All emotions / feelings are valid and valuable.
There is no hierarchy.
None are better or worse, good or bad.
Each has been honed by many thousands of years of evolution to serve us as individuals and in community.
Emotions often arise faster than our conscious awareness. They are programmed at a basic / instinctual level to guide us through the world.
All emotions are meant to travel through our psyches and bodies as a wave. To build up, crest and then dissipate. Created/accompanied by their corresponding brain chemicals. Problems arise when emotions get ‘stuck’, no longer flowing.
Emotions are situationally appropriate. For example, regret, guilt, and shame call on us to acknowledge transgressions, and make amends in relationship and community. All emotions, when honored, can lead to greater connection to others and the natural world.
Some emotions work within us as energetic flip sides – they mirror each other, such as love and grief, or happiness and sadness. They reflect the reality of life’s changes and allow us to engage more richly in life.
We often hold on to certain emotions, in response to experience and trauma, as ways to keep us safe – to protect us from greater pain and repeating experiences that have been deeply difficult. There is a certain intelligence in this approach that needs to be honored. For example, we hold onto shame and regret, often in depression, in order to stay small and invisible / safe. We hold onto joy and bliss thinking that they are superior, not recognizing that they lead to dissociation and their own detached form of safety.
All emotions can lead to greater maturity.
The key to transformation is to acknowledge emotions that are stuck, to sit with them, see how they serve us, and let us let them teach us. To allow the memories and experiences that led to them being held on to emerge and dissipate as the burdens of the past are released. To grieve what was, how we responded, and be free.
Our ideal emotional resting state is energetically neutral open, curious awareness – presence.