Killing with Kindness

Emotional baggage is like a recalcitrant child. It will not go away simply because you want it to go away. You cannot force it to go away because it will always come back, usually at inopportune times. But there is a sort of secret technique. It is very powerful. You can use it on your emotional baggage. This secret is killing emotional baggage with kindness.

Be Kind to Emotional Baggage??

How can you be kind to emotions? It sounds weird but actually it’s easy. Emotions like attention. They love to be at the driver’s wheel. It’s like the analogy in the Disney movie “Inside Out”: emotions love to take control, and get all the attention.

What is Kind?

Give them what they want. If your emotional baggage wants to be in the limelight, put them on centre stage. Focus all your attention and energy on them. Feed them and make them stronger.

Try to feel the emotion even stronger than seems natural. Pump it up and exaggerate it. Really go completely into that emotion. Imagine all the feelings and situations associated with it. Really go crazy.

Don’t Forget

Don’t forget to breathe. Sweep your head from side to side and breathe in and out very slowly. The head movement just might replicate the effects of EMDR. The breathing will definitely stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system. This could help rewire your brain to associate the emotion with safety and relaxation. Either way, don’t forget to breathe. It is super important.

This might take fifteen minutes of “killing with kindness”, or it might take an hour. At some point the emotion will simply vanish. If you break the breathing into sessions, then it will be easy to know when it is gone because in the next session you will not be able to summon that emotion. The baggage will just not be there.

In this sense you have ‘killed it with kindness’. You’re happy, the baggage got what it wanted and it goes away happily and everything ends up much more peaceful.