I regularly encounter a crucial point in the guidance I offer, which, with a good dose of discernment and inner training, can open up a tangible space of freedom.

Rodin’s Thinker: Reflection on Which Emotions I Work With

There are emotions that are the sons and daughters of thoughts, rather than lived and deeply felt experiences. While I certainly cannot control my emotions, I can gain clarity on their origins and choose differently.

When an emotion arises in me because I am telling myself a story about a situation, it is not the same as an authentic feeling like sadness, for example. Thoughts can glue a person to situations and trap them in a cycle of self-generated emotions of sadness or despair.

Thus, I am not feeling a pure emotion but an emotion produced by a thought. I may have separated from a relationship that was both dysfunctional and intense, and tell myself the story that it’s over, that I will never experience this again with anyone, and that my sense of wholeness was due to this "special" connection.

This story will generate emotions of sadness, despair, and attachment within me. Moreover, it will consume my psychic energy, preventing it from being available for opening up to new horizons, other possibilities, and future opportunities for connection and fulfillment.

If I start working on welcoming these emotions, it will demand a lot of energy while still being based on a distorted understanding of their origin. I will remain at the surface of my inner process and keep looping within this internal “story.”

It is also interesting to note that sometimes something within me collaborates to maintain this story because there is a tragically nourishing dimension to this mechanism: the emotions generated by the story allow me to experience a form of intensity and feel alive.

Furthermore, it is worth observing that there can even be a kind of addiction to these intense emotions, which generate internal chemicals, hormones, etc., to which I may develop an attachment—just as someone seeks pleasure in taking psychotropic substances or other addictive substances.

Ultimately, I will develop a form of dependence on my suffering, which paradoxically both causes me pain and gives me a sense of existence.

In this kind of dynamic, I am both prisoner and jailer. I hold the keys to my own confinement. I am trapped within my own mind, which self-generates a bittersweet cycle. This type of mechanism defines what we call compulsive or repetitive patterns.

I Hold the Inner Keys to My Own Internal Prisons

In a first step, it is essential (to put it mildly) to begin identifying the thoughts that are themselves causing me suffering and to reclaim free will and discernment in relation to them. Of course, as is often the case, saying it is easier than living it.
Indeed, individuals often construct themselves upon these patterns until they become an integral part of their personality. Letting go of them requires dying to a part of oneself—perhaps a bit neurotic, but also familiar. And the known, even if dysfunctional, can feel more comfortable than the unknown, even if it is refreshing.

However, the freedom of being that is ultimately attained is far more fulfilling than the swamps of our inner claustrophobias.

Once this step is taken, I can then welcome the authentic and real emotions associated with a separation. I can then experience a genuine process of liberation and inner growth—what we call grief. From this perspective, the grieving process is a journey of self-encounter and self-knowledge. A process of wholeness, where I face reality as it is, allowing myself to welcome my sorrows and disappointments, cry as much as I need to, and let the energy of life continue to unfold.

It is, in fact, a rebirth. In every grieving process, there is a new emergence, as if grief and life walk hand in hand—one engendering the other, and vice versa.

It is ultimately a moment that can, in the end, become a celebration—once the process has been authentically completed.

Reaching the Summit of a Mountain as a Space of Rejoicing, Accomplishment, and Celebration

Thus, the ability to differentiate between the stories I tell myself, and my authentically felt experience, appears as a key stage in the unfolding of the psyche. It is best to embark on this path as soon as possible and allow the movement of life calling from within to take its rightful place.