How do you navigate difficult emotions?

[Gillian Florence]

This week's question asks:

How do you navigate difficult emotions?

One of the reasons that so many of us come to mindfulness is to better manage our emotions. So this week, I invite us to share any tips, resources, or insights we have about the topic. What helps you to find your inner peace when tricky emotions rise to the surface?

[jeffrey108miller@gmail.com]

I’ve trained to just observe and note the somatic / feltsense movements that precede and activate emotions as they occur and as they do what they do: generate, peak, degenerate, dissolve and pass ... without merging with / identifying as / wrapping up in / conceptually embellishing them.
 

Emotions are important gauges and indicators that we can learn from without being dragged around / under by them.

[Gillian Florence]

Thanks Jeffrey! In a similar way, I often inquire with myself, 'What is actually here?' As I watch the body, those sensations (whatever they are) start to dissipate - sometimes quickly, sometimes with a little more patience.

When the emotions are really strong, I reaffirm, "It's okay for you to be here" and take a more loving mother approach. I also really like Tara Brach's RAIN meditations.

[Gillian Florence]

I came across this poem by Rumi this morning and thought I'd share it here as it goes hand in hand with welcoming difficult emotions:

The Guest House

Translated by Coleman Barks

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/guest-house/

[Lena Kim]

I find visualizations helpful- breathing into the difficult emotion, imagining a calming, healing light growing around the emotion tends to reduce its power over me. I've also been playing around with a "popping bubble" visualization (with the emotion or the physical pain being a bubble that is popped by breath) but not finding it AS helpful... just offering as a suggestion!

[Gillian Florence]

On 7/24/2020 at 7:11 PM, lenakim70@hotmail.com said:

I find visualizations helpful- breathing into the difficult emotion, imagining a calming, healing light growing around the emotion tends to reduce its power over me. I've also been playing around with a "popping bubble" visualization (with the emotion or the physical pain being a bubble that is popped by breath) but not finding it AS helpful... just offering as a suggestion!

Thanks Lena!