Understanding your emotion can change your life (conclusion)

Different people define emotion in different ways. John D. Mayer says, “Emotions operate on many levels. They have a physical aspect as well as a psychological aspect. Emotions form the bridge for 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.”

Our emotions control our thinking, behaviour and actions. Emotions affect our physical bodies as much as our body affects our feelings and thinking. A person who ignore, dismiss, repress or just ventilate their emotions, are setting themselves up for physical illness. We conclude our look at this topic in this week’s column.

● Be Specific About The Emotions You Are Experiencing: Confusion occurs when people are trying to get to know their emotions because they speak in general terms rather than specific emotions. A good example of this is depression. You may be experiencing loneliness for people, loneliness for God (spiritual loneliness), boredom, and a lack of creativity in your life. You may be feeling abandoned because of a death or divorce. If you just say you are depressed you will have great difficulty releasing the emotion or finding a solution to the situation causing the emotion. A good example of this is the difference between jealousy and envy. Jealousy relates to being resentful of a person’s advantages be they in social standing, education, profession, or it can relate to resentment of a rival in love or affection. Envy is a discontentment or resentment aroused by another’s good fortune or success.

● Are You Using Sex To Release Your Emotions? Sex is a normal and healthy part of life. Many people engage in sexual acts, with others, alone, or using pornography on the Internet, to release emotions buried within them that they have been unable to feel and release. These individuals tend to have a very high sex drive since this is their primary way of releasing emotions that are pent up within. These are people who enjoy sex more than once a day. They tend to be very cerebral or intellectual, highly emotional, but very much out of touch with their emotions. If you identify with this description, keep a record of the thoughts/ experiences/ fears that you are having prior to engaging in this type of sex. Sex can be used to stuff down feelings so you won’t feel them and identifying these feelings and releasing them will help you move into a much healthier and enjoyable sexual life.

● When What You Say and Do Is Not In Sync With What You Feel: Men and women go through many situations telling themselves that “it doesn’t really matter” or “it’s not important enough to argue about”, basically buying peace by agreeing to something that deep down they do not agree with. They find themselves feeling unhappy, disgruntled, and angry with the individual involved. This type of situation creates tensions and unhappiness in relationships. Buying peace at any price creates negative feelings within you.

Identify those situations where you have created depressing feelings within yourself by agreeing to something that makes you don’t really agree with. Write them down. This will be difficult for people who have difficulty saying no, or who are too anxious to please others. But the feelings generated by these situations are very important when dealing with your emotional life. Many times we need to excuse things and just overlook them. That’s normal in life. But we apply this to situations that affect us deeply. It’s these situations we need to identify.

● Positive Emotions: It is crucial that you identify your positive emotions during these exercises. You are probably very loving, caring, compassionate, trusting, forgiving, and generous, many times in each day. Be certain to include the wonderful and good things about yourself as you identify your emotional self. This provides a realistic picture. If you record only negative emotions, your picture of yourself will be quite distorted and lacking in reality. Each one of us is born with all emotions and each emotion needs to be seen in its full and loving energy.

● The Gentle Whispers of Your Soul: Find a quiet place and time and listen to that inner voice of intuition within you. Each person has it. And listen with your heart rather than your head. Your heart will hear different things from your head.

NB: Don’t be afraid of your emotions. Don’t fight them, run away from them, blocking them out. Welcome them; be with them, regardless of what they are. We were born with all emotions. They are neither good nor bad, they just are. Emotions dissipate and slowly disappear if you feel them, and are present with them. Just close your eyes and feel them as deeply as you can.