Words in bold are questions or responses from readers or people I’ve worked 1on1 with.
“What I have learned and observed is emotions have to be accepted and moved on forward from because engaging with thoughts and emotions gives you more of them. What you describe sounds like you try to get rid of all negative emotions which i think is 1. not possible 2. counterproductive because in my experience negative emotions get stronger if you engage with them/dont want to feel them/want to get rid of them.
what do you think about that? (note: thats only my observation)“
- I actually address this question: https://harrisonobiorah.com/2024/02/11/can-we-get-rid-of-our-anxiety-overnight/ .. I’ll also respond to you here
- I’ve seen in myself and even with you that we experience negative emotions for reasons and those reasons are often due to our beliefs. If one doesn’t have beliefs that cause them to experience emotion, then they won’t, in theory, have any negative emotions…Uncovering and discarding emotion-causing beliefs isn’t something everyone knows how to do, and even if they did, it can take time to find our emotion-causing beliefs. So my goal of eliminating emotions really means I want to figure out all the beliefs that cause me negative emotions and discard them.
I mean we’re humans, we’re allowed to feel happy, sad, remorseful, angry, frustrated, everything.
- Agreed. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with emotions, especially because our creator gave them to us. I’d go so far as to argue that emotions are programs from our creator that we have the power to use when we wish. Some think emotions just happen to us and that we have no role in why or when we feel them. I challenge that notion because I’ve seen in myself and others that we experience emotions because we think there are valid reasons why we should. These reasons often come from our upbringing and our own life experiences. When we understand these reasons we increase our self-awareness and get to choose if we still want to experience the emotion or not
For example, the demise of a loved one can break a person apart, it’s just natural.
- I think this happens but aren’t there cases when people don’t fall apart? I’ve seen this with myself and others which suggests to me that it’s possible for events like this to not break us apart. How? One can figure out the reasons why the event in question is making them fall apart. Once done, a decision can be made to like or dislike the situation without inflicting the pain of negative emotion on oneself.
- The phrase “it’s just natural” may suggest that there aren’t reasons why it’s “breaking a person apart?” which I challenge here.
But sometimes, even if you’re close to the person that has passed away, you may feel sad but you’re not able to cry, maybe it has something to do with one’s upbringing. Like the idea of men having to “man up”. It is probably why guys like me who are undergoing anxiety and stress at a point in life are afraid/hesitant to share about it with anyone. It just keeps building up till one day it starts flooding.
- I argue that anxiety contains information about ourselves, so having ways to extract that information will likely provide emotional and stress relief.
What I feel is that we experience emotions because we’re allowed to, but we all have different ways of dealing with it, which leads to varying results.
- Agreed. I’d like to add that there are probably reasons why we experience these emotions and it’s possible to find these reasons. I argue that uncovering these reasons helps us better understand ourselves and often helps us be free of the emotion.
