“Emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes. But on the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint, and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion.”
– Jung, C.G. Volume 9, Part 1 Para 179
It is sad to say, but we are so disconnected from our emotions. If you ask someone how they feel, they will name three basic emotions – happy, sad and pissed off. (Brené Brown in Atlas of the Heart.)
This is what we were taught by our parents and by society; at least, this is true for my family of origin. We were told to hide or suppress our emotions, that certain emotions were not okay – anger, frustration, fear or sadness. How many times have we heard, “Don’t cry, or I will give you something to cry about?”, or “Boys don’t cry,” or “Be nice and don’t be angry.”
We live in a society that values the intellect and the mind. Science and knowledge are revered. We think that our rational mind is our greatest strength; however, it is also the most dangerous. The intellect is often the source of our troubles because it traps us into believing a lot of crap that isn’t true. Consequently, our intellect is full of many flawed ideas, thoughts, and assumptions about how the world works that we want to believe but aren’t true.
We can’t always trust our thoughts.
But, if we pay attention, we can always trust our emotions.
Emotions and the Mind-body Connection
What if we imagined that our emotions were part of an integrated intelligent system that unified the mind, the soul and the body. In her book Molecules of Emotion, Harvard University researcher, Candace Pert, shows scientifically that emotions are biochemical messengers as a means of a complex body-wide network of communication. It was groundbreaking research that supported an intimate mind-body connection that has profound implications for health and the understanding of disease. Her research shows that the energy behind our emotional life runs every system in our body, and this communication system is the body-mind intelligence. This idea shatters the notion that the body is a machine with replaceable parts. Therefore, we can’t think of our body’s health without considering the role that our emotions play in our sense of well-being. If we touch one part, we affect the whole.
Emotions as Essential Messages of our Life
Our emotional life is a fundamental aspect of our lives and humanity and a guidance system for life. It is an important component of our information feedback system. Emotions tell us about what we are experiencing and help us know how to react. Emotions move us forward in life – they are energy in motion.
When we are in touch with our emotional life, we recognize that emotions are important communications from our instinctual selves and the carriers of truth.
As the quote above from Jung suggests, emotions are the fuel for our transformation and the source of consciousness. They move us and inspire us into action. They communicate when we are hurt, what we value, what we care about,
Emotional Regulation
The problem lies when we lack emotional regulation, that is when we lash out in letting our emotions flow rather than express them in a way that enables the flow of honesty to be expressed. It doesn’t help when we start a conversation with an emotional outburst such as “You made me angry” or “You are always so dramatic.” Such statements do two things: 1) it absolves us from taking responsibility for our emotional well-being, and 2) grants the other person in the conversation too much power over our emotional state.
Emotional regulation doesn’t mean to suppress or to repress. It simply means that we acquire the ability to contain our emotional state and respond appropriately given the situation at hand.
Old psychological patterns are difficult to transform. We return again and again to the places where we get hooked on old stories. We know that we are in the realm of a complex when we are in the grips of highly charged and emotional experiences. This is a highly charged experience from the past that has not been responsible. We still experience similar situations in a strong emotional reaction to something.
Our psychological and spiritual work is then to transform our raw emotional reactions in such a way that we can express our truth in a healthy generative and meaningful way.
Copyright Christina Becker
May 2022
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