What does it mean to wear your heart on your sleeve or wear your emotions on your sleeve? It means experiencing your emotions in a way that's not burying them.
In this article, I’ll share a wonderful tip on how you can easily experience your emotions without getting stuck in them so that you can continue to wear your emotions on your sleeve. But let’s start by looking at exactly what this expression means.
When we hear somebody say ‘Oh that person wears their heart on their sleeve’, the things that come to mind are that the person must be very loving and caring and generous. Here I want to expand that to incorporate all of the emotions.
Why is it that we just wear our hearts on our sleeve and be that loving, kind, generous person? Why not all of the other emotions too? Why can't we express those and be giving of those in the same way? Why is it that we're not allowed to wear the other emotions on our sleeve? Or maybe we are and it's just not an expression that you ever hear.
For one to be wearing their heart on their sleeve, they may be doing good deeds; they may be doing things like voluntary work or charity work; they may offer to support their family and their neighbours more than somebody else; they may be positively minded or just incredibly generous with what it is that they have to offer.
But what about somebody who wears their sadness on their sleeve? What about somebody who wears their grief on their sleeve? Or somebody who wears their anger on their sleeve? What about somebody who wears their peace on their sleeve? These emotions, and all the others, have the right to be felt and the right to be expressed in healthy ways.
I grew up in a family that was not very good at communicating their emotions in a healthy way, and there would often be outbursts, particularly with harder emotions. Frustration, anger, or pissed off for challenging somebody else's thoughts or opinions, not being able to do that in a healthy way.
When I say we were not good at communicating, here’s an example. I was on a trip to the US when I called my mum to wish her a happy 60th birthday. That call was the first time we had said ‘I love you’ to each other. When I hung up the phone I started crying because it’s not something we had ever verbally expressed.
I know that my mum loves me but sometimes the verbal expression of it, sometimes what we feel and believe should be the acting out of that love, or that anger, or that joy, the pain, the value, the worth, is not always what we get.
So as I said, I come from a very well versed family of not wearing emotions on their sleeve or just wearing particular ones. Growing up in that environment, I've certainly recognised how much more expressive I am in my emotions verbally. I’m able to communicate them much more and in a much healthier way.
But what about when we are in the experience of them? When somebody is wearing their heart on their sleeve, we might witness them, as I already said, putting themselves out there in some way to offer their emotional, mental, physical service. And that's really beautiful.
But what about if that same person, or if somebody else is experiencing pain? What if they're experiencing stress? How do we allow and create space for those emotions to be worn on our sleeve so that we can really process them and let them go? To be able to return that energy of anxiety, of overwhelm, of judgement, of fear, of hate, of loathing, of frustration, whatever it might be. How can we create space to allow those emotions to be expressed in a way that is healthy - not in the eyes of the society, but healthy for the individual who needs to experience them?
And I think this is what's really tricky.
In addition to growing up in a family that was not always very good at communicating emotions, I also grew up in England, and there's the long, long, long, long, long, long history of the stiff upper lip. The belief systems of ‘girls are meant to be seen and not heard’; ‘big boys don't cry’. These are all things that really suppress our ability to experience all ranges of emotions.
When we don't allow ourselves to experience all ranges of emotions, and to release them, we begin to store those in our physical body. When we store them in our physical body, we start to create dis-ease.
As without so within, which means that the external environment is a reflection of our inner being.
I’ve had experiences where I’ve had conversations with people and the emotion ‘guilt’ has popped up. It occurred so frequently I realised that there might be some message in there for me.
Using those few conversations where guilt has popped up as a little bit of feedback I asked myself the question: what part of me is experiencing or expressing guilt? What part of me is needing to feel guilt in this moment? And pondering on that.
It’s not about analysing any aspect of yourself. It's asking the question out loud and allowing the information to come, because your subconscious mind, your higher self, your higher power will share it with you if you are curious and open enough to hear it.
The information that came through for me was actually stemming from holding guilt around somebody else's experience of anxiety and how much anxiety they were actually experiencing, and how I was able to be in a state of so much peace in contrast, and feeling guilty for that experience. That I feel guilty for my own experience of life because somebody else is having a very different and contrasting one.
But this is actually something that I've done a number of times. I've felt guilty about sharing what I've been up to for the week, because sometimes I'm having a really nice relaxing week and I haven't done what is seen as traditionally “working” very much at all. I feel guilty about that.
I live in an apartment which I absolutely love, which I've manifested. Through this insight, I worked on this is who I am and this is what I've created for myself through the choices that I've made, through the healing that I've done and through the growth that I keep seeking.
Whilst I thought I'd come to terms with the guilt of my relaxing and chilling, it was really interesting to notice that I was still experiencing guilt around other people’s experience of life and the stress that they are holding within their own mind/body.
It’s actually in this awareness, I ask why do I need to experience guilt for somebody else's experience of life? When I trust and know that they are in the moment of their life, that is exactly where they needed it. So what part of me needs to hold guilt around that?
It's this expression of emotion that we shy away from. We don't wear it on our sleeves, and in doing so, we bury our opportunity to learn about ourselves, learn about the things that we can let go of.
We don't need to hold all of that shit within us. We really don’t. There's so much fun to be had in this world. Don't give time, space and energy to holding on to any of the heaviness - feel it and free it. This is one of my biggest mantras.
This is exactly the kind of process that you can use to just walk through and explore with so much open curiosity what is going on for you; of why you're experiencing a particular emotion.
It’s important to remove ‘why’ when exploring and doing self-reflection. It can have a bit of a heaviness around it. And play this out for yourself. For me, why, which is a question that I've asked a lot in my life, can have a more direct, accusatory tone to it. That's possibly some of my own attachments to the word. ‘Why did you do that’ is something that we would hear from our parents or from our teachers when we were being told off.
So it is a great question. It's a great probing question, but in this instance when we're being soft and gentle with ourselves, asking the questions, ‘What part of me is experiencing this? What part of me needs to experience this? What part of me is choosing this experience?’ really opens up exploration and creates so much softness and grace around that inquiry.
This gentleness is so important for our inner child to just make a little peep. It might be a very, very quiet one and you may not hear it. But simply asking the question without any analysis, without engaging the mind is so important.
A beautiful exploration question is what's stopping you from wearing all of the variety of emotions on your sleeve?
This can open a door. It may open a floodgate. But be open and curious again, and ask yourself the question, ‘What's stopping me from wearing my emotions on my sleeve?’ These are things that we can start to process and create expansion within ourselves.
Sending you love, hugs and magic.
Bhavna xxx
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