Emotional Work: Mindfulness as a foundation

There is comfort in mental loops. Going around and around in your head about how unfair someone acted is easier than feeling the emotions underneath the thoughts. Repetitive mental loops can, of course, initiate and perpetuate certain emotions. But often it’s easier to loop through narratives than it is to feel the emotion. In other words, there is comfort in the thinking pattern.

When we stop and try to be silent for a while, all sorts of uncomfortable emotions can bubble to the surface. These can be hard to feel and the temptation is to return to the thinking (or doing) cycle. This is why mindfulness (or mind-stillness) is the foundation of emotional work.

Mindfulness is the foundation of emotional work

Unlearning any conditioned response takes time. Learning how to be with difficult emotions without pushing it away, is a difficult and long journey. This is not surprising, since some emotions can be exceptionally challenging. A strong storm on the inside is not something that we can easily contain unless we have cultivated a strong sense of presence.

That said, being exceptionally mindful of whatever is going on inside, is the only way to not get shaken off centre. This is why mindfulness is the foundation of emotional work. We cannot integrate and transform volatile and stormy emotions if we do not meet it with presence.

Covering up whatever comes up

There was a time when I could not get to the pain of certain events, situations and relationships. I would journal about something and realise that I’m not really probing the depths of the emotional baggage.

I felt frustrated that I could not get to the core of the pain. Yes, there was low level anger and frustration, but it was like the pain was covered by a thick shell. Breathing practices, posture work, and meditation, started to uproot some of the pain. But when the pain resurfaced, my tendency was to try to cover it up again through addictive behaviour. Stuffing my face with chocolate or smoking “just one last cigarette”.

This back and forth lasted for months as I tried to unlearn the conditioned response of covering up whatever surfaced. As you can imagine, this is quite an ineffective way to go about things. It was a long and extremely slow process to get to a point where I could be with the internal discomfort on a more consistent basis.

What I learnt was this: The foundation of emotional work is presence. If we use some sort of tool (somatic work, or yoga, for instance) to reconnect with a suppressed emotion, we should make sure that we remain present and mindful when the uncomfortable emotions surfaces. If I could give my younger self advice I would say this: Don’t try to uproot all your garbage by engaging in more practices. Cultivate more presence first.