What is your emotions name?

I have been doing a lot of work trying to unstuck myself from where I am stuck at. I am sure you can relate. Even if you aren’t stuck right now, we have all been stuck at some point in our lives whether it is personal, professional, spiritual, emotional…you catch my drift! When it comes to this complicated issue of attempted suicide I think it is easy to get stuck, and stay stuck because facing the stuff we are stuffing is just not easy, nor fun, and you usually have to do it alone.

So this great article by Deepak Chopra entitled How to Release the Past and Return to Love seemed like a great place to continue my journey in unstuckness. Returning to love sounded great to me so I dove in.

Step 1. Recall an Emotion. One thing I have learned from Deepak is if you can’t find the word or emotion or answer it works well to place your hand on your heart and ask the question again. This step was pretty easy for me so I wrote down my emotion and the experience surrounding it (suicide attempts in this case) and proceeded.

Step 2. Feel your body. This step takes you further into the experience you are working to release. It helps you connect with what happened on a deeper level so you can release it. My feelings in my body are that my throat and chest are tight, sorta like an anxiety attack coupled with heartburn. My favorite sentence in this step is “Remember that an emotion is a thought connected to a sensation.” ~ Deepak Chopra

Step 3. Label your emotion. Give it a name. We are dealing with a complicated issue here, well, I am this go around. I knew when I read the simplicity of this step that the name of my emotion couldn’t just be Anger. Or Fear. Or Rage. It was going to be something weird and complicated and unnamed by anyone else before. The name for my emotion surrounding attempted suicide is GLUNK. I feel glunky. The glunk is getting to me. What is glunk? Glunkyness for me is Fear, Terror, Anger, Resentment, Hostility, Rage, Disappointment, Hurt, Pain, Discounted, Unimportant, Devalued, Disrespected, Dishonored, Unsupported, Alone, Longing for closure, Wanting to lay this to rest – to be done with it – to be unstuck, Gross, Anxious, Worried, Scared, Horrified, Victimized. That is Glunk for me.  What is your emotion? What is its label? What is its name?

Step 4. Express the experience. Woohoo! Boy can I express this. Get a piece of paper and write it down? Of course I will! What happened? How did it feel? What did people do? How did I react? Well. Let. Me. Tell. You! After my family members two suicide attempts I felt that people ignored the situation and ignored me. Most family members no longer sent birthday cards or called. They didn’t ask how I was. They didn’t ask what I needed or what they could do. They walked away. Friends and people I asked for help from said hurtful things like: “You don’t understand suicide or mental illness.” “You are ungrateful.” “You should be happy he is alive!” “You should not be doing this research and looking for help and answers for yourself, you should be doing everything you can to keep him alive.” “When are you going to get over it? No one died!” I reacted by crying for hours upon hours a day. I was so sad to be losing more relationships I thought I had built. I was afraid as I lost more of my support system I believed I had in place. I shut down and started to shut people out of my life over the next two years. I didn’t talk. I didn’t write. I withdrew into a shell trying to protect my very wounded heart and soul. I couldn’t handle any more pain, hurtful words, judgment, or abandonment from those I loved and desperately needed.

Write the experience from the other persons/peoples point(s) of view: Really? Do I have to? I may have mentioned I have gotten pretty stuck in my point of view. In my pain. In my own suffering. In my own blame and fear and story. Oh, yes, I am working to get unstuck. Alright then, as much as I don’t want to see their point of view, or walk in their shoes because they refused to walk in mine, I proceed: Juliet reached out to everyone she knew. Even people she didn’t know well, or know at all that may have info to help her and her family. I think she told way too much. She seemed really needy, very desperate for answers and guidance. I didn’t know what to say or do to help her. She was so hurt and violated by this experience. I felt like I couldn’t help so I walked away and never spoke to her again. I felt like she should be a lot of things she wasn’t being so I told her so. I was so sick of hearing about how sad and hurt she was. I gave her my opinion and spoke my truth. I didn’t see what the big deal was, her family member over dosed and then shot himself. So what. I still have my life to live and she needs to get on with hers. Move on already. Don’t get stuck. Quit dwelling on it. I just can’t help her so what is the point? Maybe when she gets over it we can work on our relationship, if not, oh well.

Write the experience from the view of a newspaper reporter: Juliet’s family member tried to die, twice. She really wanted support and love. She needed a lot of understanding. She was searching for answers to questions, ways to heal, things to make herself and her family and relationships healthy. She really wanted to help the person who attempted suicide but didn’t know how to. People she asked said he would eventually kill himself and when he did then they had books and support groups and help for her, but until then they had nothing. She was so sad someone she loved felt that hopeless and she couldn’t do anything. Most people close to her could only see her anger, fear, depression and sadness and couldn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense to them. Because they couldn’t understand it and didn’t want that in their life they walked away to focus on happier things. The people farther away from her really didn’t care. It was easy to erase this from their life because the didn’t see her that often anyway. This made her even more hurt because this was the reality of her life right now and she couldn’t walk away from it. She had to walk through and work through it and now she felt she was left to do it mostly alone.

Step 5. Share your experience. I am sharing my experience here because I know, from talking to others who have had a loved one attempt suicide, that our experiences are common. I hope my authenticity in sharing this exercise will help you realize you are not alone in your experience. I love that Deepak says, “It’s important not to share your experience whose actions provoked the emotional hurt you’re recounting. They won’t understand and usually won’t cooperate. Ninety percent of the time they won’t agree with your version of the event in question; in fact,  they might deny it even occurred. So stick with someone who is sympathetic and has your best interests at heart.” Good advice. I am far enough from this situation in years now to see there were times I was still hanging onto relationships and people who did not want to be hung onto. They did not want to understand. They did not want to support or witness my pain. I should have let them go a heck of a lot sooner than I did. We all would have been healthier and happier a lot sooner.

Step 6. Ritual of Release. Rituals are so important to our human nature. I love that Deepak chose this word here. I have created lots of new rituals in my life to redefine a holiday, my thoughts and feelings about certain occasions, or beliefs I have held to that were damaging. There are a lot of different rituals Deepak recommends to release the past. I personally adore burning paper. For me it is very healing. The smell, the sound, the sight of my words withering away, the whole experience. I would add that no matter what you release during this exercise, it may not be all the releasing you need. You may be able to only release a small or a large chunk right now That is alright because you are moving and moving is being unstuck. Celebrate that!

Step 7. Celebrate your release. Celebrate! Absolutely! That may be what is missing from some of our lives anyway. We stopped celebrating our victories, our dreams, our miracles, our selves, our love, our passions. Please accept this as an invitation to not only celebrate your “release of the past and return to love” but to celebrate when you set a healthy boundary. Celebrate when you walk in the evening after dinner. Celebrate choosing healthy food. Celebrate choosing water over a soda. Celebrate enforcing honest self talk. Celebrate that you are you and that you are the only one who can bring into existence what you can. Only you! Celebrate!

Use this process multiple times. Use it for anything you want to release. Book mark it on your computer. Share it with your friends. I already have! It is a great tool to use to help you get where you want to go and proceed with your unstuckness from your glunk, or whatever you name your emotion.