I believe, through experience that being able to heal emotionally is essentially what aids us in becoming whole. It’s fair to say most of us have at some stage of our lives lost touch with the experience of wholeness through the suppression of emotional experiences. Emotions are such a tremendous source of personal power and energy, as they provide us with an acumen that aids us to know what we want, and what is right for us. However, unfortunately for many of us, we live in cultures that more often than not, shames any expression of emotion and teaches denial, invalidation and suppression.
By shutting down, we begin to break our being into tiny pieces. Not only can we lose touch with our sense of who we are and our true essence, but we become cemented, rigid and stuck physically in our way of thinking and expressing ourselves. We somehow lose our sense of consciousness, creativity, spontaneity and freedom. As each emotion is shut down, like anger, for example, we can also lose the capacity to feel other emotions too – including the positive ones such as joy, peace or love.
Indeed, there are a whole host of reasons why emotions are suppressed. Sometimes the intensity we’ve experienced after having gone through something may have been too much for us to assimilate at the time. Take for instance when a woman experiences domestic violence; this could lead to feelings of being overwhelmed by the intensity of fear or even sadness. When this happens, our brains automatically set up ‘doors’ which can potentially limit the entry of any positive possibilities at that moment and even beyond.
Sadly, many of us have been disciplined in such a way we feel we need to conceal emotion. Growing up I was always told children should be ‘seen and not heard’, or ‘not to answer back’, and to ‘do what I was told’ and to always ‘be polite’. In my culture, the tendency to uphold a very false image that being strong means not being emotional; so for example not crying at funerals, or showing any anger outwardly.
My quest to discover wholeness was to initially work on my emotional mastery whilst learning how to become more aware of my thoughts, particularly the self-serving or self-harming ones. In addition, I started acquiring the know-how to be able to change them if they were no longer serving me and were the significant key turning points along my journey to embracing wholeness.
Once I understood the power that lay in me simply choosing to focus my mind on what I could do, rather than what I couldn't my life began to transform, life can be extremely gratifying when you dare to be different or step out of your comfort zone.
A combination of consistent moments of being still (meditation), along with, journaling, and visualisation of who I intended to be, became my daily practice and was the essential catalyst that was required in order for me to learn and incorporate action and become a better version of myself.
The fact is you really are unable to embrace any new beginning until you end what used to be. Don't wait till something tragic happens to make a change, anything is possible once you are committed to the change process.
What small changes will you make to start your inner healing today?