On the surface, we resist certain circumstances, but at a deeper level, we don’t resist the circumstances. We resist all the feelings and emotion that the circumstances trigger. It’s the automatic avoidance of this emotion that sabotages our lives.
To see this in your life, find a time when you were upset. Then notice the surge of emotion that you felt. This is the emotion that we avoid.
Any circumstance that triggers this suppressed hurt is perceived subconsciously as a threat. In an automatic attempt to avoid this threat, we fight, resist, hang on, and withdraw. We destroy love and create all sorts of suffering.
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If you are willing to feel the emotion that is being triggered by a particular circumstance, that circumstance will have no power over you. If a circumstance triggers an emotion that you are unwilling to feel, that circumstance will have total power over you.
The more you are willing to feel your hurt, the more you are able to flow with life. You will see life clearly and be very effective.
How to release emotion
The best way to learn how to release emotion is to look at little children. Little children are masters at healing hurt. When a child feels hurt, the child cries. Then, after the child finishes crying, the hurt is all gone.
Little children are able to release their hurt quickly because they do something that we don't notice. They feel their hurt willingly. This allows the hurt to run its course. It comes and then it goes.
Find a time when you were hurt and you allowed yourself to cry. Then, after you cried the last tear, you felt a wonderful freedom. This is a time when you felt your hurt willingly. This is the natural process for healing hurt, but our culture teaches us to do something very different.
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Instead of learning that it is okay to feel our emotion, we have been taught to fight it. "Big boys and girls don't cry. If you want something to cry about, I'll give you something to cry about."
We have been taught to suppress our hurt. This then circumvents the natural healing process. Instead of feeling our hurt willingly like a child and letting it go, we fight the hurt and keep it inside.
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This turns the hurt into pain. We then perceive the hurt as a threat and spend the rest of our lives running from it. We fight, resist, hang on, and withdraw. We then create more of the very hurt that we are avoiding.
Look for opportunities to heal
Instead of running from your hurt, go looking for it. Welcome opportunities for more healing. The more you get this destructive suppressed emotion out of you, the better your life will be.
A good way to heal more hurt is to work with your upsets. Every time you get upset, some hurt has just been triggered and brought to the surface.
To use an upset for more healing, go to the hurt that is under the upset and dive into it. Cry as hard as you can. If there aren’t any real tears, fake the tears. Faking the tears coupled with an exaggeration of the emotion is just as powerful as the real tears.
Feel the hurt willingly, deliberately, and purposefully. Feel it because you want to. Reach in, grab the hurt, and pull it out. This allows the hurt to come and go quickly.
Feel the hurt of your circumstances and the deeper, more painful hurt of feeling worthless, not worth loving, failure, not good enough, or whatever your deeper hurt is. Let the hurt take over. Let it come and let it go.
As you release the hurt, you will feel a freedom. There will be less hurt to get triggered later and you will be more effective in handling your current situation.
The most important thing to remember is to feel your hurt deliberately and purposefully. Feel it because you want to. This is the key to fast healing. When you feel the hurt as a victim of the circumstances, you can cry hours a day for months and have little or no healing.
In the next article, we’ll talk about how to find and heal the core issues that destroy love and create all of your suffering. Finding and healing this deeper hurt is one of the most important things you can ever do.
