Deeply Hurt by Burhan Dogancay

by Nina

“As with physical pain, our emotional pain is also trying to tell us something. It too is a messenger. Feelings have to be acknowledged, at least to ourselves. They have to be encountered and felt in all their force. There is no other way to the other side of them. If we ignore them, repress them, suppress them, or sublimate them, they fester and yield no resolution, no peace.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living

One of the very important things I’ve learned from studying a bit about human evolution is that all the emotions we experience as human beings have a purpose. While feelings of pleasure and happiness cause us to want to repeat experiences that are beneficial for us, anger, fear, envy, and even depression impel us to take actions that keep us safe.

For example, the fear you experience when you spot a driver who doesn’t notice you in the crosswalk or a building you’re in catches fire prompts you to take action. The anger you feel at someone who is threatening you, someone you love, or your community prompts you to protect or defend the person or people in danger. And depression you feel about being in a toxic relationship or working at an unfulfilling job can prompt you to seek help or change your life.

So can we just stop using the term “negative emotion”? Although some emotions are very painful, those have a positive function in our lives because they are “signals” about your current situation that you should recognize and heed.

In a Tantra tradition, all your thoughts and feelings are actually considered opportunities for you to learn about yourself rather than being “problems” that you need to fix. So, accepting that painful emotions are natural and even beneficial at times may alone provide you with some relief from suffering. Because guilt and/or shame over having so-called “negative” emotions can compound the pain you’re feeling, a good first step when you’re feeling a surge of painful emotion can be to let go of any judgments about it.

However, because our nervous systems are so primitive, the emotions we feel don’t distinguish between a serious threat and one that’s not actually dangerous, such as the anger we might feel when someone pulls into a parking space we were waiting for or the fear we might feel are asked to speak in front of a large audience.

So that’s why it is so beneficial to learn to listen to what painful emotions are telling you. Only then can you respond skillfully to what you’re feeling, which in some cases may mean taking actions and in others taking steps to let go. Learning to react to emotional pain in this way is so beneficial that I’ve decided to write a new series on the topic.

I’ll be covering the four basic ways you can tune into the signals that emotional pain is sending you:

  1. Pausing Briefly to Listen
  2. Practicing Yoga Poses to Listen
  3. Practicing Mindfulness Meditation
  4. Practicing Self-Inquiry

Which way you choose to do your “listening” depends on how much time you have and what you feel comfortable with. Just don’t do anything that makes you feel worse. However, in all cases, if you’re suffering too much, it may be too difficult to listen to your emotions. So before you set aside time to “listen” to a painful emotion, you can use yoga to dial down the intensity of what you’re feeling.

In positive psychology, taking steps to regulate your emotions and increase your own well-being is called making “positive interventions.” Sandy Blaine, who is a positive psychology expert as well as a longtime yoga teacher, says that positive interventions offer us some control over our own emotional states and may help us “ride emotional waves” more skillfully rather than simply reacting. And she says that yoga offers many different options for making positive interventions. I have a lot of suggestions in my forthcoming book “Yoga for Times of Change” for positive interventions for anger, fear, and depression, but here are some links to get you started:

Yoga for Anxiety: The Big Picture

Yoga for Depression

Understanding and Dealing with Anger

You can also just search the blog on the topics “anxiety,” “depression,” and anger. There’s a treasure trove of articles on these three topics.

I’ll complete the series with a post on how to respond skillfully to painful emotions.

 

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