I'd like to share this post from Karla McLaren's blog. I think her work on emotions is crucially important because the more emotionally literate we are, the better the quality of our life and relationships. Being able to feel all of our emotions is true emotional freedom.
The Myth of Negative Emotions is of course related to the Myth of Positive Emotions
In my work with emotions, I focus on the intelligence, gifts, and skills that every emotion brings to you. I don’t leave any emotions out, and I don’t treat any emotion as better or worse than any other. This unified and ecological approach to emotions treats all emotions as vital, irreplaceable aspects of your neurology, your cognition, your social skills, and your awareness.
I’ve discovered over the last four decades of study, research, and practice that emotions are central to everything we do, everything we think, everything we learn, and everything we are.
Emotions evolved over millions of years to help us become socially successful primates, and every single one of them is vital to our functioning. We can’t leave any of them out if we want to live whole lives with all of our skills and all of our intelligence intact.
But sadly, leaving some emotions out and focusing too much attention on others is the essence of the emotional education most of us receive. Instead of learning how to work with the genius inside all of our emotions, we’re taught to suppress or run from the allegedly negative ones, and to overemphasize or attempt to imprison the allegedly positive ones. Read on
2 comments:
I find this very interesting… so many VARIOUS places we are being taught not to run from our emotions… to be able to "sit with" them when difficult. The desired result is freedom and increased awareness and empathy. But to actually take the next step… to let the difficult ones off the hook and no longer call them negative, well! Though I've heard it-- I imagine to successfully embrace it must feel amazing. : ) Thank you, Noreen. <3
I know, if it were easy we'd all be doing it! It'd help when we're younger to be taught how to feel difficult emotions. I think emotions like anger/rage can overwhelm us especially when we're children. If we're girls we're not supposed to feel angry (never mind express it) and if we're boys the forbidden emotion is fear. Many people have huge issues with these two emotions. I have found Karla McLaren's work on emotions to be truly intelligent. All emotions serve a purpose in certain situations and if we can let the energy of any emotion come up, and out, and do its job we've got freedom on our hands :-) Hope you're really well Melissa <3
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