How is your emotional state today? Stop reading for a moment, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths while scanning how you are feeling.
Keep in mind, feelings are temporary states, not fixed permanent traits. We can often stay fixated on feelings for longer than serves us, rather than let them go. On average a feeling comes and goes in 90 seconds- unless we cling to it.
We can think of certain emotions like primary colors, meaning the pure ones that are less complex and not yet blended. Experts on the topic debate a definitive list but we can consider these emotions to be pretty primary:
Joy
Excitement
Surprise
Disgust
Fear
Guilt
Shame
Anger
Sadness
Easy to notice what you want more of right?
Unless you've been manic, it's safe to assume that everyone would be cool with having more joy or excitement in their life. There are not typically patterns of joy or excitement holding us back so we'll skip those for now.
Surprise is a mixed bag but doesn't create self limiting patterns either. Disgust is no fun but again there doesn't tend to be tangled emotional patterns here. There can be some pleasure associations in disgust but that is some shadow material for another day.
This leaves 5 core emotions that often create self limiting beliefs or hold us back. As we dive into our self exploration we do well to consider our relationships to these typical emotions patterns.
The below lists are not exhaustive but are a great starting point to see which of the "less pleasant" emotional patterns are controlling our lives to a greater or lesser extent. You can also think of these as toxic emotional residues that clog up our system.
Fear Patterns
Fear of...
Change
Rejection
Being wrong
Being right
Expressing myself
Trusting life
Trusting myself Â
Not being enough
Being too much
Uncertainty
The future
Making a mistake
Being judged
That I am flawed, broken, or damaged
Not being liked
Being loved
Not being loved
Being worthy or not being worthy
What other people think of me
Being vulnerable
Being seen
Being unseen
Looking stupid, dumb or incompetent
Failure
Success
Losing everything
Being homeless
Being poor
Being wealthy
Suffering
Prosperity
Having no money
Running out of money
Having money
Not being in control
Being in control
Not doing enough
Doing too much
Not being supported
Being supported
Being abandoned Â
Being alone
Death
Being forgotten
Guilt Patterns
(I feel bad about)
Guilt about...
Past actions/things I have done
My privilege
Having money/being wealthy (especially when others in the world are suffering)
Having no money/being poor (especially when others around you are well off)
Being happy/joyful/prosperous (especially when others in the world are suffering)
Being sad/depressed/lonely (especially when others around you are great)
Doing things just for fun
Not doing enough
Shame Patterns
(I AM bad because of)
Shame about...
Myself My body My sexuality My sexual preferences My actions/past actions My family
A group I belong to
My species
My beliefs
My education
My accomplishments or perceived lack thereof
My life situation
My job/work
My success/lack of success
Having money
Not having money
My ethnicity
Things that have happened to me
Anger Patterns
Angry/frustrated...
With myself With someone else
With how people act
With things that happened to me in the past
About a perceived injustice to myself
About a perceived injustice in the world/society
About a perceived injustice to someone else
Over how a situation turned out
That things went wrong
That things did not turn out how I had hoped
Sadness Patterns
Feeling hopeless...
About my future
About life
About a specific situation
Feeling depressed/sad...
About the loss of someone or something Feeling trapped/limited by...
My past My current situation My upbringing My ethnicity
Which of these feel true or charged for you?
Try some journaling or meditation on those as starting point. When was the last time you felt like that? The first time? This exercise can help you gain more insight and control of your life.
Becoming aware of these patterns is the first step towards letting go of the hold they have on you.