-me
Sigh! I am going to talk about sadness.
Sadness? Haven't you been going on and on about changing our thoughts so we feel better ,so we live better? Didn't you rave on about this ladder thing we are meant to climb one rung at a time until we get away from those negative depressive emotions that keep us down? And now you are going to talk about sadness?
Yep! You are right...I did all that and I do all that but I am still going to talk about sadness. Why? Because I ( again referring to the little me who always has some drama going on lol) am feeling sad and I bet there are plenty of times that you feel sad as well.
When "little me" is sad
The wise me is watching the little me who for now will I refer to as "I".
I am feeling sad right now. That is the truth and reality of my situation. In my ego mind I have great justifications and rationalizations for my sadness. "I don't feel physically well and I am so tired of feeling this way! There's the chest pain, the back pain and once again the good old pelvic pain to deal with. These "different" pains are hitting me all at once, interfering with my sleep, my ability to perform all the activities of daily living most people take for granted and there seems to be so little external help and validation for them. I perceive that I can't even talk about them or mention them anywhere but here. My body is completely exhausted! There also has been so much loss in my life over the last few years that I can't seem to process through: loved ones, support, finances, the stripping away of work, social and professional identity. (Parts of me I reluctantly give up to the physical limitation and gratefully give up to the pursuit of the real me.) There are past trauma memories needing to be processed through and released. Things around me are chaotic, broken, messy and uncared for and I feel so responsible. I worry about the well being of my children, D., siblings, friends and my pets. People around me are hurting for one reason or another and I feel that hurt so acutely. I have also been like a sponge soaking up emotion from other beings. There is suffering in the world and I feel that so intensely. And I want to "do" something about it all but I am just too tired. So I do nothing. I am feeling sad! "
All the above is just a thought, an idea, a story so I can rationalize my sadness, justify my sadness and resist my sadness.
This sadness has accumulated with one thought after another and curled itself up and chained itself in the center of my chest . It...like many of our emotions.... has been sitting in protest and resistance mode for a while. Most of the emotions whirling around inside us are not new. They are the result of accumulated things we cling to with our memories and file away to be dealt with later. We resist experiencing them now.
Stuffing emotion.
How do we resist our emotional experiences? We stuff them down below our conscious awareness through defense mechanisms called repression and suppression. We suppress the memory or details of an event and then repress the emotional component of it.
We don't want to feel pain do we? ...So we push painful emotional experiences away and hold them down away from our conscience experience. Or at least we try to. We place the sad in a folder to be filed away with a big stamp on it . When we stamp "later" on an emotional file we are setting ourselves up for even more suffering. The file will grow. The file gets so big it cannot be filed away. It is at that point in the way of our growing and our expanding. The protestor becomes so big and noisy it prevents the flow through of other things in us and out of us. It prevents other positive things from entering our minds and our perception of the world. It distorts our ability to see clearly around it. It keeps us retracted and small so we feel to restricted to give what we are here to give. Stuffing causes even more pain. A stuffed emotion...if not dealt with will cause even more suffering for us and for the world.
My very, very thick sadness file has a great big LATER on it and I ignore that stamp as my subconscious continues to stuff more and more information in it to justify it. Now it is so big it is causing undeniable pain in my body and in my mind. Hmm!!! Later might have to be now.
Sadness is an energy that needs to be expressed
Yes sadness is a lower rung emotion on our ladder. It belongs under the Fear spectrum of emotions and like most fear emotions we do not want to stay there forever. Still, it is just an emotion.
All emotions are energies and energies need to be expressed and released. I have given this analogy before...If you get electrocuted by something in your environment, as a first responder, I want to see an exit wound. I want to see that that powerful energy has passed through you...for your sake and for mine....because as long as it is still whirling around inside you it is doing damage. At the same time I can't touch you or help you without getting hurt unless you have released the energy.
Emotions are meant to pass through us...all emotions...even the ones that are painful. Resisting them just keeps them away from our conscious awareness but it doesn't stop the energy from moving in destructive patterns inside us or outside of us. Resistance leads to the formation of blockades in the form of developmental arrests and illness. Create an exit for your feelings by experiencing them.
See the Messenger in Sadness
Our emotions are also messengers. Sadness is a gentle messenger as I wrote in the above quote. It is a soft whisper telling us that it is time to let go and move on from apathy or a refusal to feel. It is okay to feel sad. It is okay to just stop and listen to what sadness has to say. We can get back to the climbing after we have listened for a while.
Accept sadness when it shows up in your life. Accept it and the situation that brought it on if it is present in your life now. Feel it, experience it, express it and then let it go.
If sadness is telling you that it is there because of a big file of accumulated stuff you need to process through be at least willing to open the file. Get some help, some loving support and work your way through it. Accept, feel, experience, express and then let it go.
Send the File to the Shredder
Once expressed and released...you can shred the files that once held the emotions . You do not need to cling to the information that you stuffed away. Memory is just that...information, ideas, thoughts, stories and theories about why you are the way you think you are. They represent the "little me"...not the "Real Me." The real you can never be reduced to information in a file and the real you is what you are right here, right now.
Feel, Experience, Express, and Let Go!
You do not need to hang on to "little me's" story of identification. Once the emotional energy is released, shred the files that contain it. There is no need to cling to such stuff that causes pain. Resistance of our present experiences, the failure to release emotion and our clinging to ideas and notions about what we think we are...is what causes the pain not the emotion. Feel, experience, express and let go.
If you are anything like me, it might be time to clear some space in your mind and in your life. Sweep up and move on.
All is well
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