Emotions.
What comes to your mind when talking about emotions?
Usually we are aware of basic emotions such as anger, sadness, joy, disgust. Luckily nowadays there are coming into awareness anxious, depressed, powerful, scared, distant but still those are just very basic spectrum of emotions we feel. There is much more into every single basic emotion and each of them can be divided into subcategories.
Some people are labelled to be very emotional because they express their emotions in extreme way without properly communicating what they feel then others are labelled to be cold because they don´t express any.
Both cases can be ´guilty´ of not knowing what they are experiencing and not knowing how to express it in healthy way towards the outside world.
Why is it so important to name our emotions?
Emotions live in our body, they are natural part of being a human, yet often we don´t know to name them and properly communicate them into the world so we can easily harm ourselves and others, they can take control over us, we either deny them, supress them or take them out onto others.
Either way is creating struggles in our lives on mental or physical level either we are aware of it or not. As a society from young age we are taught to learn things and knowledge but very little we are taught to communicate our emotions.
Often we are rather thought not to express them. They still live in our body and in unprocessed subconscious patterns.
Being aware of what we are experiencing in the very moment and what is happening in our body can help us communicate our needs into the world and respect needs of others.
How can we communicate them in healthy way if we don´t know what we are feeling?
How can we make sure that we take care of ourselves in order to take care of others if we don´t know we need to take time out, disconnect, set up boundaries, take care of ourselves?
How many times did you go to a doctor with physical symptom and they found nothing?
We are so little aware of our emotional body which is part of us since we are born that we live life in denial of any inner world and mental health.
Emotions and balanced life
First step to live balanced authentic life is to be aware how and what we feel. Otherwise we slip into games and patterns which create problems for us. By taking into awareness our emotions we are starting being able to navigate them into healthy (often) creative processes. We start becoming balanced and honest with the knowledge that we give space to others to process their own emotions and react openly.
Don´t worry if that´s not something coming naturally to you it doesn´t to many of us because we weren´t taught such thing.
That´s where comes self-awareness process and mindfulness.
It’s a lifetime journey to decondition ourselves from what we were conditioned into by those who again without awareness didn´t know they are conditioning us because they were as well conditioned by others.
Sounds complicated doesn´t it?
Imagine a person let´s call her Katarina who has never been taught there is such emotion as an anxiety. She might feel butterflies in the stomach every time when meeting new people or doing presentation in the office. It can be mild but then she meets someone who misplace their anger onto her without the knowledge they are doing something like that. Anxiety rise stronger, suddenly this person can´t deliver presentation because feels unbearably stressed or the slightest triggers make her feel uncomfortable and stressed out. Katarina still doesn´t know what is happening to her, when once a friend of a friend says that they battle anxiety, explaining how does it feel. It is like a light bulb lightens up for Katarina because suddenly she recognises her own feelings and learns its name. It´s as a new world opens up for her, because now she understands herself better, she understands what situations cause her anxiety and what can she do to feel better. Awareness of a simple emotion opened for Katarina new door in her life and she learns how to manage anxiety, how to set up boundaries and being more comfortable in her own skin reflecting in the outside world her inner world which makes her happy. Her happiness and honesty brings people around her clearer understanding of their own emotions and patterns and the process goes on and on.
Carl Gustav Jung called this process individuation which is fulfilling the ultimate potential of the individual human being.
First step is to recognise and understand our emotions.
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