Dam

Listen to me

Watch me

Last week’s blog Flower looked at how we can imbalance ourselves in our lives and the negative impact over time this can have on us. Today we look at how, if we leave our emotional issues and the pressures of life to build up and how, at its worst, it can shatter us and our lives.

We all have our fair share of pressure and often what comes with that is the emotions we struggle to deal with. If we let them build up inside of us this will cause many negative issues. Inside of us we have our own emotional dam, it’s our protector and everyone’s is different, some people will be way more emotional than others and often it the internal emotional dam that will affect this.  Without an adequate dam then we will end but being very emotional over many things in life and this can be an issue to us. As children we don’t have a dam, we don’t realise we have to have one either, but over time we learn the rules that we can’t cry at everything. If we have been brought up in a comfortable expressive environment without any major life traumas or issues your dam should be about the right size and shape. If for example, our parents are very emotional, we look at them for that early learning and then we can become that too, by not building a very high dam, which will often mean that when things get difficult we can cry easily. This is fine as children, but it can hold us back as adults as we will struggle with conflict and life’s ups and down as the emotional side of ourselves will always seem to be overwhelmed with life. This is something that we can change, as most children do learn to grow our emotional dam, becoming stronger in dealing with emotional issues in more appropriate ways and we can do this just as easily as adults.

The other side of this can be that we have built a massive dam and in fact, it’s too big not too small, this as well can be a big issue for many people. If life has been tough and there have been some difficult or traumatic times, your unconscious mind can have overbuilt our emotional dam as a defence mechanism. This is great to help us deal with the issues at hand but over time this can cause quite a few problems in our lives. One will be our struggle with emotions in general, as the amount we are holding will seem too overwhelming and our first instinct will be to detach from them. If we start avoiding our emotions this can lead us to detach from ourselves and even our lives, as we fear these feelings. Our mind will then continue to run from this, we know that our mind is always trying to protect us, but in the fast-evolving society, habits can often get out of date, stuck and even obsolete. Our minds are so used to having something to be afraid of, but in the society we live in now, it is a far cry from our lives 500 years ago. This isn’t normal for our minds to see the world change so rapidly normal evolution takes thousands of years, our minds are struggling with this.

If we have been building up our emotions behind our massive dam, what can happen is something in life can just tip the balance of pressure and if we can no longer hold the pressure then the dam breaks. Instantly we may look at what event that triggered this, no matter the size and try to understand what made us break. What we need to do is to look at the bigger picture and the build-up of life’s emotions behind the dam. This can be difficult to deal with as not only are we awash with emotions, the dam is broken, and everything can trigger an over-emotional response. Your dam won’t just go back up, you can’t just go back to where you were before, it will take time to go in search of all of the parts of your shattered dam to rebuild it.  This will be a big journey to rebuild your dam many parts of it can have been washed away and are even hidden by the terrain of the ground around your dam. Each part we reclaim will take a personal challenge, we will have to head over mountains and hill which can push us to the max to find the broken bits of the dam. Each part we reclaim is a journey into dealing with our old emotions, having hidden from them we have to learn to live with them, deal with them, embrace them and ultimately heal them. There is no quick route to this process but when we fully regain our emotional balance again with the right dam to support us, you will feel able to deal with all life can throw at you.

But ultimately its better not to burst your dam open, if you are struggling emotionally don’t let yourself get to this point it is not an easy way back. Now maybe is your time to start working the emotions through and finding ways to drain down your overwhelming emotions. After this, you can then start to take down the excess levels of your dam and become more connected, not only with your own emotions but with your world as well.  We often base everything on fear and we wait for the fear to tip us in a different direction, even saying this doesn’t sound a great option. But living this way is how many of us live our lives, pushed by the least fear into all aspects of our lives, emotional it can be just the same. We fear our emotions, they feel too overwhelming we avoid them until our mind says it more dangerous to stay in avoidance than it is to break the dam down and force us to change. I know dealing with our emotions can be hard but being honest we have to accept that if we are at this overwhelming point on a day to day basis that’s not great either.

Just take some time to let out your emotions, watch something sad, chat with a friend or family member about the issues and emotions which are troubling you.  Come and see someone like myself or see if there are any services your GP can offer you or any support groups or online forums which may help you work through your issues.

Times is precious and we all know that we will eventually get to this point of change by choice, by our minds or lives pushing us to, the only thing we have control over is how long we try and wait this out till we do change.  Make today the first day of change and reclaim your life, feel the freedom of being emotionally at peace and free of the pressures of those overwhelming issues.

Thanks for dropping by Sara x