Emotional expression is key to our wellbeing, but navigating life we often develop coping mechanisms to numb, repress, and/or project our emotions onto others. In order to shift into a more balanced and healthy practice of expressing emotions, it will take a willingness to examine ourselves and the patterns we have created to navigate our own emotional landscape.

As we do this we strengthen our emotional dexterity in building healthier relationships, with greater love and compassion. This is important work for us to do within ourselves to build stronger communities. As we commit to looking at how our emotions affect our relationships with others, we will improve relationships with friends and family, your relationship with yourself, and your relationship with society and the larger community.

Step 1: Acknowledge Emotions

Emotions are fluid. They flow through us. When they are current and present, emotions are communications from the soul, and we feel them deeply within us.

Managing emotions doesn’t mean repressing or ignoring them. It means that we are aware that there is an emotion, and choose how we’re going to express it. It is critical to allow for that expression, but we can direct our emotional energy in a way that is responsible.

Step 2: Take Responsibility for Our Emotion

One mistake we can make is using our emotions to validate our position against a person or situation. Party A is right and Party B is wrong. When we use our emotions to validate or judge a situation, this perspective limits any meaningful conversation that would allow the nuances to be acknowledged and shared. It fuels righteous anger and drowns out compassion.

Even if it is an emotional attachment we can acknowledge it and still express, but being responsible in our expression and not using an emotional attachment to validate our perspective as “right,” but simply acknowledging and expressing the emotion

When we come from the perspective of “this may just be me, my perspective, or my own wounding/triggers coming up, but what you said (or did) made me feel like ……,” we are willing to acknowledge and take responsibility for our emotions. We create space for a compassionate conversation where both parties can express their emotions honestly.

Step 3: Expressing Emotion

The biggest piece in this is that we must express. If we do not express, our emotions get buried or numbed, and build up in the body. They come out in passive-aggressive ways, or build up until the dam bursts and we have a flood of repressed emotion bursting onto the scene that is difficult to manage.

We may find that when we recognize the emotion moving through us that this isn’t the appropriate time or place to express it, and if that’s the case, it’s our responsibility to make sure that emotion does get expressed as soon as we have the appropriate space to do so.

Ideas for Supporting Emotional Expression:

1. Speaking to someone and sharing your experience
2. Journaling or writing a letter to express your emotions
3. Physical exercise, dance, or movement to express the emotional energy
4. Painting, writing, singing, or creating art to express your emotion – allow that energy to move through you.

If we haven’t practiced expressing emotion in healthy ways, we may need to step outside our comfort zone to dismantle the coping mechanisms we’ve built and re-build a new practice that allows us to balance our emotions so they are not bursting onto the scene in unhelpful and unexpected ways.

Emotions and Relationships

When it comes to building strong relationships, expressing emotion is key. There’s a wide ranging spectrum of emotional expression: those who hold it all in, and those who let it all flow, and then there is everything in between.

1. Acknowledge the Emotion – distinguishes between YOU (the one in charge) and the emotion (which is either communication from your soul OR a triggered emotional attachment).
2. Take Responsibility for the Emotion – awareness of our own role and not using the emotion to validate ourselves as right and the other party as wrong.
3. Express the Emotions – allowing the emotion to be expressed in a healthy way, to strengthen relationship with self and others.

These 3 steps are something we can be aware of to strengthen our relationship with ourselves, with our family, friends, and coworkers, and even on a larger scale within society.

The Big Picture

When we look at the state of the world, we see the distortions and emotional imbalances on a large scale and the damage that it causes. The “Us vs Them” mentality. The lack of taking responsibility and pointing the finger. We see this and we may feel overwhelmed. We may wonder how we can do anything about that.

On the Path of Progression within the Modern Mystery School, we teach that we must start with ourselves. We can look at ourselves and ask, “in my life, what do I have control over?” If you can do the important self-work of looking at your own emotional patterns, and begin taking steps toward greater responsibility for yourself and your emotional expression, that is a start.

The shifts that you make matter. The ripples you create are important. Through your self-work you will become a stronger agent of positive change in the world. As we do this work it is reflected in the collective. Together we can create a tipping point and shift the balance towards healthier emotional expression and taking responsibility for ourselves throughout the collective.