I used to discount emotions in every way you can imagine. They didn’t make sense to me and I believed they were something I needed to control. They showed up at inconvenient times, they were unpredictable, and I didn’t know how long they would last. Worse, I didn’t know what they would make me do. I blamed my emotions for raging and screaming at people that I loved, and lost more trust with myself every time I did. Or, equally terrible, I would suddenly find myself crying in front of people (the horror!), sometimes for unknown and inexplicable reasons. I still struggle to cry in front of people, but at least I don’t judge it as horrible to do so anymore.
Since I couldn’t control my emotions, somewhere along the way I began stuffing and hiding them away. It became so thorough, that I began to not know how I felt. And if I did know how I felt, I didn’t know what it was called. I am still learning how to name my emotions. The problem with this choice to stuff away my emotions, is that it suppresses happiness, joy, enjoyment-type of emotions as well. The cost of this choice is quite high in my opinion. How is one to have a life full of happiness, when one stuffs the emotion of happiness and can’t even feel it? Doh!
In spiritual healing school, during demos, instructors would ask the client to identify their emotions, and even where the emotion was located. Initially, I found that confusing. So what if someone has an emotion, what use is that to know? But I watched, as my instructors used that information to go deeper into the issue and eventually, it always lead to important information. I was puzzled. Then Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” was read to me, – over and over and over and over again. To read that story and the tool I gained to help me sit with my emotions, click here. I eventually had the epiphany I was looking for.
Emotions, our heart, has it’s own logic. It’s just like the brain, our intellect has its own logic. Our heart has it’s own logic with it’s own messaging system. That’s what Rumi is saying to me in that poem. In spiritual healing sessions, or any kind of self-growth work, our emotions always have a message hidden away in them. I learned, ahem - the hard way - ahem, that if I don’t acknowledge, listen or address the message tucked away in the emotion, it just sits there. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t just die or fade away. It doesn’t get less annoying or become less of a nuisance. It just isn’t insistent, until it gets triggered at some future time – BY THE SAME EMOTION. For example, if I have unprocessed grief and then I am triggered into new grief, let’s say for instance by the death of someone else, I now begin to feel the combined grief of the current situation and the old situation. WHAT?! That sounds so terrible! And, that’s the consequence of not dealing with my emotional health and trying to stuff it away. It’s like our physical health. If we neglect it and make unhealthy choices, eventually, the consequences get bigger and bigger until we can no longer ignore it.
I learned in medical school, some patients hear you when you explain the consequences of diabetes, when their blood sugar is just a little two high. And some hear you when their blood sugar is super high, and they don’t know how to manage it well to the point that they feel sluggish, tired and off. And some just won’t hear you until their second amputation. Shocking and yet we have to respect where people are at in their life journey. What they can hold and what they cannot in any given moment. And it’s the same thing with our emotional health.
We have to respect where people are at in their life journey.
What they can hold and what they cannot in any given moment.
I was not ready to help myself after leaving home and going to college. I wasn’t ready to take care of my emotional health in my post baccalaureate training. I wasn’t even ready while in medical school. It was inconvenient, nor did I have the emotional tools to do so. I didn’t hear it until I was desperate, basically until I was facing a metaphorical amputation (loss of my marriage).
Even though my worst fear of that time did eventually come to pass six years later, I gained much in the journey of trying to avoid it, including the motivation, tools and strength I needed to finally learn to take care of my emotional health. I attended spiritual healing school, and learned tools and developed the strength I needed to take care of my spiritual health. Along the way I’ve picked up tools and skills to help others take care of their own emotional and spiritual health. The journey has been well worth it so far, and it’s only been seven years.
I feared that if I felt certain, painful emotions, it might never end.
One of the things I feared in experiencing my emotions was that if I felt certain, painful emotions, it might never end. I feared an emotion could or would be endless. I was reassured by people who knew, and then learned from experience myself, emotions only “don’t end” when we don’t listen to the message they hold. When I’m willing to experience and move through the emotion, the emotion indeed does end, every time. I just needed to learn how to do that. It was a relief to learn and witness that reality consistently. I trust it now as fact.
The realization that my emotional world was logical, but in its own way, was huge for me. It helped me to respect the emotional world and to stop judging myself for my emotions. It helped me to become curious about what Allah has made in us. Why did He give us emotions? What are the purposes of our emotions? It must be important and a source of mercy if He gave it to us.
In Islam, the heart is what we are judged by on Judgment Day, not our minds or intellect, and our emotions are assigned to the realm of our heart. They must be very important indeed. I agree with what Rumi shares in his poem, that our emotions are messages for us. When I first decided to try that idea on for me, I learned to become curious about what the message was, and patient with its delivery. I used to spend so much time and energy judging, burying, despising and pushing my emotions away, that it took time to rebuild the trust with myself. Yes, I finally wanted to know and hear what my emotions had to say. It may sound crazy, because it would have to me ten years ago, and yet it’s the truth of my very human experience. So far, every emotion has carried a message for me. Thanks to my emotional and spiritual healing training, I understand how to interpret it and have the tools to discern what needs to happen for healing to proceed.
The Only Way Out is Through it
Our emotions are messages for us. I learned to become curious about what the message was and patient with its delivery.
So yes, I have learned and witnessed that emotions do have their own logic. It’s not just mine, but every client, classmate, friend or family member that I have supported through something emotional, I have found consistently that our emotions can hold the key to healing and the doorway to finding peace. “The only way out is through it.” is extremely applicable here. It can be painful, scary, hard and it’s always been so worth it for me every time. Moving forward, I am curious about one thing though. Can happiness trigger historical happiness? Or is happiness so pleasurable, we don’t hold onto it to trigger it? I look forward to finding out.
Peace and Light,
Mariam-Saba
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