Out of Anxiety - Part II - The Gift of Emotion

I’m not sure how it came to pass that emotions, especially those perceived as negative emotions, became a thing of demons. Maybe, as I mentioned in Part I, we have lost the social structure that supported our emotional health and now anything of feeling requires too much effort. Maybe it is best to simply not feel. Certainly there are many ways to get our chemical highs and stave off our lows—drinking, drugs, shopping, gambling, working ourselves to death—but that doesn’t replace or promote what could be a rich life of deeply felt emotions and connectivity.

Feeling and processing our emotions is the key to a strong underlying current of happiness. When we run from emotion, try to get out of feeling, we doom ourselves to carry our feelings with us until they are forced out by a mounting inner pressure, called out by a new, but similar experience, or we voluntarily release them by acknowledging them, experiencing them, accepting them and understanding them.

Many years ago, when I was consumed by a crazy anger, my good friend said to me, “Anger is a gift, Tiffany. What is your anger telling you?” What? Anger is a gift? All I wanted to do was get out of my anger, stop feeling it. Because I was so focused on not feeling it, I was missing something very important, the gift of my emotion. Emotions tell us crucial things about ourselves. They provide us with an opportunity to see deep into the psyche, to the heart of need, desire and longing. Carrying unexpressed emotions around takes a significant amount of energy. When we examine our emotions we are better able to refocus that energy toward the present, toward those things that provide growth and meaning to our lives.

There are lots of folks out there that will tell you that you aren’t a very spiritual or enlightened person if you feel and express your negative emotions. They say they base their opinions on the teachings of the Buddha or Jesus or Eckhart Tolle. But none of these great spiritual teachers say you should “get out” of emotion. Jesus, for instance, clearly expressed his emotions to his companions in the Garden of Gethsemane just before his crucifixion:

He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:37-39)

Jesus is able to express his emotions, and then, feeling heard, he is able to move through those emotions and accomplish his purpose. The great mystic poet Rumi speaks of the value of emotion in his poem “The Guest House”. (See the poem in full by clicking on the link in the Cool Links sidebar.) When speaking of the value of emotion he says, “Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture.” In the end these emotions “may be clearing you out for some new delight.” He says that all of our emotions should be treated with respect because they are each “sent as a guide from beyond.”

In fact many of the great mystics experienced revelation and “the Source” by delving into emotion to find its root. Eckhart Tolle tells us that before we can begin seeing our emotions for what they are we have to be sure we are actually feeling our emotions. The repression of emotions is not an enlightened state. He says we have to practice just feeling emotions so that eventually we can step back from them a bit and identify where the energy of those feelings originates. (By the way, this applies to the “good” emotions as well.)

When I was a teen, a drug and alcohol therapist told me, “Tiff, emotions aren’t wrong; it’s what we do with them…” This echoes the instruction of great teachers such as Vimalakirti, Thich Naht Hahn, and Jesus who encourage us as part of our spiritual path to stop breaking up our lives into dichotomies such as good/bad and right/wrong and to simply focus on what is. It is so vital to living fully, and especially to recovering from excessive anxiety, that we stop categorizing our feelings. When we exalt one and demonize another, we lose sight of the fact that the gift of all emotions is the direction they provide us on our path toward wholeness. They show us where the work needs to be done in our lives.

Before any of that work can be done we have to accept that emotions are a gift. We have to recognize that we are having emotions even if we are not expressing them. We have to permit ourselves to feel and express them. Then, at last, we can understand them, and ultimately let them go.

The acceptance and processing of emotions is not easy for those of us battling anxiety, but diligence and practice will undoubtedly increase the speed with which you move through these steps. Be patient with yourself. Everyday you will have new “guests” trying to clear you out. And you will have the work of cleaning out the store of emotions from your past. This takes time.

As Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist teacher and founder of the Shamabala Community, says, "It takes a long time to take our fences down. The first step is to learn to love ourselves, make friends with ourselves, not torture ourselves anymore."* This is the journey I’ve been on as I’ve sought to find my way through and out of anxiety. Emotion has been woven into every aspect of my anxiety. I have encountered emotions in every step as I have attempted to unravel it. I am grateful to my friends and husband who remind me to be patient even today as I pull apart the final threads.


*From Working with People in The Myth of Freedom