Emotional avoidance, energy constriction and flinching.
We hold in our suffering with emotional avoidance, energy constriction and flinching. This is because we have been trained to avoid emotion that is unpleasant. Unfortunately, this habit makes personal transformation almost impossible on the emotional level.
How many times a day does this happen? Something someone does or says triggers an emotion within you. You tense a part of your body as you resist feeling that emotion. It would be possible to just deeply experience the emotion you are having. You don’t relax, you tense up. You choose flinching over feeling. Emotional avoidance has been installed. Emotional avoidance energy constriction and flinching go hand in hand and they both create patterns that interfere with authentic self expression.
Now you have imprinted the emotion in your body and the next time it comes around you flinch in about the same way you did the first time. Every time that emotion is felt, a part of you constricts. Emotional avoidance and flinching go hand in hand. The flinching is the built in mechanism for avoiding the flow of emotion.
Emotional Avoidance Protects Nothing
You think you are protecting yourself from the emotion by constricting and flinching. You are not. Almost everyone has tension in the neck and shoulders. This is because of thousands of times the person has constricted around feeling judged or rejected.
But here’s the question: Have your tight shoulders every prevented you from being or feeling rejected? Of course not. Those tight shoulders never protected you from the feeling. They actually trapped that feeling withing you. That’s why some people will have intense emotional reactions during a massage. The feeling is being released and experienced simultaneously.
Emotional Avoidance is Cumulative
Look at people as they age and you will see the result of thousands of constrictions layered on each other, expressed in their body language. You will see, on a very physical level, the results of emotional avoidance. Emotional avoidance, energy constriction and flinching are all part of a process. As soon as you avoid emotions you constrict energy. And the flinch is the built in mechanism that keeps it going. Over time the flinch gets locked in physically.
The solution? Emotional healing. Feel, relax and be gentle with yourself. Experience your emotions as physical sensations like tension. All of this tension wants to unwind. When an emotion comes up, say “Yes!”. Let it move through you. Allow it to s
weep up those layers of self denial in one big emotionally cathartic release.
You’ll love yourself for it.
