What we are taught about emotions is wrong

Once I participated in a meditative dance class called 5rhythms. It is a movement-based practise that teaches us that life is energy in motion.
\’\’In dancing 5Rhythms you can track perceptions and memories; seek out gestures and shapes; tune into instincts and intuitions. They reveal ways to creatively express aggressiveness and vulnerability, emotions and anxieties, edges and ecstasies. They reconnect us to cycles of birth, death and renewal and hook us up to the spirit in all living things. They initiate us back into the wisdom of our bodies and unleash movement’s dynamic healing power.\’\’ (5Rhythms)

During 5Rhythms I saw people expressing all sorts of different emotions. Someone even screamed and hit the ground, letting out all of the emotion he was bottling up inside. First I was taken aback by it and felt a bit weird trying to move my body freely whilst I was surrounded by strangers. Only when I closed my eyes I could let go of the awkward feeling and just let my body move the way it wants to and see what emotions surfaced during the hours-long practice.

Emotions and feelings are often mistaken to mean the same thing, but they are quite different. \’\’Emotions are real-time data sparked by sensations in the body. Feelings can be more biased, altered by mental misconceptions. Take an example of an emotional threat: A bully might respond with the feeling of anger because it feels empowering, whereas labelling the threat “fear\’\’ would be too vulnerable for them. In contrast, the non-bully might respond by feeling intimidated. This is why feelings can be so different from person to person in the same scenario.\’\’ (Rachel Allyn Ph.D)

Society, other people and even ourselves tell us to shut down our emotions and encourage positive thinking, making it clear that positive emotions are the only ones that are appropriate and the only emotions you want to feel.

Society categorises sadness, anger, anxiety, frustration etc as being \’negative emotions\’.
But what if I tell you there are no negative emotions.
Feelings simply are how we process experiences.

Saying that some emotions are negative or bad implies that they shouldn\’t be felt, because why would anyone want to feel negative emotions. But there isn\’t an objective rule that states what emotions are negative and what positive. There is, in fact, nothing wrong with any emotion. We need to let our bodies feel! It is vital for our spirit and soul. It is how we heal.

Our emotions are all processed in the same place so when you suppress one you suppress them all. To be able to feel full happiness and ecstasy you have to let yourself experience emotions and when you suppress \’\’negative emotions\’\’ to feel happy, the outcome isn\’t pure happiness. Without all our emotions we can\’t connect to our passion and to what we need and desire.
It has been studied that when a person suppresses an emotion or thoughts for years it is that emotion/thought they think about the most. Shutting down any emotions diminishes our connection to our innate wisdom. The quickest way to block our ability to access our emotional wisdom is to consider half of our emotions as “negative” and something to avoid or change.

Your emotions are telling you something. They are an indicator of something and it\’s important to be in tune with them and try to learn what our bodies are telling us. Thinking that we know better than the body and intuition is dangerous. Numbing ourselves from experiencing emotions is in the way of healing and self-awareness. It is denying the wisdom of the emotional body. Emotions are telling us what is needed and when we do the action they tell us to, the emotion moves on until they are needed again. But when a certain emotion isn\’t allowed to do its job (the emotion is shut down) the need/reason for the feeling still remains. This is when other emotions step in, but won\’t be able to fill the need because they weren\’t designed for it. When an emotion is shut down other emotions go out of control. This results in cycling emotions and stuck emotional patterns, that don’t resolve even when we do all the right things. Whether or not you accept all of your emotions as valid, and are willing to feel them is the single biggest decision that will make or break your psychological health.

All our \’\’negative thoughts\’\’ are teachers in disguise. These thoughts are just the scared child in you in need of love, so you should give it love. Nurture the thought and emotion. Show love and compassion to it and tell yourself you are here to yourself. You got your back. You\’re not here to judge or to push your emotions and thoughts away, you are here to love yourself through it. We don\’t have \’\’negative thoughts\’\’ over things we don\’t care about.