ARE NEGATIVE EMOTIONS REALLY ALL THAT NEGATIVE?

All feelings and emotions were meant to be felt!

 

Since we were young, we have all -pretty much- been taught that feeling negative emotions like: fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, tiredness, boredom, jealousy, pain, etc. is not a good thing for us, that there is nothing good in it for us.

So we are taught that when we feel those negative feelings, we should do whatever we can to stop feeling them as soon as possible! We are told that that is the only proper way to deal with them: to avoid/not feel them at all, at any cost!

 

But that is one of the biggest false premises ever! It has caused unnecessary and persistent pain and suffering in the human race for thousands of years now! We have been created, built if you like, to have emotions and feelings and to feel them! That is what makes us who we are: we are Humans and we Feel! That is how we perceive the world and that is how we experience and express life! Can you imagine a life without them? Can you imagine yourself without any feelings at all? Hard to impossible, right?

 

Many spiritual teachers, religions and philosophies teach us about the benefits of letting go of our negative emotions/feelings. But that is something entirely different! Most take this advice as an instruction to not feel them! They think that that is the best way of letting go! But that is not what all those enlightened teachers were talking or writing about! That’s not what they meant. In order to let go of something, you need to first fully understand and “appreciate” the role it was/had in your life and then decide whether you still want it in your life or if it is time to let it lovingly go…

 

Feelings and emotions -both positive and negative- were always meant to be felt! It is the most healthy, natural and human reaction to life. Look at what happens to people who suppress or even worst, repress feelings and memories of events in their lives: they get sick! Both physically and psychologically! Why? Because all those emotions were always meant to be felt, to fulfill their destiny so to speak, the reason they were “created” in the first place, and then they were meant to pass through us and leave… All that energy were never meant to stay behind and be stuck in our bodies…

 

“But feeling negative feelings and emotions feels bad!” one might argue. “Shouldn’t we try to avoid them?” Avoid them? NO. Feel them and then allow them to go? YES.  

“What is the difference?” one might ask again.

Would you be surprised to find out that the reason negative feelings feel so bad, is not because they themselves are “bad” –they are negative but not “bad”, big difference- but because we fight/go against them in our minds, because we judge them and ourselves for having them, and because we try to avoid them, and we clash with them and as a result we never really-really feel them. We feel the result of this fight against them but never really them, themselves.  

 

“What do you mean, we never really feel them? I feel them alright! And because of that, I feel bad!” one might also add. No, dear friend you don’t! You really don’t! That’s not the reason you feel bad! It is the judgment of them that feels bad. It is the second layer/wave of negative feelings for the initial ones that causes all that pain! It is the fear of the fear that causes the discomfort! It is the anger of being angry that keeps that pain around! It is the shame of feeling ashamed that makes the discomfort persist and stick around, sometimes for years at a time! It is the fighting them, the running away from them, and the trying to shut them down, that make us fell bad! Never the actual initial negative feelings!

 

Picture this for a moment: You raising your hand and keeping at arm’s length a postman who came to deliver a letter that you fear contains really awful news.

You would spend a lot of energy to keep him/her at that position in order to stop him/her from delivering that message to you, wouldn’t you? Not only that, but you would also have lost the ability to use one of your hands for anything else, not to mention the fact that you would be stuck in that stand off, not able to move freely and attend to other stuff in your life. Hard to go about the rest of your day and run your errands, if you had to stay like that for hours or days, or even longer, out of fear that the message he/she wanted to deliver, would finally reach you! That would be very discomforting and silly to say the least! But if you just read the message and let the messenger be on his/her way, even if it was the worst news ever as you initially feared, you would then be free to deal with those news and to maybe focus on a solution, or to just go on with your life!  

 

Feelings and emotions are just that: Messengers! Messengers with very important information about the thoughts you are thinking. Allow them to deliver their message and they will be on their way! The actual feeling/emotion -if you allow yourself to really feel it, REALLY FEEL it, without fighting it- literally just stays with you for a few seconds and then it dissipates!

 

Every time I teach/show my students how to practically do that and in an easy and simple way, they are amazed to see feelings and emotions which were troubling them and burdening them for years and years, be felt, really deeply felt for a few seconds and then witness them go! Completely and utterly go!   

 

That is how you let go! And we were all born with that ability! We were just never encouraged or taught how to use it properly and constantly!

 

As always, feel free to leave a comment, share this in social media, and/or use the #AskDemetra to submit a question to me!

 

Love,

Demetra