DO YOUR EMOTIONAL HOUSECLEANING

Throughout the history of human evolution, emotions have acted as a sophisticated inner guidance system helping us deal with life. They help us survive and thrive in the world and they tell us the truth about what we are feeling. They warn us about possible impending danger and pain. They are the part of us that experiences grief, sorrow and loneliness. They are also the part of us that experiences happiness and contentment.

Interacting with others can trigger strong emotions within us, both positive and negative. Since our emotions function outside the sphere of rationality, they are not logical and we cannot will them away, no matter how hard we try. Instead when we feel triggered and we commit to doing our emotional housecleaning, we move one step closer to understanding the relationship gift under our trigger.

Tips to Facilitate Your Emotional housecleaning Process

There are several tips that can ferret out the gifts under your emotional triggers. (See the book, The Heroic Path to Self-Forgiveness, which has more details about the emotional housecleaning process.)

• Listen to the logic of your emotions. Although our emotions operate outside our rationality, they do have a their own logic. Being open to the language of our emotions and actively listening to what they want to communicate, reduces their intensity. Like children, who want to get a parent’s attention, if we ignore what our emotions have to say, they will get louder and more persistent in an attempt to break through to our conscious awareness. If we chronically ignore our emotions, they may affect us physically, or make us shut down to ourselves and others. Listening to our emotions gives them permission to emerge and opens a doorway into the needs and desires of the deepest and most vulnerable parts of ourselves.

• Feel compassion for your Emotional Self. When dear friends come to us in pain, chances are we listen to what they have to say and we are there for them as they work through the issues associated with their feelings. Having compassion for your Emotional Self is the equivalent of being a best friend to your emotions. The more your emotions can trust you, the more honest they will be about what is really going on inside.

As we do our emotional housecleaning, we begin to relate to others from our Emotional Intelligence. We see more clearly how our emotions and those of others guide each of us in our thinking and behavior. Using our emotional awareness, we clear out what no longer serves us, thought by thought and behavior by behavior. As our inner terrain becomes less cluttered, we become more adept at relating to others from our authentic, undefended and heart-centered Self.  

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