Day 11 Emotions and Fear

[jarditti]

I totally agree that our subconscious mind creates pain in our body to manufacture fear and anxiety as a distraction against unsurfaced or repressed emotions.

For me, in this program so far, there are two main battles going on:

1. The undertaking to identify, acknowledge, and allow these suppressed emotions to pass and acknowledge that they are the root cause of the pain.
2. To manage the fear as it comes: to not give it power, to not let it get you out of your equilibrium, to not let it take moments away from you.

The reality is that this is not a linear fix. It doesn't seem to be as simple as acknowledging emotions, and then the fear just starts to go away.

On fear, we are told to not give it power and to offer ourselves self-compassion, love, and kindness. We're told to stand up to the inner bully in our heads that has been way too hard on us. This fear/bully is there because of the repressed emotions.

I'm having a hard time acknowledging these repressed emotions that are oftentimes resentment, judgment, anger, rage, etc., and having these emotions exist in my head while also trying to be kind to myself and not letting fear arise and escalate in my head at the same time. All I'm saying is it's a lot of dialogue at once! Any thoughts?

 

[Ellen]

I'm having a hard time acknowledging these repressed emotions that are oftentimes resentment, judgment, anger, rage, etc., and having these emotions exist in my head while also trying to be kind to myself and not letting fear arise and escalate in my head at the same time. All I'm saying is it's a lot of dialogue at once! Any thoughts?

This is hard and why we call it "the work". You've repressed those emotions because you didn't want to feel them. I find one of the ways to take the sting out of feeling my emotions is to label them. "Ah, that's sadness. Now I'm feeling anger. Oh, this one is shame" etc. I think this helps me to understand that they are feelings and are transient--that I won't always be feeling this way.

And they say that emotions only last about 90 seconds on average, unless you reignite them with your thoughts. So try not to react to each feeling by starting an inner dialog in response. That will just keep it going. Think of the emotions as sensations that pass through your body. Nothing to fear.