Emotional Healing: Follow Your Gut

Every emotion comes paired with an opposite. Anxiety can’t exist without peace. Fear can’t exist without courage. Sadness can’t exist without happiness. And helplessness can’t exist without it’s opposite, empowerment. When you experience only one-half of a pair of opposites (sadness but not happiness, anxiety but not peace), you remain stuck in your one-sided experience. http://theheartysoul.com/negative-feelings-cause-cancer/?t=DrM

Yet when you stop trying to rid yourself of your experience and instead open up to a full range of emotions, you can break through. Of course, suffering from something like severe anxiety is not easy. But this exercise can often provide the relief you need to realize actions that can help you feel empowered to make change.

With your eyes open or closed, welcome the environment and sounds around you. Now, welcome an emotion that’s current in your body, or recall an emotion that you’re working with in your life. Also experiencing where and how you feel it in your body. Welcome your experience just as it is, without judging or trying to change it.

Next, think of an opposite of this emotion, noting where and how you experience this opposite in your body. IF HELPFUL, RECALL a memory that invites this opposite more fully in your body. Like the times you go on vacation an feel nothing but serenity. When it feels right, move back and forth between these opposites, sensing how each emotion impacts your body, your mind and your spirit.

When you’re ready, open your eyes and return to a state of wakefulness, write down your reflections and intentions that you agree to follow through with in your daily life. Emotions are messengers that deliver empowering actions … so learn on them to find creative solutions and successfully navigate life.

“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.” – Vincent Van Gogh

I recently watched this YouTube featuring neuroscientist Antonio Damasio talking about patients who have suffered brain damage that affects their emotional capacity. The interesting thing is without any emotional impetus, Damasio’s patients found themselves paralyzed by decision-making, circling a decision without that emotional signpost helping them make a final landing — even with simple decisions about where to go for dinner or when to book an appointment!

Is it strange to say this finding came as a relief to me? So… it’s not only OK for decisions to be made based on emotion, in fact it’s essential! So often people are criticized for making emotional decisions (I’m betting there isn’t a woman reading who hasn’t had that criticism thrown at them!). And we so often feel like our own decisions should come from a cold and logical place rather than an emotional place. But, it’s reassuring to know that it’s essential that both reason and emotion play such a vital role in decision-making. I always thought my gut was tied to my emotions — I actually think it’s one and the same.

All the data we gather, from those pro/con lists, from external advisers, arms us with a logical base for our emotional decisions. But at the end of the day, the question whether to move or not, whether to stay in a relationship or not, whether to cut your hair short or leave it long… it involves something more ineffable and mysterious, a deeper emotional, perhaps subconscious, decision-making process.

When we explain our choices to people, we usually use all the rational arguments but leave that emotional component out of our explanation — whereas we ultimately chose our course because it felt like the right thing to do. Even if true, that can sound flaky or insubstantial. But without that feeling, we would be like Damasio’s patients still circling the decision.

However, this is not to say following your emotions will always lead you to making the right decision. What the heart wants is not always the right thing. The heart sometimes wants to get back in that relationship where nothing has changed to make it different this time around. The heart sometimes makes us afraid of doing something new and leaves us stuck in unhappy situations.

Acknowledging that emotions play a vital role in decision-making does not mean they always help us make the right decision. This is why the pro/con list-making and listening to advice is still a good exercise. ALSO Exploring different facets of a decision and not just blindly following your heart is always a wise thing. Sometimes — I’ve found the more I wanted to blindly follow my heart, the more mistrustful… I should be of what I wanted to do… that my heart was rushing me towards a decision that my head knew was the wrong decision.

And even with all this: we’ll all make mistakes. However we have a choice about how we deal with our own mistakes. Sometimes, I know immediately when I’ve chosen the wrong path… the key is quickly getting myself back on the right path as quickly as possible (even if that means admitting the decision I made was wrong). I really believe that staying on the wrong path will only create a snowball effect of bad decisions. I’ve been trying to use both logic and emotion to assess the decision after it’s been made, too. And rather than feeling trapped by a bad decision, I’ve given myself that permission to change my mind. After all, there’s no shame in making a mistake once you’re willing to set it right!

Decision-making theory is an entire field of study. However, of course — we all manage to make decisions every day. Sometimes they come easy…. you go straight to your wardrobe and put on the first thing you pick out. Other times, you make a huge mess trying on every outfit before you go back to the first thing you tried on!

But as I confront big decisions in my own life, I try to calmly listen…. to my head and my heart, to not overrule or undermine one with the other. I try and give those around me the benefit of the doubt that they too have the power to change, evolve, grow and make choices based on the person they want to be as opposed to choosing based on the old behavior from the past.

We talk a lot about authenticity these days. For me, that means reflectively approaching all these choices and making a personal decision for yourself. Not being pressured, not conforming to an external idea, but exploring and staying open to new ideas, while staying true to your own emotional core. It may not make the decisions any easier, and it does not mean I don’t make mistakes still, but it does help me feel empowered in making them for myself.

God bless you!