Ever feel at the whim of your feelings? As though you lose a sense of direction and groundedness in acting on your goals? One moment you feel on top of your life but whenever that tiredness or overwhelm sets in, your plans take a back seat. You may have all these grand ideas but when it comes down to taking consistent action, you get lost in your tracks.
Don’t get me wrong, we all need a break from life from time to time. It is important to take a breather for our mental health and well-being to recharge our bodies, minds, and souls. To play and have fun. Yet when we always take the easy way out all the time, we lose sight of what moves us. We can lose trust in ourselves to get things done that matter to us in the long term. And we miss out on experiences that we love. Not to mention our innate gifts and talents can go undeveloped and unused. This can lead to a lack of fulfillment as well as humanity missing out on all that you have to offer the world.
Why is It Important to Be Emotionally Self-Aware?
It’s amazing to have something to strive for. Something that lights you up and engages your soul and gives your life deep meaning. Yet without a clear inner sense of connection to how you actually feel, some of you might lose hope or sight of your dreams. In today’s emotional dark age, society makes it easy for us to lose connection to our core sense of self. Without an inner navigation system or core emotional compass, motivation for life wanes. It is easy to get carried away by distractions, simple pleasures, and what everyone else is doing. Thus emotional self-awareness is an invaluable and vital aspect of the human experience. It is integral to how we live and take action in our lives.
So, you may be wondering, how do we get to the root of these issues? The first step is understanding how you are the way you are. Self-understanding and self-validation. Emotions matter. This is an often overlooked yet fundamental aspect of our lives and the human experience. Developing emotional self-awareness is essential for cultivating emotional autonomy and self-empowerment.
Emotional Conditioning
Yet if we were never taught how to be with and accept our emotions then we may struggle to even know they are there. When you were three and got rejected for crying you began to believe that feeling your feelings is wrong. If being emotional equaled disapproval, it disconnected you from your caregivers. It felt physically unsafe getting disconnected from your life source, your support system. From the very people, you depended on to survive.
Feelings of anxiety, rage, and fear are overwhelming enough. For a small child, they are terrifying. Thus you learned to prioritize attachment to others over your own emotional sovereignty. That is you learned to value connection with others over your own authenticity. By suppressing or repressing these feelings and pleasing others, you could ensure connection and safety. You could maintain a sense of acceptance and belonging with those who mattered most to you.
Coping Mechanisms
Because of this, often times being unaware of your feelings is a way to feel safe. Suppression and repression involve protecting our vulnerable aspects. Not being aware of intense feelings helps us cope with life but it does not address or resolve our core issues. Engaging in an addiction or bad habit helps to bring about relief. It allows us to endure uncomfortable feelings and suboptimal situations. Social avoidance helps us to evade being vulnerable around others. It can be an easy way out for those of us who struggle to assert ourselves and set boundaries.
Self-judgment and self-hatred keep us away from inner feelings of unworthiness and shame. They are a way of trying to change how we see ourselves so we do not experience the turmoil of these feelings of inadequacy. They also can help us to avoid the pain of others judging or criticizing us if we do it to ourselves first. Rationalizing and minimalizing our feelings are ways to avoid facing the full range and truth of our emotions. Along with how our life experiences are actually influencing our feelings. It can help us to avoid dealing with conflict or difficult situations.
So how do we get to the bottom of these issues without just coping through life? How do we untangle this mess of suppression and repression? How do we reawaken our authenticity and become more aware of our feelings? It begins with getting curious. Notice sudden impulses or urges to do things. Do you seek certain behaviors to mask or avoid uncomfortable sensations or feelings? Can you give yourself a bit of space and time before you act on your impulses? Allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable lessens your resistance to what is. It brings you closer to your emotional truth. If it helps, remember nothing lasts forever, not even those yucky emotions.
Emotions as Motives for Feeling States
Being aware of your feelings, whether negative or positive is the first step in emotional self-regulation. Behind every motive or agenda is a feeling state. We go towards certain experiences and engage in behaviors because of their emotional outcome. Some actions move you toward a more positive state, while others may move you toward a less negative state. Delaying gratification can move you towards a more negative state in the short term, yet bring you to a more positive state in the long run. Overindulging in certain behaviors may lead you to a more positive state in the short term, yet in time can pave the way to more negative states.
Along with this, allowing yourself to see and accept negative feelings can bring you closer to your core truth. It attunes you to reality and increases your sensitivity to what feels off or not. Being able to discern the subtleties of this also helps you to more clearly attune to what feels positive. Being real with how you feel helps you to heal. Even when it sucks. Pretending everything is fine all the time or ignoring how something is bothering you are signs of repression. Look out for thought processes and tendencies that keep you away from facing certain things. Also notice when there is a lot of effort being applied around something, or something bringing uncomfortable emotions up.
Self Validation and Compassion
In the same light, a little self-validation goes a long way. Certain aspects of yourself may need to be seen and acknowledged to feel safe enough to surface. Cultivating self-compassion is a way to show vulnerable aspects of yourself that it’s okay to feel how you feel. However good, bad, or ugly. That you understand how you would feel that way. And that esteeming yourself begins with knowing you are innately valued, loved, and worthy beyond your comprehension.
It all starts with being curious about your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. And taking steps to uncover all the roadblocks you put in place to avoid life’s inevitable struggles and pains. We are all human beings with different personal realities. Yet what unites us is our impersonal nature. The vastly rich and robust spectrum of an array of human feelings. We may see life differently. Yet our hearts all feel the same pain and joy, and everything in between.