Is it just me? Is it just you? Is it just he/she? Is it just everyone? What is happening with everyone's emotions as we move forward in this lockdown new lifestyle? Well, we're experiencing a completely new experience, we were put to the test of finding out what would it be dedicating time to ourselves! Nevertheless, the reality in many places of the world, where the space to live is reduced and where people have to share a very small space to work, meanwhile children are home schooling, your partner is cleaning some things or working just like you! And you have some noisy neighbors or environment! Let me share with you that if you have felt anxiety, frustration, doubt, fear, sadness, desperation, joy, gratitude, compassion, empathy, disappointment, guilt, shame and all the rainbow of emotions that you could think of! Is completely normal! However, you are equipped with a huge amount of resources that now is the time to take advantage of, let me just describe some of them to cope with any of those emotions that you might be feeling! Accept The Emotion, Question Yourself And Move On! If you're experiencing any kind of the emotions listed the below, for the sake of letting the emotion move and find the outlet that will be looking, the best thing that you can do is start sorting out questions for that emotion! - Question why are you feeling like that?, - Was it something you eat? - Was it because you have not move, stand up and breathe? - Or perhaps is something someone said and in the moment you didn't express what you felt? - Is it some past pain from your past that is still bugging you? Whatever the root cause of the emotion, if you allow some questioning, the answer will come out to the light and you'll be able to sort it out in a much proactive way than expecting to pass! The good side of this new experience is that by being more physically disconnected from many external things, and let's be real, forced to be indoors, your mind and body will start releasing these kinds of messages, small attention calls to you! Thus, the best thing that you can do is start handling them, to detoxify your emotional clutter that has been there, but before you didn't have the time nor the intention to address them! Well now is the time to come clean with yourself, and allow above all patience, tolerance and forgiveness! If you start being more proactive in the matter of finding the source of the emotion, then you'll be able to solve the puzzle for something that maybe you were not even aware of you still had some residual resentment, guilt or anger inside of you! Be mindful, grateful with this process and mostly, love the voice within you, because I dare to say that it might be some childhood wound, story or trauma that you had. Which is now showing up as a behavior pattern that probably it is being hard to handle, and if you start tying the loose ends you'll be able to assemble the whole picture that will enlightened you and probably it will solve some recent conflicts that you have had with someone, whether it is a family member or at work. Begin Your Body Diving Journey! What if now we take advantage of those emotions and we also start doing some work to align body and mind? If you're already being primed by your mind with some type of emotions, let's now dig deeper and start trying to listen more to our body! In order to do this, now you'll need to take advantage of something called interoception, which we previously talk about this topic before (1). The trick here is just being more aware of every little pain that you might be feeling, whether it is a headache, a colic, some articulation that you might be having some pain, or just some difficulty to breathe, digest some food or even problems to sleep! Every single signal that you might have internally is showing up, because it also needs your help to start easing its way out! We are wiser and stronger that we have been given credit for, the problem, is that we were trained and programmed to think that we needed something external to heal! Careful here, I'm talking about some minor pain or some bothering symptoms, that for sure you can stand and tolerate, but if you don't pay attention to them they will start growing! I'm not in any sense talking about chronic pain, although sometimes, those kind of extreme pain are exactly the consequence of something that was kept inside for a prolonged time, and of course, now is creating a whole mess internally which is the reason you're facing that kind of pain! Anyhow, getting back to our listening experience, we are now going to perform these kind of simple exercises that will allow you to listen the voice with a higher clarity: - Lay down for some minutes, close your eyes, and start picturing a strong white light, that will guide through your whole body, being able to literally wander inside every organ, tissue and cell within you, letting you know how are things in your different biological systems! - If while you're traveling through your body, your mind starts getting distracted, or stressed about anything, let the thoughts pass and bring your attention to your guiding light, it is a completely normal defense mechanism that is trying to distract you, but you're the owner of your attention, so bring it back to your journey! - Take some deep breaths while you're performing this exercise, picture yourself being healed by this white light, as it keep moving through your body! - Place your left hand in your heart and start feeling the beats of your heart, if you carefully breathe at the same time that you're sensing your beats, you'll create a more coherent energy within you, that will allow you to have a more accurate detection of any kind of pain or information that your body will start whispering to you! What Is Your Inner Child Telling You? We all have some wounds from our past story, in spite of already mention them above, now here we're also going to become our own trained detectives in order to release your most relevant experiences that probably you have kept inside, and that most likely they will start going out, and not in a healthy way! So, let's release the fear, and start digging deep into some of the experiences that you might have: - For this exercise, try to have someone you trust available, in terms of psychological experience or emotional counseling support, just in case things get a little bit rough, which shouldn't be the case, as we're just trying to carefully detect what kind of pain are you still holding on to! - Again close your eyes, in whatever position is more comfortable for you, I'm asking you to close your eyes to avoid any visual distractions and have a little bit more control over what you're eliciting from your mind and memories! - Think about your painful experiences of childhood, the ones that supposedly you already healed, or the ones that you know they're still there, some words, actions or toxic memories that you're still having flashbacks, more than usual! If you say there aren't any, try a little bit more to just remember every experience and I'm sure they will come out! - Now, that you're in a different mindset, that most likely you have grown and mature, probably have children of your own, or you're in the process of having them, you'll be able to see a more objective story and probably now you have more insights of your parents background which will be a very strong asset to asses the experience in a truthful, compassionate and empathic manner! - It is highly recommended that you write this experience, so that you'll be able to pick the lessons in a more specific way, so that you allow yourself to process the emotions, and if while you're doing this exercise, you feel the need to cry, yell or release some physical emotions, do so! Just be careful to not hurt anyone of course! Exercise is an excellent tool to allow you to release that physical tension, go for a run, walk or hit a pillow if you need to, but release that tension that was created with the exercise! - Once you already release the tension, allow yourself to process the lessons, breathe, try to find a positive link of that painful experience with the personality, or any kind of defense mechanism that you developed as a result of that! If you find that just negative outcomes came from that experience, just write them down and start tying those experiences with some present struggles that you are having, such as your weight, your introversion, the way you sometimes neglect what you feel and try to please everyone else, or any kind of behavior that could be explained as a result of that experience! - Finally, release the emotional load of that experience, forgive and let the pain go because the only person that is being affected by that pain is you! Whoever hurt you, or said something to you, humiliate you, abuse of you! Understand that people that cause any kind of harm are deeply wounded and they have build up a lot of pain, it is not their true nature, they are just either repeating a learnt pattern or they're still holding on a lot of anger! Therefore be compassionate and empathic to forgive them and let yourself be lighter in the process of doing it! Find Closure! Lastly, wrap these cleaning experience with gratitude, with lessons, with forgiveness, with a positive vibration towards anyone that hurt you! Start also listing and observing the patterns and behaviors that you're now repeating and draft some keywords to be aware of the behaviors whenever you see them showing up in your life! #emotions #detoxify #clean #lighter #create #consciousness #heart #connect #behaviors #insights #knowledge #attention #intention #grow #resilience #coherence #energy #intelligence #feeling #power #healing #beliefs #patterns #childhood #environment #responsibility #commitment #release #forgive #Ortega #davidortegab References. 1. Ortega D. “How to Listen to Your Body?: Interoception!" https://www.davidortegab.com/post/how-to-listen-to-your-body-interoception. February 08th, 2020.