How to Express Emotion
Hello everyone.
Today's episode is about how to express emotion.
Emotions are energy, and energy has to go somewhere.
So when you suppress that energy, your emotions,
instead of express that energy,
it sits in your body and rots it from within.
When you suppress emotion, your body starts to deteriorate.
But that's not the only thing that starts to deteriorate.
The world around you starts to deteriorate,
because even though you suppress those emotions,
those emotions, vibrations still exist,
and so they're still a point of attraction within this Universe.
And as we know, the Universe must match the vibrations
which we are off-putting, and we are offering.
The only emotions that you can heal
are the ones that you let yourself feel and let yourself express.
In order to feel our emotions,
we have to be willing to risk vulnerability.
Vulnerability can be very difficult especially for those of us
that equate vulnerability with getting hurt.
So it seems very risky for us to allow ourselves
to come in to touch with our own emotions.
But you can't heal any of the emotions which you feel,
and your life will go very very bad for you
if you can't risk that vulnerability,
and at least allow yourself
to touch on those emotions and express them.
If I were to lock two people in a closet,
what you'd see is a natural progression of expression.
Those two people would usually start in a place of anger.
They'd be yelling at each other, they'd be blaming each other.
They'd talk about resentments.
But soon one person
would come down to the level of hurt and disappointment.
They would talk about how much it hurt them,
what the other person did,
how disappointed they were.
They would talk about the level of sadness.
And very soon after that,
one person would begin to express their fears,
their insecurities,
the real thing which is underneath our anger.
And once somebody expressed that,
either them or the next person would naturally progress
to the next level of expression of emotions,
which is, of course, understanding and regret.
So that person would then say: "I totally understand.
I'm so sorry that you feel that way.
I know that I can be difficult sometimes because..."
And very soon after that,
they would reach the furthest progression of expression
which is love, solutions, intentions, and wishes.
So that person would then say:
"I really do care about you.
I'm really sorry.
And this is the suggestion I might have for how to make it better."
That's the natural progression
that the expression of emotions takes,
regardless of who it is that's in the room.
Now, we just explained this scenario
in the context of two people being locked in a room.
But the truth is, the same thing happens
when we lock ourselves in the room and look at our own emotions.
We use this model of natural expression of emotions,
and we mimic that model
when we're trying to deliberately express emotions
that we're currently out of touch with.
We use this model of natural expression,
to tell the complete truth about our internal states,
and how we're really feeling.
Let me explain;
I want you to think of these different layers of emotional expression,
like a building.
And this building has five levels and based on our upbringing,
based on who we are as people personality-wise,
we are taught that it's appropriate to go to
some of these layers of the building, floors you could think of them,
and not others.
So for some people it's appropriate to go to sadness and disappointment,
it's appropriate to cry, but it's not okay to get angry.
So that person has been taught that it's not okay
to go to level one of this building.
Another person might have been raised to believe
that it is inappropriate to express fear.
They can't express insecurity,
but it's okay to go to the level of anger.
So they may not be allowed to go to level three,
but they can go to level one.
Our healing depends on our willingness
to go to every single level of that building
and express the complete truth about how it is that we feel.
And we express this truth by going in order.
So here's the order for you now.
The first level is anger,
resentment, fury, blame,
and repelling the other person or ourselves.
The second is disappointment, sadness and hurt.
The third is insecurity, fear, bad memories and deep wounds.
The fourth is understanding, empathy, responsibility and regret.
The fifth is love, solutions, wishes
and connecting with the other person or with ourselves.
So what you want to do is to put yourself in a room
where you don't have to be disturbed by anybody.
And I want you to either type this out on the computer, write it out,
or just speak it verbally to yourself.
I want you to express your emotions relative to every single layer
emotionally in succession.
Beginning with anger and progressing down the list.
Here's an example of how that would go;
If I was the woman in the previous scenario that was out with my mate
and he cat called another woman,
I would go home later and I would sit down in my room,
and I would begin by expressing the anger I felt
relative to that situation, all of it.
So what I'm about to demonstrate to you is an abridged version.
You want to express every emotion
relative to the one layer of that building that you're on,
before you move to the next.
So, the abridged version, for example.
Level 1: anger and resentment.
"I'm so incredibly angry at you
when you act as if other women are more beautiful than I am.
I regret the day I married you.
I hate the fact that I gave the best years of my life to you.
And I blame you for the fact
that I am living such a miserable life in this relationship."
This is not the time to be delicate with your emotions,
this is the time to express the nitty-gritty darkest aspects
of what you're actually feeling.
Once you've expressed all the anger you move on to level two,
which is of course, the level of disappointment and hurt.
So it looks like this;
"I am so sad that I thought in the beginning of this relationship
that everything was going to go well for us,
and it turned out like every relationship I've had before.
I'm so incredibly disappointed
that nothing that I ever want works out for me.
I'm disappointed that I can't find a man who appreciates me.
It makes me so sad that I dedicated the best years of my life to you.
It makes me so incredibly sad that no matter what I do
I can't feel as if there's love in this relationship."
After you express all of the emotions that you have in your being
relative to hurt, and disappointment and sadness,
you progress down to the layer of insecurities, fears, deep wounds.
So it would look like this;
"I'm so afraid that I'll never get my body back
after I had our children.
I'm scared that I'm not the person that you married.
I'm afraid that one day I'm gonna wake up and realize
that you've left me for another woman
because I'm not beautiful enough for you.
And that reminds me of when I was a little girl
and my father always used to find fault with my appearance.
I was never good enough for him."
You see our fears always have to do with bad memories.
That's why we seem to overreact relative to every situation.
Even little things.
They're not really little things because they're linked to very big things,
very big things embedded deep inside of our memory.
After you have expressed all of your emotion
relative to the layer of fear and securities
and bad memories and deep wounds,
don't be surprised if you have a serious emotional release
relative to this particular level.
This is the layer of vulnerability,
which we are really looking for.
This is where real healing takes place.
Once you're done with that,
you want to progress down to level 4,
which is understanding, empathy, regret.
So this is what that would look like;
"I understand how difficult it must be to be with somebody
who is so different than the woman that you married.
I regret the fact that I have such a low self-worth,
that I can't just watch you say that to somebody else
and not take it personally every single time.
I know how hard it must be for you to feel like
you're walking on glass or egg shells.
Once you've expressed all of your emotions
relative to that particular level of the building,
you sink down to the next level, level five:
our love, solutions, intentions, wishes and sense of connection.
So this is how this would look;
"I really do love you.
I care what you think about me.
I wish that we could have the kind of relationship
where you could say anything you wanted to somebody else
and that didn't have anything to do with our relationship.
And I think it might be a good idea
if you will watch the kids once a week,
so that I can go to the gym.
And I can start gaining some self-confidence
and I can be the person who I was, who I really am."
Once you have done this full process,
you have expressed the complete truth about how you feel
and the truth exists on all layers of this building.
Then real healing can take place,
because you can see what the actual issue is.
So you might choose then to look over your list
of all the levels for specific bullet points,
and then write a letter to the person that you love.
Of course, you don't have to do that,
you can just keep it to yourself, if you like to,
because the most important part is that you've expressed it,
but you might want to take this a bit further and heal even more
by expressing it to the person, who was involved in that circumstance,
which is now causing you emotional pain.
So you might want to look over that list for "highlights",
things that you feel are incredibly important to express to them.
And then do so.
When you're involved in a couple type relationship,
any kind of relationship, really,
as long as both couples are amenable to doing this process,
you can apply this by sitting down across a table
and agreeing that when you have a conflict come up,
you're not gonna get in an immediate argument.
What you're gonna do is you're gonna sit down on opposite sides of this table
and one of you is going to start,
the other one doesn't get to talk.
And the person who's talking first,
gets to go from the top, all the way through all the levels,
and express themselves completely,
without the other one talking.
And then, the other person gets to do the same thing.
They have to start all the way back up at anger,
and go all the way down through all the levels
expressing their truth to the other person.
Now, you might notice,
if you are the second person going in the line,
that after the first person has expressed the complete truth about how they feel,
the last thing you want to do is go back to anger.
But it's necessary for you to express your story in this way.
And by doing this, you'll be able to find some real solutions.
And you won't be walking around
with all of this suppressed energy inside you.
For those of you that have a very difficult time
accessing your emotions,
I'm going to give you some probing questions
which will help you to access the emotions
relative to each one of these levels.
The first being anger.
I hate it when..
I am so angry that..
I'm fed up with..
I am filled with rage when..
Then the next:
I feel so disappointed that..
I feel so sad when..
The thing that hurts me so badly is..
This is why it hurts me so badly...
And now the next level:
I'm afraid that..
What I'm truly afraid of is..
It scares me when..
It reminds me of..
Now the next level:
I'm sorry that..
Please forgive me for..
It is completely understandable that..
I regret that..
I understand that..
And now the last level:
I want to..
I forgive you for..
I hope that..
Thank you for..
I appreciate you because..
I love you because..
It is reasonable to expect that at the end of this process
you will feel incredibly vulnerable.
You will access that raw space
which most of us are very uncomfortable of,
most of us try to numb it out with pills,
or numb it out with addictions,
or numb it out in other ways.
But I promise you that if you allow yourself to be with that rawness,
you will have access to healing,
your life will start to improve,
because that emotion, you can't just ignore and suppress it.
It will come out, if not verbally,
it will come out through your subconscious actions,
it will come out through your body, via illness,
if you don't express that emotion.
And your relationships will not succeed,
if you suppress emotions.
Because essentially, energetically,
every time you are in a relationship with someone,
that relationship can be compared
to two cylinders, two glasses of water.
And the glasses of water have a hose in between them.
And when one of these glasses of water suppresses their emotion,
it pushes the emotion through the hose up the other glass of water.
This is why you often find in relationships
that there is one "crazy partner"
and one really stable partner,
who is always going "what the hell is wrong with you".
It's because the really stable one
is suppressing their emotion
and that emotion is now going through the hose
and is expressing itself through the conduit partner,
the one who naturally expresses.
The problem is,
if two people in a relationship begin to suppress that emotion,
the hose in between the two glasses of water breaks
and your relationships will no longer continue.
Or the suppressor will suppress that emotion
and the other partner will get so incredibly tired of feeling crazy,
'cause they're not only dealing with their own emotions,
they're dealing with the other person's emotions,
that they feel as if they have to end the relationship.
So expressing your emotions is not only the key to physical health,
it's not only the key to having your relationships work,
it's also the key to you feeling a sense of peace.
Getting raw and getting vulnerable is incredibly beneficial.
And it's necessary
if we are ever to find any kind of balance here in our lives.
So try this process.
I hope it benefits you.
Have a good week!
Subtitles by: Steli & Tanya Duarte