No Comments// Posted in West Sussex County Times Column by Mary on 02.06.14.

For the month of love we are going to look at the purpose of our emotions.

For years we’ve been conditioned into thinking we need to keep our emotions under wraps in order to appear a balanced or a ‘nice’ person, but ultimately all this does is create a whole heap of problems.

Love, joy and happiness, for example, are considered acceptable to exhibit, as opposed to the other end of the spectrum where emotions such as anger, jealousy or fear are not.

There is no such thing as a bad emotion. All emotions are positive and are a signal or a prediction that something needs to happen. It could be that we need to keep doing what we are doing – such as emitted by joy, or that we need to be treated with respect, protected against being exploited or have our wishes taken seriously when experiencing the emotion of anger.

Our emotions are our principle indicators to a given situation. We can’t fake them or force them to happen… they are our ‘true voice!’

So why do we ignore them so often?

We worry about how to express them and what others will think of us if we do. This makes us rely on our heads to work things out (which rarely gets it right!) rather than get our needs met.

We often see people shouting or screaming as a way to vent their anger when a quiet assertion of their rights is quite sufficient; or suppressing tears when feeling sadness or lonely so as not to appear ‘weak,’ instead of gaining contact with other people.

The more we ignore our emotional contact the more likely symptoms of tiredness, headaches, poor sleep, loss of direction  or even ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Depression and IBS will become apparent.

Emotions are cues to action:

• What are my emotions trying to tell me about the situation?
• What do my emotions want me to stop doing?
• What do my emotions want me to do instead?
• What do my emotions need me to say?

Take this month to be more emotionally honest with yourself – it eases tension, improves well-being and gains fulfilment.

 

 

 

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