Suppressing, Addressing, and Expressing Emotions
The ideal is to address our mind-based emotions and express our experience-based emotions.
Suppressing our emotions on the basis of external, life-denying moral standards (Being angry is wrong. Feeling lust is wrong. It's wrong for a real man to express fear) is often harmful to our health and well-being. It denies our spirit and life. We do well to avoid suppressing our emotions.
We do well to address mind-based emotions. We can address them by deliberating with our spirit, revising our self-talk and mental images, and thereby removing what our spirit is responding to.
For example, we can address mind-based fear by telling our spirit that its fear is a response to our own mind rather than our in-the-world experience. We can then change our self-talk and mental images to shift our spirit to a neutral or emotionally pleasurable response like contentment.
We also do well to express our experienced-based emotions. We can express our experience-based emotions in two ways: directly and indirectly. Directly expressing our experience-based emotion is the better choice when doing so does not increase our risk of being harmed.
For example, when we can express our anger directly toward the one who wronged us at work, without putting ourself at risk of additional harm, we do well. However, when directly expressing our anger toward the one who wronged us puts us at risk of additional mistreatment, indirectly expressing our anger is the wiser choice.
We can express our anger and other emotions indirectly in a variety of helpful ways: consciously and deliberately choosing to forgive the offender, talking it out with someone we trust, journaling, writing a letter to the offender but not delivering it, and physical exercise are some examples of indirect emotional expression.
I've enjoyed reading your series of blog posts on emotions. I very much like the way you've sorted emotions into mind-based and experience-based. This suggests to me that the first comes from inside of me, and the second is externally derived. Is that an accurate distinction?
ReplyDeleteYou've offered some useful examples and tools here for indirectly working with and expressing feelings like anger.
I wonder if you can elaborate on some equally useful ways for working with mind-based emotions? For example, I'm curious as to how I'd go about deliberating with my spirit about these. Is it like giving myself a good talking-to? :-) Are you also thinking of meditation as a way to quiet the mind?
Hello Sara, I always appreciate your comments and questions. As you know, I'm presenting my ideas as they come to me and developing them real time, so to speak. There so much more that I do not know than I know.
DeleteAs for addressing mind-based emotions, I think it begins with becoming aware of how often our emotions are mind-based rather then experience-based.
When our emotions are mind-based, I think that when we change our self-talk and mental images, we change our emotions. So yes, in a sense, giving ourself a good talking to might help, when that helps us change our self-talk and mental images.
We can experiement with saying in an affirmative way, the opposite of our self-talk. We can also interupt the mental video of our mind by emphatically repeating to ourselves, "Delete!" and doing something that engages our full attention..
I know my comments are rather general at this point. I welcome your comments about what helps you disrupt harmful mind-based emotions.
Thanks for your response, Mark. Yes, I am always mindful that you are an explorer of all things related to our spirit.
DeleteHonestly, I find the practice of shifting mind-based thoughts or emotions to be difficult. I have yet to create a consistently successful means of changing self-talk. I am able to accomplish this on a transient basis.
I liked your idea of creating an interrupt mode. I have also used this as a practice, most usually with the phrase, "Cancel. . .Clear".
Other practices that I have found can help are essentially variations on the "shift my attention" theme. I always find connecting with the natural world to be useful, whether it's getting up and going for a walk, or just going outside and looking at the stars. It also helps to have something that totally engages my mind in something important to me. For me, this frequently takes the form of working with the stones and crystals that form a part of my healing practice. Nothing like playing with rocks to engage my senses and occupy my mind!
I believe changing self talk is a challenge for most of us, and I hope that you and others who read this will continue to share what is effective for them. We can all learn from one another.