Can you get stuck in a negative emotion?

E-motion wants to be in motion. Emotions move through you when you allow them. 

We are protecting ourselves from negative emotions in all possible ways. But sometimes, we need to process some uncomfortable yet useful  feelings. 

They may be exactly what we need to go through to get what we want:

• You may need to feel courage or discomfort when you write, create or try to lose weight, expand your potential, whatever it is for you. 
• The negative feelings (along with positive emotions) create a whole human experience; it would be strange not to feel sadness, grief, disappointment at the appropriate times. 

Sometimes when we work on moving to the next stage in life, uncomfortable emotions come up. You keep them “at the door.” Resisting. Some people are afraid they will get stuck in them.

But is this possible to be stuck in emotions? 

Emotions are not imposed upon you from the outside. You create them with thinking, or giving meaning to the facts. But that’s a different skill. Even more important is the skill of allowing, feeling, processing the feelings. This is when you see you can feel anything and be ok. 

Allowing, feeling, processing.

When we allow and process emotions (like we do in coaching, spiritual work, or even in business coaching ) it is not intellectual work. We don’t explain them and think our way out of them. We become present, we tune in, and witness. You witness the emotion in your body. 

And you realize there is nothing to be afraid of, because the emotion is simply vibration in your body. You realize it actually moves around, moves through your body and fades away faster than when you try to resist or avoid it. 

The -not so great- alternative:

Resisting makes the emotions bigger. 

Avoiding makes the emotion follow you until you face it. 

Reacting to it creates negative ripple effects on you and people around you. 

Only allowing and processing will make the emotion move through you. 

Why some people seem to be stuck in the same emotion?

They seem always worried, angry, frantic, on edge, resigned? Because they are supporting those emotions with their thinking. They are not stuck in the emotion by some external force. They are keeping themselves stuck in it with their thinking. 

Each thought creates a feeling and when the same thoughts are on a repeat – the feelings are repeated. Until they form a habit. Still, such a person is not continuously feeling the same emotions since emotions are in motion. They may feel better sometimes, but instead of asking “what am I thinking now that I feel better and what can I believe to feel better?” They let their thinking be chaotic and without direction, so they fall back to the familiar negative pattern. 

If it seems that we are stuck, we need to remember: it is not because we don’t feel the feeling all the way through. It is because we don’t.