Getting In Touch With & Honouring Our Emotions
How To Embrace & Work With Your Inner Guidance

by Melanie Evans

Our emotions are our most powerful inner guidance system which gives us all the essential messages to navigate our lives. Unfortunately society has not granted us the knowledge or the training to be able to use our emotions effectively. It truly is quite the contrary. People are actually put down for being ‘emotional’ and people are often respected for how well they stuff their emotions, act intellectually, bottle up, disengage from or hide them. Interestingly enough, despite this generational view most people feel very let down when they have yet another emotionally unavailable relationship. How many times do we all hear, “He’s no good at talking about how he feels”, or “She won’t let me know what’s going on with her.”

Society’s perception of ‘emotional’ is not complimentary. Usually people who are viewed as emotional tend to have uncontrolled emotional displays which are perceived as very disturbing or at the very least inapplicable. Generally in these cases emotions are reactions to other people and situations rather than healthy inner responses.

Most adults have never really learnt to become intimate with and honour their emotions. This becomes a major dysfunction in love relationships, and in trying to gain any sense of happiness and relief within ourselves.

It is easy to understand why this has taken place. Most children are extremely emotionally suppressed. We may have been told to “Be quiet”, or “Children are seen and not heard.” At one of my workshops all of the women related to being sent outside whenever adult friends came over. Any of the conversations adults held, which could have been wonderful training for the understandings of emotions, were kept out of earshot from children. We didn’t have adult emotional exposure and unfortunately most of our brain’s hardwiring took place before the age of seven.

If we cried or got angry we were usually told to “Stop it.” No-one ever showed us what it was like to be validated, held or understood at those times of emotional pain. Yet isn’t it true that every one of us would dearly love a partner to sit with us and hold us when we are angry, sad or venting? It doesn’t happen! Why not? Because it is an impossible energy statement to receive something from someone outside of ourselves that we are not willing to do for ourselves.

Our own emotional blocks becomes very obvious when processes such as self-recognition journaling are engaged in (such as the 11/11 Process For Self Healing). Most people who haven’t had their love needs met struggle greatly with this exercise. The process requires writing a positive affirmation (a new belief system to over-ride the old false belief) and then to respond with whatever thoughts come up as a result.

There are usually three reactions that are absolute resistance to this person becoming intimate with themselves. The first is “What on earth am I doing this for? It’s a total waste of time.” This person will then concede that they would be better off just writing the affirmation without a response or saying it instead.

To this reaction I reply, “How on earth do you think anyone else is every going to take the time to get to truly know you if you don’t think it is worth getting to know yourself?” (People may think they know themselves but I can assure you until we are in touch with ourselves we don’t. Most people don’t know themselves and if they did they would be able to healthily emotionally respond from a foundation of healthy belief systems and would have marvellous lives.) I also say to these people, “How would you feel if you were just about to share something really deep, meaningful and important with someone else and they got up and walked away saying ‘what a waste of time’!”

Or the person may think, “I’m not getting a response.” This is a way of stuffing the emotion that the affirmation brings up. In regard to the second response I say to people, “It is impossible for you to not have an opinion to an affirmation such as ‘I love and accept myself’ – do you believe it, or don’t you believe it? Does it feel like a comfortable statement? Does it feel like a warm and uplifting statement? Does it make you feel uneasy? What do you think and feel about this statement?”

It is really common for people not to want to respond to what they think and feel about themselves. The bottom line is they are really scared that something is going to come out that they don’t want to know. People are terrified that if they look within they are going to find something really horrible.

This leads us to the third example when people start responding to new belief systems and come out with negative comments. Say for example a response to “I love and accept myself” was “No you don’t. What is there to love? Look at you.” I can assure you this is perfectly normal, totally healthy and completely and utterly necessary when reprogramming negative belief systems. Did you think the old programme “I am unlovable and unacceptable” was just going to roll over and die! No of course it wasn’t! It has to come up and be heard before it will let go.  Theta Energy Healing will help with this.

How do you think this old programme took hold in the first place? It festered, brewed and remained within us because it never got held or validated. Let’s go back to when we were kids. If we ran up to Mum and told her, “I’m no good. I’m ugly, no-one loves me” (normal behaviour for children) she may have done one of several things. She may have pushed us away because she was too busy to entertain such nonsense, or maybe she pretended we never said it hoping we would forget we ever thought it or said it - or if we were really really lucky she may have cuddled us and let us carry on with our self recriminating beat ups until they stopped. Then eventually (probably five minutes or so later) after we had finished getting these normal insecure fears off our chest - an evolved and emotionally intelligent mother could have said something like. “Sweetheart, do you feel better now. No matter what you think I know you are lovable and acceptable just for being you.”

If this had happened we would have dried our eyes and merrily run off. We would have felt heard, held and comforted and we would have believed we were totally normal. The most important point about all of this is we would have believed we WERE lovable and acceptable, and our spates of insecurity and creating dramas with other children and life in general as a reflection our own unlovableness would have fallen away.

Can you relate to no-one ever being there for you when you need emotional support, especially love partners? This whole issue is about learning to be present with yourself. This is one of the greatest gifts you can ever grant you in order to reshape your emotional responses, your belief systems and your entire world.

When you write an affirmation and the thought / feeling comes up, “I’m not lovable, who would love me” you need to be present with these comments. This doesn’t mean judging them or feeling repulsed by them. If you react like this you are only going to be the ‘mother to yourself’ who is disgusted and turns the child away. What happened to this child all these years ago? She felt abandoned, betrayed, unsupported and utterly unlovable and unacceptable. This child did not heal and did not get better because no-one listened to her insecurities and no-one taught her how to accept, love and embrace herself warts and all.

As an adult you need to be present for and listen to yourself. Yes it might be more than a five minute spate because you have been stuffing these insecurities for years. However when it does come out, and when it has been heard, held and validated without judgment (no matter how long it takes) there will be an afterglow of positive beliefs and healthy feelings regarding being lovable and acceptable.

Be clear every human being has insecurities. The longer we ignore them, turn them away, cover them over or project them at someone else the longer they are firmly entrenched in our life. We think that acknowledging them gives them more power! This is insanity and just another example of how emotional training is so null and void in our previous conditioning. Whatever we resist persists! If you refuse to be present with these feelings lovingly they will continue to play them out and draw pain into your life. Ignoring them is the way they gain power!

I know it seems really scary, and it feels like you are admitting there is something wrong with you. The truth of the matter is you have been screaming out (probably for centuries) to just love and accept yourself with all of your insecurities so that you can get about having a great life with other people that can also be bothered to love and accept you!

The more you get clogged up with insecurities and negativities the less room there is for the good stuff! Please take the time to seriously consider embracing your true emotions. Your entire journey depends on it. We don’t reincarnate as dictated by our joys, triumphs and material achievements. We reincarnate as a healing prescription directly related to our unresolved emotional issues. This is a really sobering thought – so best get on to it!

Copyright © 2007 Melanie Tonia Evans. All Rights Reserved.