How to Deal With Difficult Emotions
How to Deal With Difficult Emotions
Source: Tara Brach | The Heart Crosses the Abyss (Listen: 49 min)
Contributor: Amber Lantz
“WHEN WE’RE NOT RELATING WITH MINDFULNESS, WE FORGET OUR BELONGING. WE FORGET A LARGER TRUTH OF WHO WE ARE.” - TARA BRACH
2020— wow, right?! Control, in and of itself, is an illusion but even the illusion has been stripped away. We’re left facing an uncertain collective future which has brought up global fear and anxiety. Not to mention, our personal lives have been uprooted and we’re left piecing together what we can of our daily lives. Given circumstances, and without all the usual distractions, many have had strong emotions rise to the surface. Without the appropriate tools, these feelings can be overwhelming and cause us to shut down or to react.
If we can learn to sit with difficult emotions in non-judgment and respond to them with compassion, love, and honesty, then they will move through us versus cause us to act. If we can release the urge to embrace them as permanent fixtures that define our world, then they will rise and fall like waves. But, if you’ve ever been in the throes of some really intense emotions, you might be asking yourself, how does one do this?
This podcast breaks it down for you—3 ways we can respond to difficult emotions:
Learn to let go of the story line
Feel the feelings that are here
Regard the feelings with kindness
“WHEN WE HAVEN’T FACED SOMETHING, WE ACT OUT.” - TARA BRACH
(17:38) “Sometimes I talk about the circle of awareness and the line that goes through it and everything below the line is outside of our awareness and everything above the line is in awareness and if we’re possessed by an emotion or if we’re avoiding feeling an emotion, it’s below the line. And, whatever’s below the line controls us. So, the deep inquiry is, ‘How do we change our relationship with the dragons? How do we free ourselves from the trance that something’s wrong? Either with me or you or life?’”
(15:18) “There’s a sense of this is the world right now and this is who I am right now. This is especially when the dragons are strong. So, rather than seeing what’s going on as coming from a helpless or vulnerable place and it belongs, we contract, we feel possessed, we feel imprisoned by the unpleasant feelings and thoughts and we turn against ourselves or we turn against others or life but the bottom line is when we’re not relating with mindfulness, we forget our belonging. We forget a larger truth of really who we are. We forget the presence and the love. We forget the consciousness that’s here. And, in that forgetting we then act in ways that deepen separation. We cause trouble to ourselves and others.”
“So, this exploration on how we relate to emotions, to the dragons, is really essential if we want to be intimate with our inner life and if we want to be close and open and connected to each other. And it’s also crucial in creating a more loving, just world. I think we can probably feel that unfaced greed, unfaced shame, unfaced fears are the cause of violence and war in society. They make us dangerous. When we haven’t faced something, we act out. So, the unwillingness to pay attention to this, all this cluster of energies has fueled the continued violence of racism of all caste systems. And, we work hard not to pay attention. It takes intention.”
LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST, HERE. (49 min)
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