Jennifer Heward
Our Emotions are like a Dart Board
I like to look at our emotions like a dart board. Imagine you are the dart board. You are going throughout your day and everyone and everything is throwing darts at you. Most of the day, the darts are missing the board, and they do nothing to you. And then someone says something to you, whether with malicious intent or not, and you begin to feel upset. You start to feel emotions. Whether it’s sadness, anger, guilt, fear, or despair, etc. Somehow, their dart hit the board.
Why don’t we get hurt or offended at everything around us? This is because we don’t get offended or hurt unless a “dart” hits something in our blind spot. There’s a saying that says we don’t get offended, we choose to take offense. Our blind spot is what chooses whether we take offense. It’s generally automatic and we can feel like we have no control over it.
Addictions
Have you ever tried to break an addiction? It can be very difficult and frustrating. Will power alone is usually not enough. You can stop the behavior for a time and go back to it months or even years later. This is because most physical addictions stem from an emotional addiction. Stopping the behavior doesn’t address the underlying reason for the addiction. The underlying emotional, blind spot issues need to be fully addressed. One really interesting emotional addiction that I have seen is a physical addiction to pornography actually being an emotional addiction to shame.
Trapped Emotions
Ideally, when we feel an emotion, it comes up, we feel it and we let go of it or it releases. However, many times we will feel an emotion and it gets “trapped” within us. This especially happens when we experience painful or traumatic events. Many physical issues are caused by trapped emotions. Identifying and releasing those can bring about healing.
