The consequences of emotional avoidance are usually worse than the experience of what we try to avoid.
What avoiding your emotions does –
- Reinforces the idea that discomfort/distress/anxiety is “bad” or “dangerous.” It reduces your ability to face and tolerate necessary pain.
- Limits your ability to fully experience the present moment.
- Keeps you from moving toward the important, valued aspects of life.
- Often leads to suffering: addiction, helplessness, hopelessness, depression, damaged relationships, and lost opportunities.
The ways in which we hold ourselves back by running from our feelings.
- Situational: avoiding people, places, or things
- Cognitive: avoiding thoughts, images, or memories
- Somatic: avoiding unpleasant physical sensations
- Protective: avoiding uncertainty through frequent checking, procrastinating, or assurance seeking
- Substitution: avoiding by numbing, suppressing, addictive behaviors, or replacement emotions (i.e., replacing shame with anger)
Those moments when you are just too busy to feel, but your emotions leak through anyway.
- Will you love me if I’m boring?
- I just feel helpless not being able to help you.
- Why do I feel guilty letting you know what I need to be happy?
Why don’t we honor what it means to be a feeling, thinking being?
What if we were to embrace all of these feelings instead?
These feelings are signals for growth. Eventually, you will have to walk through that door. These emotions you are running from are your keys to freedom. Let them guide you to do everything you don’t want to do.
Read Richard J. Davidson’s The Emotional Life of Your Brain
Liquid PinkContemporary and surreal digital collage art and photo manipulation by Gaia Barnatan. Based in Byron Bay, Australia.