Do you get lost in your emotions? Or is your tendency to push them away instead? We all go through many emotions during our day. This is crucial for our human experience. Emotions alert us, help us avoid danger, help us make decisions and take action, and help us understand others.

ARE EMOTIONS THE SAME AS FEELINGS?
Emotions are NOT feelings. Emotions are physiological states generated by our subconscious and activated through neurotransmitters and hormones. Feelings are our conscious subjective experiences of those physiological states. There is no such thing as good or bad emotions, only imbalanced and balanced emotions. When our emotions are in balance our health is in balance. But when our emotions become imbalanced, excessive, prolonged, or suppressed, they negatively affect the physiological function of our organs and our body and have a negative impact on our minds. Traditional Chinese medicine recognizes five basic emotions and correlates them with five elements that form the physical body. These are Joy, Sadness, Worry, Fear, and Anger. Each emotion has an affinity with a specific organ, plays a role in its health, and also role in our mind as it helps us to navigate through life.

WE CAN LEARN TO USE OUR EMOTIONS TO OUR BENEFIT
Learning the purpose of our emotions helps us understand how we can harness the same mental energy that creates their excess to our benefit.

ANGER
Anger is connected with our liver and gallbladder and its corresponding element is Wood. Wood represents intelligence and clarity, and its natural movement is growth. Think about a tree seed growing pushing through the soil moving towards the sun. Anger gives us energy that pushes us through resistance so we can grow, gain more confidence, clarity, and vision.

PENSIVNESS, WORRY
Pensiveness, worry, or overthinking is connected with our stomach, spleen, and pancreas, and its corresponding element is Earth. Earth represents practicality and nurturing, has grounding and nourishing qualities and helps us center. A healthy level of worry means we take time to ground ourselves and consider something before we take action.

JOY
Joy is the emotion associated with our heart and small intestine, and connected with the element of Fire. The energy of fire represents wisdom, and has a transformational power that is spiritual in nature. Joy carries the energy that leads us to move outwards and brings us into a heart to heart connection with others. The ultimate expression of joy is bliss, the experience of oneness and connectedness with all that is.

FEAR
Fear is an emotion connected with our kidneys and our bladder. Its corresponding element is Water and represents our inner power, creativity and will. Fear is an essential emotion that gives us the will to survive. Rational fear can save our lives; it can warn us of danger, mobilize us to cope, and also point us in the right direction. It helps us establish appropriate trust and willpower.

SADNESS, GRIEF
Sadness and Grief are emotions associated with our lungs and large intestine. Their element is Metal and represents emotional maturity, grace and supports our ability to let go off our past. Both are important emotions that help us move through life changes and loss. When manifested in a healthy way, they are a beautiful expression of love and teach us and remind us of the strength and beauty of our relationships.

WHY DO OUR EMOTIONS GET OUT OF BALANCE?

Imbalanced emotions, whether the tendency is to stifle them or express them in excess, often come from an unprocessed emotional trauma and our childhood conditioning that shapes our subconscious beliefs about life and ourselves. Our healing and personal growth is therefore dependent on addressing these subconscious levels of our being, but an important part of the journey is our willingness and desire to change, start consciously observing our triggers and take time to reflect on them.

It is important to realize that we often confuse feelings with emotions and get lost in how our mind interprets our emotional states. Some of our emotions, such as excitement and anxiety, can feel very similar in the body and our conscious mind can label them inappropriately.

Maybe the last thing I leave you with today is that behind our so-called negative emotions, whether it’s anger, worry, frustration, and even sadness is usually a deep-seated fear. Taking time to contemplate this and remember this every time you get triggered will help you create more space in the mind to appropriately respond to whatever it is that you are feeling.

As always, if you’re interested to learn more about your own emotional wellbeing and discover and heal old patterns and traumas you can schedule a session with me here.