Hidden Factors in our Emotions

We're going to talk today about emotions and feelings. And I know it's not all sunshine and rainbows, clouds and puffy fun. We're going to talk about emotions because when I'm dealing with the nervous system, I'm all about Clinical Nutrition, Neuroscience, and Psycho-neuro-immunology: how thoughts and feelings create the nervous system's directions and messages that then reach the immune system and the cells in the rest of the body.

I can say for a fact that the number one thing we don't do well is help people or learn ourselves how to manage emotions.

And I don't even mean manage emotions like, let's lift the good ones and push away the bad ones. I mean, learn from our emotions—what can we understand about our emotions when they come up?

So let's put that in context a little; Emotions are a toolkit.

They are there, just like symptoms are, to give us information.

If we're experiencing feelings that don't make us feel great and don't bring us a sense of peace, it's like an alert or a dashboard signal telling us that we need to pay attention to something that is causing us to feel imbalanced or off track. Often, we skew emotions because we've labeled them as either good or bad.

I know many of our clients, and probably a lot of you out there as well, have been taught that it's not okay to get angry.

Anger is considered a bad emotion, and we've labeled it as such. Consequently, when we feel anger, we don't know what to do with this emotion, and we try to push it away.

And I'm going to tell you, when we're working with clients and doing the psycho-neuro-immunology timeline, we're looking for the experiences that the nervous system has recorded. When you do any good counseling, hypnotherapy, or regression work, you're always looking for what started the symptoms. So it's basically the same thing.

We're looking back on the timeline of the nervous system to see where it got off track. We're searching for the point where something got recorded that has now become an inappropriate mechanism, a maladaptive strategy. So, we need to pay attention to the emotions as they come up because we don't want to have to heal them later.

Twenty years down the road, when we don't understand why we're experiencing phobias, fears, or nervousness about certain things, we don't want to have to try to go back into the psyche, into the subconscious, and figure them out.

We need to teach people and learn ourselves how to handle our emotions as they come up and what we can learn from them. Instead of dismissing your feelings, notice what you're feeling about your feelings. For instance, if anger comes up and you think, 'Oh, I'm not supposed to be angry,' your brain may say, 'Block it, block it!' Or if sadness arises, you might think, 'I don't want to be sad; I'm a positive person,' and you try to push it away and pretend it doesn't exist. But it's essential to address and understand these emotions.

There is such a thing as toxic emotion, toxic positivity.

If you're feeling it, feel it so that you can identify why you're feeling it, and then work on that underlying reason. Every emotion has specific usefulness as well. It's not just about venting or getting the emotion out, although that can be a part of it to some extent. However, that's not the real purpose behind it.

Every emotion has something that is powerful and useful for you.

So, anger, for example. We've been talking about anger quite a bit already. Anger, for example, is an emotion that provides motion, and sometimes that is exactly the appropriate emotion to have. When you've been sad or depressed, you tend to want to curl into a ball, stay in your house, tuck under the blankets, bring your hands to your face, cry, and seek shelter. You pull away and want to be alone.

That's typically what comes along with sadness. It's a very regressive emotion, and that might be what's necessary at the right time.

However, having an emotion like anger that provides motion can prompt action to happen.

Sometimes, that might be exactly what's needed. It's no longer right for you to hunker in, pull aside, and dive under the covers, staying in your house. Sometimes, you need an emotion that gets you up, out, and moving. Even if you make the wrong decisions, at least you're moving. Now, you can utilize your conscious mind to decide what you want to do with the anger you feel.

A phrase to remember is “emotion creates motion”.

You just need to learn to examine what kind of motion it is bringing you when you're feeling sadness and it's compelling you to want to be alone and hide under the blankets.
Now, you can address it and ask yourself, 'Why do I feel like hiding? What am I hiding from? What do I not want to face? Or am I just giving myself some self-care, acknowledging that I really do need some alone time or just need to feel this feeling of sadness?’ I know I'm going to be okay, but I need this right now. Then, I'll get up and get moving again, allowing a different emotion that provides a different kind of motion. We need to understand our emotions better.

There is a difference between action and reaction.

And I want you to understand that because that is where the scary emotions come from—those emotions that we're taught are bad, and we're told not to act on them. However, they're truly not bad to act on; that's just what we've been taught. When we take action, it involves examining the options, considering the choices, and deciding on a course of action. On the other hand, reaction occurs when you don't have the forethought or take the time to use your conscious mind; you simply respond impulsively. And that response may not necessarily be appropriate.

Here's an example: Your child does something that angers or scares you, and you quickly do an action like a SWAT on the behind or something that you haven't thought out. That is a reactive emotion. Those are the ones that we want to pay attention to. Again, it does not need to be labeled as good or bad; it just needs to be understood. Why did I feel like I had to have that quick response? Was it an appropriate quick response? How can I respond differently next time if I find myself in this situation?

There is an emotional hierarchy—an emotional change chart that is very useful, which we go through when coaching our clients here in the office or in our programs. What I like about it is that it lists emotions according to their vibration. Emotions like despair, guilt, and grief are some of the lowest vibrational emotions on the scale.

Again, it does not mean they're good or bad, but you can take a look at them and ask yourself, “Is this a supportive vibratory pattern for me right now? Is this where I want to stay? Is there a purpose for this vibratory pattern right now?” And then it moves up the scale all the way to joy, hopefulness, and love. But you'll notice on the chart that anger is somewhat in the middle, and yet worry is a step above anger. So even if we're feeling anger, we can't just say, 'Okay, I'm not going to be angry and be happy.' That doesn't really happen that way.

We have the emotion for a reason, it wants us to pay attention to it.

So even if we can just understand what I identify as anger, I acknowledge that that's how I'm feeling right now. Let's see if I can get up to just the next step. I don't have to get all the way up to happy, joy, and love. But let's just see if I can get up to that next step, and it might be worry or disappointment. So when we're talking about psychoneuroimmunology, just a reminder: everything that you experience is recorded by the nervous system as an experience. Your emotions are incredibly tied to that.

In fact, when we're working on dementia or Alzheimer's with some of our clients, I talk to them about feeling and living with all five senses. Because the more you engage the senses, the more likely you are to build neurons and retain that memory. So we work on the practice of trying to smell the experience, trying to taste the experience, trying to feel the experience emotionally, and trying to feel it texturally. The more we can engage the senses, the more perceptions we create, leading to more neurons, and the memory sticks better in the brain. It's the same with emotions. The more emotional an experience is, the more you remember it.

So you wonder why we remember the highs and the lows of our life so well. It's because they were very emotional; they needed to have us pay attention, and our nervous system is going to remember them. So when you're going through an experience, you're going to remember everything about it.

If you're eating an apple (I've used this example before), your body is going to record everything. It's going to record the enzymes needed to process that apple, the taste, the texture, and even the sound of the apple. However, it's also going to record the man yelling at you while you're eating the apple, and the stress hormones that are created due to the yelling.

So the next time an apple comes into the body, the nervous system, without you knowing it, remembers the entire experience. You might start feeling anxiety and have no idea that it's running in your background.

So, being aware and mindful of how your body is responding, ask yourself: are you in a place of peace? What emotions are you feeling in this present moment? Are your shoulders raised? Are you feeling tension in your muscles? If you are experiencing anything other than a state of peace physically and emotionally, ask yourself these questions.

These are some of the significant things that are behind some of the hidden factors why we experience certain symptoms.

The longer we're in that non-aligned state, that non-peaceful state, that tense state, the less our body is able to function on a physical level. They cannot be separated.

You cannot have a physical body that does one thing and an emotional body that does another thing. It just doesn't happen that way. And we need to start paying attention to this nervous system-recorded experience and how it influences the rest of our body if we want to be truly well.

We're going to be putting out a brand new book, Health Clues Unveiled.

I'm super excited about that one. We also have our brand new online program, which is available only online and not offered in any of the clinics, called our Hidden Health Clues Intensive.

So keep listening and watching our ANMC Holistic Health Facebook page and Instagram for details on those two new wonderful things as they come in.