Emotional Alchemy - Positive Gifts from Negative Emotions

Anger and sadness feel unpleasant. But using simple techniques to channel the energy of negative feelings can transform them into gifts of strength, safety and optimism.

All emotions give us information. Negative emotions really get our attention, so consider that the information is important! Once we accept the message, the negative emotion can be released and we are left with a positive emotional gift.

We feel emotions in our bodies and how we feel them has a lot to do with our personal boundaries. Think of boundaries as the dividing line between what you consider acceptable and not acceptable in your experience.

I like to think of boundaries as spatial; as if we each have a bubble around us. It makes it easy to imagine improving these boundaries. Such imagining often affects actual experience!

Anger is a signal that personal boundaries have been violated. Heed its message. Strengthen and define your personal boundaries by requesting and expecting respectful behavior from others, or by moving away from disrespectful people and behavior. When you set boundaries, you accept anger’s gift of freedom and safety - regardless of how others respond.

Anger is a forbidden feeling for some of us. Anger denied quickly turns to depression and sadness. When we allow continued trespasses against us, we feel victimized and vulnerable.

Try this technique: When you feel anger welling up in you, imagine it flowing out of your body and lighting up the boundaries of your personal space – about two to three feet outside your body. See these boundaries lighting up with a bright, hot, neon color that says, “No Trespassing!”

If you feel at all victimized and sad, imagine making your personal space bubble larger. Allow the sadness to flow out of your body and out of your space, while continuing to see your boundaries brightly lit.

Sadness is a call to let go of what has disappointed, hurt, or scared you. When you let the energy of sadness release, it creates space for new and hopefully more satisfying experience.

Try this approach to sadness: Feel the sadness in your body and simply relax the muscles where you feel the sadness. You can imagine that you see the sadness un-stick and float away. You can now allow new experiences to unfold. Release the resistance and accept the gifts of hope and optimism sadness leaves when it passes.

Often we are told, “Don’t be so emotional,” so we learn to avoid emotions. Denied emotions do not go away. They actually sit around past their sell-by date and cause resistance and pain. Simply feeling the emotion in the first place is much less painful.

I am not coaching any particular approach to expressing anger or sadness. I coach experiencing them differently. However, when we experience our feelings, we do tend to express them more effectively. It is the repressed emotion that can pop up and trigger intense outbursts that surprise us and those around us – often in disrespectful ways.

Practice feeling and releasing emotions for a week or more. When the cloud cover of denied feelings clears, you uncover the unchanging light within you, which is your source of love.