We live in a culture that generally believes “better out than in.”
We are told that it’s better to put your feelings out into the world than to bottle them up.
That venting is healthy.
Letting people have your raw, unfiltered emotion keeps you from blowing up later.
But there is a contrarian teaching from the mystic G.I. Gurdjieff that I personally have found very powerful.
His instruction was simple and direct:
“Do not express negative emotion.”
Now, before you react to that—feeling like, “What is this? An instruction from a mindful communications coach saying don’t be authentic?” – let me clarify.
He was not talking about suppressing your experience of your emotions.
If you are sad or you are angry, you feel it. You notice it. You name it. That is your truth.
He is talking about the automatic, habituated expression of the knee-jerk reaction to an unpleasant moment.
The sharp retort to a partner. The complaint about how “this is always happening to me?” “Why is traffic always so bad?”, “Why am I always so unlucky”
But why would you stop saying those things when that’s what you feel, and in many cases, you are every right to be irritated.
There are two main reasons for this.
1. Interrupt the Unconscious Habit of Expressing Negativity
If we habitually express every irritation that comes up, we are teaching our nervous system to complain.
Don’t you know people like that? People who are always complaining? And what is your experience of them? Do you feel like it is making them healthier?
IME, in many cases, it feels more like a loop that keeps an auto-replay, just digging in deeper.
Inhibiting that expression interrupts the circuit.
It keeps you from being automatic and helps you well as other around you by not adding more noise to it.
2. The Muscle of Conscious Communication
The other advantage is that it is a conscious practice.
In order to not express negative emotion, you have to notice that you are about to express it.
This involves mindfulness: noticing the negative feeling, noticing the urge to express it, pausing, reconsidering, and then choosing to do something different.
This is not about being fake or being “nice.”
It’s about having choice.
When you practice not expressing negative emotion, you are training the muscle of conscious communication.
I invite you to check it out for a day. Just decide, “I am not going to express negative emotion today.”
And see what happens.
What to do with your frustration?
It’s true that it needs to move.
Deal with your frustration in a different way. Notice it. Name it.
Then do something different.
Write it out, dance it out, move your body.
Take a hot bath and let it go as best you can.
The key is to somatically engage with the feelings instead of dumping them into conversations with others.
If you’re like a lot of people, you’ll notice that when you do that, those feelings are often transformed. Because that’s the nature of feelings.
So notice the urge to express negativity and before you do – press pause.
In that silence, you aren’t suppressing yourself. You’re making a choice.
Stay present, and remember—sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is nothing at all.
– Brett
PS.
IMPORTANT
This practice is intended for those not already “loaded for bear,” if you know what I mean. If you try this and it feels like you’re being “muted”, you’re building up pressure, or “stuffing it” – that’s not the intention, so it would be recommened in this case. Instead, decompress first. Use the somatically enagaged suggestions and see if that helps.. You’ll know it’s working when you feel more relaxed, grounded, and expansive.