Building Emotional Strength

We have this weird idea in our culture, especially in the UK, that emotional strength is stoicism, the ‘stiff upper lip’ cliché: where no matter what life throws at you, you don’t react, you don’t get upset, you don’t show your emotions, you must never ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’. The strong don’t show their feelings, especially their pain and fear.

We live unconsciously; disconnected, distracted; suppressing what we know of ourselves with addictive behaviour, denials, questioning, diminishing, doubting, all of it to avoid our truth and to avoid feeling our feelings.

It’s the emotions, feelings and thoughts that feel unpleasant that we seem to most deny, we don’t want to know them or even acknowledge them at all.

We shut them down flat, as fast as we can, and when you do that, you’re actually shutting down that which will give you your core emotional strength.

Real emotional strength is not burying your feelings, hiding from fear, pain, grief, anger or loss, because you can’t be strong when you’re denying part of yourself.

 

We have to know and accept all our thought, feelings and emotions, those that feel amazing; filling us up with love and joy and those that feel unpleasant, and make us uncomfortable and give us pain.

When you disconnect from what you feel, then you lose that which enables you to be you, to live life as the fullest expression of you.

Are you willing to allow yourself to become aware of what you’re thinking, feeling, sensing, observing?

All of your thoughts, feelings, senses, perceptions and intuitive knowing needs to be recognised and acknowledged by you.

Are you able to be in touch with as much of your moment to moment experience as you can bear?

When you are able to do that, you are present to the entirety of who you are, the entirety of your life experience, and your connection to God/Source/The Universe and you use this to make better choices, better decisions, to express yourself fully and take aligned action.

Psychologists and neuroscientists have found that people who keep denying themselves start to feel more vulnerable and feel no control, less control or even out of control, and end up manifesting body symptoms of dis-ease.

Overtime, people start to feel a ‘split self’, where people know they should be feeling certain things but can’t access that feeling because they have cut themselves off from their feelings.

When we do this, we end up numb, disconnected and dead inside.

When this numbing continues, studies show it can lead to feeling alienated, isolated and ultimately to despair and feeling suicidal.

Start to think of emotional weakness as anything that has to do with disconnecting, suppressing or distracting.

Not expressing how you feel leads to the death of your body and soul.

Expressing your emotions puts you at ease.

The key is to know that they don’t matter; they don’t have to impact you. You simply need to be aware of and name and acknowledge the thoughts, feelings, needs, perceptions, beliefs, memories that come into your mind and body. You don’t need to do anything with them, just know them all. Feel them.

When you allow yourself to have that intimate awareness of yourself, you can be more present, more vulnerable, more attuned to what’s right for you then you can make an empowered choice of what to do next.

Being present and vulnerable in our experience is where true emotional strength comes from, you can choose to use your awareness of your internal state of being to make a decision, to express yourself and take aligned action.

Awareness starts in the body. We need to sit and patiently become attuned to what we’re experiencing in our bodies.

When we have a feeling; we feel it in our body first. The sensation travels faster through our bodies than our thoughts can travel, so we feel the sensation first and then we give it a name, when our brain catches up.

Identify the physical sensations that comes with a feeling.

Notice what is happening in your body when you have a certain experience, whether it is pleasant, unpleasant or one with needs like hunger or thirst.

Can you take an action now, in response to that feeling?

If you would normally keep it to yourself, turn to the person who provoked the feeling and tell them about it, ‘that really upset me,’ even if it creates fear and upset.

I’m not encouraging conflict just for the sake of it, but we usually shy away from conflict, and the main reason we shy away from it is because of the discomfort it creates in our own bodies.

I have to own this one, because I’ll walk a mile out of the way to avoid someone rather than have a straight word with them if I think they might go off on me!

What’s worse is, we’re not only afraid of our own emotional discomfort, we’re also afraid of someone else’s emotional discomfort and don’t want to make them feel bad either.

We do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure and we’ll suppress pain to avoid feeling it.

We think we’re letting go but we’re really creating a state of dis-ease that gets bigger and bigger and worse and worse.

Claim your inner power and confidence by stepping into your greatness, become aware of your uncomfortable feelings and get better at managing them.

As we know ourselves more, we connect better with our innermost feelings. By becoming aware of, sensing, perceiving and observing our emotions, we can manage them better and start making different choices, taking different actions.

This makes us stronger and less vulnerable, we are able to stand in our power and know ourselves and always behave authentically.

That is emotional strength.

When you state out loud what you’re feeling, when you’re able to say what you’re thinking, to express yourself and say what you mean with clarity you give yourself the gift of self esteem.