EMOTIONAL ADDICTION

On my journey of higher consciousness, I’ve had to address my shadow-self and work on healing past trauma. I came to the shocking discovery that I was addicted to emotions. Whatever emotion it was; sadness, anger, fear, excitement, happiness, anxiety and more. I got my high off anyone who emitted these emotions. In some ways, I became an emotional leech and I convinced myself that I was using these emotions I was experiencing to fuel my creativity. 

What’s worse? I believed that these emotions were mine and in some cases, it seemed like they were, because I was already familiar with these emotions as a result of past trauma and memories. The emotions were not new to me because I had felt them growing up in a chaotic and high-stress environment. As time went by these emotions began to translate into physiological changes because when I feel fear or anxiety, my body would release some form of adrenaline or cortisol. This habit became too much that I started to look for it in other people in order to experience whatever adrenaline that came with it. I was living these emotions vicariously through others not realizing that all these emotions affected my body.

The emotion that registered the most for me was sadness followed by anxiety. I got used to the high of feeling overwhelmed and so did my body. As a matter of fact, it had adjusted to the high-stress and overwhelming emotions I was experiencing. So I started to have big reactions to seemingly small things. Little did I know that I was going to crash and burn at some point, my body couldn’t take it anymore. On my healing journey, I had to start observing my thoughts and emotions plus reactions to those emotions to trace the origin and start dialling it back.

I’ve come to realize that most of it stemmed from unaddressed childhood traumas and the environment I grew up in. I’ve realized that how I processed these traumas as a child and reacted to my environment contributed to this seeming ‘emotional addiction’. With intention and conscious efforts, I used the mindfulness techniques to pay attention to what was going on in my head, my heart and my body. I journaled these feelings and asked myself critical questions like “What has brought on this feeling of sadness?”, “Was my reaction/anger to this situation really worth it?”, “How is my body responding to these overwhelming emotions?”, “What do I need to do to heal from these emotions?”.

Once I was able to ask myself these personalized questions, I started to detach from these emotions, particularly the ones that weren’t mine. Stripping away the layers of emotions to get to my true, authentic, genuine and raw emotions. Then and only then was I able to transmute my actual emotions into art and creativity.