Your mental state plays a crucial role in your overall health, and learning to navigate your emotions can transform how you handle stress and react to life’s challenges. Let’s explore a powerful exercise that will help you reflect and gain deeper insight into your emotions.
Reflection
Take a deep breath and allow yourself to focus on these questions. After each one, pause and let the memory fully arise. Don’t rush. Sit with each moment as long as you need.
Can you recall the most joyous moment in your life? ...How do you feel?
Can you recall the scariest moment in your life? ...What emotion arise?
Can you recall the saddest moment in your life? ...How does it feel to your body?
Can you recall the most hateful moment in your life? ...How did that experience feel?
Can you recall the most euphoric moment in your life? ...How does that uplift you?
Can you recall the most peaceful moment in your life? ...How does peace feel inside you?
You just took yourself through a spectrum of emotions, feelings and environments and did not leave your seat or hold a particular pose or breath any particular way.
You have the ability to shift between these emotions and states of mind with ease. But here’s a question for you. Do you believe that any one emotion is bad and should be avoided? Or that any single state of being is the right one to cling to forever?
The truth is, life is full of emotional highs and lows. Just as a wave rises and falls in the ocean, so do our emotions. They are not right or wrong; they are simply part of the journey. We’re meant to experience it all.
I have felt seemingly stuck in depression, anxiety, fear, anger, and love. It is OK to feel all of these states. It is a part of the spectrum of life. To have a balanced EQ(emotional quotient) you should be able to experience all these with acceptance and fluidity. There is no need to be ashamed of, hide or be afraid to experience or share these feelings.
We have all felt fury, depressed, fear, joy, thankful, and ecstasy at moments. We can all pass through them to recall the lessons and feelings when needed. There will be an inevitable moment when you need fury to fight, fear to guard, sadness to cry and joy to love.
You’ve already demonstrated that you can move through these emotional states. But sometimes, we get stuck. So what do you do when you feel trapped in a particular emotion? The first step is recognizing that you can change your state. You have the power to shift your energy, change your environment, or adjust your mindset. Question the root of your emotion—what’s really causing it? Then, express your control. You don’t need to stay in any emotion longer than it serves you.
You are not broken! These feelings and emotions are normal human experiences. We all have them and pass through them. Take your time, accept and process the experience. Honor your feelings. Practice patients and reflect often.
Here’s another exercise for you:
Find a body of water—whether it’s a real one or simply one you visualize in your mind. Watch the waves as they rise and fall, flowing past or crashing on the shore. Notice how some days the water is calm and peaceful, while other days it’s stirred, turbulent, even chaotic. Yet, it’s still just a wave—always moving, always shifting between its peak and trough, between light and dark, noise and silence, warmth and cold.
The wave is always in transition, never fixed. Be the wave. Sometimes you’ll feel stirred, sometimes chaotic, and sometimes still and quiet. Just like the water, life has its storms, but those too will come and go. Let them pass. You don’t have to fight them, just flow with the change. Embrace the transition knowing that peace follows the storm and movement always brings renewal.
Enjoy the spectrum's of life for what they are and enjoy your life because you are able.
If the storm is strong, it is OK to seek harbor. Professional therapists can and do help, I know from experience. Seek one out if needed. All I personally asked of my therapist was to not prescribe me anything. These things come on through process, they can be taken apart through process. A good therapist will accept these conditions.
You are in control of your emotional state.
Move back into life.
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