How To Build Emotional intelligence Through Dark Thoughts
The peacefully present teacher is one who's faced their own darkness, demons and inner storms. They've opened their heart to past wounding and hurt, and instead of shying away from the challenge, they've let it forge them - helping them become stronger and wiser.
In their presence and through their words, you can feel the depth of their hard-earned wisdom. Their words are transformational. Their wisdom holds a light at the end of the darkness, guiding others through their own to find their own inner wisdom.
The peacefully present teacher can hold the space for a group of people with unresolved emotions. She sends out a peaceful signal that settles her students, no matter their emotional state. She responds instead of reacts - and all because she's met the full spectrum of her own emotions first.
Overcoming The Shame of Suicidal Thoughts
On a summers day in Yokohama, Japan, 2003, I got up and walked towards the harbour. "Nothing is real. I could just drown in the harbour and nothing would be different," I thought to myself as I got ready to follow through. On the way, a random man caught my attention and started talking to me, breaking me out of the spell and bringing me back to reality.
A month earlier, I'd been shaken by my first suicidal thought. After 3 days of sleep-deprived delusion reached a traumatic crescendo, the thought "I have to end my life to stop this" snapped me out of the trance. It shocked me so much that came out of self-imposed isolation and I began to reach out to friends for support. I needed to return to normality to escape the inner torment because I was haunted by the shame of constantly thinking "What's wrong with me that I've had suicidal thoughts?"
The shame stayed for many years. But things began to change thanks to 2 key changes. The first is the amazing work of empathy and emotions expert Karla McLaren. In her book "The Language of Emotions", she has a whole chapter on suicidal urges. She herself suffered with strong suicidal urges for many years. Her depth of experience and research felt true and real. Below, we'll explore the wisdom of her system.
The second was a shift in thinking. I realised that since 2003, I'd been asking myself the wrong question:
What's wrong with me?
Behind that question is the assumption that suicidal thoughts have no purpose and that I'm just a defective human to have them.
Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash
The Question That Open The Door To Healing
I started asking myself a different question:
What did those thoughts mean?
We tend to take our thoughts literally. But often what we're thinking in words is symbollic and not literal. We've been trained to think logically, linearly and analytically through left-brain focused education.
Beneath our wordy, thinking state, there's a deeper language beyond words. It works in symbols, emotions, archetypes and stories. Our wordy thinking minds can't process emotions because they have a whole language of their own.
Trying to solve an emotional problem with the wordy thinking mind is like trying to answer an English language question with Maths. They're completely different systems. To solve an emotional problem, you have to open up and feel your way through it. Once you've felt your way through, your logical mind can assist to make higher meaning from it.
Asking myself "What's wrong with me?" left my mind searching for things that were wrong. But switching the question to "what did those thoughts mean?" began a deeper enquiry into what was really happening.
According to Karla McLaren's "The Language of Emotions", suicidal urges come up when something has become so unworkable in your life that it has to die.
It's not about you needing to die, it's about something in your life that needs to die.
It made sense that after experiencing the intensity of delusion and breakdown, I had to become a new person to recover. And so an old part of me had to die to make way for a more whole version of myself.
It wasn't a quick "death". It was a gradual letting go over time. The shame lingered for a while, but eventually I could talk about experiencing suicidal thoughts without the "negative charge" of shame about them.
There's nothing wrong with having suicidal thoughts. The more we can experience the totality of being human - including the dark thoughts and feelings - the more whole we can be, and the more present we can be.
Rooted in deep humanity.
If you're experiencing suicidal thoughts, it's wise to get help from trained professionals.
Here is a website of support around the world: https://www.therapyroute.com/article/helplines-suicide-hotlines-and-crisis-lines-from-around-the-world
Journalling Prompts For Peaceful Presence
Set a timer for about 10 minutes and let your thoughts and feelings flow through your pen.
what have tricky emotions taught you in the past?
are there any emotions you've avoided that might inhibit your peaceful presence?
