We’ve Been Misled About Our Emotions (Here’s the Truth)

We’ve been misinformed and misled about our emotions our whole life.

It started as children when we were rewarded for NOT expressing big emotions because the “difficult kids” were the ones with the big anger, sadness, or anxiety.

Even today, spiritual teachers are sending us misguided messages when it comes to our emotions.

Take, for example, this quote I recently saw being shared around social media by Eckhart Tolle:

“Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.”

This is not quite right. Worry can serve an important purpose when approached the right way.

Another spiritual teacher who talks about emotions a lot is Abraham Hicks.

Abraham says: “Negative emotion is your indicator of resistance, while positive emotion is your indicator of allowance.”

While I agree that certain emotions are indicators of resistance or allowance, this is also not quite right.

Here’s why…

When we label our emotions as “negative” and “serving no useful purpose” that sends an underlying message that: Painful emotions are bad, and we shouldn’t have them.

This belief system leads us to bottle painful emotions inside our energy system (because they shouldn’t even be there in the first place), thus trapping our wounds inside.

Here’s a truer, healthier way to relate to our emotions.

Our energy is in constant motion – always moving up and down an emotional resonance scale.

As part of that scale, our painful emotions vibrate at a low energetic frequency, but they are not “negative”. Our joyful emotions vibrate at a high energetic frequency, but they are not “positive”.

Our emotions simply tell us at what frequency we are resonating at in any given moment.

Our emotions also serve as an important guide.

Our joyful emotions guide us to what we desire and what puts us in energetic alignment to our dreams.

Our painful emotions guide us to our resistance, blocks, and wounds – and to what we do NOT desire.

Getting back to Eckhart Tolle’s quote, here’s how I would reframe it:

Where I do agree with Tolle’s quote, however, is that worry is one of the low vibrational emotions that has a tendency to run wild.

For example, let’s say you have a loved one who’s going through a hard time.

Their challenge is triggering worry in you.

You have thoughts like: “Are they going to be OK? What if something bad happens? I have no control over this.”

These thoughts can put you on a constant worry loop, which has you vibrating at the frequency of worry. This loop makes you prone to attract more circumstances into your life that trigger even more worry.

And before you know it, you’re in a vicious downward worry cycle.

So instead of allowing worry to overtake us, here’s what we do instead….

Be mindful of the worry right away. Don’t simmer or stew in. Don’t get lost in your social feeds or drink three glasses of wine to numb the worry. Instead, sink into the body and invite the worry to the surface. Ask the worry: What is the story you’re telling me?

Maybe you receive: “Something terrible might happen to my loved one.”

Notice all the low vibrational emotions that are triggered when the thought feels 100% true.

Worry, fear, overwhelm, exhaustion, guilt, sadness, anger, etc.

Give yourself permission to feel those feels fully and completely for about 60-90 seconds.

This is how we release these low vibe emotions from our system and heal.

When the pain starts to feel less intense, return to your breath. Take long inhales into the lower part of the belly and long releasing exhales.

Now sink into the body, connect to your heartspace, and ask your Higher Self for a message of truth. Perceive what you receive coming back in response.

Then, set the intention to invite in more relaxing or joyous emotions. Allow this to be a time to raise your overall energy frequency.

It’s also a good idea to spend some time exploring or journaling the question: “What was this worry trying to teach me?”

So you can see when approached the right way, worry (like all of our “low vibrational” emotions) serves as important guide with an important purpose.

If you want to explore deeper into how emotions show up in your life and business, then I have an exciting invitation for you in the PS.

Until next Sunday, may your Soul Guide the way.