Emotional Accountability: Owning Our Feelings to Grow
I recently did a podcast on Gratitude as a guest with an amazing young lady and one of the questions I was asked was ‘Does every person actually grow as who they are?’
We as humans never stop growing, if that is what we wish to do. We grow in all directions and in different ways and sometimes we keep repeating our patterns as time passes by!
We can make a decision, conscious or not, to stop growing when we leave school and unfortunately many people seem to do so!
However, even then, the school of life will keep throwing lessons at us and being willing to engage in learning from past decisions will certainly benefit our future. Learning to flow with life with detachment will perhaps be the most useful lesson of all.
In the depths of despair or the thrall of joy, our emotions can feel so visceral, that we often confuse them for truth.
I work with a lot of young people who say that they would rather die than face the pain and anguish of the intensity of their emotions. I remind them that life is sacred and emotions can be confusing and when one slows down, one can see them for the falsities that they portray!
The pain of heartbreak leads us to declare eternal loneliness; the heady thrill of a promotion convinces us of boundless success to come. We forget the ever-changing nature of experience, mistaking intense sensations for immutable reality. By believing our feelings absolutely, we lose perspective.
An inability to reflect upon life with its various nuances severely limits our growth especially when we are caught tightly in the grip of our emotions. So, how can we loosen their hold enough to assess accurately?
“You are not your thoughts, feelings or circumstances. You are far greater than that.” ― Eckhart Tolle
Start by acknowledging the validity of all that arises within while resisting the urge to act immediately. Become an observor. Create space between an initial response and action by naming what you feel without judgment or attachment to its permanence. Recognize the universality of peaks and valleys across the human experience.
As wise men have often said, ‘This too shall pass.’ Everything passes!
The following words are attributed to psychiatrist Viktor Frankl: ‘Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’
Taking deep breaths helps ground us in the present and access that open expanse which vibrates incessantly taking us beyond limiting categories.
Our identity is one of the most powerful factors in determining our equanimity and how we live out the time given to us. When reactive states begin to bother us, deep breaths help us settle and gain balance and expand ourselves into our true identity. We can thus remember, ‘I am not anger, despair or even this joy alone, but the vast awareness noticing these ripples across consciousness. I contain multitudes yet transcend what presents momentarily.’
By grazing lightly the transient emotional weather patterns without fusing wholly with them, we can mindfully avoid exaggerating present conditions. We know that this is one temporary offering of life but not its entirety. There exists more, far more, beyond what I perceive now.
Shakespeare wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
While visceral sensations arise involuntarily, the stories we then tell ourselves about their meaning largely determine associated outcomes. For instance, a promotion might get perceived as proof of one’s superior competence or we can ascribe it to luck alone. Either interpretation impacts motivation, self-worth and behavior going forward quite differently.
By taking an eagle’s view, distancing ourselves to see the bigger picture, when immersed in strong emotion, we can fact check associated narratives for accuracy. Does feeling respected by colleagues after a successful presentation truly verify our permanence or competence? How might clinging to such limited stories eventually backfire? Does despair mean that we will always stay lonely or never again create beauty? Broadening the scope around temporary states puts their sudden urges into perspective within the larger ongoing flow of life.
This process of separating raw feelings from the strategies the ego devises helps us capitalize on them and reveals newfound power. We retain influence over our interpretations and resulting behaviors regardless of whatever our temperamental inner weather declares.
This does not mean forcing positivity through a fake and toxic bypass of emotional suppression or avoidance of our imperfections through denial; it means remembering to access our higher selves, a wider logic and deeper insights.
By first validating and then tempering emotion through higher reasoning, we break destructive cycles that manifest from belief in their absoluteness. We become accountable for our associated actions taken rather than blaming our emotional feeling states. This emotional accountability is not a projection onto outside forces that we have relinquished control to. Instead we ask ourselves good questions. ‘How did my strategies, priorities, filters, perceptions and self-view contribute to what took place? What can I do differently? What is a more empowering attitude to have? Where can I find solutions?’ Self-reflection is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and others.
Owning our interpretations and associated results and consequences helps us build wisdom through lived experience. Rather than resenting past versions of ourselves or life itself for painful outcomes, we accept fallibility in all as a human facet which is essential for growth. With compassion for the self and for others, we acknowledge the learning process unfolding through every perceived failure and misstep. Each intense wave of anger, envy, pride eventually breaks, revealing the fragility and the resilience of collective humanity in its wake. The more we ride their ups and downs without identifying wholly with them, the less we drown in illusion created through emotional reasoning unchecked by higher truth.
This ride grows smoother over time as our perspective expands to see a bigger picture. Great power lies in knowing that there exists a version of me largely unaffected by daily turbulence, able to hold space for whatever unfolds with less reactivity. This witness glows warmly behind passing weather fronts that once blotted out my sun. Emotions lose absolute control as I shed exaggerated stories about what each one means. By repeatedly catching myself mid-delusion then broadening my view, I cultivate the wise insight of my intuition.
I still feel intensely — bliss, heartache and outrage or happiness, wonder and joy alike. But increasingly, my awareness from the background notices all without losing equanimity over what appears on the surface. I welcome all within as teachers revealing facets of reality and the conditioned self. Temporary fury may show me lingering unease within myself needing attention and tenderness. Overflowing love for nature or all of God’s creatures may reflect a ray of divinity glimpsed through the veil. I extend gratitude for each glimpse behind the surface mirrors of these reflections, reconnecting to eternal waters running deep beneath passing storms.
Over the years, intentional inquiry reveals emotions as simply guideposts signalling areas for self-reflection and self-care, more opportunities for honest communication or surrender to forces outside the control of my personal will. Reflexive reactions of stress, automatic responses of fight, flight or freeze lessen as my nervous system regulates in response to cultivated and steadied presence, benefitting my wellbeing. The ups and downs and dramas of reality continue but I release myslef more quickly from identification with any one of them as I detach consciously. I enjoy peaks without clinging out of craving for associated highs to stay forever on the roller-coaster. Instead, I trust the ocean’s nature to keep waving, washing, wearing and calm itself in open space again while I observe it all.
I hear wisdom in the swell again, ‘This too shall pass.’
We can make a decison to be uplifted by surrender and faith in life’s intelligent unfolding toward wholeness through each passing season rather than a superficial positive thinking supressing the emotions or toxic spirituality invalidating the messy like a quick bypass. Leafy trees don’t resist the call to go bare in autumn, their surrender ensures rebirth again after winter’s harsh silence and stillness. They abide content in flowing cycles of life.
The more we seek and chase permanent states like happiness, security or satisfaction, the more we suffer the ups and downs of the impermanence of our reality. By releasing demands for feeling states to hold static beyond their natural lifespan, we allow ourselves to flow gently and conserve our integrity. We take emotion as they ebb and flow while recognizing its limits in defining outcomes for us or our personal capability over time. We stop overidentifying and thus suffering unnecessarily. We realize that we are more.
Through repeatedly catching transient patterns, we notice the stories we habitually tell ourselves about each feeling state and how these shape resulting actions. Over time and with practice, our inner consciousness stabilizes to offer such perspective immediately rather than days or years later after much suffering.
As our perspective broadens, personal storms lose terrifying power to define identity or determine destiny absolutely. They signal areas for attention then move along, their dissolution clearing space for the next ray of insight. We settle into being the higher sky-self, welcoming all within as teachers, while refusing to be pulled into the false storylines of permanence. We open ever clearer to guidance emerging from the loving intelligence of knowing ourselves which is always waiting below to guide us through the surface ripples. The more we courageously lean into being detached witness in the midst of turbulence, the faster we actualize self-mastery of our emotional turbulence and sail into calmer seas with the expertise of experience and conscious intention.
As a mindfulness practitioner and life-design coach, I help clients focus on well-being and personal growth and make life choices that prioritize their mental and emotional health. This leads to personal freedom and independence allowing the person to blossom and manifest the life they deserve. Connect with me if you are seeking to go forward on your journey.