Deep

In the PBS documentary "This Emotional Life" they explore emotions and how they are all vital to a healthy life.  I think we believe differently - sad, anger, fear, guilt and shame are not to be felt.   It is only when we dwell on these emotions that there is a problem. It is not the emotion itself.  Even these negative emotions have their place in our lives.     

Nowadays we get frustrated when we can't reach someone at the moment we want to reach them because we have created fixes for those kinds of frustrations.  My mother used to make flyers for people.  Can you imagine what that was like before computers?  I would not know where to begin.  She would hand write  and draw most of them and any kind of graphics were pictures cut from magazines and glued to the original.  Fancy was black and white printing on a colored piece of paper.

Our too busy lives have very little patience for exploring uncomfort or even having those feelings in the first place.  You might think you don't apply but if you have excess weight on your body, you do.

Try this experiment. (from Geneen Roth) Take a day and look at all the things you do repeatedly.  You know that thing that you do with almost a knee jerk reaction or that is a habit.  It could be eating, it could be checking email or Facebook or whatever thing you do several times a day out of habit - cracking your knuckles, whatever.  For that one day stop just when you are about to do it and analyze your body.  What does your head feel like?  What does your stomach feel like, your chest, your neck, everywhere.?  What emotion would you say you are feeling?  Is it pleasant?  Or, is it uncomfortable?  The why doesn't even matter.

In "This Emotional Life" they explored many different people that were stuck on an emotion  It is very easy to do.  A women was afraid to fly on an airplane - she was stuck on the emotion of fear.  In order to get unstuck she had to first identify what she was feeling in her body.  Her heart would race, her breathing would get faster, her hands would sweat.  After identifying what her body was feeling then they would mimic those things by let's say running.  She would create those feelings again and again while working on her fear.  When it came time to fly she was very nervous and you could see her fear vividly.  Her doctor asked her if it was her pounding heart that bothered her right now or the sweating hands.  She began to calm down as she recognized that what she was actually feeling was familiar and that made all the difference.  Her reactive emotions were not pleasant but they were not going to kill her in fact she needs those emotions to protect her in times of danger.

There are some negative emotions that we would prefer. They are just unpleasant enough to distract us from the bigger, scarier unpleasant.  An uncomfortably full stomach is a great distraction.  A physical pain is much more concrete than an emotion.  On my own scale I do this.  I am still working on it.  Where someone might down a whole pie I eat seven chocolate chip cookies (last night :( I may get it but I haven't got it made)  but if I say "at least I am not her eating a whole pie", I lose the opportunity  for growth.  Last night I felt pain at seven cookies, for her it takes a whole pie.

Earlier in the day I had received some "uncomfortable" news.  When I look back it was about then that I decided tonight would be a dessert night.  At the time I was not thinking I was drowning my sorrows, I didn't even relate them.  The truth is, I was balancing out the day with some good news - what is wrong with that?   But, what happens is we flatten our negative emotions and when you don't have the downs you don't have the ups.  It is a law of nature.  I should have taken a moment and ...cried.  What would have been so wrong with that?  Today that disappointment from the "uncomfortable news" is still there and it will be for a while.  I can handle it.  It is just normal everyday stuff but at its first moment it was scary, very scary. 

So, we have these tricks up our sleeves, these heroic rituals that turn the switch and keep us from unpleasantness.  I would bet that when uncomfortable, your customized uncomfortable, enters the room you too have a triggered reaction to do...something.  Many times it is eat.  We switch gears and then we can disconnect from that uncomfortable.   Sometimes these emotions can be traced back to a particular moment and sometimes they can not.  The point is not always the why,  the point is to start to go through those emotions instead of stifle them. Your experiment can be the same as the woman afraid of flying.  You can get used to feeling those negative emotions and then they are easier to deal with.

Taking time to really feel your emotions can seem trivial and hooky shpooky but it is really important.  All emotions are crucial for our well being - even the negative ones.