We've all heard the phrase "good vibes only." Perhaps we've all done our best to live the energy of that phrase, only allowing ourselves to feel positive and not let the bad vibes drag us down. What I like to call the "good vibes only movement" actually ends up being more harmful than helpful, though, and I'm here to introduce why it's important to allow yourself to experience all vibes always.
Good vibes only, or GVO for short, can also be seen as what's called spiritual bypassing and just straight up emotional suppression. Spiritual bypassing is what we are doing when we use spiritual and other practices to ignore the difficult or uncomfortable emotions that are a natural part of the human experience. Emotional suppression is "stuffing down" our uncomfortable emotions. Emotions need to flow freely like water in order to process through you and release.
I'd like to pause here to say that I don't believe emotions are either good or bad, or positive or negative. I do think, though, that it's pretty obvious some emotions tend to feel better and lighter than others. Emotions like joy, gratitude, happiness, and excitement are what most of us consider to be "good." Sadness, grief, anger, frustration are what we think of as "bad." In reality, they are just different and we all experience them differently.
We learn as children to suppress our emotions because we are made wrong for expressing ourselves. We are told to be quiet, stop complaining and maybe even things like "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about." As a child one of the basic jobs of the unconscious mind is to keep you safe. If you are expressing an emotion that makes your caregivers mad at you and you feel they are withdrawing their love, even just temporarily, it’s a form of protection for you to suppress that emotion or act that way, because you know you’ll get punished and that will jeopardize your safety.
As you go through life, difficult emotions arise and you shut down the same way as you did when you were a child, because that’s all we know how to do. So this plays out in other relationships - you are afraid to express how you really feel because you are afraid of how someone may react or what they may think.
Another habit that gets created is when we are children and are expressing difficult emotions or having a tantrum, we get sent to our rooms. We are left alone to try to deal with our emotions. This translates into adult life as follows: people only want you to be seen or heard from when you are happy. When you’re unhappy or sad or angry, people want you to go deal with it on your own. So as a child we are taught that we have to figure out the tough emotions on our own, and as an adult the habit becomes that we isolate when we need help the most, or sometimes we completely disconnect or disassociate from the emotion altogether.
Sometimes we suppress emotions because they just feel too overwhelming to deal with. We have emotions of grief or anger start to rise to the surface and rather than allowing them to flow through us and be expressed, we ignore them completely or we tell ourselves that we're overreacting.
So what happens to emotions that are ignored and denied? They become trapped within the physical body. Emotions are energy and when energy cannot flow freely it becomes stuck. It will keep gnawing at you until you deal with it. Trapped emotions can manifest in many different ways such as headaches, adrenal fatigue, depression, anxiety, and even chronic illness and disease. Just like water, wind, and other elements cause erosion over time, your trapped emotions cause erosion within you.
Now to take it a step further I'm going to offer you two self-healing tools that, if you put them into practice, will help you start releasing trapped emotions.
Journaling. By far one of the most effective techniques for emptying yourself of emotions and heavy energy. Sit down at any point during the day and write down everything that you're feeling. If journaling is new to you, you may feel stuck when you first get started. You may feel as though you don't know what to write. If that's the case, write "I don't know what to write" until other things start flowing. Write your grocery list, your to-do list, what is stressing you out, write literally anything. As you get more comfortable with this practice, deeper things will begin to flow out. If you are worried that someone will find and read your journal, go to the dollar store and buy a pack of looseleaf. Journal on your looseleaf and then as soon as you're finished, tear the papers up into tiny pieces and throw them away.
Movement. Any type of movement will help get energy and emotions moving and releasing. Choose whatever feels good to you on any given day. Here are some ideas: dancing, yoga, going for a walk, swimming, weight lifting, tai chi, jogging.
By putting things like this into practice you will begin to open up and get more in touch with yourself and your emotions. You will find that the more you actually allow yourself to feel all emotions, the more easily you are able to sit with the tough ones, acknowledge them, and express them in a healthy way so that they can flow through you and not become trapped.
One last thing to consider. When you practice GVO, you are denying a large part of yourself. It is 100% a normal part of human existence to experience all types of different emotions. When you suppress the uncomfortable ones there is no way you can live life as your authentic self. To live a full life is to embrace your whole self, "flaws" and all.
Take care out there,
Kristi
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