How to move through Emotional Blocks
What are emotional blocks?
Imagine you want to change jobs because your current employment causes you a lot of stress. You decide to start looking but find it difficult to write your CV or find the job you want. Maybe you make mistakes on the application or get flustered in the interview. This could be due to normal feelings arising out of the situation or there could be something else going on, self sabotage. We have a desire to move jobs but there is a part of us saying no to that. So an inner conflict is set up within us.
We could call this an emotional block or an inner ‘no’ to things we want to do. This can create frustration because we feel stuck and unable to move forward on our plans. We can either give in to this and stay in our current situation or force our way through the block often creating anxiety and inner conflict. These methods may work for a while but can be tiring, frustrating and difficult. It’s not easy to escape the stuck feeling.
Often we try to deal with this in one of two ways, avoiding the anxious situation (in the example staying in the stressful job) or forcing our way through the anxiety and taking the leap which works in the short term but can be an ordeal to go through making us less likely to take steps forward in the future.
A different approach to deal with the block is to see it as a part of us that has a reason why it wants to stop us from moving ahead. Maybe this part of us is afraid of the unknown, a loss of control or being unable to cope with the outcome. Perhaps that part of us is trying to protect us from a feared outcome, even if it’s not clear why that is. So an alternative to dealing with that part of us is to get to know it. This seems counter intuitive because we often just want it to go away but the ways in which we’ve tried to make it go away aren’t always successful. If its a recurring problem then it may be worth taking the time to investigate why there is a part of us that strenuously says no to things that we know we want to do or will be good for us.
Once we get to know and understand this part of us we will be better placed to get it on board with the things we want to do rather than fighting ourselves. This is a process of exploring and understanding the root causes of the emotional block and how it cam to be there in the first place. If we take the time to do this we can find a way through the clock that doesn’t involve force or avoidance. We can have more harmony within ourselves and can move forward in our lives in a way that feels peaceful and positive which means the outcome is more likely to be successful too.
