Dealing with negative emotions – Emotional Weight Series

Ever since I was a little girl I ALWAYS wanted to be HAPPY. I think it is one of the things my Dad liked most about me. He said I entered this earth with a smile on my face. I feel like I have a happy personality naturally. But with that being part of my identity… I never learned how to feel or accept myself when I would feel another emotion. I always want everyone around me to be happy too. It is hard for me to see people sad. And when my loved ones were sad… I’d feel like it was my job to fix it and make them happy. I am trying to work on that and realize it isn’t realistic to never feel negative emotions and to my surprise I am learning that it is healthy to feel a whole range of emotions.

One interesting fact about me is that I don’t remember a time that I have ever felt angry or expressed anger. My mentor tells me that rage will eventually bubble up if a person never expresses their anger. So…. I guess that I will be better at allowing myself to feel it when I need to.

A few years ago I did some energy work and I did have a lot of suppressed anger that I never allowed myself to feel. Instead of feeling anger… I would feel sad, helpless, guilt and shame. I am sure my suppressed anger has to do with the fact that I wasn’t allowed to express any anger in my childhood. I would never express my feelings if it wasn’t a happy or a sad. I don’t think anger would EVER be allowed in my childhood home.

Unfortunately, I have taught the same thing to my kids and they never talk back to me but they also don’t stand up for themselves in the real world. So even though I have raised respectful children, like my parents raised….. they never learned to vocalize their negative emotions either. I’m now aware of that and I hope that I can teach my kids this now. I think I would take it personally if they were angry. I would have made it about me and my feelings instead of listening to them and hearing what they were feeling.

The negative emotion I have felt A LOT is guilt. Especially as a people pleaser…. I have felt so much guilt is because I felt like I was responsible for everyone else’s happiness. Making sure my husband was happy was definitely something I felt responsible for. I thought it was my job to make him happy. But it never worked. He was never happy and I felt so much guilt for that. My kids would also be a source of guilt for me. Making sure they have everything they need and protecting them from having to feel their negative emotions….wow. i can see how I took on so much more than was my responsibility.

Honestly even family members that are not in my immediate family, who are struggling… it will over take my mind. I just don’t want anyone to suffer and I want to fix it all for everyone else. Learning how to handle my negative emotions with out turning to food is a huge thing I need to learn how to do. I would feel guilty about everything. I felt guilt if someone wasn’t happy with me. I would feel guilty by just doing something I wanted to do if I felt it inconvenienced someone else.

Another negative emotion that I would feel often is shame. I felt a lot of shame about my body. I also just now am recognizing that I have felt a lot of shame around my parents because of the life i was living. I remember writing them letters or cards…. telling them that someday I hope they will be proud of me. For so long I identified as the daughter that was happy, obedient, open, loving, good and caring. When I got married and I didn’t live the life that was in line with the daughter I needed to be for them to be proud of me…. I experienced a lot of shame about myself and my life.

This is such a huge issue for me and I am sure it is for alot of my listeners because we buffer alot of negative feelings with food. So I asked my mentor Angel to give me some advice about this subject and I wanted to share what she had to say about it. I asked her how we can “DEAL” with negative emotions like guilt and shame. Here is what she shared with me……

Emotions come from what we are telling ourselves. Cognitive psychology teaches us that emotions are the product of thoughts. You can’t have an emotion all by itself. It’s generated by a thought. Emotions are the offspring of thoughts. So there’s no such thing as “dealing with emotions.” Emotions can’t be “dealt,” with. They are not a toddler having a tantrum. You can’t control them. Tie them up. Hold them down. or anything like that. To move away from being a slave to your emotions you can use emotions as the “alarm clocks of your awareness.” Let them “wake you up.” All you can do is notice them, feel them, and in place of judging them, ask, “what am I?”

When a strong emotion appears, Ask yourself the question, “What am I telling myself right now? “ Get to see what you’re thinking. Find your thought patterns. Then you will understand and see the connection between the level of thinking and the corresponding emotion your thoughts produced.

It’s our thinking that needs to be addressed. The emotions do not need to be bridled, or tempered, trained, or stuffed. They need to be recognized. They need to be seen as the red flags that they are, the alarm clocks that they are, the evidence that is getting your attention to make you look at what you’re telling yourself.

Now seeing your thoughts and being willing to look at their origin is taking it one step further. Your thoughts are the offspring of your beliefs. These beliefs lie in the unconscious mind. They are underground, so to speak. So you look at your thoughts, and ask yourself, “if these things I’m thinking we’re actually true and permanent, what would that mean about me?” Repeat that question until it pulls up the deepest fear. Which will be something like, “I’m not good enough, I’m a failure, I’m unlovable, I’m unworthy.”

-Angel Naivalu

Now you can all see why I love my mentor Angel SO MUCH. She has learned how to allow all emotions. I love how she talks about them being an alarm clock to our awareness. So good and so true. Also she really called me out when i asked how I can learn how to “DEAL” with my negative emotions. I love it when I learn something new. Every single time I do another podcast episode I have more enlightment to how I can come closer to the truth and uncover another layer of “EMOTIONAL WEIGHT”. It is the best feeling ever.

I am actually feeling guilt today so I want to put this formula in to practice. So here we go.

“What is the emotion I am feeling?”

I am noticing that I am feeling guilty about how I am spending my time lately.

Ask yourself, “What am I telling myself right now?”

I am telling myself that I should be doing more. I should have cooked dinner and cleaned the house and not spent so much time on social media. What have I been doing all day? i need to do more if I want to start making money. i am not doing enough.

“if these things I am thinking are actually true and permanent, what would that mean about me?

It would mean that I am always going to struggle financially and I am not a good mom or wife. It would mean that I am not going to create the life I know I am capable of if i just had more discipline.

“if that was true, what would that mean about me?”

It would mean that I am not good enough. (I want to enter a eyes wide open emoji right now…. Can I have access to emojis in this blog? haha)

As I am processing this feeling of guilt that I am feeling today I realize that I am still trying to prove my worth by doing things instead of realizing I am worth it no matter what I do. Wow. I have been feeling so weird lately and I didn’t know why. Now I do know why. I am putting a lot of pressure on myself lately to start making money. My husband is driving a truck and he doesn’t like it and I would love to make enough money that he could stop working and start doing this healing work on himself without the pressure of making a living for his family. But the plans I have will take time.

• I have a podcast that I am producing a weekly episode.

• I am working part time for my friend plus I am managing her social media.

• I am making sure i have daily posts for my own social media too.

• One of my future goals is writing a book about this journey. Maybe I am already working on that by blogging? yes!

• In February 2022 I am launching a membership for women like me who want this soul-aligning coaching with accountability and community.

• Eventually I want to put together in person groups that we can learn this work together just like Angel does, but have it be in the niche of body acceptance and weight loss.

So there is a lot of dreaming going on and a lot of goal setting. And then when I don’t accomplish what I feel like I need to then I start to feel guilty because then I worry that I won’t ever get it done.

What I want to think and feel is to look at what I am doing. Look at what I have accomplished this past two months. It took me almost 7 months to actually launch my podcast but I am so glad I waited because my podcast is totally different that it would have been in February. The direction is so much better and more meaningful to me. I am so grateful. I know that I need to trust the timing. I have a clear picture of what I want. I am meditating and picturing it daily. I am building up my community by posting daily and sharing what I am learning with others on my social media. I am about to post my 7th episode on my podcast which I just created brand new artwork for. I am doing ok. I am making movement towards my goals every day and however long it takes… is exactly how long it was meant to take.

Now that we have the formula. I want to ask you all to think about the emotions you are feeling a majority of time? If there is one that is standing out for you, I would love to challenge you to do this work with me. Lets continue to uncover all of this emotional weight that we have been holding onto for so long. Lets get to the bottom and continue to learn and grow.