Our emotional health is incredibly important for us to live a good life.
It’s often an area we overlook, by thinking our emotions control us rather than we are in control of them. Instead, we can view them as guides as to what needs our attention and what we need to do to take care of ourselves.
Within the chakra system, which I have always looked to as a guiding backbone to wellbeing, the second chakra (the sacral chakra) is associated with our emotional health and our emotional wellbeing. It’s about us really being able to understand our emotions are there to guide us, to inform us, and that we are in control of our emotions. They are not in control of us.
Within The Curious Club (my wellbeing community), we are exploring the sacral chakra and I invite you to listen to my short lesson about emotions and in particular the emotion of guilt. We also explore the impact of emotions and guilt within our Health and Wellbeing Coach Training modules.
Click below to have a listen (or read the transcript beneath) and spend this month exploring your emotions and the impact guilt may have in your life.
Transcript
Throughout this month, I would really like you to become more familiar with your emotional landscape. To understand what your emotions are saying and not to label any emotion – this is a good one, this is a bad one, this is a positive one or this is a negative one. It’s an emotion. Ask what is the emotion trying to inform me of?
Now some emotions can certainly feel unpleasant and some can feel more pleasant to us. All emotions have a thought associated with them, we’re thinking something. We can be feeling something physically within our body. We can be behaving, acting in a certain way because of the emotion.
And this is what we want to pay attention to because some of those feelings could be uncomfortable, some of those thoughts could be really nasty or be bringing you down. Some of the ways that you act or behave could be unpleasant and detrimental. And so that’s when we start to put emotions into this good or bad kind of category. Some emotions are driving us to not be the best version of ourselves. They are getting in the way and we want to be observant of them.
I’m going to mention one emotion in particular, which is guilt. Some people don’t think it is an emotion. Other people have labelled it a useless emotion, as it’s not really serving us or giving us anything.
- What are your thoughts around guilt?
- Where does guilt show up in your life?
- How often do you feel guilty?
- How often do you say the word guilt?
- How often do you hear other people talk about being guilty?
It’s a very common word, and we often use it without thinking too much into the meaning or why and how it affects us. But guilt is really “I have done something wrong, I have broken a rule, I have gone against my values”.
We want to start to think about:
- What rules have you broken?
- Are these your rules or are they family rules that you’ve grown up with? Are they society’s rule? Religious, cultural? The government’s?
- Have they been indoctrinated into you?
We can have them in our own sense of self. And we can start to think of this in some ways as whenever you say, oh, “I must do this, I should do that. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have done this”. So start to think into your things that are like a must and absolute, ie: I must behave this way. That’s a very strong kind of expectation that you’re putting upon yourself.
What are you saying to yourself when you are say “I should do this. I should do that”. For example, “I can’t rest, I must be busy”. And so if you rest, you feel guilty because you’re meant to be busy. You must be busy, as only bad people stop.
When we start to really think into it, it sometimes seems a bit nonsensical but a lot of the way that we operate in our own little world can be nonsensical, and this is what you’re wanting to look at. So start to explore your shoulds and musts and rules and all of these things that you keep telling yourself you have to do.
Then when you don’t live up to your own expectations and demands:
- How do you start to treat yourself?
- What are you saying to yourself?
- Are you berating yourself?
- Are you telling yourself you’re useless? You’re pathetic? Why don’t you do this? You’ve got no commitment?
You are spiralling into guilt.
- How does guilt then show up in your life?
When we are guilty, we have a tendency to punish. So how do you punish yourself? What are you stopping yourself from doing or not doing?
Really have an exploration into guilt. It’s the shadow emotion of the sacral chakra.
For further understanding, continue here: Does Guilt Impact Your Wellbeing?
Image by Foundry Co from Pixabay