that these emotions are bad, we dissociated ourselves from them which has translated to all sorts of problems. We use drugs, alcohol, food, and other sorts of distractions to dissociate from truly feeling.

What if we allowed ourself to truly feel in any given moment?  To be present with ourselves.  To accept what we are going through and use it as information to ease the process of change.  What if we realized that emotions let us know where we are out of balance and gives us the tools to get back into balance?

I am pretty certain, the world would be a totally different place.

So what are these emotions telling us?

In the next couple of emails, I will share with you what our emotions are telling us. 

Stay tuned!

Start the ball rolling by sharing emotions that have overwhelmed you. In that moment of experiencing the emotion, what were the thoughts going through your head at the time? How did you deal with the emotions?