Do your emotions take over your life?! If you feel sad, it’s like a ripple effect and everything seems to make you sad and you end up feeling like you are a depressed person.
What if you are not actually your emotions? What if you can detach yourself from your emotions? What if feeling angry does not mean that you are an angry person, but it just means that anger is flowing through you at that certain moment?
Recognising the difference
Making this differentiation means that the emotion is not who you are and therefore can and will pass.
This also means that when you feel depressed, you are not a depressed person.
It is an emotion flowing through you at a given moment. Which means that you have the potential to allow happiness and love to flow through you as well.
Awareness of the difference
Once you become aware that you are not the emotion but the emotion is passing through you, you can also begin to let this emotion go. Detaching from the emotion means that you have the potential to choose when you react to a situation and how.
This does not mean that you shouldn’t allow the emotions that come in. If your reaction is a feeling of anger, then yes, allow yourself to feel it. But if you see it as detached from yourself, you can also choose to let it go. This emotion does not define who you truly are. This emotion is not you.
What this also means is that you are not a slave of your emotions. Your emotions cannot dictate you or your life.
Immunity to others’ actions
So, if you can see it in this way, here’s some relief for you. If who you are does not change because of your emotions, then this also means that your happiness does not depend on the actions of others. You decide who you want to be at all times.
Stay with me for a moment.
Someone does something to you and you have a reaction. You feel hurt. If feeling hurt does not mean that you are a wounded person, but you are in actual fact ‘just’ feeling hurt, then this does not change your core being. This is an emotion that will and can pass if you allow it too.
Therefore, the actions of others can cause you to have a reaction – a certain emotion – but when you realise that who you are is so much more than that emotion you feel in that given moment (which will pass), you will begin to see that the actions of others cannot change who you truly are on the inside.
Because the emotions you feel in response to their actions are just that: emotions detached from who you truly are. They are emotions that can and will pass … should you allow them to.
Recognise, relax, release
So next time you find yourself having a reaction that makes you feel upset, try the following:
1/ – Take three deep breaths in the situation, recognise the emotion and allow yourself to feel the emotion you are feeling.
2/ – Tell yourself you are not angry but just feeling anger and that it is possible to let this feeling go when you choose to and are ready to.
3/ – When you are ready to release the emotion, close your eyes, take three deep breaths and tell yourself that you are now releasing this emotion of anger. It has served its purpose and you are ready to move on.
Remember emotions are like waves in the ocean. They come and go. You are more than your emotions. And therefore, you hold the power to be who you truly want to be and create the life you truly desire.