How to deal with emotional baggage?

How  to deal with emotional baggage

 When I was a child, I remember reading these lines outside an open heart surgery center-"अगर दिल खोल लिया होता यारों के साथ तो आज नहीं खोलना पड़ता औज़ारों के साथ" .And that’s the truth.

There are people who are really confined to themselves, they have so much of baggage in their minds that they can’t get rid of, they store those unnecessary and trivial issues in themselves, cursing and feeling guilty of one or the other thing without even trying to resolve the issue.

 Ladies and gentlemen, believe me there is not a single way that you can flush out that emotional baggage without sharing them with anyone.

“Sometimes the past should be abandoned, yes. Life is a journey and you can’t carry everything with you. Only the usable baggage.” ~Ha Jin

If a boy child is crying ,parents console him by saying-“Are you a girl”? And the poor boy after noticing those expressions on his parents face, sop up all those tears back into his eyes as if being a girl is sin and the rest of his life, he doesn’t cry. His parents condition him emotionally  this way.

 As  they say, a true man doesn’t feel pain, come on, you demon, he is a human with few emotions.

New research has found that 80 per cent of men repress feelings of anxiety rather than externalising their emotions. Mental health experts say the brave face isn't helping anyone-Telegraph

The new research shows that whilst men and women deal with their anxiety in different ways – with women more likely to cry and men tending to 'bottle up' their emotions – the triggers of these negative thoughts are largely the same. Job interviews, moving house and having a health problem were all commonly cited as contributors to anxious feelings.

Curiously, the only standout statistic concerned marriage. The research found that men were twice as likely to experience serious anxiety before tying the knot than their brides-to-be  -    Telegraph

According to a report presented by India Today in 2011, it was stated that men are hard-wired to suffer heart disease more than women.

For god sake , let them cry when they want to, let them pour out their heart. That boy when grows up, keeps all his frustration and he ought to present himself as a MAN who is courageous enough to bear every emotional trauma without saying ‘ouch’. It was stuffed in his delicate mind that crying is judged as a  sign of weakness.

We all have emotional baggage. Some of us have 3 suitcases of heavy things, some of us have just a tiny bag… Everyone has them. Sometimes we feel as if we were carrying a lifetime’s heaviness of sorrows, pain, and anger.

We have men who need to learn to cry and women who need to unlearn to cry as usually, the ladies think that crying is their birth right.

Let’s see how we can identify triggers of emotional baggage:

1.Terrified of being alone :

When we are not comfortable with ourselves, we jump into relationships, work , shop till we exhaust ourselves. We do whatever it takes to keep ourselves away from our own thoughts. We run the race against ourselves.

2. Hurling feelings:

You are actually annoyed or upset because of something else and tend to transfer those emotions to someone else and you end up putting your relationships at stake.

3.Too much attention to your faults:

When you kind of scrutinize yourself and try to find out one or the other mistake of yours .Eventually it becomes an obsession.

4.Keep on comparing yourself with others:

You never feel satisfied with yourself and keep on comparing yourself in quest of finding a fault.

Emotional baggage is nothing but a “story” we tell ourselves. By challenging those stories, you accelerate the process of healing. Understand that you can leave that unnecessary heaviness out there on the carousel of the baggage claim and away from you and your life and how does it feel?

What will it feel like when I let go of the heaviness and leave my emotional baggage behind? How would I act and think since I don’t have to carry it with me anymore? How would my relationships with people look like? Take your time to think and reflect on those questions.

Have your desire to heal and to be free at all times in your mind. Be aware and stay alert of your thinking process. Be vigilant of what exactly goes into your bucket and make sure you release it on time.

Clinging to your conditioning and emotions will only make you miserable. Be like a tree that is deeply rooted but has new leaves and fresh flowers and fruits.

Bless your past, wish it well, forgive and let go…Take a look at your past experiences. What did you take from them? What lessons did they bring you?

It’s up to us how we choose to see the world: through the glasses of fear and contempt towards the future… or we can choose to embrace it with all the hope and forgiveness of the past.

Remember, emotional baggage is all about fear and its up to you whether to choose fear or freedom.