One mistake many people make when they first hear about the Law of Attraction (i.e. that their thoughts and feelings create their reality), is to start judging, repressing, or denying negative feelings out of a fear of the negative consequences they may attract.
‘Bad’ feelings are not wrong per se. Furthermore, what we resist persists. Pretending you don’t have feelings or numbing them out doesn’t make them go away.
Negative emotions can be helpful guides to what’s going on inside – the limiting thoughts, beliefs and stories that may not be serving you and standing in the way of the dreams you wish to manifest.
Painful or uncomfortable feelings can illuminate un-serving thoughts and attitudes, unhealed aspects within, and hidden agendas.
Many termed ‘negative’ emotions can also serve a positive function. Grieving, for example, is a natural process that may involve the experience of pain yet ultimately lead to healing. Fear’s function is to signal when to protect yourself from potential harm. Even anger if acknowledged and expressed cleanly can at times be productive – a catalyst for change, awareness of what you don’t want, or assertion of respect, for example.
Feelings are a natural part of the human experience. It is when feelings are repressed that they become problematic, toxic, and leak into your world affecting your reality in not so pleasant ways. They may come out ‘sideways’ as projection, passive-aggression, or sabotage, for example.
This is why honoring, accepting and letting your emotions be felt is important, and part of developing an intimate loving relationship with yourself. By this I don’t mean wallowing in them inappropriately, however, as I will explain (i.e. nip that self-pity in the bud!).
Emotions are supposed to MOVE (e-motion). When they are controlled, stifled and stuffed down, they can putrefy or stagnate, and like layers of dense energy can block light and the higher frequency energies of your true nature – the bright positive feelings of your essential self – the love, happiness and joy that you ARE!
Repressed emotions inhibit vitality, authenticity, spontaneity and flow. They can lead to depression, addictions, mental and emotional imbalance and ill health. When you accept and honour your feelings, rather than fear, judge, or deny them, they can more naturally be expressed, released and move through you.
What you accept, you more easily let go of and release.
“Acceptance heals hurt. It heals the resistance that causes or exacerbates the pain. When you accept, it allows you to move forward in the flow, because what you accept, you naturally let go of.” ~ Chuck Spezzano
Let your emotions breathe, whether that be to laugh, or be to grieve.”
With traumatic painful life experiences, there may at times be a level of safety in repressing emotions as a means to survive an experience and not be overwhelmed by terror/pain/despair/horror, for example.
In some cases feeling all your feelings at once may not be appropriate or in your best interest, and for this reason they may be stored in your unconscious until times when you are better equipped to deal with and process them. It is at these times that they may be triggered by an external person or event to be released, which can be seen as an opportunity for the wound or pattern beneath to be healed.
Placing a lid on emotions, whilst understandable if they are painful, is in general not serving, however, and can simultaneously block out the positive feelings that make life so worthwhile.
When you shut down to avoid painful feelings, you shut out the light feelings too! Give yourself permission to feel.”
There are many techniques these days for releasing emotions, everything from writing them down, the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), the Sedona Method, the Release Technique, the ZPoint Process, NLP, acupuncture, expressing them through creativity, energy healing (such as Reiki), communicating them to a friend or loved one, flower essences, and many others.
Unsurprisingly, and yet so often avoided, feeling your feelings is a fast and effective way to release them.
This doesn’t mean indulging in them or giving them undue attention if they do not serve you. More, it enables them to move through you and be expressed. It takes greater energy to stuff emotions down than to experience them. Furthermore, denied and repressed emotions don’t go away, and can require numbing and distraction (through drugs, alcohol and addictions, for example).
Acknowledging, accepting and feeling an emotion will enable its release. Forgiveness, of self and others, can also liberate whole clusters of negative emotions.
Experiencing your emotions can at times feel like you’re walking into a fire – consider it a fire of purification and one that will set you free.
It may seem to get dark, and feelings more challenging initially, yet there will always be a clearing and breakthrough to light at the end of the tunnel.
The darkest hour is just before the dawn.” ~Proverb
As you release the denser energies, space is created for brighter energies to flow through you and be received- more of the love, light and magnificence that you are, and the blissful vibrations of your higher being.
It is sometimes through the dark that you find and connect to the love and light within and the eternal truth that you are loved, loving and loveable, ever and always.
The deepest truth, I believe, is that only love is real.
I share a step-by-step Releasing Emotions Process below you may like to explore to help with this if it calls you/resonates to do so.
If you are not used to being in touch with your emotions, you may feel numb and dissociated, in which case be patient as you flex your feeling muscles and do your best with the exercise.
If you are feeling particularly shut down, you can try bringing to mind a past experience when your emotions were particularly vivid and charged, and see if you can get in touch with those feelings again as a place to start, particularly if those feelings are ones that tend to resurface as part of a repeated pattern/life-story and you’d like to release.
If you would prefer to not get in touch with past feelings or think you have already processed them, obviously don’t do so. Just go with what feels appropriate for this exercise.
The idea of the below exercise is, clearly, not to wallow in negative emotions or rehash them unproductively, but to clear possible repressed or existing feelings through allowing them to be felt and expressed, hence move through you and be released. Hold that as your intention.
There can be layers of emotions and you may find it easier to access certain ones more than others, typically those more surface. For example, you may be able to get in touch with anger, yet there could be sadness, pain, or grief buried underneath that anger that it may serve you to release. Getting stuck in anger can be a way even of distracting yourself or avoiding these other more painful feelings.
As you give yourself permission to feel your feelings, they may shift and change. Allow this movement of energy as you experience your emotions and their relationship to each other.
It takes courage to feel your emotions. Painful feelings can be scary, and people can fear losing themselves or being overwhelmed by them.
Emotions bring great gifts for you however, and the more you allow yourself to be in touch with them, even the darker ones, the deeper and richer your emotional experiences will become, which includes the heights of blissful states and love, joy, wonder, delight, enchantment, and so on.
Before I move on to the Releasing Emotions Process below, I wanted to share Rumi’s poem called “The Guest House” as it is both poignant and relevant to this article.
The Guest House - By Rumi
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice. meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes. because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Releasing Emotions Process
For the below process, ensure you are in a place where you will not be interupted or disturbed and where you feel free and relaxed to get in touch with your feelings.
1. Identify a feeling or emotion you wish to release. Perhaps it is one you are currently aware of or have recently experienced.
Become familiar with it. Name it. Let yourself experience it. Do you feel it somewhere in your body? If it had a colour or shape, a sound or picture, for example, what might that be?
Don’t think about it too much, just try to hone in on it as best you can to get in touch with the feeling and then experience it more fully. Be immersed by it. Step into it. Allow it to move through you and be felt.
2. Own that you are the source of this feeling. Whatever this feeling is, it is yours. Whatever the outside circumstances are that have triggered this emotion, or whatever you believe may have caused it, it is yours nonetheless.
Let go of the story around this feeling and just experience it as it exists within you now.
3. Accept this feeling without judgment. Welcome it and allow it to be there. View this emotion as energy – neither right, nor wrong, just a current of energy of some nature, whether you understand what that is or not.
4. Now really feel the emotion. Let it consume you or dive into it. Sink into this feeling further and further and get in touch with its depths.
Allow it to fill you and immerse yourself in it. It may start feeling more and more intense as deeper levels are experienced, or it may change to a different emotion. Other feelings may arise as layers that exist beneath this emotion are accessed.
5. Have you felt this feeling before/does it trigger familiar or not so unfamiliar memories or thoughts? Can you remember an earlier time in your life when you felt this same emotion? When, and what was happening at that time?
Don’t try to analyse too much, just let yourself drift back to a previous time in the past when a similar or the same emotion/state was experienced (if it feels natural and flowing to do so).
Allow yourself to travel back to the earliest time you can remember feeling this feeling and saturate yourself in the emotion (this is what I call sourcing the emotion).
6. If you find it difficult or distracting going back to a previous time or occasion, just stay with the emotion as it is in the here and now, and increase its intensity until you feel totally immersed in the feeling. Perhaps you experience it in a certain area of your body, or cursing through you. Notice any sensations and be as ‘in the emotion’ as you can.
Feeling a negative emotion can, of course, be unpleasant, painful or uncomfortable. You may try to distract yourself or belittle the process or opt out. Do your best to stay with it.
7. The feeling may begin to change or dissipate as it is released. Keep feeling as fully as possible whatever occurs. You may experience layers of emotions, as said. They may become more intense, darker or lighter, yet will inevitably lead to an experience of relief and freedom through their release. Ride the waves and allow your emotions to be experienced, whatever they be.
8. It may help to breathe deeply to release the emotions at times in this process. You may shed tears, feel like shouting out or screaming, or clench your muscles. If there’s no one around you will disturb, feel free to vocally express your feelings (you may want to scream into a pillow so as not scare the neighbours!). You can also journal and write down your feelings at any stage if this helps, but avoid getting into your head and stay in the emotions.
Closing Notes:
• As a guide, I recommend 20 minutes for feeling a given feeling in an intense magnified way as described. Any more with one specific emotion can possibly lead to wallowing or mean you are caught up in the story or drama surrounding the emotion rather than the feeling itself. Emotions will start to shift, move, release and change when you allow them to move through you and be felt.
• During this process, notice if any particular thoughts, attitudes and beliefs come to mind about the way you, others or life is, though again, refrain from analysing. Just observe as a witness whilst being in the emotions
After the process is over you can always reflect and ask yourself the question, “What must I believe to be feeling this feeling?”
• After this exercise you may like to imbue yourself with love. Let love embrace you, wash around and through you. Ask your Higher Self, the universe, angels or guides, God, Source or whatever name appeals, to surround you with love, and allow this to gently fill you and the space created through the release of this emotion.
You might like to imagine it as a soft light surrounding you. Lilac or violet can be very healing, soothing and a high vibration, dissolving any remnants of denser energy and ‘softening your edges’ energetically so-to-speak. Pale pink can be a very nurturing and loving colour, blue calming and cooling, green healing and loving, and so on.
You may just like to ask to receive love, and open up to let it in, imagine it surrounding you and imbuing you.
Let love embrace you, wash around & through you”.
• After the exercise you can also ask to receive insight, information and learning around this emotion. Just close your eyes and be open to any insights from your Higher Self.
You may like to ask your Higher Self questions, such as how that emotion serves or disserves you, what its main root is for you in this life-time, its light and dark sides, and so forth. See if any insights surface/are revealed and note any down.
Having released the intensity of an emotion after an exercise like this, you can experience a calm and still space after, in which left-brain will be less dominant and you are more open to intuitive insights.
By Aine Belton ©
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