How do you break away from the patterns of avoiding emotions?

At some point in our lives, we encounter emotions that are unpleasant, emotions that give us discomfort. And sometimes, we just don’t want to deal with these emotions. Instead, we create patterns that serve as a temporary escape from our emotions.

In this episode, I’m going to break down the patterns of avoiding emotions and offer you solutions to help you handle them.

Why Do We Want To Avoid Emotion?

This question brought me back to childhood development. I believe it also goes back to a parenting mistake most parents make without knowing it.

Children, from newborn up to their teen years have big emotions. When they’re upset, they cry, throw tantrums, and just are unafraid to show how they feel. And when that happens, parents don’t want to see their children in pain, emotionally hurt, or feeling uncomfortable. Their instinct is to distract their kids from feeling big emotions. However, children need to see and feel the big emotions because emotions come and go and that’s okay.

And although parents come from a place of good intentions, parents should learn to let their children feel strong emotions and just be there with them while they go through the process.

How To Handle Strong Emotions?

Think of it this way, no emotion is good, no emotion is bad, and emotions are neutral. You have to remember that emotions are not permanent.

In my Reset your Mindset group, one of the skills my clients master is what I label ‘sitting in the mud’.  It’s all about feeling the discomfort of that emotion but not attaching yourself to the mental drama. Because mental drama magnifies the emotion and creates unnecessary drama.

Sitting with the emotion is detaching from all of that. It’s simply focusing on the emotion until it transforms into a new emotion. You’re not a victim of your emotions. You are the creator of your emotions. 

Your Emotion Wants To Be Heard

When an emotion shows up in your heart and is felt in your body, the emotion wants to be heard, it wants to be felt. And when you avoid it, the emotion becomes stronger and louder because it wants to exist. And if you resist them, it’s like putting glue on that emotion and allowing it to hang around until you decide to feel them.

Your job is to feel the emotions because if you don’t and if you resist them, they will just persist.  You’re not healing and you’re not moving forward and you’re not doing yourself a favor.

How To Break The Patterns Of Avoiding Emotions?

The pattern is easy to find once you start paying attention. What do you do when you’re trying to avoid emotions? What is your go-to pattern? Is it shopping? Is it eating? Is it napping?

Eventually, that awareness will leave you to change your behavior because you will decide to break the pattern and that you’re going to feel the emotion instead. That’s how you break the habit.

I want to invite you to work with me. We are opening the doors for the new Reset your Mindset that starts on June 16th. The doors open on the 13th and for three days we’re going to open the cart so that you guys can sign up and work with me for 12 weeks. By cleaning your mind from the limiting beliefs and providing you with the right tools to create new thinking patterns, that will give you the freedom to decide on different thoughts, and different behaviors, and therefore land in the most confident version of yourself. Click here to join!