Healing for Damaged Emotions

But in the process, negative emotion has gotten a bad rap.

The truth is that emotions aren’t bad. Frankly, I'm not even sure they can be damaged. Emotions are simply "energy in motion".

How we feel in response to our emotional signals is what we react to. These responses are influenced by cultural conditioning, subconscious programming, and belief systems.

We experience a range of emotions all the time. They give us feedback into how we are experiencing our inner and outer environments.

Unfortunately, because the human brain is wired for survival, it naturally attunes to the negative. Therefore, most of our 60,000 daily thoughts and our emotional responses are going to be more negative than positive.

Another very positive aspect of emotions is that when you tune into how you are feeling, your emotions guide you and provide feedback through how you feel. Does that emotion feel good, bad or just neutral?

It tells you if you like what's happening or not. It can cause you to take necessary action and may keep you uncomfortable until you do what needs doing or you shift the accompanying thoughts and beliefs.

Negative emotion does become a problem when it's habitual and inappropriate. Then, instead of energizing you to take appropriate action, it limits and drains you. It keeps you in a state of chronic stress, which harms your mental and physical health.

Gary Craig, creator of the very popular Emotional Freedom Technique teaches that "all negative emotions are caused by a disruption in the body's energy system."

When the energy is unblocked, it can flow smoothly. The mental and physical tension related to that disruption is relieved and you feel better.

How to Heal Damaged Emotions

These two steps alone will begin to shift the energy to a more positive vibration.

Become fully aware of what you are feeling.

Awareness is key to healing thoughts and damaged emotions. How bad does that negative emotion feel? It may be helpful to use a scale from (no feeling)0-10 (feeling really bad). It's important to act as an observer. You goal here is to just notice without resistance or judgment.

Don't worry that acknowledging how you feel will attract negativity to you. Ignoring damaged emotions and faking positivity doesn't make them go away. Looking at your feelings honestly, healing the beliefs, and disarming the triggers does allow you to shift to more positive thoughts for real.

Let yourself feel the negative emotion.

Don't push down, or repress your damaged emotions. If you need to vent or cry, that's okay. Let it out. Give it a voice. Listen to what it's telling you. It'll give you a good eye into your beliefs and thinking patterns, whether true or not. If you like to write, then write or type it all down. Don't censor your words, they're for your eyes only.

Figure out what triggered the negative emotion.

Most of us don't have to dig very deep to dredge up memories of major and minor traumas, sorrows and disappointments. Some always seem to be just a thought away. Others are buried so deeply that we forgot they ever happened. Still they are there triggering painful emotions that we don't understand.

Be a detective. Even if you don't know the core event, you can still make headway by noticing the immediate triggering event or thought. What were you thinking? What did someone say, or what happened that caused you to feel that way?

American psychiatrist, and author of Emotional Resilience, David Viscott says:

Pain in the present is experienced as hurt.
Pain in the past is remembered as anger.
Pain in the future is perceived as anxiety.
Unexpressed anger, redirected against yourself and held within is called guilt.
The depletion of energy that occurs when anger is redirected inward creates depression.

Release the negative or damaged emotions and shift to a better feeling thought.

There are many ways to do this. Acknowledging your thoughts and relaxing into the emotion, or fully expressing it,is sometimes all that's needed to release it. Other times, you will need persistence, help from a professional and/or the aid of emotional releasing techniques. These techniques can help you make short work of even long-standing damaged emotions and the limiting beliefs that are often behind them.