I am a highly sensitive person (HSP), and my zodiac sign is cancer, which means I am all EMOTION.
From an early age, I had to deal with my feelings and emotions, to be a functional human in society. Otherwise, it would have had me curl into a ball every time a difficult emotion was happening.
Add to that a high level of empathy, the ability to sense what others are feeling, and I had to develop a system for myself, to not get drained or absorbed in others’ emotions.
I called it an “emotion workshop” because I took the emotion, every time I felt it, and explored it from different points. First I felt it, I brought my attention to it (awareness), and I let it be and felt it as much as possible. Sometimes dwelled in it for days, sometimes a matter of hours.
After dwelling, I started to ask questions about it. Where is it coming from, to which memories is it connected? Where do I feel this emotion in my body, how often do I feel it, and at what intensity? When does it occur, how do I react, what can it serve? Do I want to do something to change how I perceive things in order to manage the intensity of this emotion? Do I feel comfortable with this emotion and don’t need to do anything else?
If I decide I want to change my intensity or perception, I keep doing more exploration.
For example with the emotion of envy, I read a lot about it and raised my own self-esteem, so I could accept other people being better than me or my perception of them and myself. My approach to competition and variety of human behavior and skills, and my approach to life in general, were all under scrutiny. As a result, I ended up feeling good with envy, feeling good with my perception of others and myself. I discovered a new point of view I could live life through. It helped me feel this emotion in a more ‘manageable’ way. (I wrote about my workshop with envy here https://tinyurl.com/yrj4v8av).
When I describe the work I do with emotions or the fact I even call it work and connect it with something that is so formless or intangible, people often get confused. People also don’t like when I call it ‘work’, because often work is associated with other earthly things.
Another thing that confuses people is if I try to diminish the emotion, as it doesn’t seem to be humane or possible.
And that is true. That is not what I’m trying to do, or more accurately, I thought I can and of course, discovered that there is no such thing as controlling our emotions. That’s why I call it managing. I also don’t try to diminish completely an emotion, rather work with it, and lower its intensity on the scale of how I feel it.
Emotions can be beneficial, anger serves to point somewhere we want a change, and envy points somewhere we strive to be. There is also learning in accepting an emotion as is without managing it. We can’t and are not supposed to live our lives emotionless. But if you are like me, an HSP and an empath, it helps.
If you are not like me, it can also help 😊 as you are, like all of us, a human being with emotions. Learning to be aware and manage our emotions is a tool everyone can benefit from in the day-to-day.
Maybe I’ll call it Emotion exploration/inquiry, instead of work. I just love doing this kind of work, so I don’t care so much to use this word.
Let me know what you think of all this :) and what is your favorite way to call it?
Pic by Nick Fewings/ Unsplash
