How and when your baggage was first formed will vary massively depending on the challenges you have faced over the early stages of your life and the amount of “balanced” support you received in response to this.
I emphasize the word balanced as this is critical….not enough support and we never get to share and eventually ground the impact an experience has had on us. Too much support might lead to blowing something way out of proportion and stifle the development of resilience.
And so the baggage stays with us, co-dependently waiting for the next conflict, health concern, family crisis or other life problem thrown at us.
I personally feel the path to emotional freedom is complete ownership. Now it is easy to own feelings of peace, calm, joy, excitement, etc. However, when anxiety, frustration, fear, guilt, anger or sadness come our way, we either hightail it away from these emotions, i.e. suppression, or pass them off as (crappy) re-purposed gifts for someone else, e.g. blaming the person who might have triggered this emotive response.
By denying complete ownership of our emotions, you are denying our right to be human; denying the experiences which forged these emotions; and denying the power we have you take control of our psychological reality.
So the next time one of your triggers are fired, take a step back and reflect on who owns this. It’s either them or you.
If it’s them, notice the influence others are having on your inner world. Do they deserve it this power?
But if it’s you, you may find embracing the emotions and refusing to mentally label them as either good or bad begins a process of fighting back against the negative impact of others and discovering a level of personal freedom many don’t realize they have.
Take care
Karl