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I recently started using my emotions as my guide. As a sort of emotional GPS system. The most basic explanation is the more negative my emotions, the more I question and examine what is going on in my life and what needs adjusting or attention. The more positive my emotions, the more I have validation that I’m on the right track and to just keep proceeding with gratitude.

Negative emotions aren’t inherently bad. In fact, they give you a lot of information. Lets take for instance anxiety. There was a period of time in my life that I was having panic attacks daily. They were debilitating. At the time I thought it was something being done *to* me. I look back and see it was actually there to help me find my way.

I wasn’t being my authentic self nor was I doing what made me happy. I was constantly doing for others and never taking care of myself. Not a surprise that panic was present at the time.

We also have to think about how we as children were taught to deal with our emotions. Some of you may laugh reading that because you know that most of us weren’t taught to deal with anything. We heard a whole lot of “oh suck it up, you’re fine” or “you are too sensitive, stop crying”. Some of us didn’t even get that much in response to our emotions, we may have been taught to sweep our emotions under a rug or put them into a box.

On top of what our parents instill in us, we have societal pressures that paint a portrait of having emotions as a flaw. If we are seen crying we are thought of as too sensitive or a ‘pansy’. If we have anger, we don’t want that for heaven sakes! We must go to anger management. If we are sad- that’s allowed for a certain period of time, as long as society approves of the cause: death of a loved one, loss of a job, etc. And only are we allowed to be sad for a certain period of time, anything longer than a month or too and we better pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and move on with things.

With all of these mis-communications and untruths that we are taught from an early age about what to do with our emotions, it’s no wonder that many of us struggle.

In the book “Ask and it is Given”, the author Abraham-Hicks, discusses the range of all emotion. There is an order to emotions ranging from guilt and shame to joy and ecstasy. Each emotion has a corresponding frequency. Meaning just like notes on a piano have a frequency, emotions have a frequency, too.

The scale of emotions looks like this:

Joy/knowledge/freedom/love

Passion

Enthusiasm/happiness

Positive expectation/belief

Optimism

Hopefulness

Contentment

Boredom

Pessimism

Frustration/Irritation

Overwhelm

Disappointment

Doubt

Worry

Blame

Discouragement

Anger

Revenge

Hatred/Rage

Jealousy

Insecurity/unworthiness/guilt

Fear/grief/depression/powerlessness

 

1. What does the emotion FEEL like and where does it reside?

When you first notice you are feeling an emotion, let’s say anger (which by the way is not a “bad” emotion, it falls in the middle of the emotional frequency scale), can you describe what it feels like? If I’m feeling anger I usually feel it in my gut. And it definitely has a very slow vibration. It feels dense and heavy. Your experience might be different or similar. You might feel it in your chest or your back. It might feel hot or cool and seething. There is no wrong answer, the important thing is just to take note.

If you’re feeling something like joy, where do you feel that? I feel it in my heart. And it feels like a fast vibration with a lot of lightness and warmth. It brings me a sense of one-ness and I feel a lot of hope and happiness. You might feel joy in a different place in your body, maybe your head or your arms. Again, there’s no correct answer, I just want you to be aware of where the emotion is sitting.

For more reading on this subject, check out the book “Spiritual Growth” by Sanaya Roman. She goes in depth on finding the messages that your emotions are bringing you and how to process and clear them.

The importance of noticing where the emotion is in your body and how it feels to you is that emotions are also energy. Energy that brings you bits of information about your current situation or state of mind. By taking note of this, you are also encouraging the development of your intuition! Lastly, this exercise helps with “dealing’ with your emotions or getting ready to do some healing with them.

2. Hold space for the emotion

Don’t try to get rid of the emotion, even if it doesn’t feel good! Don’t sweep it under the rug or stop your flow of tears. So many of us find alternative ways to cover our feelings up. Some eat their feelings and some drink to numb the pain. Some exercise too much and some work too much.

We all have our ways of coping with our feelings but what I’m hoping is that we as a society can stop the rampant discrimination of emotions and teach ourselves and our children HOW to handle our emotions.

SIT with the emotion that is coming up for you. Try to view it as a third party. Practice the exercise above and then just allow yourself to FEEL that emotion. If its sadness, feel what that sadness feels like. I’m not saying take a day off work and wallow in how sad you feel (I mean, you can if you want to or need to). What I’m saying is take 10 minutes to stop what you are doing and allow yourself to feel the sadness. Don’t grab a cookie and turn on netflix or pour a glass of wine (again, you can do this too, but do it after the exercise!!!).

Ask the energy (emotion) why it is here? What does it want from you? Can you also take note of how big it is? Can you give it a color? This exercise takes some practice but with time and also developing your intuition, these answers will come. Your higher self knows all of these answers and will happily give them to you. If you do not hear anything right away, don’t stress! Again, this takes practice and the more you do it, the easier it will get.

Note: Some of us may have yeaarrrrrs of covering up our feelings under our belt. I’m talking decades. So please be patient with yourself. This is not a skill most of us are used to using. Journaling is another good tool for this exercise to get in touch with your higher self for answers.

3. Take inventory of the emotion

Next, take it a step further. Ask your higher self what is this emotion trying to tell me? How is it guiding me? Where do I need to put my attention? What possible resolutions are there?

This is the exercise where you really ask yourself, what is really bothering me here and why? Allow yourself to go in deeper, don’t just skim the surface. For example, let’s say on the drive home, another driver cuts you off. It really just puts a whole lot of anger in your system after an already long and irritating day. Ask yourself, is this anger just from the jerk driver? or is there something else? Are you harboring resentment towards a certain person or situation in your life? Do you hate your job? Are you just too tired and need a rest?

It may seem like I’m exaggerating in the example above but I promise you, I’m not. We come up with all sorts of reasons why we think we are angry just to get out of having to think about the real reasons for our anger (insert any emotion, really).

You can especially notice this when you look for patterns with your emotions. Are there certain times of day that you are triggered? What tends to be the triggers? I digress….there are so many questions we can ask ourselves about our emotions but they are beyond the scope of this article. I just want you to get your feet wet and get used to feeling your emotions first!

For more in depth reading about what specific emotions actually mean, read “The Language of Emotions” by Karla McLaren. I really love how she breaks down each emotion and explains what each one means and even how to manage it.

4. Transmutation

After you have fully immersed yourself in the exercises above, you can begin to ease the distress of the emotion(s) that you are feeling. When you have sufficiently asked yourself all of the questions you need to and FELT all of your feelings, call in your higher self for transmutation.

When you feel the presence of your higher self, take the energy of that emotion and pull it away from your body and put it in front of you. Now shrink that energy down to a manageable size. In your mind’s eye, visualize you handing this ball of energy over to your higher self. It will take the energy from you and transmute it into the light.

Take note of how you feel now. Better and lighter I hope? And if not, that’s ok! Keep trying. This is another skill that many of us aren’t used to using. Be patient with yourself.

One of my mentors taught me this transmutation skill and I find it to be so helpful and healing! Her name is Cynthia and I highly recommend her as another resource if you want to check her out: www.cynthiastarrheartspeak.com

These are the steps I use to help myself be guided by my emotions. I truly hope that these simple steps will help you get comfortable with your emotions and be guided by them! Please comment below and let me know how these exercises work for you!