Listen to Your Emotions, Not Their Story

feel what arises
listen to its messages
let it move through you

On my drive home after trapeze practice, I narrowly averted an accident when a car on the highway failed to notice me in his blind spot while changing lanes. I was in the middle lane and had to swerve into the left lane to avoid a collision. Thankfully there was nobody in the left lane at the time.

This was the third driver to cut me off, and blaring my horn to alert the driver to my existence failed to make me feel better.

I was angry.

Like really angry.

Suddenly the car, so often a vehicle for freedom, was a prison. The collar of my jacket felt suffocating. My shoulders wanted to open from their rolled in position. My legs wanted to move. My hands wanted to pound on something.

My body wanted to break free.

The Story vs The Message

When difficult emotions arise many of us default to suppression or to dwelling in the story about why the emotions are justified.

I noticed that my mind wanted to regurgitate stories about why the anger was there, but a wiser part of me knew that it didn’t matter.

I knew it wasn’t just about this driver or the others who had cut me off. This incident was just a trigger for a deep well of emotion that was trapped.

Every emotion has a message. The message is what matters, not the story.

Staying in the story is actually a form of suppression because it keeps us in the mind, as opposed to feeling the emotion in the body.

If we stay in the story we can’t listen to the message. And if we stay in the story we stay in the emotion.

What mattered was feeling what was there, listening to its message, and letting it work through me.

The anger needed a place to go. It needed to be expressed — in a safe way.

And so I let the anger express itself in the only way I could do so safely in that moment.

I screamed.

From deep in my body emerged a primal scream the likes of which might have drawn alarm if anyone else had heard me.

When it finished, I screamed again. And again. And again. Until no more screams would come.

When I got home, I shook it all out of my body. Literally shook it out of every limb, to release the trauma of the incident and any emotion that was still trapped.

And then I settled in for a Breathwork session, to help move through any last remnants of the anger.

I came back home into myself with a reminder that it was safe to be in my body.

All emotions are welcome to visit, but I get to choose which ones can take up residency.