you can manage them, but you cannot control them. The more anyone tries to control their emotions the more they resist control, and the more frightened people eventually become at what is seen to be a “loss of emotional control.” It is a vicious circle.
When we have an experience that we find painful or difficult, and are either unable to cope with the pain, or just afraid of it, we often dismiss this emotion and either get busy, exercise more, drink or eat a bit more, or just pretend it has not happened. When we do this we do not feel the emotion and this results in what is called repressed, suppressed or buried emotions. These feelings stay in our muscles, ligaments, stomach, midriff, auras. These emotions remain buried within us until we bring that emotion up and feel the emotion, thus releasing it. Emotions that are buried on the long-term are the emotions that normally cause physical illness.
The following are a few examples of the methods people use to avoid feeling their emotions.
- Ignoring your feelings
- Pretending something hasn’t happened
- Overeating
- Eating foods loaded with sugar and fat
- Excessive drinking of alcohol
- Excessive use of recreational drugs
- Using prescription drugs such as tranquilizers or Prozac
- Exercising compulsively
- Any type of compulsive behaviour
- Excessive sex with or without a partner
- Always keeping busy so you can’t feel
- Constant intellectualizing and analysing
- Excessive reading or watching of TV
- Working Excessively
- Keeping conversations superficial
- Burying angry emotions under the mask of peace and love
It takes a lot of energy to keep emotions repressed and buried. If you keep emotions buried for a long period of time, you lower your overall vibrations, and lower vibrations lead to illness and an accelerated ageing process. Buried emotions create fatigue and depression. The following are some major symptoms of buried and repressed emotions.
- Fatigue
- Depression without an apparent cause
- Speaking of issues or interests rather than personal matters and feelings
- Pretending something doesn’t matter when inside it does matter
- Rarely talking about your feelings
- Blowing up over minor incidents
- Walking around with a knot in your stomach or tightness in your throat
- Feeling your anger not at the time something happens but a few days later
- In relationships, focusing discussions on children or money rather than talking about yourselves
- Difficulty talking about yourself
- Troubled personal relationships with family, friends, acquaintances
- A lack of ambition or motivation
- Lethargic – who cares - attitude
- Difficulty accepting yourself and others
- Laughing on the outside while crying on the inside
Repressed or buried emotions can cause major difficulties in the physical body and energetic systems. They affect all your relationships, and they especially affect your ability to grow spiritually and shift your level of consciousness. Emotions repressed for the long-term can cause serious illness including cancer, arthritis, chronic fatigue, and many other major health problems. Since repressed emotions can rest either in your body or auras, they can cause holes in your auras, through which your energy leaks out creating fatigue, a sense of vulnerability, and low self-confidence.
It is very important and vital that you know how to express your emotions. Once you learn how to properly vent your emotions, you’ll be able to communicate with others as well as yourself much better. It’s not always easy to express your feelings, but it’s rewarding when you do. In order to express your emotions you need to acknowledge the presence of such emotions. Before you can do anything else, you have to recognize and accept that you are going to have feelings and that those feelings are okay. What you are going to have to learn is how those feelings operate in your daily life and how you can deal with or express them more productively. Ask yourself the three following questions: What is the feeling? What is the feeling telling me about the situation? Why has this feeling appeared now?
Everyone feels differently so it is important if you can learn how you feel and why you feel the way you feel. Don’t take anything for granted. You have been created to live life to the fullest and you are not going to allow your emotions deprived you of the best because you have been created for the best. Your emotions are governed by the limbic system in the brain and the involuntary, autonomic nervous system. In times of emotional distress, you might experience an increased heart-rate, increased and shallow breathing, perspiration, and trembling. You need to pay attention to your body’s response. Your body’s reaction to emotion can have very real physical side effects.
Most of the problems you have is not as a result of the emotion or the event but on how you respond to the emotion or event. You need to learn to tune into your body so you understand what it is trying to tell you and how it is reacting to certain circumstances. This means setting aside time to calmly assess and identify your feelings and thought patterns. We make too many assumptions without getting the facts. We tend to react, based on our unverified assumptions. It is advisable you get the facts and if you do, don’t be in a hurry to draw out a conclusion. Take time to analyse the situation before committing to it. You need to realize that first and foremost, how you express your feelings is a choice that only you can make. There is no one absolutely true way to express yourself, although there are ways that are harmful both to you, and to others. You should stay calm enough to find out the best way to express your emotions.
I received a nasty email from a colleague. I know it is nasty. I know I don’t have to reply back at that time but I wrote a reply anyway. I didn’t send it though. I read it every ten minutes and make changes. These changes removed the acid in my reply. I did that continuously not being in a hurry. Anytime I visit my reply I am forced to edit it until it because very simple and very professional. I asked other colleagues about the person that sent me this irritating and insulting email and I was told by all I consulted that this wasn’t his nature. The more I learnt about him the more I can understand that the pressure and stress of our job is getting on him. Finally I pick up the phone, called him and we have a wonderful conversation where we resolved the matter.
Always remember that there isn’t an exact way you can express your emotions. What is important is to ensure you don’t react, you get all the facts and you stay calm and don’t be in a hurry. You try to learn more about the event, don’t assume, get the details and this will enable you to respond appropriately. Repressed emotions only grow stronger, so you can feel a little bit angry right now or extremely angry later. The way to diffuse a powerful emotion is to express it. Emotions do not last if you express them. When it comes to emotion you can’t stop them so it is not a matter if you should feel the emotion because you will definitely feel the emotion. It is normal when you do. What matters most is expressing the emotions in a safe way.
