Anger, sadness, fear— every emotion we experience is healthy.
Emotions are feedback.
They guide us around how we are experiencing life + the world around us.
Our relationship TO our emotions can be unhealthy. We haven’t been taught how to stay still + present as an emotion flows through our bodies.
So, we react TO our emotional state.
Most of us are reacting to our emotions all day long keeping us stuck in one core emotion.
If you practice witnessing, you’ll see people are usually stuck within an emotion for long periods. When we say “he’s an angry person” or “she’s depressed (sad)” What we are seeing is someone stuck in an emotional state.
Usually, this is called a person's “mood.”
In this state, we aren’t experiencing the emotion: we become the emotion.
Emotion consumes our thought patterns, our behaviors, + how we interact with others.
HOW TO STOP GETTING STUCK IN EMOTIONAL STATES:
1. Learn to witness your thoughts: we are not our thoughts. Learning to witness thoughts without judging them will allow you to see your thoughts as separate from who you are + will allow you to stop compulsively reacting to them.
2. Learn to return to the body: emotions exist within the body, so we can use movement to move through emotions. When experiencing powerful emotions, walk. Listen to music as you do this. This will shift your consciousness + mood.
3. Stop or limit emotional dumping: emotional dumping (or re-telling of your story in cycles) can keep us experiencing the same emotion over + over again. Our body knows no difference between experiencing something + our mind reliving it.