What does emotional freedom mean?

It seems to me that many think that emotional freedom means freedom from emotions, especially the "negative" ones. I know from my own experience that emotional freedom means the freedom to feel anything and not feel guilty, ashamed, disloyal or bad for feeling that way. Emotions are there for a reason, they are there to be felt, not denied, disconnected from or shunned. Feeling our emotions keeps them flowing so they don't get stuck, blocked or trapped and cause problems.

One of the best ways to use EFT is to tap to be able to feel what you find difficult to feel. If you tap to "tap it away", you're missing the invitation (or lesson) to learn something valuable about yourself. We can't tap something away and then continue doing things in the way we've always done them. It doesn't work, at least not long term. We need to make changes, take a different path, or walk a path that feels more true to who we are. We have to do different to have different in other words.

We work with nutrition and exercise to increase our energy, but we ignore the richest source of energy we possess—our emotions ~ Karla McLaren

Free flowing emotions

Emotions don't cause us issues when they're free flowing. It's only when they're blocked, trapped, unfelt, or dissociated from that we run into issues.

Illustration by Puja Kanth Alfred, a great friend and fantastic EFT practitioner

Very few of us are taught emotional literacy. Little to no emphasis is placed on understanding, welcoming and honouring emotions, especially the so-called "negative" emotions. I prefer to call them the difficult emotions, the emotions we need to learn how to handle in order to make our lives easier and more joyful. We need to discard the simplistic notion of "bad" and "good" emotions in my opinion, that idea just doesn't serve us. What happens is we avoid the "bad" ones and run after the "good" ones. All emotions serve us very well and we need them all. Life really would be less colourful and interesting without emotions, the whole gamut of them.

I highly recommend the book below by Karla McLaren, it is really excellent and has helped me to see emotions in a new light and work with them in a new way. Here is a sample of her take on fear.

Fear is not worry or anxiety, which jangle and nag at you when your instincts are in some way impaired (or when you’re ignoring them for some reason), nor is fear terror and panic, which take over when your instincts have been utterly overwhelmed. Free-flowing fear will make you intuitive, agile, balanced, and safe — not because you meekly tiptoe through life to avoid all possible dangers, but because you can trust yourself, your instincts, and your resourcefulness in each moment. If you’re generally capable, naturally intuitive, and focused, you’re actually already connected to your flowing fear (even though you may not think of yourself as fearful). All you need to do now is to name your fear as itself, welcome it, and thank it for all its help. Fear is not your enemy. In fact, it may well be the best friend you have ~ Karla Mc Laren, The Language of Emotions: What your feelings are trying to tell you