Part one: Identification with Emotion,
by Victoria Nickisson, Life Coach and NLP Practitioner.
This article is the first in a series that deals with how we identify ourselves and what issues affect us causing joy or pain, with the intention of helping you find balance and your compass, so that you can find a healthy identification of who you are. Identification with our emotional state is done without question. But do we know the true impact of this?
A thought: Have you ever found that you can observe yourself think? Who is that? What does that mean actually if you are thinking but you are also observing?
These questions have brought about many philosophical questions and debate about the mind and its identity and its relationship with the self. In this article, I am not going to get too deep into these questions, but they will remain a focus over the series.
Hi! I am Victoria, and I am a Life Coach.
There are some phrases we are so used to saying that we don’t consider the level of truth in them. We say them without thinking and we never consider what it means to us and how it impacts our belief system about ourselves. Before I get into these phrases, I need to lay a foundation of how we get to our identity, not the healthy way but the way in which almost everyone does.
So, the fundamental driving force behind our behaviour is our belief system. I am not talking religion here, although it can play a huge role, I am talking about belief about everything we experience in life. As babies, we develop filters in our mind which shape our perception of reality. Those filters are informed by many things to name a few: parents, siblings, friends, teachers and life experiences. Belief systems are developed as experiences and filters are reinforced, and so we are shaped into a human being with an underlying personality, gifted with layers of thoughts and beliefs.
It is sad that many of us grow up learning constructs of ‘truth’ that are actually not true. We have accepted them as truth because the people we trust have reinforced ‘their’ truth over time and through multiple actions. To add to that, our brains are wired to think negatively and so we gravitate to validating a learned belief. True or not. If your predisposition toward negativity is high, then you are going to have a rough life experience.
All of the above impacts each individual uniquely due to psychological makeup, genetics and experience and reactions to those experiences. It is therefore very true to say that one person’s truth is not the same as another, even if they went through the exact same experience at the exact same time.
With all that said, let us get to these phrases of identification. So, our identity is made up of some critical demographic data like what gender we are, how old we are, where we were born, our education, our body type and size, the colour of our hair, skin and so on. We then can move to more psychographic data where we talk about personality and character traits that are presented through our actions and reactions to life. We sort of, collect all of this information into a concoction of some description of who we are. Typically, when we are introducing ourselves, we tend to reference all of the above and perhaps some additional facts like marriage, children, likes and dislikes etc. But are those facts actually us? I would like us to unpack the conundrum of identity, critically and thoughtfully.
The phrases we often use that I am referring to are those that reference our emotional state. Now, depending on your background and belief you may think that some people are not emotional. Let me debunk that with a swift fact: We all experience emotion. It’s just that some express their emotion externally and others internally in varying degrees. It is usually the soul who expresses their emotion externally that is labelled ‘emotional’. Anyway. Be that as it may, we all experience emotion and when we experience emotion, we say things like:
I am angry; I am sad; I am happy; I am depressed; I am scared; I am anxious.
Think about that for a moment. Think about how you introduce yourself: I am [name]. So, when you state: I am angry…what are you actually saying? What you are actually doing is identifying yourself with your words, as the emotion. That great ‘I am” statement that holds so much power, is thrown around our conversations like it is just an addon to our experience. We show little respect for its value in how we use it.
With these statements, we find every reason to validate our emotional experience giving it impetus with reasoning and facts on why we feel that way and why we are justified to feel that way. And yes, I am also referring to how we use it in a positive sense. Why is that a problem? I am sure I have you bouncing up and down shouting that “surely if it's positive that’s a good thing?” Well no. Any extreme or uncentered emotion is indicative of attachment to the ‘thing’ that caused it. So, let’s just stay with the negative for the moment.
If I say I am angry I give anger permission to take over my ‘Self’. I give it permission to interfere with and taint every experience I have while that emotion is present in me. Watch my language as I write. I am referring to the emotion as a third party…did you notice?
I would like you to try something new. Do you think you can? Just an experiment if you like. I would like you to do this the next time you feel emotion:
Change I am angry to: There is anger. I am sad to: There is sadness. I am happy to: there is happiness; I am scared to: there is fear; I am anxious to: there is anxiety.
Our emotions are not permanent. They move through us like fluid energy. They don’t remain. So how can you identify with them? And if you do, then how unstable is it to identify with something so impermanent as an emotion that could change in an instant? Breath that concept in and out and take it easy as you contemplate what I am saying.
So, there is another statement out there that says: Anger is a choice, happiness is a choice. So how does this fit in with the above concept? Well, consider for a moment that you have a choice as to how you respond to an experience. Our choice lies in our behaviour. Not necessarily in having the emotion. We judge ourselves for feeling anger in a moment and then shove these statements down our judgemental throats saying ‘anger is a choice’ and ‘I choose not to be angry’. We then feel awful as we struggle to rid ourselves of the gripping emotion that we so desperately feel is wrong.
How about, allowing the emotion of anger to come up and then observing it. Watch it and allow it to show you why it is there.
You can never heal from negative emotions if you have no idea why they present themselves to you in the first place. And you cannot know the reason for their existence without self-reflection in a calm and meditative state. This is hard…really hard if you are not well practised in the art of meditation, mindfulness, presence and stillness. This art is one of the critical traits of powerful businessman and leaders. They have coaches teaching them and guiding them through this process so that they don’t spin out of control.
Ok, so why is this necessary for positive emotions then? Well with every negative is a positive right? So, every positive emotion has its opposite. I will dare to say let’s not judge any emotion as positive or negative, energy is energy it has no judgement, it just is. So, if something can make you extremely happy, then the absence of it can make you extremely sad. Right?
And therein lies attachment.
The theme of attachment is massively prevalent in our culture, and I will say to you that it is the cause of much grief and pain. Acquiring that which we are attached to (and it’s not just material things, it is also relationships and psychological addictions too) causes elation and joy. Losing them causes pain. The Buddhists talk about the Middle way. The Christians talk about moderation in all things. There is truth there. In our excessiveness, we create imbalance and therein lies the root cause of suffering.
The prevalent existential crisis that so many people are going through now, is something I have gone through myself. The dark night of the soul, that lead me to where I am today and through which I learned profound principles of truth and understanding that brought me out of pain, and believe me I have suffered loss and tragedy that would scare you. These principles released me from the bondage of a material life and led me to tranquillity and peace, understanding and perspective.
I am here to teach it to you. To take you step by step through your life to help you transcend your constructed self and find the true ‘you’ in the process. A ‘you’ that has always been there but has been smothered by wrong beliefs and desires that do not serve you.
Let me help you release your true potential and master yourself. Let me help you find your diamond within so that you can unleash your own personal power and live a fulfilling life.
Call me on +27 813062828 or email me at victoria@milleniapublishing.co.za
Till next week, live a life filled with light.
Next time we discuss this attachment theme and how we have become addicted to ‘having’ in order to feel a sense of self-worth.
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