And we’re on to belief #3! This is Part 3 of a series entitled “5 beliefs about emotions I gave up to truly heal” – you may want to read the first two posts before reading this one (check them out here: Part 1: There are “negative” emotions, and Part 2: Emotions exist in a hierarchy). **content warning: this post mentions abuse and sexual assault**

In my early twenties, I was invited to a community event at a healing arts centre that was run by a family friend. I was struggling a lot – I was reeling with the aftermath of being sexually assaulted, and my mental health was in a terrible state. I’d been told by the owner of the centre that this was a warm, welcoming healing circle of sorts where I wouldn’t be judged, and it was going to be led by an experienced healer. I wasn’t sure what I thought of the group setting, but I was also desperate at that point, and I trusted the person who had invited me.

The circle-goers did indeed seem welcoming at first. I felt safe, and I started to cry as people shared their struggles. When it came time to share my own, I shakily spoke about the grief, fear, shame, and confusion that was overwhelming me, how I was having panic attacks and couldn’t sleep and didn’t know what to do. I was shocked when the “experienced healer” took an abrupt tone with me in response. Dismissing everything I’d said, she preached about how I was in pain because I wasn’t replacing the painful emotions with love. If I did that, there would be no space for toxic emotions – I just needed to hold myself and my abuser with love, and I’d be fine. She made a point to add that love was supreme and didn’t involve lowly human concept like justice, the law, or police reports, so reporting the incident wouldn’t be a “loving” thing for me to do. Speechless, I looked around the circle to see if anyone thought this was odd, and no one seemed to be reacting at all. Feeling diminished and invisible, my emotions seemed to freeze internally and I stopped crying. The “healer” took my numbness as a sign that her skills had worked, and she moved on. It was years before I could bring myself to talk about the incident again.

This is an extreme case of trying to substitute a positive emotion for painful ones, but I think it’s necessary to mention it because it’s an easily recognizable example of two things: spiritual bypassing and gaslighting. I think the line between these two behaviours is thinner than most of us would like to admit. Gaslighting – the act of making someone doubt their reality and their perceptions – is often talked about in the context of abuse, and because of this most people don’t consider that they could actually be partaking in it. But this is essentially what we’re doing when we insist on substituting “good” emotions for “bad” ones – and we don’t just do this to others, we do it to ourselves as well.

I’m not suggesting that we should avoid reframing things or looking for the positive in a situation, by any means. In the short term, this can be an effective way to get through something difficult or to keep ourselves moving. As a long term strategy though, it’s not so effective – especially when it comes to healing deep wounds or developing a healthy relationship with our emotions. Focusing on gratitude when we’ve experienced loss, for example, doesn’t cancel out our grief: it can absolutely be a part of the process of healing, but grief has value and meaning in its own right and it’s crucial to give it space. Even more crucially, the pain and intense emotions from traumatic and abusive experiences can’t be skimmed over by feeling grateful for the good, looking for the “lesson” or higher meaning, focusing on forgiveness, or anything else.

I spent many years trying in vain to do these very things (and I tried HARD!)….and I can promise you, not only do emotional substitutions not actually work, but over time this pattern creates a split between what you really feel and what you believe you’re supposed to feel. And the more you try to convince yourself that what you “should” feel is what you really feel, the more you’ll feel a growing pressure to put up a façade and pretend to be something you’re not. This is not a case where “fake it til you make it” holds true: it just becomes exhausting and demoralizing to try to stifle how you really feel, and people who do exhibit emotional honesty will trigger you and remind you of all the wounds you’re avoiding. This is also not a case of “time heals all wounds” – masking your true feelings for a few years won’t give you less to deal with when you get honest with yourself later on. I really haven’t found that time heals wounds, especially not deep and painful ones. Healing work heals wounds.

There ultimately is no life hack for processing emotions. They’re often layered, complex, confusing, contradictory, and inconvenient as hell – and the only way through this is to go through it without denying anything. We can’t curate our emotional experiences to only include what’s comfortable and what makes us look like good or spiritual people. True healing requires courageously telling the truth: about what really happened, how it really affected us, and how we really feel. But the good news is that once we decide to do this, the feeling of relief is palpable, and it can help to propel us forward. In my case with the gaslighting “healer”, when I finally did tell the truth about my experience in a caring environment (this is crucial!), I couldn’t believe how much lighter I felt, or that I’d denied myself this freedom and honesty for so long.

This honestly also helped me develop a deeper awareness of when my reality and feelings were being diminished (by myself or someone else) and when I was doing this to others, and helped shift how I navigate conflict…but more on that soon for Part 4: the belief that situations which evoke negative emotions need to be avoided or fixed.