Excavating my beliefs about emotions

I’m often surprised by how many limiting beliefs I operate from, in spite of having done a lot to surface and shift beliefs. But the limiting ones are masters at camouflaging themselves. That’s how they survive.

I’ve recently been excavating my beliefs about emotions and realizing that some that aren’t helpful. These include the beliefs that:

• I can’t handle fully feeling all my feelings. If I was to fully feel sadness, I wouldn’t be able to function.
• My emotions are dangerous.
• The only way to deal with feelings is to think them into submission. If I learn more about emotions and understand them cognitively, I can control them.
• Emotions only have a purpose if I can learn something from them, otherwise, they’re just a problem.
• I’d prefer not to have emotions. I just don’t like them.

That’s an excerpt from the list of beliefs I’ve held about emotions. But as I’m exploring these and working with two incredible therapists, I’m adopting the following beliefs:

• I can fully feel my feelings, including sadness. When I feel safe and held, and when I surrender to my grief, it moves through me like a torrent of energy. I have moments of feeling liberated from my fear of emotions and from the weight of unprocessed grief.
• Emotions are neither friend nor foe. They just are energy and my mind extrapolates lessons, but my emotions aren’t dangerous.
• In order to release emotions, I need to be in my body, not in my mind. This is a new practice that I’m building and it’s not easy, but the body is the portal to liberation.
• Repressing emotions (and being afraid of them) has restricted my access to joy, love, awe, ease, and satisfaction. I’ve never felt the kind of joy and ease I’ve been feeling recently, and I know this is because of the new relationship I’m forming with my emotions.
• As I release unprocessed emotions, I realize how much energy it took to keep them suppressed, and I’m finding access to a tremendous reserve of energy that’s now available for creating, appreciating, connecting, loving, and being in the way I want to live.

If you’re interested in exploring beliefs about emotions and how to support others to process their emotions, join us in one of our upcoming The Art of Coaching Emotions workshops. You’ll find this workshop deeply personally and professionally meaningful.

Wishing you ease on your healing journey.

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