“It’s not a matter of letting go- you would if you could. Instead of ‘let it go,’ we should probably say ‘let it be.” ~ Jon Kabat Zinn
To heal negative emotions requires persistent efforts and overcoming challenges that come along the way. You reach a point in your self-awareness process where you become acutely aware of the emotional responses happening within you daily. You may have found a thin line between showing support to yourself and at the same time, getting attached to these painful emotions, where it becomes your sense of identity.
Walking this line, trying to find a balance between the two proves to be the difference between becoming a confident, healed, and self-loving person, rooted in awareness rather than ego or being a victim of life, so intertwined with our painful emotions and the stories attached to them that they become extremely difficult to heal to completion.
While one should never use their idea of “being a positive person” as a means of trying to get rid of the natural emotions that are arising in them by methods of manipulation or judgment, there are undoubtedly, ways to heal negative emotions. These are, in fact, effective in helping them heal and transform all on their own, which in turn creates the space by which the blissful “positive” emotions that are our inherent nature can arise.
Here are seven ways to heal negative emotions
1) Acknowledge them
We cannot change that which we deny is even happening, which is why the initial step to creating a space for healing any emotion, is to acknowledge its existence. You don’t even have to name the emotion if you are at a point where you can meditate and feel the energy of the emotion, but nonetheless, you must see that it is there.
2) Honor Them
Most emotions orbit repeatedly in our energy field because they have been feared, rejected or denied which only perpetuates them. When a painful emotion arises, that should tell you a deeper inquiry is required. Simply put, they are arising to be seen so that they can eventually be healed by you.
If we know that all stems from source (God/the divine/the omnipresent Universe) we should also know that even painful emotions fit into this category. Knowing this is a huge reason why honoring each emotion as God is hugely transformative.
If God him/her/itself arrived at your doorstep for dinner, how would you treat him/her/it? Most likely with the utmost respect and reverence, right?
So now you know how you should treat each emotion that arises as well. While it is easy to treat joyful emotions with respect, it is not so with the emotions that feel painful in our body, nonetheless, respect is required in assisting these emotions into a place where they can relax and dissolve into our awareness.
3) Do not blame others
Here is another approach that can be rather tricky, but effective to heal negative emotions. Very often our emotions come as an onset after someone else’s behavior or words, which makes it “feel” like that person is to blame for the emotion. On one level of consciousness, this may feel true, but those who are seasoned in self-awareness know something that takes this perspective into a higher truth.
The pearl of insight is that people are coming into our lives to act as catalysts to bring up the very emotions that exist unhealed in our energy field. This means that rather than blaming them for causing the emotion (which completely disempowers us into needing them to change or apologize before we can heal), we can see them as messengers that provide unlikely clues to our own healing.
On the opposite end, we must also not become too attached to the idea of ownership from within either. We are the consciousness behind the emotion, so while there may be a limiting belief that is running a program in our subconscious mind that has been triggered by the action of another, it does not mean we ARE that emotion.
We are simply the awareness who has the power to heal negative emotions – that defunct programming and emotional block by observing it, feeling it, and respecting it – but not owning it.
4) See them as evidence of their opposite vibration
One helpful way to assist in actually having the courage to feel an emotion head on, is to know that emotions dissolve as a way to create space for their opposite to emerge.
This means that all unworthiness – when actually faced and felt – is creating the healing space that makes way for worthiness to arise in its place.
Anytime you are able to pinpoint what emotion you are having, you can acknowledge it and also bless it with its opposite, or even just declare, “I accept that this fear of not having enough is the evidence that space is being created for abundance consciousness. In knowing this, I allow myself to feel this fear completely without judgment as it is simply healing as I’m feeling it.
5) Thank Them
A major factor to heal negative emotions is to thank them.
As we come to know that no emotion arises as a mistake, we come to see some of the hidden gifts emotional responses contain. One is helping us identify where we are holding onto a subconscious belief or definition that is out of alignment with our highest truth.
All emotions stem from a belief, so no negative emotion can arise without there being a belief behind it. Knowing this makes these emotions amazing gifts in helping us to rewrite our subconscious beliefs!
By taking the time to sit with each emotion and appreciate it for the healing benefits and clues it contains, the emotions begin to soften and reveal their source – meaning the subconscious belief they stemmed from. As we rewrite that belief we are able to heal that emotion.
6) Celebrate them
With many things on the spiritual journey it is the most ironic or unheard of approach that actually is effective. Probably the last thing you would ever think to do when a painful emotion arises is celebrate its arrival — which is why this approach is also hugely transformational.
Treat it like you truly cherish its arrival and are so humbled to have its presence and the wisdom it holds in your energy field. Watch how quickly you can detach from negativity when you do the one thing that you would have never thought of, which is to celebrate its existence instead of judging or resisting it. Here lies the key to heal negative emotions.
7) Welcome them back home into the light
Imagine your open heart as a doorway into the light for each emotion. As you open your heart and allow yourself to feel the energetic signature of each emotion, what you are actually doing is letting that emotion be welcomed into your heart space, which leads to the light that you are. The light is where all emotions go to heaven so to speak.
You may have heard the word alchemy in relation to the spiritual journey and this approach is exactly what that word means. Alchemists use the light of their true nature to be the avenue by which painful emotions are dissolved into space – by simply feeling them to completion and welcoming them into their heart space.
It is important to note that it is most likely that you will need to use more than one or a combination of a few different approaches with each emotion. Nonetheless, it is also important to remember to honor your humanity in all of this.
It is often easy to see ourselves as spiritual robots here to use all techniques to get rid of all that “negative energy” we don’t want to deal with, but without also honoring the part of us that innocently feels these emotions from a human place, we become the manipulators of our emotions vs. the safe place they long for to return home.
Image Sources:
Faces screaming/”dealing with painful emotions” pic by: Nikki Sapp
Quote pic by Steven Attchison made by: Nikki Sapp
