Guilt. shame. Pain.
Who hasn’t felt them from time to time, still all such emotions have got a really bad reputation among us humans.
Our common response to these feelings is to get rid of them or to keep lingering on them but both the ways are neither healthy nor fruitful for our emotional and mental well-being.
If we have negative emotions, there is a purpose of them.
If you remember the children movie – “Inside out” where a young girl is going through many emotions and she realises that every emotion serves a deeper purpose in her life.
The purpose Sadness served was this – to let her and others know that she is not okay right now. She is not happy with certain things in life, she needs to do something about it and that she needed help.
Sometimes an emotion can make you realise very deep stuff about yourself. Only if you are aware enough to listen deeply and get motivated to change things.
Negative emotions are there for a feedback.
The purpose of feelings is to feel them. And also help you understand yourself deeply in the process of experiencing and navigating them fully with vulnerability and no judgement.
Let’s explore these feelings wholeheartedly and see how you can harness them to evolve in life…
Guilt and Shame
Guilt occurs when you have done something that you think you shouldn’t have done, something against your value system. You’ve betrayed someone or you’ve been inauthentic in some way.
First, you need to have a reality check that you have really done something wrong or not.
If yes, a healthy amount of guilt can help you bring on the right track, to take authentic, conscious action.
Whenever you have guilt and shame, they are calling forth your higher awareness to recognise the reality of who you want to be.
To accept that whatever you did in the past was your best at that moment and now, you are a different person and certainly more aware.
You need to awaken to the reality and tell yourself this –
“Guilt is there to bring you awareness, and not to punish yourself.”
Shame occurs when you feel that you are deficient or foolish in some way and non-worthy of what you desire, whether it’s love or respect.
Shame can make you feel very vulnerable and it can be toxic and damaging to your confidence if you keep on lingering on it without questioning whether it’s true or not.
But if you challenge your thought process and work through it, to know yourself deeply; you can become a highly aware person and start accepting yourself the way you are.
Suffering or pain can be because someone else did something wrong with you or did something that you didn’t expect them to do or you think, that they’ve done wrong to you.
Even though, that might not be the complete truth.
If chanelled rightly for spiritual and mental growth, it can lead you to a higher level of understanding and compassion towards yourself and others.
But usually, that’s not the case.
Because if you keep on feeling guilt for long, then you start becoming ok with your guilt, you even start enjoying self-loathing, on a subconscious level.
For your Ego Mind, thinking about your guilt is itself an action; hence there’s no need or motivation to take any further action.
Emotions are E-Motion, energy into motion.
They come and go. The reason most people feel crippled by their emotions is that they don’t feel it fully.
Because the truth is if you allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling, the feeling will go.
It is like a body sensation which is never forever, always fleeting.
What we do is this – we start feeling a negative emotion like guilt and then we create a huge story about it in our head, which creates self-pity, self-loathing, low self-esteem, low self-confidence with thoughts like this –
Why did I do what I did? (or someone else)
Why couldn’t I understand this before?
How is it impacting me and others?
How is it ruining mine or someone else’s life?
Our mind keeps on thinking repeatedly, on and on…. non-stop.
Now you are not feeling the emotion any more, rather you are indulging into self-criticism, self-blame, self-pity, blaming the other or whatever it is.
Your Ego mind really enjoys all these Victim-Blame stories. And you keep repeating these stories in your head and get stuck with them.
How to channel these emotions and start utilising them for your best use?
First and foremost, sit in stillness with yourself for a few minutes. Notice what do you feel.
When you feel something, be present with the feeling, notice where in your body you feel that.
What kind of sensations it brings. dull, sharp, heavy, hard or something else?
Give yourself permission to feel this fully. Aloow the feelings to pass through you, do not judge them.
Once you’ve felt whatever you’re feeling whether guilt / shame / pain ask yourself these questions:
What did I learn about myself through this experience?
How can I best respond to it rather than reacting?
In which areas of my life do I need to grow?
Do I want to come out stronger or weaker? Better or bitter because of this?
What kind of person do I want to become now?
What can I do to become that person?
What help do I need to become more self-aware?
Once you get the answers, just take action without any delay.
Your Guilt, Shame and Pain can help you realise the deeper truth about yourself, that you might not be aware of before.
It can help you practice self-acceptance and compassion and become a more empathic, kind and loving person.
Harness the power of all your emotions.
Much love.