Cope with unspoken words and unresolved emotions

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment

Lao-Tzu

We all know that emotions can deeply impact the way we feel, behave and go through life. After all, humans are emotionally driven species. An emotion attached to a life event can shape our future and the way we dream, develop and succeed in life. Think about how impactful bulling is on the develop of child and how these emotions might affect him/her in the adulthood. Words we say or things we do to someone can have a significantly higher impact on someone’s life beyond our conscious understanding.

Life events are often linked to emotions. Think about the joy you felt when your first child was born. The happiness of finally getting your college degree. The pride of seeing your art exposed into a gallery. But also, the sadness related to the loss of someone we loved or the peace experienced a walk in the woods. To add an extra dimension, think about all the nicknames overweight kids get labeled with at school. There are words that will resonate in the child’s mind over and over. And unless these words, and related emotions, get released this child will struggle to get detached from these labels across his entire life. Once I heard the quote “do not let someone’s opinion become your reality”. Despite the power and truth of these words, it is not always easy to put them into practice unless we find the way to release emotions at the unconscious level. 

To understand what the unconscious mind is, it can be helpful to compare the mind to an iceberg. Everything above the water represents conscious awareness while everything below the water represents the unconscious. Whereas things we are aware of are “the tip of the iceberg”, there is information outside of our conscious awareness that lies below the surface. Unconscious thoughts, beliefs, and feelings can potentially cause a number of problems including anger, distress or relationship problems.

It all starts by understanding that negative emotions and negative thoughts can be very harmful to all dimensions of our well-being: spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. Unless there are some underlying mental issues, I believe that it is no one’s intention to produce thoughts that make us depressed, unhappy or sad. It is not intentional to turn ourselves down, decrease our chances to realize a dream or achieve a goal. But yet, this happens all the time.

The generation of negative thoughts and emotions thereof is often driven by our unconscious mind. Since we tend to ignore our unconscious mind, it will keep on generating thoughts and emotions in response to what we think of ourselves but also what inputs it receives from families, peers, work, society and the overall world surrounding us. Have you ever heard the expression “to making an impactful change in your life, start by removing negative people from your circle”? Well, now you know where this saying comes from.

To start understanding what is hindering your motivation or preventing you from taking actions to accomplish certain goals, it is essential to look into the part of your life that is in disharmony. Whether it is your job, your relationship, your overall sense of happiness or fulfillment. You know that something is wrong but most likely you do not know what is causing this imbalance. 

Many of us feel financially trapped in a reality they do not want to be in. Likewise, many hate their job and every morning when the alarm goes off, they wish it was a dream. What about feeling unhappy with your appearance? Basically, we know that something is wrong but there is a high chance that we have no idea what is causing this unhappiness. Most people run throughout the day with their fingers crossed hopping for something to fall out of the sky or wishing to win a lottery that will take care of the bills. To tell the truth, everyone has more chances to succeed in life by investing in themselves and solving their problems within than just hopping or wishing for life to change.

Life is not a straight line and how we feel strongly depends on how we react to everyday struggles. It is easy to complain, blame others and believe that the world is a bad place. However, this will not change our circumstances. On the contrary, we will feed our mind with negative thoughts, excuses and self-imposed limitations allowing our unconscious mind to surface our weakness and negative thoughts over and over.

Life is challenging but not necessarily cruel or against us. If you are not failing, you are not even trying to make any changes. It is through failure that we succeed, learn and become stronger individuals. Feelings like anger, fear or grief serve a useful purpose when present in our life as a momentary response to certain events. For instance, when you are faced with aggressive behavior, anger provides a way to express our disapproval and set boundaries. Fear can act as a lifesaving mechanism, triggering the fight or flight mode, providing us with the extra energy and strength we need at the moment of a dangerous situation. Whatever happened or happens in your life, a healthy response, expression and release of emotions will allow you to return quickly to the balanced person you were before the occurrence.

The unfortunate side of the story is that many of us are not able to release these emotions easily. As a result, emotions and negative thoughts get stuck and frequently repressed within us. The result; a large variety of imbalances affecting several dimensions of our life. Think about all you would like to say to an unfair boss but you do not dare because of fear of losing your job. This is a simple yet very common scenario filled with unspoken words and unresolved emotions within us including fear, anger, disappointment, distress, worry and so on. Imbalances one can experience in adulthood can also be the result of traumatic or difficult situations experienced during childhood. This is why many adults react to life events similarly to children when trying to deal with a complex world they do not fully understand.

We can try to visualize unresolved emotions as bags of trash. Instead of disposing them, our tendency is throwing them behind us hoping that as we move forward in life, these bags will slowly disappear in the distance to a point we do not longer see them. Unfortunately, it does not always work this way. Our unconscious mind is very efficient at collecting the trash bags we left along the way and like a computer, pieces of these bags will be efficiently stored with the relative emotions until we decide to deal with them. Have you ever experienced flash backs from the past making you wonder “where is that coming from and why?”. Well, now you know. We should ask ourselves “how much trash am I carrying along my life?”

As mentioned before, our unconscious mind reacts to inputs we receive from the outside world and if we do not pay attention to the quality and type of these inputs, our behaviors can be biased in reaction to ideas and experiences we pick from influential people around us. In today’s world dominated by social media and advanced marketing strategies, no wonder why many of us run into automatic pilot in carrying out many day-to-day activities and choices. Think about it next time you go grocery shopping or buy some clothes or define what the “ideal” physical appearance is. What about the next car you want to buy? How much have your surroundings influenced your choices? 

Usually, we feed our unconscious mind with negative thoughts. It is easy to say to ourselves how badly we perform at school, how financially broke we are. Frequently we repeat the words “I cannot”, how bad my health is, and much more. The worst part is that we tend not to be accountable for certain situations but we blame it on others. We continuously program ourselves with things we tell ourselves.

The first step to reverse this “self-destructive” behavior is to be aware of what we feed our mind with. Buy a diary and use it as a journal. Record all the emotions you are currently dealing with and what stops you from feeling happy, joyful, fulfilled and free in all dimensions of your life. Do not rely on your memory. Write things down because only then can you critically look at each emotion, events and facts. Check what stressed you yesterday or the week before that and compare it to what is stressing you today. Do you see patterns? Is it a person? Is it a place? Is it an event from your past? Once you can identify what creates imbalances in your life, you are on your journey to make a significant difference to becoming what you wish to become tomorrow. The second step to consider is to watch your inner conversations and be mindful of what you feed your mind with. The next time you think “I cannot” correct to “how can I?”. The next time you say to yourself ” it is impossible for me to….”, correct and say out loud “it is possible for me to…”.

Take control of your thoughts and remind yourself that you are capable of doing whatever task you want to take up. Take the courage face unresolved emotions and be humble to ask for help in case you are not cable of doing that on your own.

Now, take a deep breath and go after your dream.