WHY BEING POSITIVE ALL THE TIME CAN IMPEDE YOUR HEALING
And what to do in order to allow all your feelings & learn to cope with the full range of your emotions!
Yes, you can be thinking positive thoughts all the time, pushing away any negativity and uncomfortable emotions, but if you are constantly blocking out negative emotions instead of just allowing them to move and flow THROUGH you, you’ll basically will stay stuck at a lower frequency either way. Your feelings create a vibrational frequency all the time, whether you’re consciously using the Law of attraction or not, there’s a superior one, that’s simultaneously working along with it, which is called the Law of vibration. Today’s topic ties up to what I was talking about last week.
Basically it’s about why you’re emotions do matter, even more than your thoughts do!
Now, this could somehow imply that from now on you should demolish all negative emotions. So I thought it’d be a grest idea to share WHY you shouldn’t be striving towards toxic positivity AT ALL! Yes, emotions create your vibrational frequency - BUT suppressing negative emotions instead of allowing them to flow through you, when they come up, is even worse! I’ve been there. Back in 2018/2019, I was at my lowest mentally, so one day I decided that it would be best to simply stop feeling. At all. But I absolutely wasn’t mindful of the fact that we cannot selectively cut out “negative emotions,” such as anger, sadness and anxiety, while maintaining the ability to feel joy and happiness. When we cut off our emotions, we become numb to life. We lack direction or meaning. I’m sure many of you can relate to what I’m talking about. Suppressing emotions is a GREAT way to cope with pain 🙃 ( I really do hope you understood the irony here lol)
For me it just made sense to distance myself from pain, but through my healing journey I finally understood that true wellbeing starts when we learn to sit with our shadows as well as the light so we can be truly present and embrace the fullness of being human. We don't get away with not feeling our feelings and processing big emotional experiences. I surely never did. Even though I tried to, the only thing I accomplished was being overly angry, anxious and depressed. I was numb to life.
Suppressing emotions means that you’re deliberately choosing to not work THROUGH them. How are you supposed to heal and move on with your life, if all the pain, trauma, sadness and anger is still there - buried deep down in your subconscious mind? We have to complete our emotional cycle, because otherwise we buffer and store them in our bodies.
This is basically what occurs when we experience trauma - it’s something that is too big and scary to process and feel. But trauma doesn't just happen on the psychological level - it happens on the physiological level just as much. Suppression of emotions and old stored trauma keep living in the body, reinforcing our stress response, triggering our fight/flight modes of the nervous system, which causes our body to chronically release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. All this causes elevated blood levels, anxiety, decreased immune function and nutrient absorption in the gut, indigestion, brain fog, and inflammation in the body. The list goes on. We have created cages that keep us prisoners to our own mind, sick and depressed.
I really think that the ability to feel and express emotions is an integral part of our human experience and a powerful way to connect with our higher power. On a spiritual level, holding onto negative feelings and emotions creates inner anxiety and prevents us from progressing to a life filled with happiness, joy, abundance and love. You basically block your connection to your soul and higher self, impeding growth in any way.
We predominantly live in a culture that resists and fears emotion. From the time we’re babies we’re taught to quickly shut off “negative” feelings like anger, sadness or pain. Yet, coping with your emotions by suppressing or overly control them has serious consequences. When we avoid our feelings, we tune out important clues as to who we are. We limit our capacity for self-understanding and fail to fully experience or shape our lives.
Despite its difficulties, recognizing, experiencing and understanding our emotions is a crucial part of getting more in tune with yourself. Personally, a large part of my emotional healing involved the willingness to accept and love myself unconditionally, which meant having compassion for my humanness - including all the emotions and experiences that I sometimes would rather forget or avoid.
So as I finally committed to this incredible journey, I slowly learned to cultivate awareness of my thoughts, beliefs, and emotions and how they shape my experience of life. As I became more self-aware, I got a greater understanding of how I think, what personal triggers I had and how all of this influenced the way I interpreted and responded to my external environment.
When we begin to create space in our life for these different feelings and emotions to exist, we learn to see them with a clearer perspective and even sometimes, gratitude. Rather than resist or cope in our usual way, we can make room to open our hearts, observe and appreciate our life in all its glorious complexity, even with all its pain and difficulty. This awareness helps us to learn the truth that lies beyond our suffering and gain the ability to more easily embrace our shadow and discover our strength, resilience, and innate wisdom.
“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.”
Here are some things that helped me get more in touch with my emotions and see them as a blessing rather than a curse:
1. Don’t judge your emotions. No emotion is “bad.” Feelings are just feelings; So resist the temptation to judge these emotions or label them.
1. Accept and embrace your feelings without judgment. Even though emotions can sometimes be difficult, try to remember that it is okay to experience all types of feelings. Acknowledge the feeling you are having without getting bogged down by thoughts or stories around why you are feeling that way. If you can sit with these feelings, you can actually learn to be more comfortable with them.
2. Self-regulate your emotions. Find a healthy activity that allows you to bring yourself into a calmer and more balanced emotional state. Try deep breathing, listening to music, going for a walk, doing some art, reading or other activities that give you a break and provide you with some stress relief.
3. Journal it. If you feel like talking it out isn’t a good option for you, try writing down your thoughts and feelings. Writing out your worries and emotions can help you process them more deeply.
4. Learn mindfulness techniques. Mindfulness techniques can help you learn to be more aware of your feelings, which can lead to greater self-awareness. Through mindfulness, you can learn how to recognize and acknowledge your feelings without reacting to them and choose how to act on them instead.
This may sound irrational to your ego but if we feel our sadness, we’re more likely to feel love, gratitude and happiness as well. It’s the law of duality - Human existence is dualistic. This means we make sense of our world by comparing one thing to another. In order to “know” one thing as a human, you must “know” its other side. For example, most people perceive hot and cold two opposite things. They are actually the same thing. The same spectrum. Two sides of the same coin. The “coin” is the spectrum. Although they are on the same line, they are on different sides of the spectrum, which is why we perceive them as opposites but that is another topic I will catch on probably next week, so stay tuned for that!
Thus, acquiring the ability to process and regulate our emotions in healthy ways is one of the most important skills to live our best life.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s post and share it with anyone who might benefit from this!
May you all have an energizing and productive week ahead of you (and nope, productive doesn’t mean you need to be drowning in TO-DO lists!) - You’re allowed to take time for yourself, to just be and refocus your energy and attention. You’re allowed to rest.
Until next time,
Francesca