All That Resists, Persists (emotional Negation)
Any emotion that you hide or resist, persists. Have you ever heard this phrase?
Sometimes in psychology it is often said that pain is the best medicine. It is possible that this statement surprises you and that you do not accept it. However, there is nothing more obvious than the fact that any emotion experienced involves a learning process.
For example, suffering tends to represent the best scissors of our vital knowledge, because it marks new paths according to the learnings achieved through loss, defeat or disillusionment.
Although some do not want to see them, others prefer to hide this pain in the abyss of their being, and quite simply, lock the key to emotions.
Therefore, the pain still persists but acquiring new forms. Anger arises, because anything that resists persists. In this article, we are going to talk about emotional negation.
Emotional negation and its obsession
Let’s take an example. You have an emotional relationship with someone. You love this person and you have a solid life thanks to this couple.
However, something in you tells you that things are not the way they used to be. You feel that this person doesn’t love you anymore.
How to accept it? You deny it. And whatever the reason, the other person doesn’t want to admit what’s going on.
Time goes by and despite knowing full well that what you hold is no longer an authentic relationship, you are in denial and you don’t want to see it.
People around you try to show you what’s going on, but you fight back. Your emotional negation persists and resists every day.
The more you hide the truth, the more it will emerge. Instead of leaving it out and not thinking about it, it will become a constant and destructive thought.
Indeed, the mind has a terrible mechanism regarding negative emotions, because they can turn into almost obsessive thoughts.
If we tell ourselves that we are not going to be sad, often during these very high anxiety states, the opposite happens.
We should not tell ourselves that we are not going to be sad but rather ask ourselves why we are sad.
It may sound ironic but it is so. Emotional negation is an entity which tends to persist over time, and which resists logic and reason. She becomes obsessive and almost irrational.
If I deny it, it does not exist, because I am avoiding the problem. But in reality, the problem is so big that I can’t help but think about it.
Emotions and their adaptive function
Emotions like sadness, anger, or fear are good medicine. They are difficult to cope with, we know, but they perform an adaptive function.
Fear forces us to escape and run, and thus survive. It is something intuitive that we have learned like any human being.
But within this evolution, we have also learned that sometimes the solution is not to run or escape, but rather to stop and find this enemy who wishes to do us so much harm.
Denying it is not going to help us. Sadness must be assumed and accepted. You have to mourn her, before facing her. Negative emotions allow us to survive because they sometimes force us to go the other way. Real reality is found on the opposite path.
The emotional negation that resists will persist until our own destruction. So why resist? Let go, because if you resist an enemy, it will give them even more strength.
Better not to offer resistance: Accept the obvious, the pain, and the error. Embrace them and day after day they will unravel and disappear.
