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May/June 2009 Featured Stories
The One Thing Holding You Back

by Raphael Cushnir

Raphael Cushnir

The one thing holding us back from our greatest possible success and well being is resistance to emotion.

Most of us grow up without ever learning what an emotion is, how to honor it or how to feel it successfully. In fact, we get harmful messages to the contrary about "counting to 10" and bottling up our powerful feelings.

The truth about emotions is pretty straightforward. They're messages from the brain that are delivered in the body. To receive these messages we need to feel them where they arise.

If we're lonely, for example, the message might show up as a stab in the heart, a tug in the stomach, a welling behind the eyes or all three. Counterintuitive as it may seem, to feel a painful emotion fully, at the site of its delivery, is the best way to help it diminish. Not feeling the emotion, on the other hand, causes it to grow stronger, remain longer and mess up our lives in many ways.

Whenever you're not willing to feel an emotion, your choices and behaviors stem from your avoidance of that emotion. Your resistance then runs your life, and is directly contrary to your overall best interest.

Take the case of a man who's unable to feel inferior. This resistance is likely to make him allergic to criticism. He'll go out of his way to avoid criticism, or to deflect it, and will therefore deny himself the chance to hear potentially crucial feedback.

Resistance to jealousy, for example, leads to controlling behavior in relationships. We think that jealousy itself is the source of such behavior when in fact it's the resistance. A person who is able to experience jealousy directly, physically, loses all need to control.

Resistance to lack, likewise, leads to hasty and unwise spending. A person who can tolerate the visceral sensation of not having enough is able to remain patient and discerning when presented with possible purchases.

The antidote to emotional resistance is acceptance. This means learning to accept your emotions, in your body, as soon as they arise. This acceptance is not mental or theoretical - it's a practical skill.

I call this skill surfing. With internal surfing, your attention is the surfer, and the emotion is the wave. Here's how it works. Suppose someone rejects you. Your initial inclination is to drown your sorrows. Instead, you locate the raw sensation of rejection in your body. Then, you remain attentive to that sensation as it moves and shifts. In the process you ride it out. Soon, much sooner than you'd imagine, this leaves you cleansed, refreshed and truly over it.

Often temporarily the wave is excruciating. It takes a lot of practice not to bail. After quickly getting to "shore" a few times, however, your motivation grows exponentially.

Another difficulty is that surfing often brings up all kinds of distracting thoughts. In the above example, while surfing, you might simultaneously notice thoughts like, "No wonder I got rejected - I'm a total loser." Or, "I'm better off by myself." Or, "What should I have for dinner?"

Dealing with such thoughts requires noticing them dispassionately, like clouds in the sky, while doing your best to remain on the wave or catching the very next one if you "wipe out."

To be clear, surfing an emotion doesn't mean you must give credence to the thoughts associated with it. In other words, feeling like a loser for a few minutes doesn't mean you ever have to believe that you truly are one.

Negative patterns are caused by stored-up, resisted emotions. They are the way resisted emotions try to get our attention, so that we'll finally feel them.

If you're carrying around a lot of bottled up rejection, to complete our example, you'll actually draw people into your life who are bound to reject you. The good news is that once you surf your way free of that rejection, the pattern loses its power.

Stumbling Blocks

Many people encounter stumbling blocks when trying to release their emotional resistance, including:

• Analyzing: An attempt to figure our way out of an emotion. "What's going on? Why am I feeling so anxious?"
•  Judging: A decision that something's wrong with the emotion, or with us for having it. "This guilt is too much. I shouldn't let him get to me."
• Assessing. Excessive focus on how well or poorly we're connecting. "I'm not feeling much of anything. Am I doing this right?"
• Bargaining. Conditions placed on how long or how deeply we're willing to feel. "I'll feel this grief fully today, but it better not show up again tomorrow."

Whenever these stumbling blocks occur, the solution is simply to notice them with equanimity and resume surfing as soon as possible.

Let's see this in action. A client of mine always wanted to write but never got around to it. His flinch occurred every time he walked past his waiting computer. His worst-case scenario was writing something that his most loved and respected friends thought was pure drek. He realized this would make him feel like an abject failure.

Together, we imagined that he wrote a whole novel, was super excited about it, and gave it to his friends who were promptly horrified. They hated the book vehemently and ridiculed him for writing it.

His emotional response to this imaginary situation was a daunting wave of shame. I guided him to stay on the wave through many challenges and distractions, and after a few minutes it abated.

"Well," he told me, "that really wasn't so bad. I kind of feel like, 'Oh, well, at least I tried.' That's better than never writing anything."

This process revealed to my client that the one thing holding him back had been his resistance to shame. Repeated a few more times, it released his resistance almost completely. Now, with nothing holding him back, he writes at least 30 minutes a day.

All emotions are valid and need to be felt, in order to receive their message and allow them to depart. The only way to shift from a negative emotional state to a more expansive one is to feel your way through it. No type of will power or self-talk will ever take the place of simple, straightforward feeling.

Raphael Cushnir, author of The One Thing Holding You Back, is an emotional connection coach for individuals and couples. He contributes to O, The Oprah Magazine, has written three previous books, teaches at the Esalen Institute and the Kripalu Yoga Center, and lectures worldwide. Visit www.cushnir.com.