Anger, fear, grief–oh my! What’s your relationship with these intense emotions? Are they friend or foe? Frenemies at best? Do you believe they are to be avoided at all costs? Perhaps you don’t relate to even feeling them at all.
Many people try to bypass these heavier emotions, seeing them as negative and bad for you. These states are ones that we often avoid, resist, ignore, bury, and control because they feel uncomfortable. That’s because emotional pain is a physical experience and because we have been conditioned to avoid or not feel these emotions with admonitions such as “good girls don’t get angry” or “only sissies cry.” We also fear these emotions, perhaps believing that if we give into our grief, it will swallow us up, and we’ll drown in it.
“When we bypass our uncomfortable emotions,
they go underground and become our shadows.”
When we bypass our uncomfortable emotions, they go underground and become our shadows. And, along with the “negative” parts of the emotions, the positive parts of the emotions get put in the shadow as well. This means we don’t have conscious access to the positive purpose of these banished emotions.
You’ve all heard about the Comfort Zone. We are wired to stay in our comfort zone, and it exists for a reason. It is so we can stay in a state of homeostasis. However, the key to growth is learning how to be comfortable enough with discomfort so that we can expand and grow beyond our current comfort zone. This includes learning to be comfortable with uncomfortable emotions.
Why would we even want to do that? It’s because these heavy emotions serve a purpose. They contain both shadow and golden qualities. They are not our enemy to be slayed and killed off forever. They are trying to protect us. To keep us safe and secure. They are not meant to be dammed up, but to flow through and out. The energy it takes to keep these feelings at bay, or contained, can be freed up once you learn to dance with the discomfort.
The purpose of these shadow emotions:
- Anger: Anger warns us when something dangerous could happen to us either internally or externally. However, sometimes warning systems create false alarms, so further investigation is needed to determine whether we need to take action to keep us safe or not.
When you suppress anger, you lose your ability to say no to things that are not in your best interest. You have weak boundaries, and can become a doormat so others can walk all over you.
Reconnecting with your anger allows you to speak up and stand up for yourself in healthy ways. It allows you to create healthy boundaries and revitalizes your creativity.
- Fear: When we feel afraid, there is a disturbance in our body, mind and spirt. It is accompanied by physical sensations, and activates the flight, flight, freeze response. When fear is about the future, it is felt as anxiety. It comes from the desire to be able to ‘control the outcome’ and invites you to learn to let go and trust. When fear is directed to the past, it is experienced as guilt or shame. The difference between guilt and shame is that guilt says, “I did something bad or wrong.” Whereas shame says, “I am bad or wrong.”
With guilt, you can change your behavior and/or seek forgiveness. This gives you a sense of agency and empowers you to do better. With shame, you can question to truth of the belief and realize it is not who you are.
- Grief: Grief is extremely painful, emotionally, and physically. It is a sensation of loss and deep sadness and the realization that life is fragile and can change in a moment, usually involuntarily and irrevocably. It shatters our illusion of control and results in feelings of helplessness and sometimes hopelessness.
Grief can be scary to feel because we often think if we allow it, we will be overtaken by it. However, if you allow yourself to feel your grief, take the plunge into it, you will find that it is deep, but that it ebbs and flows.
Grief teaches us about our capacity to love, to feel compassion for ourselves and others, and to attune with the fragility and tenderness of life. There’s a certain grace and stillness that accompanies grief.
So how do you connect with these shadow emotions? Curiosity is the bridge between comfort and discomfort. So, you approach them with curiosity.
Here’s a transformational 5-step process to reconnect with these emotions:
- Notice: Start to notice when you feel uncomfortable emotions.
- Acknowledge: Acknowledge what you are feeling and name it.
- Accept: Lean into the sensations and allow yourself to be with whatever is present without trying to change it, avoid it, or push it away. Allow it to flow within you.
- Creatively Express: Put your feelings on paper, but instead of words, draw your feelings using lines, circles, shapes and/or colors. Give shape to your emotions and see how they express themselves in symbols and images. Receive their messages.
- Journal: Continue to express your emotions on paper. It can be in words or pictures. When I was grieving the death of my husband, I journaled my grief and other day-to-day emotions in shapes and lines. The shapes took on a life of their own becoming squiggles and bricks, tears, and flames. They chronicled my journey through grief in what became a playful, yet powerful mode of expression.
When you become comfortable being with uncomfortable emotions, you develop resilience and the ability to stay centered and flexible. Instead of getting dammed up and stuck inside you, your emotions will flow through you, and you’ll have access to the full range of their qualities, giving you agency and power to respond to life in the present moment.
