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We all know them, those nasty ‘negative’ emotions. We are angry about something, hate someone, feel shame, guilt, unworthiness, have been sexually assaulted, in wars etc. etc.
During our life, and in this world it seems a result of just living our lives, we collect a lot of negative experiences. But how we deal with these experiences is often not very constructive.
If the experiences are too difficult (often when we endure them as children) we lock them away as a survival mechanism needed at the time to keep our sanity. However, these locked-down emotions will fester and block the normal energy flow in your body.
Another way we behave when something happens is to reiterate it in our mind. We get stuck in a thinking loop around what happened, effectively re-traumatising ourselves again and again and again. This way the negative emotion usually grows instead of diminishes. Anger turns into hate, small things become huge.
There are surely more ways our emotions can get stuck.
Many people, including professional therapists, are convinced we have to delve into our emotions and find out the why and wherefore, dragging up memories involving these emotions. Now the problem with this, as I see it, is that it is ok to do drag up memories and emotions, but then you have to clear the emotions. This is often not done, and the person comes home from therapy with all these emotions reactivated, but no understanding on how to clear them. This easily results in re-traumatisation. The therapist is not necessarily aware of this.
During my ‘journey’ doing healing work, I have tried to find the things that are easy and work. From these I extracted a way to work with our negative emotions that is the easiest and fastest way I have experienced. Looking around on the internet, I have found a few people that are aware of this technique but it is not widely known.
Everybody is different and we each have to find the things that work for us. So the instruction I’ll give may not work for you. But give it a try, you may be amazed. Almost all people that have seriously tested this have had good results diminishing and removing their traumatic emotions.
When we have a negative emotion, usually we start thinking about the why and who etc. This creates story. It is the thought, the story, that actually keeps the emotion in place. So thinking about it keeps us ‘stuck’ in the emotion.
So…what do we have to do?
STOP THINKING. ‘Well, that is impossible’, I can hear you say, and formulated like that, it is! But it is relatively easy to re-focus our attention. So if we put all our attention to feeling the ‘negative’ emotion 100%, we do not think anymore! Because we do not think anymore, our thoughts don’t hold on to the emotion and the emotion can leave. Also by feeling the emotion a 100%, we accept the emotion and by accepting, the emotion can leave.
Sometimes you can feel the emotion diminish and disappear in a few seconds, sometimes it takes 30 minutes or more. So, do it as long as it takes. You can do it anywhere, at home, in bed, on the bus, even at work. Try what works for you.
There are times when an emotion does not clear. It can happen that you moved to a different aspect of the emotion which has not cleared yet, but the original aspect of the emotion is cleared. Or it can happen that another emotion is ‘laying on top’ of the emotion you are trying to clear. Usually you will know, because another emotion than the one you are working on pops up. In that case work on the emotion that pops up first.
The technique:
If the emotion is not currently active, try to activate it by going back to a memory. Slowly go into the memory until you feel an emotion coming up. (at this stage thought may be used to activate the emotion)
Refocus ALL your attention to the feelings in you body, to the emotion and keep on feeling it. The only thoughts you may have are things like: ‘where can I feel this in my body?’, ‘does it have a color, a texture?’, ‘Does it want to move?’ (If you cannot activate an emotion in the first step, you can do this step by just feeling what is going on in your body… an emotion may come up…)
during the whole time, but definitely during strong emotions: keep a deep, slow breathing.
That’s all there is to it. I suggest to try it with small feelings/emotions first (like irritation, anger) before you move on to the heavy emotional traumas, so that you will KNOW that it works and how it works.
I personally think everybody should do this. Also if you think you do not have any traumas or negative feelings (because most often that is just not true). It should be basic emotional hygiene.
I hope this is of help. Good luck and take care!
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