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One of my biggest challenges in life, has been learning to cope with feeling overwhelmed with emotions. For many years, I thought that emotions needed to be split into positive emotions and negative emotions. And with that in mind, I also thought that I was only allowed to experience the positive ones, in order to classify as a decent human being.
The truth is, that feeling anything that my mind would classify as a negative emotion, made me feel ashamed. I'd start asking myself things like... ''What´s wrong with me? Why do I feel this way? Why do I feel sad? Why do I feel angry? Why do I feel ungrateful? What do I have to do to stop feeling overwhelmed with these emotions?'' And I would in an instant feel ashamed for not being able to quickly drive myself into a state of happiness, joy and freedom.
I finally figured it out
Fast forward to today, after five years embracing and welcoming into my everyday life, spirituality, mindfulness and compassionate observation of my inner world, I can say that now I do know how to drive myself into that state of happiness, joy and freedom that we all desire.
But more important than that, what I found out, is that my mistake wasn't in wanting to experience more of those feelings, but in my approach to do so.
See my love, neglecting your feelings won't take you anywhere. You can desire all the love and light in the world for yourself and for your life. But as long as you let the fear of facing your darkness drive your attention, you'll be stuck in the feeling of being overwhelmed with emotions that you so much desire to escape.
Find light through the darkness
The only way to the light, is through the darkness. And I say this to you, while currently feeling the light of my soul warming my being, but also after experiencing profound emotional pain during long hours of countless tears drying my eyes and running down my cheeks.
The answer to the question ''why am I so overwhelmed with emotions?'' is simple and ironic at the same time. The reason why you're overwhelmed with emotions, is that you're a multidimensional being with multiple layers of feelings and emotions, which more often than not, manifest themselves in you, simultaneously. What's ironic about this, is that if you're open and willing to let the emotions flow through, regardless of how uncomfortable and painful they may be, then this act of unconditional love and acceptance toward your feelings, will elevate your awareness to a place where the overwhelming aspect of it, dissolves.
However, if you resist the emotions that are trying to flow through you, because the part of you who's afraid of being identified with them is ruling where you direct your focus, then the feeling of being overwhelmed with emotions will become stronger by the minute.
You can't eliminate your multidimensionality
See, you don't stop being a multidimensional being just because you want to. You won't just stop experiencing grief, pain, frustration, disappointment and sadness, just because you want to feel happy. In fact, you'll finally feel a true sense of joy, happiness and peace, after you allow yourself to explore the grief, pain, frustration, disappointment and sadness that's trying to flow through you.
And right now, you may be wondering why. You may be asking yourself... ''but Mary, how is it that opening myself to the pain, can bring joy to me?'' And that, my love, is an amazing question, that I'm delighted to answer for you.
See, we can only experience true joy, happiness and fulfilment, when we allow ourselves to practice unconditional love and acceptance toward ourselves. And considering that we are multidimensional beings, practicing unconditional love and acceptance toward ourselves, isn't an easy task.
The parts within you
The way in which I like to understand ourselves as multidimensional beings, is by acknowledging our experience as human beings as an experience made of multiple emotional parts. What that means, is that we need to understand three major things.
The first one, is that we're not our emotions. The second one, is that all of our emotions matter. And the third one, is that we can feel way more than one emotion at a time, and that's not just okay, but also what should be expected.
In practical terms, what that means, is that our human experience as multidimensional beings, comprises the existence and requires the acknowledgement of a single human that contains multiple simultaneous emotional parts.
The part of you that feels gratitude for certain things, and the opposite part of it that feels resentment for the things that have still not materialised in your life. There's the part of you that wants to love unconditionally and practice compassion with everyone around you, and the part of you that's afraid of being hurt and is constantly anticipating the worst as a way to try to protect you. There's the part of you that wants to live in the moment and experience life to the fullest, and the part of you that feels like the only way of eventually having the life that you want, is to spend the present moment doing something that you don't love.
Where neglect happens pain arises
And with that being said, there's the part of you that wants coherence, clarity, confidence and direction, which is the same part of you that wants to neglect any other part that causes confusion, divergence or noise. But of course, when your attention is being controlled and driven only by the part of you that's reaching for that coherence and clarity, then all the other parts of you that are feeling scared of the unknown, confused by the present, or guilt or regret about the past, are neglected. They feel unseen and they experience pain.
And while we don't acknowledge the existence of these parts of us that are lying in the darkness at a subconscious level, the pain that they feel, is transferred to us not only as pain, but also as overwhelm. So you end up telling yourself that you're overwhelmed with emotions, and you feel so much shame about it that you do everything you can to push that overwhelm away, but the overwhelm of emotions keeps growing and growing, and you don't know what to do.
What's wrong with me?
All of a sudden, you find yourself saying things like ''I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't feel like myself anymore''. And the reason why you're so overwhelmed with emotions, is simply that you're trying to skip the part of the human experience that implies understanding yourself as a multidimensional being, and you're trying to label and identity your entire being as the embodiment of a single emotion.
You feel excited about a new project and you declare to yourself that you're finally a happy person. And then the next second, you remember that maybe you don't have as many friends right now as you'd like to have, and you feel miserable. So you declare yourself as miserable. But then the next second you think about the fact that you're healthy and somehow financially stable, and then you declare yourself as grateful. But a second later you remember that one of your biggest dreams in life is to be happily married, but you still haven't found the love of your life and you've already been divorced twice at 40. So you declare yourself as hopeless.
Love lies in the acknowledgement
The way to practice unconditional love and acceptance of our multidimensional being, is by simultaneously acknowledging the existence of every part of us, without confusing our essence and full identity with each separate part that lives within us.
See, you're not pain, sadness and disappointment. But parts of you, are experiencing that. So your job as the divine awareness of your human experience, is to go inward, see those parts of you, and make them feel loved and accepted, as a loving parent would make their son or daughter feel.
Try it once
Today my love, I encourage you to sit some minutes either in full silence or playing some nice and comforting music, go within, and see with love and acceptance those parts of you that you've been neglecting.
Acknowledge and send love to the part of you that feels disappointed of where you're at in life. Send love to the part of you that feels scared of what's going to happen this next year and the following decade. Send love to the part of you that's able to enjoy a hot cup of chocolate in the balcony, that part that finds joy in the silliest Netflix reality show, and who gets lost dancing alone in front of the bathroom mirror listening to that 2018 hit that you could never not dance to. Send love to the part of you who's optimistic and believes in you more than anyone else, and also to the part of you who's never been more scared of failing. Send love to the part of you that wants to be mature and give unconditional love to everyone around you, and also to the part of you who's deeply scared of being betrayed and is struggling to identify where it's safe to go and where it isn't.
Send love to every single part of you, even if it's hard for you to understand that all these parts live within you. Send love even to the part of you that doesn't understand the complexity of your multidimensional being. Love it and embrace it all even if you don't like it all. And even send love to that part of you who's struggling to love every part of you. Send love to the part of you that's struggling to love your complexity.
You don't need to be fixed
Take a deep breath in, and for the first time in years maybe, don't try to fix or heal yourself as if you were broken. For the first time in a long time, maybe just try to see those parts of you that just want to be seen, heard, acknowledged and embraced.
And I know trust me, the first time you do it, it can be hard, it can feel awkward and it can be painful. But the more you show up for yourself internally and intimately, the more you strengthen that unconditional love and acceptance muscle, which is the only muscle that will finally get you to experience the joy and happiness that your soul is after, by helping you navigate and dissipate the overwhelm of emotions that you feel.
You're a multidimensional being, which means that you're a complex being. But in navigating that complexity, you'll notice, that sooner than you think, by acknowledging the noise, you'll have risen above the noise, and you'll find, that peace and quiet were patiently waiting for you to arrive.
Love,
Mary.
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