Emotional Awareness
Many of us were taught to suppress our emotions, shove them down and ignore them. ‘Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.’ ‘There’s nothing to be scared of, go to sleep.’ ‘Don’t answer back.’ ‘Stop shouting.’ ‘If you’re not going to be pleasant you can go to your room and not come down until you’re ready to join us.’ Or we were ignored when we got emotional, walked away from when the thing we needed the most was to be comforted. So we stopped paying attention to our emotions; instead we learned to suck it up and go through life wearing armour.
Empaths have another layer of complexity added into the mix. How often are the emotions that you are feeling ones that you have unwittingly picked up from others? The edges of you and ‘them’ are blurred to the point that you assume that the emotions such as anger, sorrow, and fear that you feel are your own. Or we see someone hurting or being hurt and it feels as raw and as real as if it were happening to us.
How often do you wake up in the morning, wide awake, happy and ready to tackle your day, only to realize by the evening that it all went wrong? What happened? Your good mood and enthusiasm completely disappeared and you are left with no idea where they went. I struggled with this on a daily basis before I learned to pay closer attention to myself. So many of my days ended with me feeling depressed and defeated; the world was a challenging place to be. ‘Empath’ was an unknown word; I just knew that I was very shy and uncomfortable, even more so around strangers. I had no idea how I was affected by those around me or how much they influenced my being and my emotions.
I no longer remember where the idea came from but I do remember lying in my bed one night reliving my day, every part of it, in detail. It was one of those days that had started with me feeling upbeat, and happy, but ended with tears welling up in my eyes and despair sitting heavily in my abdomen. What went wrong? My ever-analytical brain wanted to question everything from an intellectual point of view: what ifs, if only, should haves, the list was endless. Quieting my mind was close to impossible back then, I had no idea it was even possible. I loved my mind, my intelligence; the rest of me, not so much. I pretty much ignored my body and my emotions until they became loud enough that they made themselves heard. My brain ran the show so I paid close attention to it while it dissected and analyzed every single thing in my life in great detail. It got me absolutely nowhere, in fact it just left me feeling even worse.
Then a really fascinating thought flickered into my awareness. Instead of tracking my day intellectually, why not track it emotionally? For someone so out of touch with their emotions this was a tough concept but I was willing to give it a try. I decided to start out by reviewing my day, beginning with remembering waking up feeling content, and then mentally stepping slowly and carefully through the rest of my day. Getting in my car to drive to work, feeling good. Parking my car, walking into the office, saying ‘Good Morning’ to everyone, still feeling good. Coffee, ah yes, even better. Ready to tackle the day. My first phone call was with a difficult client. I remembered doing my best to smile, my voice pleasant, answering his questions to the best of my ability, and being helpful and supportive. I remember hanging up the phone, feeling that I had done well; all still right in my world. Management meeting next on the agenda, take a deep breath before entering the room. Being the only woman in a roomful of stubborn men was always a challenge and needed me to be constantly on my toes. After the meeting, lunch time. Oh, I’m not doing so well now. I’m upset, angry, feeling hurt. What happened?
As I lay in bed that night I realized that I had found the point at which my day had gone downhill, the management meeting. From there it was relatively easy to mentally replay the meeting until I found the exact moment, the words that were spoken and by whom, that has upset me so much. As I reconstructed the meeting I was able to feel the visceral impact of the words, the sour feeling in my gut, the sensation of deflation as if someone had sucked all the air out of me. This was a huge revelation but the discoveries weren’t over. Carefully listening to what had been said, not just at that moment but also before and after, seeing in my mind’s eye the faces and body language of everyone in the room, I could see that there was a strong possibility that I had overreacted. The words had not been directed at me with the intent to hurt me or to pull me down, the person was simply stating the truth as they saw it. My conditioning, my belief system, my lack of self-esteem, had taken the words and allowed them to push my buttons. We all have buttons and often have people in our lives that seem to enjoy pushing them. Consciously or unconsciously we become caught up in an energetic dance with others.
What I learned to do that night has been a wonderful gift. Finding that turning point in the day when everything seems to go wrong has helped bring things into perspective on many occasions. Often the event that threw things out of kilter turns out to be far less traumatic or impactful than our emotions led us to believe. Our interpretation of events is colou
red by our own conditioning, and the way we take things is rarely the intent of the other parties. Understanding what happened can shift the emotion and will often lead to insights into ourselves that help us to be less impacted in the future.
These days I monitor my emotions on a consistent basis so that I feel the shifts within a very short time of them happening. It took practice to observe myself at this level, often done in bed before falling asleep; few of us are taught to pay close attention to our emotions. Start by reviewing your day, feel your physical and your energetic shifts as you relive each moment, it is amazing how much we can feel when we pay attention even while looking back. Your body will thank you, your emotions will thank you, and your energy body will celebrate.