Limiting Emotions that keep us in 3D

[BHelmet]

Quite telling that this thread has only 29 posts and has been dormant for so long. Thanks for rebooting it.

I think bodily manifestation of limiting emotion is a chicken vs egg deal. Front and back of the hand. The assignment of causality is less important than letting go of the triggering experiences thoughts and tightly held illusions and unexamined assumptions.

 

[Tindaro Martino Curione]

Many years ago, I came across an interesting hypnotherapist by the name of Calvin Banyan, who put forth a fascinating approach to understanding one's feelings, in particular the negative feelings which are universal to us all. His idea was that our feelings are really a language, hence attempting to communicate something of value to us. This may seem obvious, as we have often heard, "your emotions, your feelings are trying to tell you something!" But Banyan, observing the repetition of working with his clients, was able to not only see a pattern, but to also put that pattern into a useful language. So when we feel sadness, for example, the language is, "I have lost something or someone." The remedy would be to ask, "Can I get it back?" If yes, you resolve the sadness. If no, "Can I find a healthy way to let go of what I have lost?"

Banyan went on to identify a list of feelings, and what the emotional pain was attempting to remedy:

1. Boredom - To grow through challenge
2. Anger - To experience fairness for self and others
3. Guilt - To be fair to others
4. Sadness - To keep valued things and people
5. Loneliness - To have meaningful relationships
6. Inadequacy - To feel good enough/adequate
7. Stress - To have success in managing one’s life
8. Fear - To feel safe

These he considered the primary feelings. And when we do not want to deal with these feelings, we seek distractions.



This obviously does not remedy the problem, which leads to what he identified as a secondary feeling, but secondary not in the sense of being of lesser value, but rather secondary in that this feeling follows the primary ones, and that is the feeling of...

9. Frustration - To meet needs through own efforts

Frustration, according to his approach, arises when one fails to address a primary feeling in a healthy way. So if I'm angry, "Someone or something has been unfair to me!" Do I seek justice or do I eat a bowl of ice cream? I eat ice cream, the anger is still there, now I'm frustrated. So I'll go and distract myself some more, which leads to the tertiary feeling of...

10. Depression - To be effective and hopeful

Banyan identifies the feeling of depression as the boiling point in which you are not "listening" to your feeling of frustration, and thus depression is a way of shutting you down, or saying, "STOP, this is working!"




This is a very simplified example of how to he advises people to listen to their negative feelings:

• The Secret Language of Feelings

 

[Tindaro Martino Curione]

...thus depression is a way of shutting you down, or saying, "STOP, this is NOT working!"

 

[Sol Logos]

Many years ago, I came across an interesting hypnotherapist by the name of Calvin Banyan, who put forth a fascinating approach to understanding one's feelings, in particular the negative feelings which are universal to us all. His idea was that our feelings are really a language, hence attempting to communicate something of value to us. This may seem obvious, as we have often heard, "your emotions, your feelings are trying to tell you something!" But Banyan, observing the repetition of working with his clients, was able to not only see a pattern, but to also put that pattern into a useful language. So when we feel sadness, for example, the language is, "I have lost something or someone." The remedy would be to ask, "Can I get it back?" If yes, you resolve the sadness. If no, "Can I find a healthy way to let go of what I have lost?"

Banyan went on to identify a list of feelings, and what the emotional pain was attempting to remedy:

1. Boredom - To grow through challenge
2. Anger - To experience fairness for self and others
3. Guilt - To be fair to others
4. Sadness - To keep valued things and people
5. Loneliness - To have meaningful relationships
6. Inadequacy - To feel good enough/adequate
7. Stress - To have success in managing one’s life
8. Fear - To feel safe

These he considered the primary feelings. And when we do not want to deal with these feelings, we seek distractions.

View attachment 77665

This obviously does not remedy the problem, which leads to what he identified as a secondary feeling, but secondary not in the sense of being of lesser value, but rather secondary in that this feeling follows the primary ones, and that is the feeling of...

9. Frustration - To meet needs through own efforts

Frustration, according to his approach, arises when one fails to address a primary feeling in a healthy way. So if I'm angry, "Someone or something has been unfair to me!" Do I seek justice or do I eat a bowl of ice cream? I eat ice cream, the anger is still there, now I'm frustrated. So I'll go and distract myself some more, which leads to the tertiary feeling of...

10. Depression - To be effective and hopeful

Banyan identifies the feeling of depression as the boiling point in which you are not "listening" to your feeling of frustration, and thus depression is a way of shutting you down, or saying, "STOP, this is working!"


View attachment 77666

This is a very simplified example of how to he advises people to listen to their negative feelings:

View attachment 77667

• The Secret Language of Feelings

I like the idea that emotion is an energy in motion (e-motion). And so, emotion must have weight and a direction. Like you said, there’s a function or purpose to it.

We suppress it by denying it has any weight - “it’s not really that big a deal” and tell ourselves the direction/target is wrong - “I don’t care that much about [change I really want]” or “I don’t have what it takes to make [change I really want] happen” but then it just bottles up, coverts to anger, then we tell ourselves anger is bad, then energy converts to resentment and depression etc.

And then we've learned that expressing emotions is too risky because it threatens how we see ourselves and how others might accept us. Even having a superficial sense of belonging is better than feeling like we don't belong at all.

Facing this reality is so uncomfortable that some of us would rather not exist. It's like admitting that we're fundamentally not accepted or acceptable, which can be really painful. So instead, we've developed long-lasting habits to distance ourselves from the sadness and also the fear of being completely abandoned. In comparison, denying our emotions seems like a much better option.

But it's not a conscious choice; it's more of a survival mechanism that probably developed really early on, during our childhood. However, the big problem is that it becomes harmful when we're adults. It leads to a lot of dysfunction, addiction, broken relationships, putting ourselves in all sorts of dangerous situations to help us deny, dismiss or detune from all that underlying trauma.