Fear is a natural emotion and most of the time it serves us well. Fear helps us stay safe. But what happens when fear gets out of control? It can affect every area of life. It can lower your self esteem, destroy your confidence, and keep you stuck in a life that is not working. Ask yourself “Am I living with fear?”
Your emotions affect every area of your life. This article will help you determine how reclaiming your true emotions will benefit you.
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When people talk about emotions what are they really talking about? We all know that emotions cause us to feel certain ways. We feel angry. We feel happy. We feel guilty. We feel confident. When we use these words we are labeling our feelings. Labels are important. Labels help us understand how we are feeling and how others are feeling. Being able to label emotions is an important skill and helps us communicate with others. Labels are not our emotions.
We have thoughts that reflect our emotions. When we are feeling sad we focus on sad memories and tell sad stories. When we are happy we look for the positive in life. Thoughts and feelings are usually in alignment. Thoughts can change our emotions. If we are having a great day and we hear some upsetting news about a friend we start feeling sad or upset. If we are sad a friend can cheer us up with a joke or a heart warming story. But our thoughts are not our emotions.
We experience emotions in our physical body. In The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness ( 1999) Antonio Damasio tell us that “All emotions use the body as their theater.” (page 51) We need our body in order to experience emotions.
According to Candace Pert who wrote The Molecules of Emotion: The Science of Mind-Body Medicine (1999) emotions are the result of chemicals flowing throughout our body. These chemicals are neuropeptides and are produced by our brain. These chemical messengers attach to receptors on the cells. Every cell knows your emotional state.
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When we hold onto emotions from childhood they can continue to affect our lives. If you felt fear as a young child, you may still feel that same fear as an adult. When you try new things or you meet new people you may feel afraid. Perhaps your parents taught you to be afraid by worrying about every little thing.
Emotions from the past feel exactly like emotions from the present. Most of us are not able to determine whether an emotion is old or current. This can limit us in many ways.
Sometimes it feels like we have no control over our emotions. We want to change our life and our emotions but we just don’t know where to start. We try positive thinking, affirmations, changing our thoughts or our behaviors.
We never try communicating directly with our emotions.
Our emotions speak to us in metaphors, images and stories. These are our emotional poems. Candace Pert who wrote The Molecules of Emotion: The Science of Mind-Body Medicine (1999) believes that our body is the key to understanding our emotions. She says that our body is our unconscious mind. We experience our emotional poems in our bodies.
Many people can benefit from the poetry of emotion process. There are some important exceptions. Please read through the following list and make sure the poetry of emotion process is right for you.
The poetry of emotion process is designed to help you reclaim your true emotions. In the process of growing up your true emotions get covered up with family beliefs, cultural beliefs, and limiting emotions. These emotions and beliefs do not reflect the real you.
Most of us have a sense that there is something missing but we are unsure exactly what we are missing. We have lost touch with our true emotions and our true self – the person we were meant to be. The poetry of emotion process gives you the tools to reclaim your true self.
The easiest way to explore emotional communication is through the five senses: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. Through our senses we can connect with our emotional self. Emotions are felt in the body. To understand more about our emotions we need to look to our body rather than our thoughts.
Let’s go through an exercise so that you can check this out for yourself. We are going to focus on a positive memory for this exercise. Remember a positive memory – one that is filled with happiness, joy or fun. Experience all the good feelings that go along with that memory. Before you start you may want to get a pen and paper to jot down your answers.
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