| This article is part
1 of a 3 part series on emotions
Emotions
1
Emotions
2
Emotions
3
Emotions Pt 1 – How To Understand, Identify and Release
Your Emotions
Why Bother With Emotions:
Emotions control your thinking,
behaviour and actions. Emotions create illness. Emotions affect
your physical bodies as much as your body affects your feelings
and thinking. People, who ignore, dismiss, repress or just
ventilate their emotions, are setting themselves up for physical
illness. Emotions that are not felt and released but buried
within the body or in the aura can cause serious illness,
including cancer, arthritis, and many types of chronic illnesses.
Negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, negativity, frustration,
depression cause chemical reactions in your body that are
very different from the chemicals released when you feel positive
emotions such as happy, content, loved, accepted. Repressed
emotions lower your vibrations. It takes a lot of your vital
energy to repress emotions and keep them repressed –
and you wonder why you’re so tired? This article deals
with emotions, how to identify and release your emotions.
What Are Emotions –
Feelings?
Different people define emotions
in different ways. Some make a distinction between emotions
and feelings saying that a feeling is the response part of
the emotion and that an emotion includes the situation or
experience, the interpretation, the perception, and the response
or feeling related to the experience of a particular situation.
For the purposes of this article, I use the terms interchangeably.
John D. (Jack) Mayer says,
“Emotions operate on many levels. They have a physical
aspect as well as a psychological aspect. Emotions bridge
thought, feeling, and action – they operate in every
part of a person, they affect many aspects of a person, and
the person affects many aspects of the emotions.”
Dr. Maurice Elias says, “Emotions
are human beings’ warning systems as to what is really
going on around them. Emotions are our most reliable indicators
of how things are going on in our lives. Emotions help keep
us on the right track by making sure that we are led by more
than the mental/ intellectual faculties of thought, perception,
reason, memory.”
Belief Systems
Underlying much of our behaviour
is what is called a belief system. This system within us filters
what we see and hear, affecting how we behave in our daily
lives. There are many other elements that affect our lives,
including past lives and the core issues we come into this
life for resolution, but our belief systems in this life have
a major effect on what we think and do.
Your belief system affects
your perceptions or how you interpret what you see, hear and
feel. For example, a person raised by an angry man or woman
will view people in the future with beliefs that anger is
bad or that it is something to fear. Another example would
be someone who is quite intelligent but who has never been
encouraged or honoured for their intelligence, this person
might believe they are stupid. Men raised in conservative
societies might have the belief that women who work outside
of the home are not as good as those who do not work outside
of the home.
It takes a lot of work to
look at yourself and identify the beliefs that are affecting
your life in a negative manner. However, knowing your beliefs
will give you a sound basis for emotional freedom. I do believe
that it’s wise to deal with the belief systems before
dealing with the identification and release of emotions. First
things first!
Other People, Places, and
Things Cannot Change How You Feel
The only person who can change
what you feel is you. A new relationship, a new house, a new
car, a new job, these things can momentarily distract you
from your feelings, but no other person, no material possession,
no activity can remove, release, or change how you feel.
How often do you hear people
say things like “when I have enough money, I won’t
be afraid anymore”, only to find there never seems to
be enough money to stop being afraid. Or “when I’m
in a secure relationship I won’t feel lonely any more”,
and finding they are still lonely regardless of their relationship.
We need to understand that we take our feelings with us wherever
we go. A new dress, a new house, a new job, none of these
things change how we feel. Our feelings remain within us until
we release them.
Emotions Are Not the Only
Cause of Illness
Emotions are not the only
cause of illness. Little babies and young children get ill,
and not always because of their emotional issues. There are
many causes of illness including emotions, but they are not
the sole cause of illness.
The causes of illness today
are quite different from the issues causing illness 20 or
30 years ago. We are living in a world filled with chemical,
metal, and atomic poisons, radiation, pollution, and pesticides
in our food. We are bombarded with all types of electricity.
These energies affect the physical, mental/ intellectual,
energetic and emotional health of people.
As we travel more, moving
with ease from country to country, different types of infection
causing elements are spreading around the world more easily.
Infections of parasites, worms, viruses, and different types
of infectious bacteria are many times greater than 20 years
ago. Our water supplies are filled with chemicals and metals.
The benefits of antibiotics have also brought with them the
difficulty of the candida fungus overgrowth and other physical
and emotional difficulties. The causes of illness today are
different.
Two Basic Emotions In Life
– Love and Fear
There are only two basic emotions
that we all experience, love and fear. All other emotions
are variations of these two emotions. Thoughts and behaviour
come from either a place of love, or a place of fear. Anxiety,
anger, control, sadness, depression, inadequacy, confusion,
hurt, lonely, guilt, shame, these are all fear-based emotions.
Emotions such as joy, happiness, caring, trust, compassion,
truth, contentment, satisfaction, these are love-based emotions.
There are varying degrees
of intensity of both types of emotions, some being mild, others
moderate, and others strong in intensity. For example, anger
in a mild form can be felt as disgust or dismay, at a moderate
level can be felt as offended or exasperated, and at an intense
level can be felt as rage or hate. And the emotion that always
underpins anger is fear.
Physical Effects of Emotions
Emotions have a direct effect
on how our bodies work. Fear-based emotions stimulate the
release of one set of chemicals while love-based emotions
release a different set of chemicals. If the fear-based emotions
are long-term or chronic they damage the chemical systems,
the immune system, the endocrine system and every other system
in your body. Our immune systems weaken and many serious illnesses
set in. This relationship between emotions, thinking, and
the body is being called Mind/Body Medicine today.
You Cannot Control Your Emotions
You cannot change or control
your emotions. You can learn how to be with them, living peacefully
with them, transmuting them (which means releasing them),
and you can manage them, but you cannot control them.
Think of the people who go
along day after day seeming to function normally, and all
of a sudden they will explode in anger at something that seems
relatively trivial and harmless. That is one sign of someone
who is trying to control or repress their emotions but their
repressed emotions are leaking out.
The more anyone tries to
control their emotions the more they resist control, and the
more frightened people eventually become at what is seen to
be a “loss of emotional control”. It is a vicious
circle.
It’s important today
to be politically correct. And that means not challenging
or disagreeing with what the average person believes. It means
not expressing negative emotions in public. Showing emotion
in public in North American and European societies represents
being “out of control” a great sign of weakness.
People feel uncomfortable with those who express strong emotions.
We are a society that is taught to hide our emotions, to be
ashamed of them or to be afraid of them. Regardless, we are
born with them and must live with them. This means learning
how to know them, be with them, and release them.
The Difference Between Core
Issues and Emotions
We each come into this lifetime
with at least one core issue to resolve. Different situations
will continue to present themselves in different but repeat
patterns until you have dealt with the core issues in your
life.
A few examples of core issue
are abandonment / victimization, demanding justice in all
matters, living spiritually rather than materially. These
are overarching issues that affect emotions completely. Many
people find out about their core issues by learning to deal
with their emotions. It is a gentle pathway that leads you
into a deeper knowing of your core issues.
Emotions and Emotional Abuse
Emotional Abuse is a form
of violence in relationships. Emotional abuse is just as violent
and serious as physical abuse but is often ignored or minimized
because physical violence is absent. Emotional Abuse can include
any or all of the following elements. It can include rejection
of the person or their value or worth. Degrading an individual
in any way is emotionally abusive, involving ridiculing, humiliating
and insulting behaviour. Terrorizing or isolating a person
is deeply abusive and happens to children, adults, and often
the elderly. Exploiting someone is abusive. Denying emotional
responses to another is deeply abusive. The “silent
treatment” is a cruel way of controlling people and
situations. Where there is control there is no love, only
fear.
If you are living in a situation
that is emotionally abusive please seek help from either a
professional or one of the many helpful organizations present
in most communities, to help you sort out your issues. Emotions
stemming from emotional abuse are deep and complex, requiring
ongoing help from those trained to deal with emotional abuse.
“Go South” –
Feeling Your Feelings
People spend much time talking
about how they feel. They attend workshops, they visit therapists,
and they tell others who did what to them and describe how
they feel about it. They talk and talk about their feelings
but they don’t feel their feelings. They intellectualise
and analyse their feelings without feeling them.
People are afraid to really
feel their feelings, afraid of losing control, afraid of the
pain involved in feeling their emotions, of feeling the sense
of loss or failure or whatever the emotion brings with it.
People are afraid to cry. So much of life is about what you
feel rather than what you think. Being strongly connected
to your emotional life is essential to living a life with
high energy and a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction.
I was privileged to work
with a professional many years ago when I was learning about
my emotional self. I remember the day Fred told me that he
knew what I thought about the situation, and then asked me
“How did it feel?” I was smiling as long as I
was providing a description of the situation. As soon as I
looked for the feelings inside of me I began to cry. It did
not feel very good. I was hurting. Fred used a term “Go
South” to help me go to my feelings rather than an intellectual
approach. He used to tell me to “Go South”. Many
of our feelings reside in our midriff and navel area. Today
I will often tell myself to “Go South” Mary, meaning,
“How does it really feel Mary”?
This article is part 1 of a 3 part series
on emotions
Emotions
1
Emotions
2
Emotions
3
More Information On Emotions
(Your Emotions)
(Enlightenment)
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