HSP’s: Your Emotions Are Not Toxic!
As someone who is both a trained psychotherapist and an energy healer, I often see clients who are on a spiritual path of some kind. Typically, they or their parents (since I work with children) have been practicing one or more forms of spirituality in their family—from shamanism to reiki to yoga to mindfulness meditation—for many years. One thing I have observed in a number of spiritual practices, and even in some forms of Eastern medicine, is that emotions can be referred to as “toxic” and having a negative impact on our wellbeing. I want to speak to this phenomenon, because I feel it does Highly Sensitive People (HSP’s) and our emotions a great disservice.
Practices that preach about toxic emotions are especially harmful to HSP’s of all ages for this reason: if emotions are seen as a problem, and we as HSP’s tend to feel emotions more deeply, this easily translates into the message that HSP’s are a problem. We see this all the time when people tell HSP’s we are too sensitive, taking things too hard, over-reacting, etc.
I believe that emotions are information, and that even those often referred to as “negative” are not toxic in and of themselves. Emotions give us valuable information about our safety, our environment, our relationships and our own well-being. If they are welcomed and validated, they often pass through us fairly quickly. Young children show us this all the time. One minute they are screaming and crying and the next they are laughing and having fun. Young children show us that emotions can be intense, but they are fleeting. It is only when emotions are pushed away, shoved down, or otherwise invalidated that they have the potential to do harm. When our emotions are not welcome within us, they tend to get projected onto other people and situations, and this causes pain in our relationships and our daily lives. Therefore, it is the disowning of our emotions that results in toxicity. When emotions are honored and nurtured, they have so much to tell us. They connect us to ourselves and others. They help us to feel alive. They are a source of healing and love.
Many adult HSP’s received messages when we were young that our emotions were a big problem for those around us, so we developed ways to work around them. We pretended everything was fine, focused on pleasing others and suffered in silence, only to boil over at a random time (How many HSP’s scream in your car over a minor frustration? Or snap at your kid after a long day at work suppressing your own needs?) Emotions can only be disowned or ignored for so long before they rise up. If we have a longstanding pattern of trying to avoid our emotions, parenting can be especially challenging because our kids have so many ways of triggering us! We know we want to do things differently than our own parents did, but it can be tricky to know where to start. We may find ourselves being afraid to show our emotions to our children or our partners for fear that we will do harm or be harmed. We may also try so hard to focus on the positive that we neglect our own truth and needs.
If this is a struggle for you and/or your child, here are some compassionate strategies to practice:
1. Find ways to ground yourself when you or your child are experiencing an emotion: this may be a visualization exercise that grounds your energy to the earth, going outside to a natural environment, breathing, movement or relaxation exercises (there is a grounding meditation and a relaxation exercise video on my website resources page!). Grounding helps us release any emotional energy that is not ours, as well as calms our nervous system.
2. Ask your body and emotions what information they want you to know. Anger can sometimes indicate that a personal boundary has been crossed, for example. If this is difficult for you, imagine your intense emotion is like a baby, and try to think of what you would say or do when your baby was crying out, and respond to yourself accordingly. Often the way we handle a crying baby in real life is very different than the harsher way we might deal with our emotions. Since our big emotions come from a part of our brain that is very primal, it is better to see them as we see a crying baby than it is to try to rationalize, reframe or push to release an emotion before we know what it signals to us.
3. Ask yourself whether the emotion is only about this situation, or if it resembles other times in your life when you have had this emotion. Often times, if adults or children have experienced trauma or loss, a present time event may trigger a mountain of old feelings related to that past event. If this is happening to you frequently, you may need support to heal from these past events.
4. Ask your body what it needs in relation to this emotion. This could be an infinite number of actions, including reassuring self-talk, breathing, having a good cry, taking a break, setting a boundary, or speaking a truth to someone.
If you feel it would be helpful for you to work with a coach who combines the spiritual lens of energy healing with a trauma-informed approach focused on emotional regulation and psychological healing, I’m here for you! Just as our spirits have important information to guide our lives, so too do our emotions. Often it is the emotions that throw us off the most, whether they are our own or those of our children and/or partners. Working holistically, it is possible to connect with both your emotional intelligence and your spiritual wisdom for lasting healing.
Carolina is an active and proud member of the Sensitive Empowerment Community! Learn more about this wonderful group through Julie Bjelland’s website at https://www.fatfreecartpro.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=342244&c=ib&aff=383793. There are numerous free and paid resources designed to support Highly Sensitive People on this site!
