Understanding Emotional Safety and Inner Child Work

Exploring Emotional Safety

If you are a person who feels like it's not safe to feel, believing "I'm not safe," then we need to do a deeper dive. We need to engage in some inner child work. We must explore where these beliefs originate and release that energy, letting those emotions flow out of the body. This process should ultimately create a safer environment for you because if you're running an internal belief, program and energy around feeling unsafe and the notion that it's not safe to feel, that energy will be restricting the ability to process emotions, energies, and beliefs.

If this resonates with you, it's essential to slow down. We need to start at the very beginning, ensuring patience and safety, and working with those younger, inner parts that have not felt safe. We'll be discussing inner child work for this aspect.

Addressing Emotion Beyond Logic

We can't merely use our mind to jump over this. If this issue exists, we want to address this part, love this part, and support this part. We can't bypass it with logic, but here is some logic to begin feeling safe. I want you to notice from the different emotions—apathy, grief, fear, and anger—what the various sensations are in your body, and what the different responses are in your body. Let's explore this together.

Tackling Apathy and Desperation

When apathy comes into awareness, and it just feels like, "Oh, I'm buried. I may as well just give it all up," especially if you've had suicidal tendencies in life, which is a dangerous territory to even get near, you might be avoiding that altogether.

It's beneficial to have one-on-one support to release the energy around that so you won't fall into a well of apathy and heavy emotion. This ensures you won’t feel trapped, thinking, "I can’t get out of this." Having the support to process it allows you to traverse or transform this energy. Sometimes people have such experiences in life that these feelings are buried, and occasionally there’s even an overcompensation for it.

Creating Comfort with Emotion

In some cases, you might think, "I never want to feel that, so I'm just going to stay busy and maintain this big smile and chirpy laughter all the time to avoid it." So just know that you can get comfortable feeling those four primary emotions, and when they release, you're transitioning into states of peace, more courageousness, more acceptance, or simply feeling lighter. Often, that's the expression I hear: "I feel lighter."

Distinguishing Different Emotions

Let's practice, moving to the next emotion: grief. Notice what grief feels like in the body. Apathy might feel like, "Oh, I'm buried and I can't get out," or it might just feel so heavy. Notice what grief feels like and whether you feel it in your heart or somewhere else in the body. Explore what it looks like, feels like, tastes like, and what senses it evokes in the body. Imagine, as an example (though it might not work for everyone), going to a smorgasbord, but instead of food, it's emotions. Learn to get more and more comfortable so that the emotion doesn’t feel too overwhelming and you can begin to feel it and be present with it. Let's continue.

Understanding Fear and Anger

There's extensive discussion now about fear and anxiety, so it's not a foreign concept. But notice when you feel fear, what do you observe in your body? How does that feel to you? Observe if your throat tightens, what happens in your limbs, and what happens in your stomach. As you grow familiar with each of these emotions, it enables you to begin feeling them. If this doesn't feel safe to do, you can skip all of this and wait, and we'll do that inner child work first.

While we're at it, let's finish and do the last one, anger. A simple example could be sitting in traffic that's not moving when you want to be somewhere, and perhaps you're tired or hungry. You might think, "Do I want to be in this traffic?" If you release the tension and emotions, sitting there feels very different. And of course, if you're having an upset with a particular person that you have to interact with frequently, you might have a different sensation or feeling.

Conclusion: Embracing All Emotions

Let’s allow some anger to surface and notice what it feels like in the body. Each emotion that comes up actually has higher energy, more intensity of energy, and anger is usually easier to move than apathy unless you're one of those who feels it's not safe to feel anger. If somebody is angry, I think, "Great, yes, we can move that." Notice how anger feels. Maybe there will be some energy surfacing in the shoulders or the arms, or perhaps there’s a sense of the body wanting to move, push, or say something.

I encourage you to begin to get comfortable with each of the four primary "negative" emotions, and we'll continue with some child work to allow this to be more comfortable for you.

Alright, there's more to come on this expansive topic of emotions. I look forward to seeing you soon.