Why It's Not Enough To Just Allow & Feel Your Emotions

Allowing and feeling our emotions is incredibly important. But, if that's the only way we relate to our emotions, it is not enough to truly live happy, authentic, and free. It can also lead to a lot of unnecessary suffering. This talk explains the benefits and limitations of allowing and feeling whatever emotion arises.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Noah Elkrief and today I want to talk about why just allowing and feeling all emotions is insufficient and can create a lot of suffering.

So the reason that I'm sharing this is because I've come across a lot of people through my work that have been overwhelmed with emotion.

That there's too much emotion,

Too many feelings,

Too many triggers,

Too much emotion all the time that it leads to a lot of suffering,

Drama,

And just difficulty to get things done.

And it leads me to want to share something about this.

In spirituality right now,

A lot of the times there's these two main groups,

I mean there's many groups,

But two major groups that are in sort of contradiction within spirituality is like the transcendent people that are like just float away and just discover you're nothing,

Everything,

God,

Enlightened,

Awareness,

Or anything like this.

And then you've got the other side which is like just feel everything,

Allow all your feelings and feel everything.

And having been on both of those paths as well as dozens of others,

I wanted to share some insights that have come to me through my own direct experience that can really really serve you to not have to go through the pain and hardship that I had to go through in my journey.

The first thing that comes to me is when we're resting as awareness or if we're meditating and resting as awareness or we're following more of like a non-dual path where it's kind of like emotions are said to be no problem at all,

They're part of everything,

They're part of oneness,

There's no problem,

Just allow everything.

The tricky thing with that is they say allow everything,

But what happens when you rest as awareness is that there's so many emotions that are suppressed throughout our life.

When we're young children,

There can be massive amounts of fear,

Intense fear or intense anger that or frustration or helplessness or freeze mode that are too intense for us to feel so we disassociate.

So those emotions get buried in our body.

Alternatively,

Later on,

Sometimes our emotions aren't welcome.

So for us to be afraid or sad or angry,

Our parents don't like it when we're afraid,

Sad or angry.

So they try to make us feel better or they let us know in one way or another that our emotions aren't lovable,

Welcomed or okay.

So those cause us to suppress our emotions and then in school our emotions aren't allowed so we suppress our emotions even more.

And in work our emotions aren't allowed,

In male culture our emotions aren't allowed.

Men often call women too dramatic and their emotions aren't allowed.

So there's so many reasons why throughout our life our emotions have been suppressed and buried.

And when we come into a meditative path,

A non-dual path,

An awareness path,

A mindfulness path,

What happens is the wording might be okay,

Your emotions are allowed,

But the energetics behind it is that it's okay if emotions stay suppressed.

So allowing all emotion actually just keeps the vast,

Vast amount of emotion staying buried in our body.

It's almost like we're living up here and there's so much emotion down here,

Kind of like buried stuff in a volcano.

But there's a whole bunch of stuff in between you and the emotion.

Let's say there's like a massive cement wall between awareness and emotion.

So if we just allow all emotion,

Well this cement wall will make sure that those emotions don't really come up.

So in order for us to heal and grow and purify our body,

Empty our body,

Physically,

Energetically heal our body and come into our own soul's authentic essence,

We've got to actually actively break through the cement to really support emotion to come up as opposed to just allow emotion.

You understand?

Because that cement wall is made of fear.

Fear of intensity,

Fear of dying,

Fear of our parents' rejection,

Fear of so much.

So just allowing emotion won't actually support emotion to come up that has been buried for so long.

You understand?

So that's why allowing emotions is completely insufficient for genuine healing if we really care about what's going on in our body,

In all of our centers,

In our heart,

In our belly,

In our root,

In our sexual organs.

If we genuinely care about our body,

Of our spine,

Then we have to actively seek out and deal with this stuff in order for the stuff,

The emotional stuff,

The suppressed energy to come up,

Be met,

Be healed,

Be felt,

Be dealt with.

So that's the first part.

And many people already know this.

But the other side is a little tricky and more of the intention for why I'm making this video and that is there's a lot of teachers out there,

There's a lot of paths out there which is just feel everything.

Feel your emotion.

All your emotions are acceptable.

All your emotions are okay.

And once again,

The wording is wonderful,

Of course,

And it's really an important part of the journey that we're allowing our emotion,

Welcoming it,

Loving,

Allowing ourselves to feel everything.

Because we have so much history in our childhood,

In our ancestors' lives,

In our past lives where emotions are suppressed,

Hated,

Rejected,

Sign of weakness,

Sign of incompetency,

Sign of so much that is unwelcomed that it's really important that we love ourselves while feeling emotion.

So if I'm feeling massively afraid,

Massively sad,

Lonely,

Hurt,

A mess,

A disaster,

Lost,

Helpless,

I'm lovable,

Right?

Like I'm lovable while feeling those emotions.

So whatever emotion comes up,

It's okay.

I don't have to heal it,

Fix it,

Suppress it,

Go into awareness,

Go into transcendence,

Justify it,

Disbelieve the thoughts that create it,

I don't have to do anything.

I'm lovable while feeling my emotions and all my emotions are completely welcome.

And that's so important as a part of our healing journey,

To welcome our emotions,

See that they are not a sign of unworthiness,

Right?

Because in spirituality,

Sometimes in the enlightenment journey that many people preach,

It's like emotion is a sign of that you're not enlightened,

That you're confused,

That you're a mess,

That you still have work to do.

So therefore,

When emotion comes up within our experience,

We want to fix it,

Heal it,

Get rid of it,

So that we don't have to feel the shame that I'm bad for having emotion.

So it's so important that we heal that so we can recognize no matter what emotion arises within our experience,

We're lovable,

It's okay,

And we can love the emotion and ourselves while we're feeling it.

Yeah,

I feel like I'm speaking quite quick,

But it seems that it means a lot wants to come through and it's quite sharp.

So I'm going to keep allowing it,

But I just noticed that.

I hope it's okay for you.

Next.

Once we've gotten to the stage where our emotions are allowed and supported in a really genuine way,

The floodgates have basically opened,

That emotions are coming through,

Coming through,

Coming through,

And they can be intense,

Painful,

Horrible,

Ruin our life,

Make it difficult to make clear choices,

Access our intuition,

Get things done,

And all of this type of thing.

Now,

It's one thing to love ourselves and love our emotion.

That's fundamental,

That's so important,

But that doesn't mean it's not also worthwhile and helpful to heal our emotions,

To heal the pain underneath our emotions,

To heal the cause of why we feel the emotion,

And this can be massively overlooked sometimes.

A lot of times people choose one path or another,

So it's sort of like,

I'm going to heal and fix everything.

I'm going to heal and fix all my emotions,

And that often comes from unworthiness,

That we see emotions as a sign of unworthiness and need to be fixed,

So it's kind of like the person who chooses success as a means for self-worth,

I have to keep getting better and better,

More money,

More success,

A higher promotion,

And going up and up and up,

And in spirituality that takes on the form of,

I have to heal,

Heal my emotion,

Heal more,

Heal deeper emotion,

Heal my ancestral emotion,

Heal my past life emotion,

Heal,

Heal,

Heal.

And so the solution for that is to come into deeper love and acceptance towards emotion,

That we can just allow ourselves to feel whatever we feel,

Still loving ourselves,

And not looking for our self-worth through our emotional experience,

That I'm equally lovable and worthy no matter what emotion I feel,

Whether that's peace,

Joy,

And happiness,

Or that's pain,

Misery,

Difficulty.

But once we've discovered that,

Then we have to heal our emotions,

And this is so overlooked,

And I need to share it because I see so many people making themselves miserable by just allowing all your emotion.

And sometimes it's under the pretense,

The idea,

The premise,

That's the word I was looking for,

Under the premise that when we allow and feel our emotion,

It will just go.

And that is the case some of the time.

So if I have buried sadness from something that happened to me when I was five,

And it gets triggered now and I feel sad,

If I let myself feel it and just break open crying,

It's possible that that leaves in a minute,

Five minutes,

Ten minutes,

Maybe even needs an hour.

But it goes completely,

That just allowing the emotion to be felt and expressed is enough for it to be healed completely,

Go away,

And never come back.

And that's sometimes the premise that people are under,

That you can just allow and feel all your emotion and that will effectively help make you happier,

Clearer,

More enlightened,

More coming from your soul,

Purer,

Emptier,

Whatever words you want to use.

However,

That is very,

Very often not the case.

And it depends on the person.

Maybe for you,

90% of your emotions can leave just through emotional release,

Just through expressing your emotion.

But for me,

That number has proven to be more like 5%.

I went through maybe a year or two where I just allowed and felt all my emotions.

And it was a disaster,

But I thought I was doing the right thing.

I thought I'm allowing all my emotion,

I'm letting it all,

I'm feeling all of it,

I'm crying,

I'm screaming,

I'm shaking,

I'm doing everything.

But I was miserable and it took me a really long time to realize that with a lot of my emotions,

In order to actually heal,

To move past it,

To move forward,

I have to heal something,

I have to do something.

And what that means is,

Or let me express why that's the case,

If you allow your emotion to be expressed,

You express your fear,

Express your sadness,

Express your anger,

There might be no end to it.

And if you're doing this work,

You've probably discovered this in one way or another,

But you might think you're doing something wrong or you just need to express it more.

No,

Sometimes there's no end to emotional expression.

So if you have anger or fear or hurt or unworthiness or loneliness,

Expressing it might never do even a tiny little bit.

So I think I just said,

Maybe 5% of my emotions get healed through release.

And the rest of it,

No matter how much I release,

It doesn't solve it.

So I'll tell you why.

There are many reasons why,

And I'll see what comes out.

One,

If it comes from your ancestors,

If the emotion you're feeling,

If you feel massively unworthy,

Worthless,

No matter how much you let yourself feel it,

If it comes from your mom,

Your dad,

Your grandma,

Your great-grandma,

Your great-grandpa,

If it comes from your ancestors,

From one of them,

From all of them,

No amount of feeling it will alleviate it.

I'll say that again differently.

If your emotional expression,

If your emotional wound comes from your ancestors,

No matter how much you allow it,

Feel it,

Express it,

There is a very,

Very high probability that it will do nothing to release it from your system because the source isn't in you.

It's like pumping,

Like you're pumping a well trying to release it,

But the well is not coming from within you.

It's coming from somewhere else and there's just no end to it.

A lot of the time we're attached to our emotions,

So if we're attached to our anger,

If we don't want to let go of it,

When I'm expressing anger,

If there's a part of me that wants to hold on to anger because it thinks it makes me powerful,

It's protective,

I don't want to let people off the hook,

Then no matter how much I express it,

I have a hook of attachment to it,

Which means my system will find a way to keep it going,

To avoid something that allows it to release fully.

Next,

If we have a belief that was formed in our childhood,

A conclusion that was formed,

Like if I was rejected by my mom and she yells at me and I take that on,

If she yells at me it must mean I'm a worthless piece of shit that deserves to be yelled at.

Then if I'm at my work or if I'm in my relationship and something's not going well,

Or maybe everything's going well,

But I'm feeling worthless and I allow it,

I'm such a worthless piece of crap,

I'm terrible and I'm crying and I'm letting it out,

That will never ever end as long as I haven't disbelieved the false conclusion that I formed in my childhood.

I have to go in there and talk to my inner child and say,

Hey buddy,

What's going on?

And he might say,

I'm a worthless piece of crap,

And I might say,

What makes you think that?

He said,

Well mom treats me like that,

If she treats me like that it must be because I'm worthless.

He might say,

Oh interesting,

Well it doesn't mean that,

If she treats you like crap it means she's miserable,

In pain,

Confused and projecting onto you.

You get it?

So,

It doesn't actually mean you're worthless.

And then he might go,

Oh shit,

Whoa,

I'm not worthless,

And then we've broken the source of the worthlessness.

You get it?

As long as you're believing the conclusion that was formed at some point in your life that creates your emotion,

And as long as you're releasing it,

It's like putting a water glass under a faucet,

Pouring it out,

But keeping the water on.

You've got to,

To turn the faucet off,

You've got to disbelieve the conclusion that was formed which is creating the emotion.

Next,

A lot of the times it comes from our past lives.

Yes,

Our emotions sometimes are created through hooks that happened in our past lives.

Something that happened right before dying,

Something painful that happened with a partner,

With a family member,

At war.

Sometimes it comes from some major event that we still feel like we're a part of.

We still feel like we're at that war,

We still feel like we're in that miserable relationship.

And so,

We can release emotion,

But as long as a part of our soul feels like we're still in that terrible situation,

Then we're going to keep having the emotion.

We have to take ourselves out of that situation.

And that same thing applies for this life.

If we had a terrible situation in this life,

Our nervous system can still feel like it's there.

And so,

No matter how much fear we let out,

We had to take ourselves energetically out of that situation in order to actually end the emotional misery.

You get it?

And that's just the beginning.

Sometimes there's soul things that have to be gotten.

There has to be a lesson that needs to be understood.

There's different types of attachments.

Sometimes we have to make a physical change in our life.

I know for some of you spiritual diehards out there,

You might think,

No,

Everything has to be done internally.

Sometimes we need to physically make a change in our life.

And as long as we don't,

We're perpetuating the emotional experience.

There's all sorts of reasons why just allowing,

Feeling,

And expressing our emotions isn't sufficient to be happy,

To live from our awakened self,

To live from our authentic self,

To embody our soul,

To feel free,

To feel light,

To enjoy ourselves.

Another thing comes to me,

A lot of times I see people have an attachment to intensity.

I had it too,

Where there's a lot of fight or flight from our childhood left over,

So it makes us quite intense,

And we're always having emotionally intense experience.

And letting out intensity a lot of the time isn't releasing intensity,

Because there's always more of it because of our safety and comfort with intensity.

So we have to break the hook to intensity in order to stop having intense emotion.

Rather than dealing with one emotion after another,

Expressing it,

Hoping that reduces our intensity,

It's kind of like addressing the category of intensity more collectively,

So that we stop,

Our system stops looking for intensity and creating intensity.

I think you get the idea that it requires more sophistication and wisdom than just allowing and feeling everything in order to be happy.

Now,

This is the case for myself and for everyone I've ever met.

That being said,

It might not be the case for you.

So maybe for you,

A hundred percent of your emotions can be expressed and released fully just by feeling your emotions.

So honor your own experience.

And at the same time,

There's a phase for everything.

So I had to go through a phase where I was just allowing and feeling everything.

And I needed to do that in order to get to a place where I could really,

One,

Not be suppressing emotion anymore,

Kind of breaking that cement barrier,

Two,

To discover that emotions aren't going to hurt me,

That they're not dangerous,

Three,

To stop finding myself worth through peace and other things.

So even if what I'm saying is true for you,

It might not be true for you in this particular phase of your life.

So honor your own experience,

Trust yourself.

And I'm just sharing these nuggets of wisdom in case they resonate with you and you find them helpful.

Yeah.

I feel like a lot came out there very quickly.

I hope you could digest it.

If not,

It's not live.

So you can watch it back again.

I wish you all the best in your relationship to your emotions and finding the peace,

Clarity,

Wisdom and flow that you're looking for.