Category: Emotional Work

The Lens Through Which To View Emotional Work

Posted on by Henriette

It’s always tempting to have a final destination mentality around things. This is the mental framework that says, “When I’m done with school I will be done with all my learning.” Or, “When I finally get that promotion, things will be better.” Or, “When I retire, my life will begin.”

Strangely enough, we don’t view physical fitness through this ‘final destination’ lens. We never say to ourselves, “I will exercise for two hours every day for the next month and then never exercise again.” Or, “After I’ve finished my first marathon, I’ve made it.” Anyone can recognise that this is silly. We don’t think that we can accomplish all of our fitness goals in one month and then be done with it for the rest of our life. Most of us, when it comes to fitness, know that we will have to exercise for the rest of our life to maintain and build our physical capacity.

Why do we not recognise that this is also true for cognitive acuity and emotional health?

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The Difficulty With Grief

Posted on by Henriette

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about grief. I wanted to write that post as a reminder to myself that there’s always a sense of relief when you’ve processed through deep grief. But working through grief is also really difficult. When you’re in it, there’s a sense of deep hopelessness that permeates every aspect of your life. From the space of being grief-stricken it doesn’t seem like anything will ever be better again.

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Grief

Posted on by Henriette 1 Comment on Grief

Working through grief can be a very long process. This is made worse by the fact that it doesn’t feel like there’s an end to the process. When you’re deep in grief you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. And it doesn’t seem possible that you will ever feel better.

But one day the grief will lift. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Grief is a sacred process that can help us become more of who we truly are. We should not rush this process or wish it away. Easier said than done, true, but integration goes hand in hand with acceptance—allowing whatever is there to be felt.

The Most Important Thing

Posted on by Henriette

The reason why I write about emotional processing and mindfulness on my blog is because I believe it’s one of the most important things we can invest in, for ourselves, and those around us. It’s foundational. Also related to this is trauma work. I believe trauma work is an unexploited goldmine. Not in a monetary sense necessarily—but in the sense that if we really want to see progress in our own lives and in the world around us, resolving old traumas becomes exceptionally important. All of these things: mindfulness, emotional work and trauma work goes hand in hand in my view. We need to invest time and effort into it to become more calm and centred.

Emotional Reactivity Dissipates a lot of Energy

Posted on by Henriette

I recently made a short video on how to get creative work done. The gist of the video is that if we spend a lot of time either stuck in mental loops or being emotionally reactive, we wont get a lot of creative work done.

This video was intended for creatives but really applies to any work, any craft, any pursuit. It’s hard to get any meaningful work done if you’re siphoning off your attention to fear or outrage or any of these difficult emotions.

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Future Achievements Cannot Set Us Free from the Disappointments of the Past

Posted on by Henriette

There’s a reason I spend so much time writing about being in the present moment. I believe that being mindful and in the moment can transform our experience of life.

In my twenties, I used to chase certain achievements because I thought that it would counterbalance some of the suffering that I was experiencing. I thought that if I could only achieve a few key things, I would feel better.

But I’ve realised that there are very few external conditions that can bring us inner joy. Yes, certain things might lift our spirits for a while, but if we want to have a more sustained experience of joyfulness, equanimity and focus, then we need to be with our internal suffering for long periods of time.

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Emotional Work: Mental loops, negative emotions and deep patterns

Posted on by Henriette

What came first? The negative emotion or the destructive thinking pattern. This is a question that I’ve been trying to answer for a while now. But I cannot seem to come up with a clear answer, and the main reason for this is that these two are quite interconnected. When you don’t feel good, that state has a tendency to colour your thoughts and mental view points. Likewise, when you’re stuck in some self-defeatist mental prison, that can make you feel pretty bad emotionally. Then, if that isn’t enough, these two seem to feed off each other at times.

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Emotional Work: Why venting is a bad idea

Posted on by Henriette

Years ago an argument with someone made me so angry that I struggled to sit still after the interaction. This was quite a while ago, and back then, I still had a punching bag in my backyard. I couldn’t get my mind off the incident so I went outside to throw some punches just to get all that anger out of me. There was an enormous amount of frustration and anger flowing through me while I was punching the bag, and by the end of ten or fifteen minutes, I felt completely spent. Not only was I exhausted, I also had a raging headache.

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Emotional Work: Anger

Posted on by Henriette 3 Comments on Emotional Work: Anger

Anger is not an easy emotion to contain or process. Until recently I’ve been largely unaware of how much anger I was carrying around inside. Terrifying dreams showed me that I needed to work on this emotion but I had no idea how. I was intuitively nudged towards Anger by Thich Nhat Hanh.

This ended up being one of the most profound things I’ve read this year. The writing is simple and the book is short, but it contains an enormous amount of wisdom and great practical advice. This was indeed the single best book I’ve ever read on anger—and maybe even the best book on any single emotion that I’ve come across.

It’s really hard to do a complete summary of everything so I’ll instead point to some of the main ideas and advice that I found particularly helpful.

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