“They’re too emotional.” “Sorry, I’ve come over all emotional.” Have you heard words like these? Why are we describing emotions as “too much” and apologising for them?
What is strange about this, is that our emotions are exactly what we need, that tells us we are alive and interacting with the world around us. Emotions are vital, essential, necessary and precious, valuable parts of ourselves. We feel emotions all the time and this is what we are supposed to feel.
When events, words and actions happen, we feel something. We feel because we have sensitivity and nervous systems, muscles and organs connected up with fascia. In other words, our bodies sense things and they react. This is perfectly normal and valuable. Without sensitivity, we would be blank and unfeeling. Sensitivity is definitely a profound intelligence and needs to be treasured and noticed all the time.
In the traditions and cultures of human beings, we have suppressed and judged as negative, the fact that we sense all of what’s going on around us and trained ourselves to push it down and out of the way. One reason is that the brain-in-the-head has been given greater prominence and value than the brain-in-the-body: the head-brain tries to control anything that feels uncomfortable as “dangerous.” So we’ve learned to push away our beautiful feelings as problems that need fixing, which is a denial of our humanity right there. People whose pattern is to lash out their feelings into energetic behaviour tend to dominate, because often their behaviour is violent and society sees this as strong. I do not see this as strong. I see it as using power to crush others i.e. brutality. Our fantastic sensitivity is a wise and creative gift and we need this to be loving, relational, aware, connected and interconnected beings. We need our sensitivity to relate with ourselves, each other and the world in such a way that attends to everyone and sustains everyone. All the other ways end up with people being hurt and the world endangered.
I am in favour of learning to enjoy our innate sensitivity and un-learn the idea that it’s weak or negative. What has your sensitivity shown you today? Do you feel a tension, a relaxation, a warmth, a sinking, a heaviness, a lightness? That’s your body, sensing the world. Beautiful!