I was at the park with my youngest son Benjamin and he was playing with a truck that wasn’t his, later a little boy came up to take his truck back. That was enough to throw my son on the floor with a classic case of « tantrum ». His face red, legs kicking, crying as hard as he could.
And I am there thinking, wow look at the power of his anger and frustration. I could see the emotional storm going through him, so I stayed with him (deep breath) and waited until it passed. A few minutes later he was done, felt calmer and was ready to move on and keep playing.
Little ones have the ability to allow the emotions to be fluid, they go quickly from tears to joy, they know how to let them go through their bodies, to express with sound and movement until the emotion complete its cycle and naturally fades away. As we grow up we loose touch with this ability…
We grow and learn to self-soothe, but we are not really encouraged to express fully either so we end up controlling, repressing a lot of our feelings.
What breaks my heart is to see so many adults who learned to repress their emotions growing up, who got the message that something was wrong with them for expressing who they were authentically.
For me, it was the opposite I used to get overwhelmed by my emotions. I was crying a lot! I still cry easily ;-)
Learning that being emotionally rich was powerful was a real big shift. Unfortunately I had to learn it the hard way...
I used to get very emotional during difficult conversations and I was getting lost in a pool of emotions. It was clouding me and my message couldn’t get through to the other person. I felt irrational and powerless. Arghhh!
I hated that feeling so much that I would avoid any confrontations or conversations. It took me a while to finally find my way back to a heathy relationship with my emotions. Now, I allow myself to feel it ALL. I practice expressing my emotions regularly, it gives me much more clarity, confidence and I even manage to stay centred during difficult conversations.
It is so helpful and healing to let emotions be felt and expressed. When you allow yourself to feel the emotion, all of it, and stay centered, you get to see it isn’t that bad/hard/scary. And you slowly develop a new relationship to it, best news is you get to live more fully!
What emotions are you struggling with? What do you usually do about it: express, get overwhelmed or repress?
Let me know!
❤
Camille