The Wisdom of Negative Emotions

This Community Gathering during Mental Health Awareness Month will serve as a unique space to acknowledge and honor the wisdom of negative emotions.

We live in a culture that stigmatizes “negative” emotions (such as anxiety, anger, despair, grief, powerlessness, irritation, aversion, overwhelm, etc.) as “bad” experiences to be avoided and minimized.

As a result, many of us were socially conditioned to cope with negative emotions by suppressing, avoiding, escaping, numbing, and denying them. However, these types of coping mechanisms keep us from developing our capacity to process our emotional experiences, attune to our needs and desires, and become self-aware, aligned, integrated, and whole.

During the gathering, we will reflect on these questions:

• How are all human emotions, including “negative” emotions, messengers from our body and unconscious mind that convey important information? What are the risks of ignoring these messages?
• How do negative emotions serve an important function to help us acknowledge patterns, beliefs, stories, and circumstances that aren’t serving us?
• How can negative emotions be part of a complex bio-feedback mechanism that helps us shift into closer alignment with what our Inner Sages / Higher Selves actually want for us?

We look forward to having this enriching and meaningful conversation with you.