It occurred to me today how much we close our hearts…without even knowing it.
Perhaps we’re conscious of when we close our hearts…perhaps we’re not.
We close our hearts for several reasons.
Why Hearts Close
We often allow relationships to close our hearts.
The relationship ended badly and left us wounded.
The pain was so great that we closed our hearts to prevent anything remotely close to that pain ever happening again.
Ever wonder about the opportunities you’ve missed because you closed your heart? I have…
We also close our hearts when we avoid grieving and mourning a loss, a death.
Instead of opening our hearts and talking about our feelings and emotions, we close up.
We kid ourselves into believing that if we don’t talk about it or mention it, we’ll heal, we’ll get over it. Instead, we isolate, hide, cry alone. Why?
Our hearts close when we avoid others who are in pain also.
We know they’re hurting, but we either avoid them or say something meaningless like, “It’ll be okay” “You deserve better” “This too shall pass” “At least they’re in a better place”
These empty phrases say a lot more about our fear than the other person’s pain and grief. We’ve concocted this myth in our minds that if we bring it up or say anything that we’ll hurt the person more. Really?
It’s a pretty egocentric perspective to think that we could possibly hurt the person more than they are already hurting.
When Hearts Close
What happens to feelings and emotions that don’t get expressed?
They definitely don’t evaporate into thin air or drift off into the sunset.
Feelings and emotions that don’t get expressed show themselves in others ways. They come out through anxiety, depression, body pain and psychosomatic issues, addiction, and violence.
Another myth is that we can heal unexpressed feelings and emotions through medications, such as anti-depressants.
Don’t get me wrong, medication is vitally necessary for some issues and disorders; however, using anti-depressants for grief, sorrow, and gut-wrenching sadness is not the answer.
Grief is not necessarily depression, and burying feelings and emotions long-term could most certainly grow into depression.
Medications, alcohol, drugs and other compulsive behaviors numb our true feelings and emotions, and bury them deep inside, closing our hearts.
Brene Brown and Geoff Warburton have years of research, writings, and Ted talks that reveal the sad realities of numbing and closing our hearts.
Years of closing my heart took its toll on me through bad relationships, psychosomatic pain, stress, anxiety, and numbing out.
I always thought my heart was open because I cry easily, especially when I see others in pain, but I was never expressing my feelings and emotions, especially with myself.
If I can’t open my heart up to me, I’m probably not opening my heart up to others, or at least, not authentically.
In my yoga practice, we often focus on heart-openers, the 4th Chakra, Anahata, the emerald green energy center that connects us to our feelings and emotions, our compassion and empathy, our passion, our aliveness, including hurt, pain, anger, rage.
We can’t live whole without experiencing the full range of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. This doesn’t mean that we must act on every feeling or emotion.
Instead, we must be brave and courageous enough to acknowledge them (breathe) sink into them (breathe) be with them (breathe) and allow them to dignify our lived experience, whatever that might be.
Sending you inspiration,
Leave a Reply