Emotions are like puppies. They all want to be loved and held and cuddled. They are also all worthy of love and cuddles.
In my perspective there is NO SUCH THING as a bad emotion. Anger and sadness deserve as much love and affection as joy and ecstasy. Joy and ecstasy are easy to love because they feel good! Anger and sadness may be harder to love, but they have more to teach us.
Anger Protects
I believe that Anger is a Protector Emotion. Have you ever felt sad or powerless for so long that finally Anger came to protect you? To light a fire under your ass, to initiate and instigate you? To pick you up and out of sadness and depression and throw you into action?
In some schools of thought Anger can live in and around the Solar Plexus Chakra which has to do with our drive, determination, will and ego. It makes sense that Anger can be instigating! It’s literally pushing us forward into our destiny. Ego is not necessarily a bad thing as it’s purpose is to protect the Inner Child. It can be seen as negative if it runs our life without us knowing.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. ~ Dr. Carl Jung
There is no such thing as a bad emotion
Sometimes as children we are taught there are ‘bad’ emotions but this is a lie. When a child is angry or reactive this can mean a boundary is crossed. Sometimes children do not feel comfortable hugging family friends because they can feel like strangers (if there is a lot of time between visits). Parents, sometimes embarrassed by this, will override the child’s boundaries. This can teach a child at young age that their bodies are not their own and they have no bodily autonomy. Obviously this is problematic at the time and later in life when children grow to pre-teens and young adults. If their voices and boundaries didn’t matter then, why would they matter now?
Sometimes parents do not like when children say “no,” as it’s seen as an act of defiance; but it can also be a child setting a boundary. When parents deny a child setting healthy boundaries it strips them of many things. Let’s dive deeper down this rabbit hole: a classmate wants something they have, do they say no? An older person wants to touch them inappropriately, can they say no? Someone hurts them, do they tell? How can they with no voice, no boundaries and no bodily autonomy?
all emotions are valid
Sometimes in childhood when we’re joyful the volume of our voice increases and a parent or peer shushes us and tells us we are “too loud.” This is around the time we learn that our joy isn’t welcome which can cause us to emotionally shut down and physically tighten around the diaphragm. This tightening can cause shallow breathing and a low vagal tone. ‘Vagal tone is a measure of cardiovascular function that facilitates adaptive responses to environmental challenge. Low vagal tone is associated with poor emotional and attentional regulation in children and has been conceptualized as a marker of sensitivity to stress.’
All emotions are valid and the whole point of an emotion is expression. Dr. Candace Pert writes in Molecules of Emotion that an emotion’s full lifespan is a matter of seconds. It begins, climaxes (if allowed) and then resolves itself. By fully experiencing our joy / sadness / anger / ecstasy we are allowing the full expression and complete lifecycle of that emotion.
the only bad emotion is a stuck one
There are many schools of thought on this: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) believes that certain emotions will cause certain meridians and chakras to become discoherent and/or stagnant; by using herbs and acupuncture you can clear congestion and bring about wellness or ‘balance.’ Grief can sit in the lungs, frustration in the gallbladder, anger in the liver, overthinking in the stomach / spleen, emotional and mental digestion in the stomach / intestines and so on. In my experience, the only ‘bad’ emotion is a stuck one, as stuck emotions can cause physical ailments.
When I went through my healing crisis around 20 years old I was only able to fully heal my physical body by also balancing my mind and emotions. I talk about this often as this is when I came to realize that ‘healing’ comes from integrating the mind, body and soul as they are all interrelated; this is also when I dove much deeper into holistic healing, TCM and Ayurvedic medicine.
Later in life during my Saturn Return (Dark Night of the Soul) I was able to use and benefit from what I had already learned to help heal my 27 year old body from shingles. Shingles generally lasts for 3 months and is super painful as it affects the nerves, mine manifested in my face and neck. Luckily, I only suffered with shingles for a week because I came at it from an emotional and mental perspective, as well as treating it physically.
If you ever need another guide on relating emotions to physical illnesses, Dr. Louise Hay has compiled a list you can find here.
emotions are like puppies
And finally, emotions are like puppies. YOUR puppies. Joy and ecstasy are your adorable clean fluffy puppies and anger and sadness are your adorable fluffy puppies that accidentally got covered in mud. The important truth is that they are the same and they are yours. Your fluffy clean puppies come to you for love and you pick them up and hug them easily without hesitation because they’re clean.
Your silly adorable puppies that fell in mud cannot get the mud off themselves, so they are coming to you for help. They need your love, acceptance, and require more time and patience then your other puppies to remove the mud. Once you remove the mud you see the truth - that they are just as deserving and worthy of your love.
This is the same for your emotions, they are all valid and they deserve acceptance. In accepting your emotions and loving them for who they are and what they’re teaching you reduce resistance, you quicken the healing process, and integrate the lesson quicker.
Healing is not fixing the parts of you that are ‘broken’ - healing is loving all parts of yourself anyways <3
I dedicate this blog to my adorable fluffy Toby (pictured) when he got sprayed by a skunk twice - in the same week - during the winter - at night - after I had showered and was cozy in bed about to fall asleep :p
Furever Toby <3
