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Let’s revise what we have learned so far...
DON’T AVOID EMOTIONS
Emotional hygiene is an essential part of being happy & healthy. Denying, avoiding or suppressing our emotions doesn’t work long term. They will build up, resurface or cause internal damage!
START EASY
As a beginner, start processing emotions of a minor nature. Start with emotions that you can handle easily and have little emotional charge. Always seek expert or professional help if needed.
CATEGORISE AND RATE
A useful first step is to label & categorise emotions as GOOD or BAD, and RATE their STRENGTH. You only need to feel the emotion briefly to do this. Try to be an impartial observer!
DON’T GET STUCK IN ‘THE STORY’
Experience ONLY the PURE FEELING of the emotion. DO NOT DWELL on the associated people, situation or storyline. You risk lowering your vibration and becoming fearful. That drama is counter-productive and just delays the release!
RELEASE THE FEELING
Just feel and observe the emotion in a calm, positive, kind & unattached way. That allows it to release! Just sit with it. Allow yourself to let it all go! Repeat this if there is any return.
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DON’T SUFFER
There is no need to unduly suffer in this process! Excessive distress usually indicates a low vibe or poor technique. Improve your vibe as outlined in Challenge 1! Anticipate how much better you will feel. Start by processing mildly uncomfortable emotions as they arise in your daily life. Only then progress to more moderate emotions. Try these tips:
STAY POSITIVE
Stay positive and in a high vibe. Becoming fearful inhibits the healthy processing. The key is to focus only on the pure emotion and not the attached story. This shortens the processing time & minimizes the discomfort! Ask for expert help if this becomes too challenging.
DON’T ATTACH
You might be needlessly suffering through this process, by ‘attaching’ to the story behind the emotion. Emotional processing might feel ‘uneasy’ but should not be unbearable. The feeling should diminish quickly and then pass. The pent-up energy releases through feeling, observing and ‘sitting with’ the pure emotion. Stay positive and kind to yourself. This will help it pass more quickly!
UNCOVER THE NEXT LAYER
Releasing one emotion can sometimes ‘unmask’ another related feeling. These related emotions will eventually surface and need to be processed too. Clear the deeper layer in the same way when you feel ready.
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DON’T RUMINATE
Remember to FOCUS on the PURE FEELING itself. Don’t ruminate or dwell on the mental story! The storyline will distract you from releasing the emotion. It creates fear or doubt. This will lower your vibration and hold back the clearing!
JUST OBSERVE IT
Sit only with the pure feeling and experience it. Stay positive and caring. This RELEASES the pent-up ENERGY. Let it all go! Don’t suppress it again by becoming fearful. ALLOW it time to CLEAR. Invite this release in a kind or caring way as per Challenge 1.
DON’T CREATE SUFFERING
We create more suffering when we repeatedly go over ‘the story’ in our mind! Attachment to the story is what causes most of our suffering! That lowers our vibration & triggers fear.
WHAT HINDERS RELEASE?
If you avoid feeling the pure emotion, this prolongs the clearing process. Dwelling on how or why something happened also does not work. Rumination just hinders the release!
FACE THE FEELING!
Eventually, in a safe setting with appropriate support & technique, even deeply REPRESSED EMOTIONS can be faced. The emotional charge can finally be released. This will help resolve a long-standing or deep-seated issue!
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SUMMARY OF CHALLENGE 2
Recall a recent mildly annoying emotion. Briefly re-experience what it feels like, then release & clear it fully. Sometimes an insight or wisdom is gained in this processing.
How is your practise going? This reminder might help:
DON’T RUMINATE
Don’t dwell on the specific event or people involved. That just HINDERS processing & clearing the emotion!
EXPERIENCE THE PURE FEELING
Just experience THE PURE FEELING itself. Just the feeling ALONE! Un-attach the mental story from an emotion.
AVOID THE THEATRICS
Don’t get caught up in painful thoughts! That’s just the storyline & drama of what happened. Avoid attaching to the story. The associated fear or overwhelm will hold you back! STAY POSITIVE!
JUST OBSERVE & FEEL
Sit with the pure emotion and ALLOW the RELEASE. Keeping a high vibe of ‘kindness & caring’ speeds this up!
These are the important first steps in processing & releasing your emotions! Seek additional expert or professional help if you find releasing a particular emotion too difficult to handle alone.
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PRACTISE RELEASING AN EMOTION
Practise just sitting with a ‘pure emotion’. Experience that feeling alone and not the attached story. Don’t fear or judge. Remain calm and just observe the feeling. ALLOW IT TO PASS.
ALLOW THE RELEASE
Lovingly, give the emotion permission to go! Invite it to clear fully. Don’t repress it again! This occurs automatically when you ‘sit with’ the PURE feeling in an unattached way. Becoming fearful or caught up in the story hinders the release.
IT CAN BE QUICK
Mild emotions can usually be experienced and released in just a few moments. Most of the energy or ‘sting’ behind the emotion is released quickly. It might take longer for it ALL to pass. Be patient and kind to yourself! It‘s worth the effort!
DON’T JUDGE
Release attachment to the mental story built up around the pure emotion! Let go of any judgement! This ALLOWS the feeling to leave.
ALLOW THE HEAVINESS TO LIFT
You will know you’re successful because of a sense of release. Pressure and heaviness will lift. Plus, the issue won’t keep coming back into your awareness for more processing! You have now covered the first steps in processing & releasing your emotions! Well done.
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LABEL EMOTIONS
Try labelling emotions precisely. Negative emotions include pride, anger, craving, fear, regret, despair, blame & shame.
BENEFITS OF LABELLING
There is a benefit to accurately labelling an emotion. It’s like making the effort to correctly label a computer file. Then we can more easily find them for full processing later! With practice, we become better at recognising our emotions.
DON’T HIDE FROM EMOTIONS
We tend to avoid dealing with negative emotions. But they’re the ones that cause the most damage! So, concentrate on feeling & labelling your bad feelings or ‘negative’ emotions. Fearing them will only suppress them! Avoiding them won’t make them go away!
ACCURATELY IDENTIFY THEM
It’s also valuable to classify our emotions according to HOW NEGATIVE they are. This makes them even easier to identify in our memory bank! Then if a bad feeling resurfaces, we can be sure we have the ‘right file’. Then we can clear the remaining energies!
SUMMARY OF CHALLENGE 2
Recall a recent mildly annoying emotion. Briefly re-experience what it feels like, then release & clear it fully. Sometimes an insight or wisdom is gained in this processing.
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WHY IDENTIFY AN EMOTION?
Why invest so much effort to categorise, rate and label our emotions? First, it makes us feel them! That is essential! But this labelling can seem like a lot of work. Why should we do it?
A COMPUTER ANALOGY
Think of an emotion as a computer file on your brain’s ‘hard drive’. In order to fully process & release a suppressed emotion, you must find that ‘computer file’ again. Finding a file is easier if you know the file name or description! Correctly labelling an emotion file allows use of the ‘search function’ on your mental computer. Then retrieval is fast & accurate.
EMOTIONS CAN GET MISPLACED
If you don’t give an emotion a clear name, the stored ‘emotion file’ could get misplaced or confused with other files. By accurately labelling the emotion, you can more easily locate it for processing & clearing. Bad labelling can result in some emotion files remaining lost & unprocessed! So, remember to briefly feel your emotions to correctly label them!
PROCESS THE FILE
After fully processing an emotion, you can DELETE other unhelpful parts of that file from your active memory! You can also MOVE valuable parts into a ‘dealt with’ or ‘wisdom gained’ folder. Practise feeling an emotion well enough to accurately characterize it.
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GAIN INSIGHT & WISDOM
Emotional processing isn’t just about releasing pent up or painful emotions. We also learn and grow from confronting our fears. By processing emotional issues, we learn powerful lessons! The optimal outcome is to gain maximum insight & wisdom! Emotional processing can lead to us making better choices in the future.
BUILD COURAGE
In facing our fears we also gain courage & learn perseverance. Extract the essence of WISDOM from your experience! Overcome your FEARS to gain courage & confidence!
LEARN EMPOWERING LESSONS
We can ‘REFILE’ new insights to another mental folder of ‘important lessons learned’ or ‘wisdom gained’. What once was a painful memory can now be an empowering lesson. We will expand on this later, but hopefully you get the idea. The gaining of wisdom and courage is part of your Challenge 2 exercise!
DISCOVER POWERFUL INSIGHTS
Practise Challenge 2 again and see what lessons or wisdom you can discover. Powerful insights might however take hours or even days to be ‘delivered’. It might come to you as an insight or a dream! You might just notice changes in your thinking or behaviour. You might have less fear or resistance. Remain open and welcome this.
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DON'T AVOID EMOTIONS
We tend to avoid experiencing unpleasant emotions. Sometimes we deeply hide or REPRESS a painful emotion deep in our subconscious mind. That’s to avoid facing & feeling it!
FACE EMOTIONS
If we want to really MOVE ON, we must instead ‘face the fear’. We can’t grow emotionally if we keep hiding from painful issues. We will just keep getting TRIGGERED by life events! These remind us of the hidden issues! We can however upgrade from these childish ways of coping!
RELEASE EMOTIONS SAFELY
If we want to finally RELEASE all the suffering, then the pent-up emotion has to be RE-EXPERIENCED. Most of the PAIN is however in the story & invented drama. We DON’T have to re-experience the whole story. That just hinders release of the emotion. It is much easier to re-experience the pure emotion. Just UN-ATTACH the emotion from the related story. Just experience the pure emotion!
FIND THE RIGHT FILE
Re-experiencing a difficult emotion confirms that we have found the correct ‘emotional file’. It’s a double-check to ensure we’re targeting the right ‘emotion file’. We don’t want to clear or delete the wrong file with an unrelated emotion inside!
SEEK EXPERT SUPPORT
We may occasionally need professional to help us process and release a deeply repressed issue.
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SUMMARY OF CHALLENGE 2
Recall a recent mildly annoying emotion. Briefly re-experience what it feels like, then release & clear it fully. Sometimes an insight or wisdom is gained in this processing.
REWIRE NEURAL PATHWAYS
Successfully processing an emotion REWIRES the associated neural pathway in the brain. This process can also rewire other similar experiences and hence ‘heal them’ at the same time.
HOW TO BYPASS LABELS
By accurately labelling an emotion, the ‘search engine’ of our brain can more easily find it. However, if we don’t give the emotion a word label, there is still a way to find it! An unlabelled emotion can still be found by visualising the associated ‘physical setting’. That’s actually how the experts do it, but it’s essential to IMMEDIATELY DETACH from the story. Focus only on the pure emotion!
COMBINE LABELS & VISUALISATION
Experts also COMBINE accurate labelling with accurately visualizing ‘the setting’. This gives double confirmation that they have found exactly the right ‘emotion file’ to process & release.
REFRAME EXPERIENCES
Once the negative emotion has been released, we can refile the whole experience to a ‘wisdom gained’ folder. This is the mental process of REFRAMING a negative experience into a positive one.
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HANDLE SUPPRESSED EMOTIONS
Sometimes it’s not convenient to immediately process an emotion when it first presents. Ignoring or denying an emotion TEMPORARILY SHIFTS it to the top layer of our subconscious. This is termed ‘suppression’.
MANAGE RESURFACING
A suppressed emotion will stay on the ‘to do list’ of our subconscious mind. It will then regularly re-surface to our awareness, until it’s properly addressed. Related life events can also trigger these suppressed emotions to resurface.
LIGHTEN THE LOAD
The resurfacing of an emotion is a reminder that more processing work is still to be done! Each time a suppressed emotion resurfaces, it’s another opportunity to fully process that emotion. Keeping an emotion suppressed for too long wastes a lot of mental energy.
GAIN CLARITY AND VITALITY
Ideally, we promptly PROCESS and CLEAR our emotions from our subconscious ‘to do list’. This ‘Emotional Hygiene’ lightens our mental workload, leaving us with more clarity and vitality.
PRACTISE THIS
Think of an emotion you have avoided or suppressed. It’s using up valuable headspace and wasting energy. Imagine how good it would be to let it go. Use this motivation to practise Challenge 2.
Congratulations! You have completed episode #16 about Practising 'Emotional Intelligence' by UltimateQuest.org