How to Overcome Negative Emotions

Whenever you feel a negative emotion, embrace its presence and enter it both fully and willingly. Anything you try to avoid or resist will only come back stronger, so it makes little sense to do otherwise. Instead of thinking about how bad the emotion is making you feel, and multiplying the amount of painful thoughts rapidly spreading through your mind like the black plague , redirect your dialogue with the experience by turning and asking the emotion what it has to teach you. Talk with it, not about it. Explore it, do not become it. Every emotion houses hidden secrets and deep truths, and is nothing more than the vehicle offering you the opportunity to unveil the doors of perception leading to those easily missed yet life changing messages they contain.This is true in regards to even the most painful of emotions -especially the most painful ones. When a negative feeling arises, use it. Keep it. Feel it. Become it. Inhale it. Feel it in your heart, lungs, and veins. Pay close attention as it turns your vessels to ice sickles, rest in the coldness without placing judgement towards it until it passes, and then release it with an exhale of desert breeze. Melt it and release it back into the duality of the universe where it belongs, keeping only the message and strength it gave you. If the pain still has more to teach you, trust it will come back to you. Do not hold on to it, nor resist it. Let it visit when it must and welcome its arrival, perceiving it as an opportunity for inner growth.When negative thoughts threaten to obliterate you to ground zero, engage with them. Talk to them, rather than about them which only feeds your pain body and multiplies your suffering.
Author - Shelly M. White

1. This is a powerful post not to just think positive but not to become your pain, your pain or anxiety will teach you if you observe it non judgementaly.
2. What about your life can this pain or anxiety be trying to say to you.
3. Are you emotionally distressed over a lost relationship, something that never was, someone that hurt you. Are you still holding some past or future event that you haven't felt and then let go.

Eric Watson

 

Such a beautiful and poignant post. All morning I have rested in my favourite place watching the birds flock in readiness for their long flight. There is sadness at their leaving and a warmth in remembering that this is but one small cycle within a larger cycle that holds all life safe. Our emotions are much like this too. They flock, they fly, they come and they go but they are all beautiful in their perfect expression of God's grace and love for us.

 

Thanks for this. I feel so stuck in resentment and obligation now and I have for years and years. I will embrace it today even though I feel hopeless and trapped by it. Obviously just trying to feel differently hasn't worked.

 

Sweetheart, there have been crushing times in the past when I could have written your words. One of the greatest steps I made towards healing was to make peace with the past. An error I made early on in my tms journey was to spend so much time digging around in what had happened that my present moment consisted of endlessly dragging out relics, tearing apart memories for some 'hidden truth', and nit-picking current relationships based on stuff that had happened donkeys years ago. Net result was I became an unhappy urchin who stomped emotional mud everywhere she went. The point came where I'd had enough and I kicked tms healing into the long grass. This proved to be the most sensible thing I'd done in years because after a while I looked at it anew and realised how I'd taken my intensity, like a spade, into the dig. My personality was the problem, not my past.

With this insight I re-entered the fray. You cannot make yourself feel different. You have to actually feel different and the best way to do this is incorporate soothers and downtime into your life. Resentment and obligation create huge amounts of tension and overwhelm and this pours fuel on the tms fire. You need to find ways of creating time for yourself, breathing space, time to simply be and do nothing.

I'm a full-time carer so the logistics of making this happen are not lost on me. It took me quite a time and much turmoil to manage it. Again looking back this was not necessary. For complicated reasons that lie at the heart of who I am (my personality), I had to make a song and dance of it. How much easier to be assertive and just do it. Easier said than done. I know. Believe me I know.

Only you can break the cycle and once you do, you'll be astonished at how quickly good things flood your life. It's all there waiting for you to become your best self, not your perfect self, but the you who is balanced, kind, loving and caring because she feels abundant not obligated.

Negative emotions are nothing more than information. They urge us to make deeply needed changes and the best place to start is by loving yourself more.

Most of the regulars here know that my circuit-breaker is swimming. Twice a week I head to blue waters and I swim at least a mile. Then I indulge in the jacuzzi and some socialising. I am a shiny new pin afterwards and return happily to my life where I can care with a heart full of love and a body free of tension.

I hope some of this helps you find a way out of the trap you feel stuck in.

Love,

Plum x

 

Plum,
How sweet of you to respond to my little quip.
I agree that chronically digging and obsessing through the past isn't all that important, rather it can be a symptom of my personality that is my problem. In fact I'm pretty annoyed because I'm still resentful and angry about past behavior that my husband has apologized for and worked hard to not continue doing. Sure there are little reminders of his old behaviors but nothing really concerning. I want to FORGIVE. I want the resentment to not feel so fresh. I even know that I helped create the past nasty dynamics because of my martyr personality. And yet...it is so RIGHT THERE sometimes.

I've spent the last 3 years teaching myself to not be a workaholic. It was crazy hard because a frantic obsessive pace without rest or self-care was all I could imagine even when I couldn't keep doing it and no longer wanted to do it. At the beginning I spent many days pretending to relax and forcing myself to set realistic expectations for being productive until I was actually doing just that. Fake it before you make it. I know to other people that all sounds doable...but it was exquisitely difficult because it was so foreign and SCARY.

Now days I've got some pretty great activities that are fun, refreshing self-care. I love walking, stand-up paddling, birding and baking. I love love love alone time, now that my husband works and my kids are older I get alone time! I used to swim laps before I had kids, it was great going back and forth without stopping for at least a mile. I loved the whole body workout without feeling hot and sweaty. I loved feeling GOOD at something (unlike running which I've tried many time to like but don't). Now our town is down to 1 pool with limited, early morning lap swim hours...it would take quite an effort to make that a routine again. Thanks for the reminder about swimming.

I think I may be afraid of taking care of myself anymore than I do. I feel like "care" is a limited commodity that must be reserved for my children, semi-disabled husband and clients (of course I'm a nurse with an intense care-giving role for work). I fear that if I was nicer to myself my whole family/"nice life" would be destroyed. When I write this I can see it is not a true threat, just something I made up like 30+ years ago. "If I try hard enough to hold everything together I will be safe." TMS personality much?

Oh no! I just had a worse thought: what if self-care is divorcing somebody I love and who has changed so much for the better because I just cannot get over the past? I really don't think that is truly what I need because even if he gone for a few days I still have my same personality tormenting me with or without him.

In the last week I've started to actually see a significant reduction in my TMS pain. I'll keep focusing on working on what is working for me as it is AMAZING!

"Lars"

 

In addition to loving self-care what else did you do to start breaking the cycle that your (our) personality created?

 

Mostly I learned to respect my personality for what it is and to see that most of my problems came from kicking against it. I suppose the main thing has been to find balance between intimacy and solitude. I need lashings of time alone, it feeds me and allows me to replenish. This is one reason I love lane swimming so much. Nothing grants me such personal freedom and quiet-time while gifting me with a body that feels like my own. This makes me naturally kinder towards myself and then kinder to others.

I totally understand what you mean about 'care' feeling like a limited commodity. Sometimes (less now than ever, thank God), I feel the crushing nature of this spike and I do my best to recognise that it is a visceral nudge to slow down, take a step back and let things be. If I don't do this then it veers into overwhelm and resentment, and then my pain starts to jag... I know the tms beast so well now that these moments signal the staccato dance back to smooth sublimity. No more fighting it, just the ease of sinking back and letting things ride. Most things can wait a while.

Today is a minor case in point. I'm running late (whatever that means) so I don't have as much time as I'd like at the baths. In the past this would have annoyed me and started a tizzy of negativity and internally imposed pressures as all the things that 'need doing' make themselves known. Instead of this nonsense, I'll probably swim less then sit in the jacuzzi for a while and leave in a fluffed-up, happy mood that cascades beneficially through the rest of my day.

The trick is catching the slippery tms fish before it starts ramping. Not always easy but it helps to see that we all have parts of ourselves that engage in stressful circumstances and that this can become habitual unless and until we check it.

Mostly it's about balance though, and anticipating my needs when they are whispering not shouting.

And now, to those beautiful healing waters.

Plum x