Anxiety and Emotions
One of the most confusing aspects of healing my anxiety was understanding and accepting my feelings and emotions. Anxiety is an illness that’s rooted in our feelings and emotions. Our current emotions feed anxiety and we can heal with our feelings. While there are very real physical triggers in our bodies that are causing anxiety (EBV and heavy metals), it’s important to address our emotions too.
There is so much confusing information about anxiety and our emotions. When trying to heal my anxiety, I found most of the information frustrating. There’s a belief that those of us with anxiety just need to simply take control of our emotions. If we’re feeling anything bad, we need to brush it aside and think positive thoughts. I was once told by a counselor that if something bothered me, I shouldn’t spend more than 10 minutes of my time thinking about it. After 10 minutes, I should move on.
This kind of information and “help” is, simply put, awful. Freaking awful! First, to say that we need to control our emotions implies that we’re doing something wrong by having emotions and at times strong emotions. It suggests we’re being reckless and just allowing our emotions to spin out of control. Second, to say that we should only feel positive emotions is irresponsible. It not only places judgment on our emotions but also makes us feel wrong for having normal human emotions that may deemed “negative.”
Step 1: Own only your emotions.
Many of us with anxiety are energetically sensitive. Many of us are empaths as well. This means that more often than not we are experiencing someone else’s feelings and not necessarily our own. After discovering that I was an empath, I began to see how easily I was absorbing other people’s emotions. This realization helped me to observe that I didn’t feel good after being around some people or situations. These feelings included anger, sadness, anxiety, and overall discomfort. This was very confusing and sometimes still is. For most of my adult life I had been absorbing other people’s emotions and accepting them as my own. It took me a while to figure out what were my emotions and what belonged to someone else. I learned that by simple stating to our angels, “I only want to feel what is mine,” these uncomfortable feelings melted away most of the time. This is what has worked for me, but I encourage you to find the words or method that works best for you.
Step 2: Process your emotions.
My experience with healing anxiety is about giving yourself permission to process all of your emotions. I don’t like judging our emotions as good and bad, or positive and negative. Instead I say there are some emotions that are comfortable and some that are uncomfortable. It’s important to give ourselves time and space to move through all of our emotions both comfortable and uncomfortable.
By facing my emotions and meeting them head on, my anxiety started to subside substantially. Before, I kept avoiding my emotions and pushing them aside. I used distractions to keep my emotions at bay, but they weren’t really. I was bottling them up until they started spilling over into other areas of my life. For example, where I was once fine climbing to the top of a tall mountain, I was now terrified of heights.
Allowing my emotions to move through me is not always easy and feels raw at times. However, this is the way to heal anxiety. No more running away from my emotions. I deal with them as they come. I’ve had terrible sadness and anger move through me, and it felt awful. But the great thing about emotions is that they don’t last forever (even though it feels like they will) and they will pass.
Understanding my emotions has been huge in my journey to heal anxiety. First, owning only my emotions helped me realize that not everything I feel is mine. Of those feelings that are mine, I now give myself time and space to process them. Those days when I’m dealing with some strong and uncomfortable emotions, I make sure to increase my self-care and am extra nurturing to myself. When I feel overwhelmed by my emotions, I find solace in surrendering to our angels. This seems to lessen the load. There is also great comfort in talking to a trusted friend, healer, or professional.
Lots of love and healing.