In your life, you may have dreams of what (and how) you wish to experience. It may include happiness and freedom (love-based experiences). Yet, you are experiencing a life fraught with intermittent challenge that take you away be from feeling truly joyous or happy from the inside. You know you wish to experience more out of this life but do not know why you “can’t.” that takes an understanding of what you’re feeling so that you can move beyond what limits you and find the freedom of joy.
Now that you have an understanding of why emotions are so critical to this life, let’s look at how you can become aware of your own emotions. Too often I hear people say they do not know how they feel. Yet, they can at least tell me if they feel comfortable or uncomfortable inside. That is a great starting point. Where you are uncomfortable you are experiencing fear or a fear-based emotion. Where you are comfortable you are experiencing a love-based emotion.
Remember, anger never exists on its own! It is there as a secondary emotion. It is up to you to learn what the underlying emotions are and why.
As I have said, knowing your fear-based emotions allows you to unravel the challenges in your life that set you apart from your freedom and joy. So, let’s start with fear. As I stated, anytime you feel a fear-based emotion, life is showing you there is a challenge that could (if you choose) be healed. Yet, in order to heal, you must be able to identify what you are feeling! More often than not, people know they are feeling anger, irritation, or frustration but may not be able to immediately identify any of the other fear-based emotions mandating their experience.
Let me take some time and talk about anger. Anger is a secondary emotion. That means that ANY of the primary fear-based emotions are what is (or are) creating the anger. Anger is that emotion that comes up to give you the impetus to go back against the perceived threat that elicited the primary fear-based emotion. That is what makes anger an aggressive emotion. Aggression is formally the act of going against. When you feel a primary fear-based emotion, you may feel small or what to step back or hide. Think of feeling hurt. You do not want to say or do anything you want to go away or be alone, as an example. But the anger comes in and gives you the strength to go against that which (or whom) hurts.
In order to understand your anger, or to put closure to a situation that elicited the anger, You will need to identify the cause of the anger. So, I usually give my clients a list of fear-based emotions from which they can identify the underlying emotions. Once they identify their emotions from that list they are opening their understanding of how they feel and what they need in a situation that brought up anger in them. That list of emotions, can help you start to identify what you are feeling and why. Remember, anger never exists on its own! It is there as a secondary emotion. It is up to you to learn what the underlying emotions are and why.
Consequently, the fear-based emotions, once identified, show you what is ready to heal, if you choose. Free will says you will choose to heal some and, maybe, not others. Let’s look at an example. You are in a marriage and you are constantly feeling angry at your partner. Your anger keeps pushing her away. The more your anger pushes her away, the more angry you feel inside. One day, you decide to look at what is causing this anger in you and you realize you are feeling lonely. You start to look into the loneliness and you see it consists of the fear of not being good enough to be loved and wanted/desired. You then realize you have felt this loneliness through out your life at various times. Once you know you are experiencing loneliness you can tell your partner what you are really feeling! Maybe you are missing her and feel really afraid that she has decided that you aren’t worth loving anymore. This opens the doors for your partner to express her feelings which may be that she has endured your anger because she loves you and is trying desperately to do what you need to get beyond the anger. Maybe she too is feeling unloved and fearful of loss and maybe that is coming from her fear of abandonment!
In the last part of this series I will talk more about properly identifying fear-based and love-based emotions.
