Happy Sunday!
And welcome to today’s edition of ‘Conscious living with Purnima’. Hope you have been adding joy, play and conscious inner silence to your everyday life. Today, we will address emotions - our societal conditioning of suppressing emotions, power of articulating clearly how we feel to ourselves if not to others, & deciphering the hidden messages our most difficult emotions hold.
Let’s get straight to it.
When I first read that piece by Rumi, I felt like there was something profound about it. The poem touched me yes, but I didn’t fully comprehend what it meant. Not until I encountered difficult emotions that compelled me to pay attention and listen to what they were telling me. Slowly as I began deciphering their messages, I felt a greater freedom and a sense of control over my life. Today, I appreciate this poem a lot more as I know what it means.
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second by imitation, which is the easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest”
- Confusius.
If you have worked with me in any capacity, then you know how much emphasis I place on ‘holistic wellness’ and by that, I mean paying attention to the health of our body, mind, & emotions. While we don’t have to be experts in all areas, we do need to have basic knowledge so we can better care for ourselves. To help people have fundamental understanding of Emotional Intelligence, I started a Sunday series of posts along with Krishnaveni, a Conscious Parenting Coach, on my Instagram page. If this topic is of any interest to you, then consider following the Series. To access previous posts, check out the ‘highlights’ on my Instagram Profile titled ‘Emotional Health’. I will in any case keep this post as detailed as possible.
Let’s start from scratch.
Our Societal Conditioning:
Our Society has conditioned us to:
A. Suppress difficult emotions:
Reflect on how often you have heard your care givers tell you not to cry or create a scene? How often have you said it to your children?
We are repeatedly told not to cry, not to be jealous, not to be upset, not to be angry. And unconsciously, we learn to suppress these emotions, like they don’t exist.
B. Stereotype emotional behavior based on gender:
Men should not cry is a popular one that causes many men to act emotionally strong even when they are feeling weak & can do better with opening up. I haven’t seen my own dad exhibit his vulnerability much but the times that he has, are the times I have felt closer to him.
C. Encourages ONLY happy emotions:
We see happy pictures everywhere and are bombarded with messages that tell us how we should practice self-love and force gratitude on ourselves. We internalize this to mean that we should never be unhappy or feel low.
What has this conditioning led to?
Such conditioning has led us to invalidate our difficult emotions. We are quick to judge them and even quicker to categorize them into good and bad. Anything we perceive as irrational, inappropriate or uncomfortable is dismissed.
The other reason we run away from them is because we don't understand the emotion and don't know what to do with it. So, it's easier to disregard it.
Repercussions of such suppression:
By suppressing emotions, we are only ignoring the feeling and not addressing what it is doing to our body and mind. Suppressed emotions stay in our body affecting our physical health in myriad ways.
Also, when we reject our feelings, we reject a part of us and are not fully there for ourselves. Thich Nhat Hanh says it beautifully in this quote:
“Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you; your perceptions need you; your feeling needs you. The wounded child in you, needs you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it. Go home and be there for all these things.”
―Thich Nhat Hanh
Emotional suppression also distances us from people preventing us from cultivating deeper and more beautiful bonds of support & togetherness.
How are difficult emotions important?
A difficult emotion could be pointing at several different things. Some of which could be:
Your values
Your beliefs
Your unmet needs
Your desires, expectations, dreams etc.
If you don’t pay attention to them, then you miss the opportunity of learning more about yourself.
It is not a crime to feel jealous, or angry or rejected. There is no need to rationalize why you should not be feeling a certain way. If you feel it, you feel it. Accept it fully. But what you need to be careful about is not giving the emotion power over you by allowing it to affect you negatively. Treat the emotion as a visitor (as in Rumi’s poem) that’s come to tell you what you need most. You need to respond to it skillfully and use its presence to empower yourself.
Next part of this post will be on that.
Steps to take when you encounter a difficult emotion:
A. Recognize its presence.
B. Acknowledge it.
C. Name it.
Cultivate your emotional literacy so you can identify your primary emotions. A primary emotion is what we feel first. The secondary emotion is what it leads to.
Anger is a secondary emotion and could be a result of several primary emotions such as feeling pressured, or trapped or disrespected.
Depression is another example of a secondary emotion. Primary emotions could include feeling discouraged, hopeless, lonely, isolated, misunderstood, overwhelmed, attacked, invalidated, unsupported, etc. Normally it includes several feelings.
When we identify the primary emotions, it is much clearer what our unmet emotional needs are and what can help us feel better. So, it is important that we learn to identify the primary emotions. Use this feeling wheel to build your emotional literacy & better label what you are experiencing:
D. Manage the feeling skillfully.
Once the feeling has been identified, ask yourself how you would like to respond to it. List your options & choose the one which will most likely lead to your long-term happiness.
When you are too overwhelmed, give yourself some space and resist the urge to feed more thoughts that will intensify the emotion.
Emotions can be overpowering and cloud our good judgement narrowing our lens with which we view the world. So always remember to not act on them but just pay attention to them.
E. Nurture Yourself.
Next ask yourself what would help you feel better? Another question you could ask is how you want to feel? This will help direct your thoughts in a positive direction.
So, to summarize the steps to handling a difficult emotion:
Recognize. Acknowledge. Name it accurately. Respond to it in a way that feels right for your physical and mental health. Nurture yourself.
Lastly know that you are never alone in feeling a certain way. It’s part of the human experience to go through hard feelings. But these hard feelings make us soft, empathetic, compassionate & kind. Making better humans of us. So, they are needed and valuable. Let’s treat them like that and never be afraid of them, reject them or run away from them.
The more you learn to validate your feelings and be there for yourself, the easier it will get for you to validate other people’s feelings and be there for them. This will help you build a great relationship with yourself (most important) and a great relationship with everyone else you get an opportunity to interact with.
With that I will conclude today’s post which is Part 3 of the Series, ‘Finding the lost art of living’. I have given you enough material to work with. If this is an area that you would like to learn more about, then do follow our Sunday Series on Instagram.
I will see you next week with Part 4 which will address how to move forward when you find yourself stuck and practicing letting go as a way of life. Until then take good care of yourself and pay attention to your life as it unfolds 💞
To know more about me & my work visit my website
To Subscribe to my Saturday Newsletter on ‘Health & Fitness’ related topics Sign up here
Follow me on Instagram
Good Read !