How many times have we heard the phrase “Body, Mind, and Spirit” bandied about? Or how about “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”, if you prefer a more traditional way of arranging the players within the phrase? It has become a boring given that our culture has sidestepped or looked past the feminine principle. The feminine principle, the Mother energy, is inextricably linked to emotions. She-in-us, regardless of gender, is our emotional body, among other qualities with soft, purring features like desire and receptivity and intuition. And, let’s face it, this emotional side of who she is has been thoroughly denied in most of us, even in women.
As consciously growing adults, many of us have started edging towards acceptance of our emotional reality. We are starting to notice when we are angry, sad, feeling hurt,or scared. Sometimes. Other times, we just know we don’t feel good, but we don’t know why. And underneath our so-called negative emotional backlog of anger, fear, and grief that we so often don’t even know is there until it gets triggered, lies the gold…denied joy, spontaneity, laughter, childlikeness. It seems the nature of the beast that when we deny the hard feelings, the ones we’d like to experience go away as well, to one degree or another. The spontaneous and joyful gifts of childhood are the casualties of inner and outer repression.
Denial is hereditary, passed down through generations. As our society matures, many parents are no longer swatting their children for emotionally expressing sound, as many of our parents and their parents did…still, the encouragement to deny expression is everywhere. It’s there in the well-meaning parent joggling a baby to “help her stop fussing”, it’s there in distracting young children with tv and videos and food rewards if they would just quiet down, it’s there in laws and social mores that discourage adults from being outwardly emotional, especially if it’s loud.
The “why’s” of our misfired lives are hidden underneath the emotions and often can’t be accessed mentally until the anger, grief, hurt or fear has had its emotionally expressive say. I have found many clear understandings about what is going on with me after I’ve expressed emotion, but could not find that level of clarity beforehand, no matter how much I tried to get clear before expressing my feelings first.
Some suggestions: find safe ways to express that do not verbally or physically harm you or others. Hit soft things, yell into down pillows to block your sound if sound safety is an issue. Ask your higher power to fill you with loving light. Form peer healing circles, and uncover your own denial within that group; this can be a do-it-yourself process with the occasional support of those who do the same thing in their lives. A therapist is not always necessary.
Give yourself safe, proactive triggers, so that it is not always life’s hardships in your face that are putting you through your paces. I’ve made tapes of triggering music and lit candles and prayed in order to trigger the pain I knew was lurking and impacting on my life every day. Surrender to what rises in you with as little control as possible on the expression. If triggered by another in the space, move away from them when possible, unless the two of you have a longstanding agreement to do this kind of interpersonal work together and are each willing to feel the “cascade” of back’n'forth triggering along with the leaking blame that spews inevitably as the sparks fly upward. Taking responsibility for your involvement in each and every controversy is important.