The impact of emotions on personal growth
In the last few years, I have been trying to understand how emotions influence our general well-being and how they impact our life and growth. Here are my thoughts and learnings.
Since we are born, we experience emotions, I would say, in their very ‘raw state’. Children can feel so intensely happy or excited that they have the impulse to express this by jumping or repeatedly clapping their hands against their laps as they cannot contain the emotion itself. They can feel sadness, anger and be fearful with the same intensity too.
Emotions play an important role in our human experience, and they have different functions with positive and negative aspects.
But what is an emotion? Is there a difference between emotions and feelings?
The emotion is more like an impulse, a reaction like when we get angry at what somebody is telling us. It mostly works unconsciously and changes the individual’s current state. When we become aware of the emotion, we might start to realise its outcome as ‘feeling’ angry. Therefore feelings work on a more conscious level.
Emotions have different degrees of intensity. At their extremes, there is a fine line beyond which they transform into something else. So, for instance, anger can help to stand against unfairness and can act as an internal alarm to warn us that something doesn’t seem right. When too intense though, anger can transform into aggression and violence. Even happiness has its dark side. When too much, as some research shows, it can turn into addictions.
The key is to learn how to manage emotions, experiencing and expressing them without being overwhelmed or controlled by them (this is what many call today ‘Emotional Intelligence’, ‘Emotional Potential’ or ‘Emotional Competence’)
In a more spiritual approach, emotions and intuition can be associated with the Water element. If we think of emotions as water, we can give them a ‘concrete form’ and it can help to better understand how they work.
One of water’s feature is to have a definite volume but an indefinite shape. For instance, by pouring some water into a glass, its volume will be contained and the shape kept ‘under control’ until the liquid will stay within the surfaces of the glass. But if we continue to pour water, there will be a point where the liquid will overflow the glass with no control. The same happens with a river. The water within could be still, or turbulent; crystal clear or cloudy. However, what happens if all of a sudden there is a continuous storm for three days? Can you avoid a flood? What if rather strong currents start to form and lead the stream to a cliff? Could you divert the torrent? And what if the container is the body, not the river?
Research shows that 60-75% of our body is water. Water is in our blood, brain, lungs, skin, heart, even in our bones.
This makes me think that on one side, emotions have their independent characteristics with their currents, stillness, clearness, and murkiness. On the other side, emotions also strongly influence the smallest single cell in our physical body, being water itself an essential component.
New Medicine research has shown how the body can heal itself as well as create diseases as a form of reaction. Dr Hamer explains with ‘The Five Biological Laws‘, or so-called the German New Medicine, how shocking or blocked emotions are the source of many illnesses. These experiences can create an internal conflict. When this is not solved the body reacts by causing an illness (from allergies to cancer) and creating a ‘lesion’ that is visible on a CT scan – depending on the stage of the conflict.
When patients become aware of this conflict, they can solve it with the body starting the healing process itself. It is quite interesting to read about this.
Emotions and the body are strictly linked and becoming aware of them is crucial for our overall well-being. However, bringing consciousness is not an easy task, especially when it is about us.
How aware are you of your emotions and their impact on your personal growth? Do you know if they are getting in the way? Can you prevent them from ruling yourself?
Here are some suggestions that I find work well for me on a deeper and sometimes preventive level.
– Physical activity, sports and breathing techniques are very effective when it comes to managing emotions. They can help to release tension, anger, stress and calm anxiety. They can help to keep the negative emotions at bay and allow us to think clearly. Through reasoning, we can identify the emotion at stake and bring balance. However, these activities might not be sufficient to solve the cause of many issues.
– Don’t ignore or avoid emotions. Sometimes we have to fully live our own emotions to heal like when grieving or breaking up with someone. We need to acknowledge them, talk about them, identify the lesson to learn and be patient.
– Out of all the emotions, I think ‘Fear‘ is an important one to mention here. This emotion protects us and helps us to survive in danger. More often though, Fear blocks our growth, and we find ourselves hiding behind excuses that prevent us from opening incredible doors. Sometimes, by simply asking ourselves a few questions we could see that what might be stopping us from acting and achieving things is fear. In that sense, a book like ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway‘ can be a good starting point.
– This might sound silly but every time we are not happy with something that annoys us, hurts us, or when our instinct says “this is not quite right”, we should never ignore or dismiss these feelings. When we think to ourselves “it’s fine!”, “it will be just for this time!”, “it’s all right, s/he is my friend” “I don’t want to argue with my partner”, “it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine” … it’s actually not fine! The probabilities are that it will happen again and that feeling will be growing in secret until it becomes something very complicated to manage. Watch out for those “it’s fine” and sort them out from the very beginning. Be creative or straightforward if necessary when dealing with it, so you can respect yourself, your thoughts, your feelings and be in control of things.
– When there are things that frustrate you, don’t just moan. Ask yourself why is this happening? Why am I upset, or angry, or too sensitive about it? even if you think you know the answer. Talk to yourself about it loudly, write it down, or ask someone to listen to you (not necessarily talking back). Like a detective, have the courage to investigate, dig, and be objective. Be fearless. Most probably you will not like what will come out if you do a good job, and you could realise that most things happen because of your own choices. This will be the first step to bring awareness and start to solve issues. You might begin to become aware of your dark side (we all have one!)
– Learning about the dark side is not something people normally like to do. It is dark for a reason and we like to keep it there. Going through what is known as the ‘Five stages of grief‘ can help to understand your current stage with certain situations. I think those stages work in the same way with our negative traits.
Five stages of grief
Stage 1 – I deny that aspect as it’s not nice and quite shocking to see (it’s easy to see them on others but not on us!). So how do I ‘see’ a negative characteristic? Maybe by starting to look at my best qualities. They can also be my worst weaknesses. I can also look at my current issues and question everything about them. Is it entirely other people’s fault? Is it entirely related to the circumstances? What input do I have on them? What if I change my behaviour? Being honest is essential here.
Stage 2 – When I become aware of it, I get angry with myself because I don’t like what I see.
Stage 3 – I then start to look for compromises as I still don’t accept it thinking I can change it or avoid it somehow. If somebody is dead, I am afraid it is dead. There is no “what if ..” question that can bring that person back. In the same way, for instance, if you allow people to take advantage of yourself, or you are aware of a very unhealthy lifestyle that you want to change. You need to see aspects of your dark side as they are. Those are aspects and behaviours where you don’t respect or care for yourself. If you keep deceiving yourself by thinking: “well, this time it happened because …”, “It wasn’t really his fault …”, or “what if I do it another time only?”, you will keep allowing this to happen to you.
Stage 4 – I feel depressed and sad because I realise that I cannot change the situation or the person.
Stage 5 – I accept it and can finally deal with it.
It needs humility to go through this process, it takes lots of work, and it can last a lifetime to learn this but, in my experience, it is an excellent way to manage negative aspects of our personalities, to keep them under control, to prevent emotions from taking over, and it is very worthy!
– Nowadays, we spend many hours in front of social media and youtube videos without realising the deep impact they have on our emotional life. For instance, we might be unhappy in our relationship or our job. Watching clips, videos or movies about someone who made it in his/her career or is living a romantic and amazing love story, in reality, steers something deep inside us. It is like we are creating currents in the river of emotions. We want what we see, and even if we are not entirely conscious of this, it affects us, raising or aggravating frustrations, unhappiness, sadness, anger, and so on. It controls us without knowing it. Be aware of the significant influence and power that images and videos have on emotions!
In conclusion, I believe that questioning things, learning about ourselves, our limits, our dark side, our potential, being fearless and working hard can allow us to control our emotions while still expressing and healthily living them.
This has been my experience so far. What is yours?
— ★ —