Power Of Emotions

No sadness, pain, anger, or hurt. You could never have felt abandoned, left out, or disrespected.

You could never experience grief or heartbreak because you also could never feel love.

You would never be let down because you would never have felt excitement or anticipation.

No Anxiety. No Joy. No contentment.

That is life without emotions…Nothing.

Emotions are the point.

No matter what you believe, without emotions, life is pointless. The devil has no power without emotion because there is no temptation.

You cannot hear your intuition, god, or universe speaking within you because you can’t feel it.

You know you exist, you know you are alive, but it’s as if the “life” has been sucked out of living.

It’s oblivious that life without emotions is pointless, then why do we as a society spend so much time ignoring them?

Every action we’ve ever taken was to illicit or create some emotion. We are always chasing an emotion, often trying to run or hide from them.

How We Fail To Understand Emotions

**Acknowledge me**

You can look at emotions as a childlike soul **speed running** the experience of life.

They are born from the stimulus around us and die when we stop feeling them.

In between that time, the emotions explore our bodies and minds like amusement parks of experience.

We, of course, feel these little rascals running through us, and when the emotions that come into our bodies are the ones we want, we make sure they are welcomed.

Happiness is allowed to stay with us indefinitely. This goes for joy, excitement, and pleasure. We have no problems recognizing these friends and inviting them into our lives.

On the other hand, when fear, sadness, or shame comes knocking, we aren’t as welcoming. It is easy to attempt to ignore those emotions and act like they aren’t there.

All of these emotions just want to live their “lives” and know they are important.

But we have a clear caste system in place. The good emotions are welcome, and the “bad” emotions are not. They are less than.

I wanted to compare emotions to little souls because no one wants to be told they aren’t worthy of existing. Everyone wants to be acknowledged and feel seen, even your emotions. Instead, we bottle up the “bad” ones and ignore them, preventing them from having a whole experience and eventually leaving. We grab them at the border and lock them in prison out of fear of what they might reap in our lives.

The little monsters inside you

Emotions need two things: To be acknowledged and to be released.

Back to our metaphors 🙂

If you were kept against your will, you’d surely grow restless and do anything you could to leave. Knaw, scratch, and bite your way to freedom.

Well, emotions ignored are emotions trapped. Emotions trapped, like you, will do ANYTHING to get free. Even if being free means taking you down with them.

That sadness or fear that was trapped inside of you will grow. That little emotion will get stronger and even team up with other trapped emotions to wreak havoc on your life until you break down and let them out. You can do this through an adult tantrum, mental breakdown, or just crashing. This is the result of trapped emotions. The emotions only want to be free, and letting them go would free them and you from their constant attacks.

However, the longer you wait to let them go, the bigger they will become and the more intense that feeling will become when you finally release them. Holding emotions becomes a perpetual cycle because a feeling that feels trapped will grow and rot, then the idea of letting them pass through you becomes terrifying, which creates more emotions, and you trap those as well. This continues until you get good building prisons to trap your emotions ( cutting you off from the full experience of life), or you just let them go.

Thorns and Contraptions

One of my favorite books, “The Untethered Soul” by Michale Singer, describes the invisible thorns in our lives.

Singer gives a metaphor for a guy with a thorn sticking out of his side that causes excruciating pain when touched. Instead of going through the pain of removing this thorn, the man learns how to move through life, avoiding anything that may come into contact with his thorn. Until he gets to the point where he can’t stand not being able to live a normal life. The man then sets out to build a device that allows him to hug his wife by creating a barrier around his thorn. The man is so excited about his invention that he sells it to other people with thorns. He becomes wealthy by helping others avoid their thorns and live everyday lives.

Singer points out that at no time did the man think just to remove the thorn. That would have been far too painful. Instead, avoidance is a good enough option. (Who knows, avoiding your issues may even make you rich).

How Emotions are stored

Another thing I learned from Singers’ Untethered Soul was how emotions get stored in our bodies. Our bodies were designed to keep a good record of all the possible dangers we could encounter. This is primarily done through our pattern recognition abilities. We can easily unconsciously identify the world based on past experiences. As a child, I almost drowned in a pool, so my body was hesitant to swim in the ocean. My body wasn’t trying to make sure I didn’t have the same fun summer experiences as the other kids; It just wanted to protect me from potential danger.

The movie inside out explains this very well. When we have an emotion, it gets recorded, and depending on how strong that feeling is, our bodies decide to keep that record or discard it. And sometimes, if the emotion is complex enough, it will be stored and become foundational in our lives—core Memories.

As we experience new things, these core memories are activated and contain tons of stored emotions. When called upon, the emotions will feel just as powerful as the original feeling.

How to release emotions

I disagree with the movie “Inside Out” that emotions must be stored. We can release emotions and keep our internal world like a garden of emotions rather than the warehouse depicted. Unfortunately, emotions will feel the same coming in as they do going out.

We cannot avoid this, so if we are releasing pain, it will be through pain. Some people intrinsically understand this; many will get tattoos, work out, or create until the point of physical pain because they can feel their emotional pain being released through those processes. Everyone’s stored emotions are different so that the process of release may differ, but the steps are typically the same.

Find something to put the energy into.

Screaming the energy into a pillow or open space
Working it out
Putting it in art
Put it in creation
Put it in motivation
Write it out
Vent it out

No matter what path(s) you choose to release the energy, you must have the intention of releasing the energy, or else you may just become dependent on it.

Bonus points if you can acknowledge the energy with gratitude on its way out the door!

Everything we do is for emotions and because of them.

Everything we have that’s worth wild creates an emotion or is created through them.

Emotions are our magic! Emotions fuel all of our wonder and beauty.

Embrace your emotions because they add color and flavor to your life. They are not you, nor are they in charge of you. Just a spectacular part of this experience called life.

Look around you and try to see how emotions push and pull you and the people around you. See how people use emotions for strength and creation. Pay attention to how others will use emotions to manipulate and bully you. These little or big sensations are everywhere around you. Accept that they are here to stay and learn how to deal with the uncomfortable ones. Do not block them off or bend to their will, but instead listen to what they may be signaling to you.

Listen, then make your own decision with that beautiful supper computer between your eyes and let them gooooooo.

How We Fail To Understand Emotions