A River of Emotion

In order to be fully connected to one’s Self, and thus develop a whole sense of Self, I encourage those I work with to fully connect to and experience their emotions. A common concern I hear is that they will get stuck in their emotions, and the sensation of the emotions (i.e. crying, heat, tightness) will never end. We fear our emotions even though we may become more skillful at managing them with practice. As we face and play with our emotions the more fun they can become. The problem begins when we experience an emotional storm. The first time this happens we are usually young. If the adults around us are not skilled at navigating and successfully dealing with emotional storms then this becomes a scary experience. Out of fear, and perhaps also from encouragement from the adults in our life, we learn to build a dam. The next time an emotional storm happens it is mostly stopped by the dam.

            A major problem is that the dam most of us learn to build does not let any water through at all. The struggle to keep the dam intact causes the dam to grow higher, and no self nourishing water can get through. The resources it takes to maintain a dam that lets no water through becomes enormous and exhausting over time.

            An alternative to continuing to maintain and build this dam is to begin to let some water through. We do not want to tear the dam down all at once. That would be too much. We want to learn to start letting some water through, and over time drain the dam. Once we have drained the dam we then want to be able to tear it down and learn to be skillful at handling emotional storms as they happen. The idea is not to get stuck in and drown in our emotions. The idea is to learn to be able to let our emotions flow and in that way truly go. Before our emotions can flow and truly go they first must wash over us. When we allow ourselves to truly experience our emotions with our whole body and being we find that all emotions come in waves. A true genuine wave of emotion feels like it lasts a few minutes, but in actuality is probably more like 30 seconds to a minute. Of course, there is likely more than one wave of emotion to many events. However, this is the only way I know of to truly let go of our emotions and to not be stuck in emotion or trapped into keeping them at bay. I’ve tried every other approach I could think of, and this is the only one I have found that truly works.

            I like to imagine that once we fully take down the dam we can joyfully play in the river of our emotions most of the time. When a storm comes along we now have the tools and skills to navigate it, so once the storm is over it is truly over and gone. We probably won’t forget the storm, but we are no longer exhausted by avoiding and keeping the emotions at bay. When I imagine this, this feels like a life that is full of energy and joy, and is a life worth living.