Game Changer: Emotional Health Hacks

By Regan Keely

In a sane world, one of the first things we would have all been taught as children is how to deal with our emotions in a truly healthy way. Unfortunately, we are often conditioned to do the opposite: ignore, resist, project, or repress our emotions. There is no doubt this has had an extreme consequence on the mental and physical health of all of us… which leads to many different manifestations of suffering and disease in our world.

That said, learning how to see, accept, and transform your emotions doesn’t have to be a long-forgotten science. It also doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, you may find that experiencing emotions, even the “negative” ones in a healthy and beneficial way is actually very possible and simple when you know a few inner techniques.

Human beings are by nature emotional creatures. We live in a world where, naturally, we are constantly being triggered. Since this is the case for all of us, learning the knowledge and practice in this article is a true game changer for coming back to wholeness and freedom. This has been key to shifting my life in a very real way so that I am no longer a slave to my emotions… and in fact, I know my emotions are a superpower for incredible transformation and creation!

Transforming Emotional Energy

Let me begin by saying there is no “wrong” emotion. Emotions are simply feelings that contain important messages that we can take heed to, without having to dwell in them. We are not meant to be slaves to emotions like fear, anger, depression, anxiety, guilt, shame, etc… these are simply guide posts that are telling us something in our life is off.

Transmuting emotional energy is not an advanced technique, rather it is as simple as it is unknown. The key to emotional transformation is this: FEELING is HEALING. We often resist simply feeling our negative emotions, which is actually what makes them linger. We have to feel them to move them through our system.

The next time you observe a “negative” emotion arising, take the soonest opportunity you can to sit quietly with it and just feel it completely. In other words, give yourself permission to FULLY surrender to the emotion by feeling it without resistance or thinking about it. If you do feel resistance towards it, feel that too. Feel all of it.

This is not a mental thing; be sure not to get sucked into thoughts or “stories” of why you are feeling this emotion; be the observer. Often our thoughts, stories, judgements, and beliefs will only prolong our suffering and keep us from just feeling. Simply feel the emotion as it moves through you so that you can transform it. The deeper the emotion, the greater release. Even if the emotion is extremely intense, it won’t kill you. It only needs to be felt fully to be transformed fully. This is a natural process when you allow this energy to be felt-there is no need to force or do anything else.

As you allow yourself to just feel the emotion for as long as you need to consciously, you will notice it will begin to move through you and dissolve and integrate. Emotions (energy in motion) are designed to move through your body naturally. It is only when we resist them, repress them, or project them outward that they literally get stuck in our body. It’s been shown that stuck emotional energies have magnetic fields in the body that effect your health and state of being. Eventually these emotions have to be felt and released (which is why we get triggered about the same thing again and again until we finally surrender and just feel it). Too much repressed emotional build up in the body is what causes dis-ease.

As I said before, we are (mostly unconsciously) conditioned to resisting, repressing, or projecting our emotions outward which is ultimately just a way of avoiding feeling our emotions. Many are afraid of their own emotions and have very negative thoughts around simply feeling certain emotions come up. This causes much needless suffering and illness.

An Opportunity for Raising Consciousness

When you truly understand this, you will begin to see every trigger and painful emotion as an opportunity for healing and shifting your consciousness higher. which is what life is all about! Unresolved emotions from the past come up as triggers not to punish you, but so that you can begin to FEEL that emotion, release it, and extract the needed lesson/wisdom/strength from it. Learn more about this process in my article about integration.

For this is another beautiful part of this process. When you allow yourself to feel those painful emotions without resistance or judgement you transform them. You are always left in a better, lighter state than you were before you transformed it. We are eternally evolving towards higher and higher actualized potentials. With every transformation, new levels of wisdom and strength are attained in the form of indispensable spiritual lessons.

The great Bruce Lee once said: “Don’t ask for an easy life, ask for the strength to endure a difficult one”. I now understand why he said that… this is what makes for the greatest and most developed kinds of people! When you truly embody this technique you will no longer dread negative emotions, but devour them as opportunities to become a more advanced version of yourself.

Taking it to the Next Level

Since I practice this technique on a regular basis as a very sensitive person, I can say that in almost every case the real cause of our suffering is not the emotion itself, but the thoughts/beliefs around the emotion. The thoughts, not the emotion itself, is what keeps those heavy emotions lingering. As I demonstrated above, emotions are simply “feeling” energies that move through our body quite easily when we allow them. However, it is our minds that are the real tricksters that are so programmed to repress and resist these emotions and unwittingly keep us looping in lower states of consciousness.

Why is this the case? In the simplest terms, it comes down to the split between our Ego and our Higher Self. This is quite literally a personality split that we all have. While many books have been written on the ego, allow me to keep it in simple terms: the ego is the “survival mode” part of the mind that is designed to keep you physically “safe”. It is not bad, it is simply very limited in its perspective. This part of the mind was not meant to be the master of our consciousness; however this has been the case in a world of trauma, conditioning, and mind-control. We must learn to be the aware observer of our thoughts (and ego), for this is what it truly means to “be awake”. To be consumed by the ego is simply to be lost in “the dream” of autonomic thinking; to be in a constant state of survival/anxiety/panic. To be the conscious observer of your thoughts is to instantly shift your consciousness.

The ego is the part of the mind that fears these emotions as threats to our survival. As we become conscious and embody our Higher Self- we know that these emotions are not threats to our existence and we actually have the very real and strong capacity to work through them now... they are simply emotions to be felt and transformed. This is something you may have to remind yourself again and again until it is reprogrammed into your mind. Yes, our minds truly are like super computers!

A great analogy I often use is that allowing the ego to direct your life is like allowing a 5-year-old to drive your car. You don’t want to yell at it, rather you want to gently explain to the 5-year-old why it doesn’t need to drive the car, but is more than welcome to take a seat in the back and relax because you (the conscious self) have got this. In other words, don’t fight your ego, simply recognize it for the small aspect of the mind it is and take back direction of your life. This is true awakening from the dream!

Conclusion

I hope that this information has been as enlightening for you as it was for me. It is one of the most empowering things in life to be able to navigate the entire spectrum of emotions with such compassion and grace. This allows us to rise above duality, knowing that both positive and negative emotions have their place in our experience and we need not be “slaves” to these negative emotions or thoughts by getting caught up in our own fear or illusions about them.

Regan Keely is the founder of Transforming the Darkness: a platform for inspiring humanity through spiritual health, holistic freedom, and creativity. She is an energy and sound healer, Reiki master, teacher, and musician. Her course on activating your innate extra-sensory abilities as well as healing services, teachings, and music can be found at www.transformingthedarkness.com.