Does it really make sense that we're all born with such a wide range of positive and negative emotions if we're only supposed to experience the positive one's? Is there really such a thing as positive and negative emotions?
Energy In Motion
Let's first take a look at what are emotions. I really like the definition of emotions as, E-Motion. Or, Energy In Motion.
Emotions are designed to be nothing more than Energy In Motion. Joy, fear, love, hate and any other emotion that we can think of is nothing more than an expression of an energy. The problem isn't with any expression, but only when the energy becomes "stuck". Now we have a problem.
Driving and Emotions
My friend Bob was, to put it mildly, an "aggressive driver". He readily admitted that he would become enraged when someone would cut him off in traffic. Honking his horn was just the beginning for anyone that would dare cross driving paths with him. He would often follow the offending driver closely and wave using only one finger.
When we started working together to release suppressed feelings of anger, it wasn't to improve his driving skills. He knew that he had pent-up feelings of anger that would come out in sometimes inappropriate ways, such as during arguments with his wife. He really just wanted relief from these flare-ups.
As we began to release the anger and other emotions (using the methods that you'll find in the Methods & Techniques sections), he began to find himself becoming a quieter and a less tense person. Even his wife found that he was easier to live with.
Bob told me one day that he had been cut off in traffic on the way over for his session. He went on to share that he found it amazing that he didn't have the same reactions that he used to have just a few months before. Bob admitted to still being angry at the driver for cutting him off, but it was as if he no longer felt all the "injustices" ever done to him being acted out in that one driving experience of being cut off.
Stuck Energy vs. Energy In Motion
Now let's take a look at Bob's driving in terms of Emotions versus Stuck Energy.
When Bob would find himself being cut off while driving, he wasn't only having the experience of being cut off in the moment. Rather, from an emotional level, Bob was being re-triggered to feel all similar resonating feelings of injustice that he had never released. Now the traffic incident was Much Bigger than the moment. No wonder Bob was acting out uncontrollably.
It is those unreleased emotions of injustice within Bob that I refer to as Stuck Energy. Once we began to release these long-forgotten feelings and experiences Bob no longer had all those past events piling on top of him while driving.
Was anger a Negative Emotion for Bob? We could say that it was, but really it was the reaction to the Stuck Energy that compounded the anger into very inappropriate levels.
This time when the driver made a simple error in judgment, Bob reacted with a level of emotion (Energy In Motion) that was appropriate in the moment.
It's okay for Bob to get angry if someone cuts him off. It's okay for you and I to feel sad or hurt at times. These are not Negative Emotions, but rather just normal and appropriate emotional reactions.
The key is that we only want to experience the emotions In The Moment of the experience.
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