Who Controls Who?

Our emotions and feelings are a physiological experience in the body. We are not our emotions. Emotions are created by us but saying “I am angry” is inferring that I am my emotions and by believing that, we are taking the control away from us to manage them. If you believe your emotions and you are one, then you would feel there is little you can do about it. It’s the way you were made, it’s your DNA. So Instead of saying “I am angry” you would say “I am experiencing feeling angry” when you understand that you are not your emotions. They are separate. You have the power and control over them.
 
In meditation practices, they use the sky and clouds metaphor. The sky is you and the clouds are your thoughts and emotions.  Your thoughts and emotions can be beautiful but sometimes their dark, just like the clouds but they also are just passing through.
 
Our emotions provide valuable information. There are lessons in life to be learned and our emotions help us experience those lessons, good and bad. It is not healthy to deny or suppress them. We need to learn from them and then let them go.  Try to find the positive intent behind the problem emotion. When we suppress our negative emotions, we release them in other ways usually on a sub-conscious level. For example, we may feel angry or frustrated and by suppressing feeling them, we see others around us in a negative light, we find fault with them, they irritate us easily.  Our internal feelings and emotions come out externally and attack others. Innocent people experience our negative emotions.
 
It is also important not to feed your negative feelings and emotions. You probably have noticed that when you got angry or upset about something or someone, eventually your anger/sadness subsides, dissipates until someone asks you to tell them what happened and while you are telling them, you revisit all the feelings and emotions again and your back to feeling just as angry or sad as if it just happened to you.  This is feeding the monster, feeding your emotions. You are giving them control over how you feel in the day. Doing this is no benefit to you, in fact, it is taking away from you valuable time and more importantly, energy – where you could be using it on something that is giving to you. This is not the way to understanding the lessons of the emotions.
 
So what I’m saying is you need to find a balance. Feel your negative emotions and look at what the lessons your supposed to learn from them but don’t feed them and allow them to feed on your energy. You need to be able to let them go and move on. You can choose to control your emotions or allow them to control you, it’s your choice – choose wisely.
 
“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions”
Brene Brown

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