Befriend your Strong Emotions | with Sister Dang Nghiem

Dear Friends

I know you are there
and I'm very happy

As I was closing my eyes and

followed my breathing

I silently told myself

I love you so.

I love you so.

And I saw myself as a child

wandering on the streets of Saigon

feeling quite sad.

I saw myself standing by the bridge

thinking of dark thoughts.

I saw myself coming to this country

as a teenager

with a small handbag on one hand

and a younger brother on the other hand

holding him

And a thought arose in me:
"You have come a long way."

I love you so.

Thank you for all the efforts
you've made in life

so that you can still be here

Before I came to the practice

I didn't know how to take care
of my strong emotions

so I remember as a child

I already experienced a lot of trauma

from the sexual abuse

from the verbal abuse

from being an immigration child
from Vietnam

so I was quite depressed

of course I didn't call it depression

and in Vietnamese I didn't even know

that there was such a word
called depression

We just say "sad."

But I used to wander
on the streets alot

and I would make up
songs about my life

and those songs were quite sad

I remember I would sing
and then cry

I even sang to my brother and
both of us cried.

Or I would . . . we had
many bridges in Saigon

So every time I stood
on a bridge or

rode a bicycle on a bridge

the thought of suicide

would arise in my mind.

That was so rehearsed in me

since a young age that as I
grew into a teenager

it became worsened.

And in college, in medical school

whenever I had a difficulty

in life, in relationships

my thought immediately went to

it was like a default

it would go to,
Why do I live?

What's the meaning of this life?

I might as well just check out.

So there were times, most of the time

I didn't want to die

but suicidal thought would come up

as the first choice for me.

So, that's how I became a practitioner

and realized that it had become

a habit, a personality for me.

So, slowly I learned to breathe with it

and to tell myself

I am dying everyday, I don't
have to wish for death.

The body goes through
changes every moment

My skin cells slough off,

hair falls off, everything is changing.

So the question is not
whether to die or to live

the question is
How am I living?

And how am I dying?

Can I live beautifully?

Can I die beautifully, each moment?

So that helped change my attitude

and the way I approached
my sadness

and I see that as I practiced

the four kinds of nutriments
more diligently, more positively

slowly and now I don't
experience strong emotions that often

I'm quite steady and stable

in my way of being

and when a sadness arises

of course things that are
unpleasant still happen

but I don't react so strongly

so the frequency and the intensity
of strong emotion

is definitely reduced a lot.

But also how I respond to them
so they don't last for long.

Because instead of

blaming on the external circumstance

I learned to come back to myself

and breathe and tell myself,
"I choose peace,

I choose harmony within myself."

I don't want to cause further
damage to myself.

So whatever happened already

I don't have to explode.

I can just come back and
care for myself first.

And when I'm calm
I can go ask the person

what they meant when
they said that or when they did that

or I may have enough understanding

from within that I don't even
need the clarification or verification.

I can just let it go.

So that's a choice.
That's a wonderful choice.

All of us go through strong emotions

whether it's sadness

anger,

insecurity,

jealousy,

self-doubt

regret, yearning

etcetera.

We all have them.

Some emotions are stronger than others.

At certain times in our life

it also depends on our personality

how we express our emotions

Over the years as a spiritual practitioner

I've learned to regard emotions

first of all, as a wave.

Emotions,

they can also be regarded

as a storm, or

as a food, a nutriment.

As a habit

as an addiction.

So I'll go over them

in that light

so that we can

gain a deeper understanding

into our emotions.

Emotions as a wave

The moment we experience an emotion

we may not even be aware of it.

Like when you are angry

and somebody says,
You are angry.

And you may say, I'm not angry

Or somebody says, Are you sad?

Is something wrong?

You say, I'm not sad,
there's nothing wrong.

Sometimes a emotion has passed

and looking back a day later

sometimes a week, sometimes a year

sometimes years later

that we realize what we were experiencing

So, we look at a wave

It doesn't start at a peak

and it does not end
at this trough.

And emotion starts long ago

underneath the surface of an ocean

the undercurrent, so many the conditions

the previous waves push the water

so that it builds up into this one wave

or one tsunami

and it manifests

and it comes down

but it is also the basis
for another wave.

It also helps build up another wave.

So when we see an
emotion is a wave in that way

we know we're not caught

when it's full-blown

when it has quieted down.

But we learn to take care of it

at every point along the wave.

And I like to see that when we
practice mindfulness

we learn to embrace our emotion

we are like a surfer

instead of riding on the wave forward

we actually learn to ride
on the wave backward.

To look at it after it has passed.

And to learn which conditions

that have helped build
this particular wave or tsunami

How it affected our body

The tension, the fatigue

the flare of a skin problem

some physical health
or mental problems

some insomnia, for example.

So we look at the effects
that that particular emotion

just had on our body.
on our thoughts, on our speech

and we slowly go backward
on it and identify

when it was full-blown,
how did it affect me

in those moments?

What thoughts did I have

What speech did I use

and which kind of bodily actions,
movement, tension did I have?

So we learn to go backward
on that wave

and slowly to identify

the underlying causes and conditions

that triggered that particular wave.

Maybe somebody had said something that

triggered a feeling of insecurity in us

triggered a memory of our childhood

of something pleasant or painful

Maybe it was a sight

a sound

even a smell.

A word, a touch.

A touch can also trigger

a pleasant or unpleasant

painful memory experience.