10: How to Navigate Difficult Emotions

Transcript

S1:E10: How to navigate difficult emotions:

Welcome to the Return to Her podcast. I'm your host, Cassie Dalton, experienced yoga teacher, energy worker, and wellness coach who is passionate about helping women reconnect with their true selves and thrive in all areas of life.

Even though I'm still doing the work on my own wellness and spiritual path, my mission now is to guide you in reigniting your inner spark and living in alignment with the unique calling of your soul. By honoring your whole being, together, let's create a pathway to empowerment, balance, and authentic living.

Your journey starts here, and I am so excited to walk beside you.

Just a quick reminder—this, like every episode, is for informational and educational purposes only. It is never intended as a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are experiencing physical or mental health challenges, please reach out to a licensed professional for support.

Hey everybody. Welcome back in. I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you to all of you who have been listening, sharing, and reaching out to me. It really does mean so much to me. Every time you share this podcast, it helps more women find it. And together, we are creating this ripple effect of healing and transformation through the world.

For those of you who have told me personally—whether it's through messages or even during our private sessions—that this podcast is making a difference in your life, thank you so much for reflecting that back to me.

It means everything to me because, honestly, sometimes it does feel a little lonely on this side of the mic. I wonder if this is landing, if anyone's even listening, if it even matters at all that I'm doing this. And when I hear your reflections back, it reminds me that you are out there, that this work is being received.

It does matter because it's made a difference to you already, and that's really humbling. More than that, it's really inspiring to me.

So again, thank you. Please keep listening, keep sharing, and stay in touch. I love hearing from you.

Okay, so we're gonna dive in now to today's episode about transmuting emotions.

I've been really thinking about emotions a lot lately, especially the ones that we label as negative or call, quote-unquote, low vibration. You know, the ones that we've been taught to avoid, to suppress, to feel guilty for even having at all—such as shame, anger, jealousy, fear.

These heavy feelings that we're really quick to judge or try to push away. But what if we have been thinking about them all wrong?

What if every emotion that you feel—whether it's shame, guilt, anger, jealousy, or fear—is actually love? Trying to show up in your life in a different way?

What if these feelings are not something to run away from, but something to move through? They're not obstacles, but rather doorways through which higher love comes to express itself.

In a world where we're often told to push away or fix these low vibrational emotions, I invite you to consider a different perspective. One where every emotion—no matter how heavy, how tight, how scary—is simply a reminder of your wholeness. Of your divine essence.

Because if you believe, like I do, that God is love and that you, as a soul in a human body, are a piece of God, that means that you too are love.

And deep down, everything we experience in life is simply an invitation to return home to the remembrance of that love.

If we start to see that every single emotion we experience is just energy in motion, love in motion, then we might start to respond to these emotions rather than reacting to them.

We might start to shift our relationship with them, realizing that even the ones that feel really uncomfortable—the ones that we want to resist, the ones we wish we could just get rid of and stop ever feeling—are actually love trying to express itself, trying to guide us back home.

So instead of running from them, what if we met them with presence, with curiosity?

What if we stop labeling them as bad and instead saw them for what they really are—an opportunity, a doorway, a chance to rise a little higher, to transcend?

Because everything is love.

At our core, we are love because we come from God, and God is love, and everything is God. Therefore, everything is love—including our hardest emotions.

So today—ooh, that was a lot! That might just be the end of the podcast right there.

But no, I did want to go a little further. I want to unpack this.

So today, we're going to talk about what emotions really are, how they move, and why the only way to truly shift them is by being present with them.

We will explore why safety is the key to transmutation and why our emotions are not the problem—it's how we meet them that makes the difference.

So let's dive in.

Nothing in life is actually static. Everything is constantly moving, changing, and vibrating—and that includes our emotions.

So let's start with something that is really simple but really powerful:

Emotions are just energy, and energy is meant to move.

And if you're into this kind of stuff like me, you have probably come across this guy—Dr. David Hawkins—and his Map of Consciousness.

It is a way to see emotions on a frequency scale.

So remember: every emotion is energy, and energy vibrates.

Every emotion carries a vibrational frequency.

• Emotions like shame, guilt, and fear are on the lower scale, which means that they vibrate at a lower frequency.
• Emotions like love, joy, peace, and gratitude are on the higher end, so they vibrate at a higher frequency.

That is—scientifically—what we call good vibes or high vibes.

And it is really damn easy to start to realize that emotions carry vibrations, and then fall into the trap of thinking: "Okay, so I need to stay in the high vibes all the time, and I need to avoid the low ones at all costs."

But when we identify something as either good or bad, we start to form attachments to it.

We start to either hold onto it and hoard it, or we want to resist it and push it away.

And when we attach to anything—whether that is wanting to hold onto it or wanting to resist it and push it away—that is really what causes our suffering in life.

Because remember: nothing is permanent.

Everything is constantly moving and changing.

Emotions are not static.

They are frequency waves, constantly moving, constantly shifting.

And the only time that they actually become stuck is when we start to resist them—when we suppress them, ignore them, judge ourselves for feeling them, or try to hang onto them rather than letting them flow.

Think of it like a river. Water naturally wants to flow. But when we build a dam—when we block or hold on to emotions instead of letting them move freely—they stagnate. And that stuck energy creates all sorts of problems downstream. But when we stop resisting, when we let the emotions move the way that they need to, they will naturally begin to return to their original state. And our original state is love. Because we came from love. We are love. Everything is love because everything is God, and God is love.

Then these emotions will naturally start to shift back into love.

• Fear starts to shift into trust.
• Anger can transform into passionate action, clarity, direction, and focus.
• Shame might start to soften into self-acceptance.

And really, it's all just energy. Just moving through and returning back to where it started—if we allow it to.

So instead of thinking that lower frequency emotions are automatically "bad" or something to avoid, I'm starting to see them as really important parts of our personal songs.Like the low notes—the low frequencies—and the high notes—the high frequencies—They all work together in this song to create a complete experience that we call living as a human being in this world. Without those high notes—those higher frequencies—playing the low notes would be really overwhelming. Very dense, very deafening. But without those low notes, playing the high notes would be pretty meaningless.

We have to learn how to experience both—without holding on, without resisting.

We are supposed to let them flow—to let the song play—without attaching.

Remembering that even those so-called "low" emotions—

They are not permanent states.

They are simply invitations to help you return back to love.

So remember, some of you may have read in my blog post recently—if you're on my mailing list—that emotions only last about 90 seconds. That’s all it takes for them to move through you when you allow them to be seen and felt—without holding on, without pushing away.

And when you allow this to happen, when you don’t create stories around it, when you don’t block the energy of it— The emotion naturally starts to rise and return back to the state from which it came. The state that all of us came from. The state of love. And that process happens when you notice and honor what’s going on, rather than when you fight it.

You might be asking, like I’ve asked myself—"If everything is love, why then do we experience these feelings like fear and shame, anger, and jealousy?" Well… maybe it’s because love isn’t just a one-note song.It is a dynamic, evolving, constantly moving symphony.Love—i.e., God—shows up in all of its forms, even those that feel challenging. Because love is not just this warm and fuzzy feeling sometimes.It's this very intense, expansive energy that can purify and transform you. Sometimes love has to show up in ways that challenge us, that stretch us, that call us to grow. And I'm starting to see—quote-unquote—"negativity"… it isn’t actually something that’s separate from love or separate from God.It’s just love that hasn’t yet been recognized, that hasn’t yet been illuminated.

So think about it—

• Anger might just be love trying to protect something we care about, whether it’s ourselves or someone else.
• Fear might just be love looking for safety, so that it can grow and expand.
• Shame might just be love trying to guide us back to a sense of self.

So maybe these emotions aren’t really working against us after all.

Maybe they are guiding us toward deeper healing, toward deeper truth.

The only way to actually move through these emotions though, is to meet them.To stop fighting them.To stop seeing them as something that needs to be fixed or swept under the rug because you’re “too spiritual” to have these emotions.

And I’m reminded of something that my teacher, Sri Kaleshwar, used to say: "Love is the final weapon against all negativity." And if we think about that for a minute—negativity isn’t some force opposing love.It is just love that’s lost its way.It is just God that has forgotten itself.

When we stop trying to fight these feelings and instead start seeing them as parts of the larger whole, Then they can begin to dissolve. The light starts to illuminate the darkness.

So let’s go back to anger, that example. Underneath anger lies a message.

Perhaps it is a need for boundaries to be set—or to show you that boundaries you have set have been violated. Maybe it is a message that something needs to be changed, something needs to be acknowledged. When we suppress anger, though, we mute whatever message it came to share with us. And as my teacher says, "What you resist persists." So the anger will just keep showing back up in different ways, different forms, different manifestations in our minds and in our bodies.

But when we sit with that emotion lovingly…It can start to transform into energy that leads into positive action. The same thing goes for fear—which is often love’s way of just asking for safety.

And like I said before, shame—perhaps—is love trying to remind us of our worth, because we’ve forgotten. Every emotion, no matter how heavy or scary it feels, is really just love whispering to us to come back home.

Now, let’s get practical for a moment.

We can’t transform our emotions unless we feel safe enough to truly experience them.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re feeling overwhelmed, your body tenses up, your breath gets shallow, it’s hard to think?

That’s your nervous system on high alert—stuck in that fight, flight, freeze mode.

If you’ve ever tried to process something while feeling like this—while feeling stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed—you know how difficult it is.

That’s because when our nervous system is in this state, the body isn’t focused on healing.

It is just trying to survive.

So this is where our root chakra comes in. That base of the spine energy center—that is our foundation for a sense of safety and grounding.As souls in these human bodies, it is what keeps us connected to the Earth element. When our root chakra energy isn’t flowing properly…

We don’t feel safe in these bodies. We don’t feel safe in our place in the world. And therefore, we can’t be fully present with what we’re feeling. If we can’t be present, We can’t allow anything to move through us and shift.

When this energy center is balanced, on the other hand—

We feel secure.

We feel safe.

We are able to be present with what is going on around us and what is going on within us—our emotions.

And that’s when the magic really starts to happen.

So before we can even try to work with an emotion that is moving through us,

We have to ground ourselves.

We have to come back to this root chakra and tap into that energy.

We have to come back into the body.

There are a lot of different ways that you can do that, but here’s something that might be practical for you right now to try.

Take a deep breath.

I feel like this keeps coming back up in every single episode that I’ve done up to this point—

The importance of breathing.

So just take a deep breath right now.

Inhale… and exhale.

Do that again.

Try one more.

Now, start to feel the ground beneath your feet—almost like the ground is rising up to hold your feet. Feel the surface beneath your sits bones. Again, it’s rising up to meet you, to hold you.

Notice the way that your body is being held here without your effort, and allow yourself to release into that support.You might even imagine—if you’re the visual type—that roots are growing down from your feet, from your sits bones, deep into the earth beneath you.

Feel yourself get a little heavier as you imagine this. 

As you feel yourself being held, notice how much more solid you feel, how much more connected.Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your lower belly. Let the weight of your hands rest there for a moment. Then remind yourself—you can say this out loud or to yourself: I am safe. I am held. I am present.

And once you have entered into this safe, secure feeling in your own body, now the emotions that you're having can naturally move.

They can transform.

They can reveal their messages, their gifts.

So how do we actually allow this to happen?

Here is a simple but powerful practice.

Again, I think every episode up to this point has had some combination of these things in it—because they work.

Step 1: Acknowledge & Name the Emotion

The first thing we do is acknowledge or name the emotion—without judging it as good or bad.

Instead of saying, I am angry, try saying:

"Anger is present right now."

"Anger is wanting to move through me."

This small linguistic shift can help you observe the emotion rather than attach to it, resist it, or identify as it.

So again—don’t say: "I am angry." "I am anxious." "I am [insert emotion]."

Instead, name it without attaching to it: "This emotion is present right now, and it is wanting to move through me."

Step 2: Breathe Into It

Emotions need space.So hold that space for yourself with intentional soft belly breathing.

With every inhale, feel the breath coming down to your belly, allowing your abdomen to softly expand. Invite calm acceptance in. With every exhale, release the breath and allow tension to leave the body. Notice how the energy in your body shifts.

Step 3: Ask What the Emotion Needs

Let it speak. Instead of pushing it away, ask it:

"What are you here to show me?" "What do you need me to know?"

Sometimes, the emotion itself carries a message or a lesson that’s just waiting to be uncovered.

And once you ask that question, it can reveal and release.

Step 4: Move the Emotion Through Your Body

Emotions are energy in motion.So let the emotion move through your body by moving your body.

• Dance
• Stretch
• Lift your arms slowly up and down with your breath

Any gentle, intentional movement can help that energy flow and transform.

Step 5: Keep Anchoring Back Into Love

Remind yourself: Everything is love. Everything is God. Even this.

This affirmation can ground you in the truth that every experience is valid and part of the journey home to yourself.

So let’s bring it all home.

At the end of the day, we have two choices. We can either see the world as full of negativity—things we need to run from, hide from, repress, resist— Or, we can see it as full of love, just waiting to express itself.

The way that I choose to see it is: Every emotion, every challenge, every experience—

is either love, or an invitation to return to love.

The next time you feel a low vibration in the form of an emotion, it is not a bad thing.

We don’t have to run away from it. Don’t judge it. Instead, just ask:"What if this is just love in disguise?"

Because when we meet everything with love, from a place of love—everything changes.

I know my teacher, Sri Kaleshwar, used to say: "Be in the positive. Live in the positive. Die in the positive." And for a long time, I thought that meant I was never supposed to experience negative emotions. That I wasn’t allowed to.So I would repress, suppress, reframe, or white-knuckle through with some sense of false or toxic positivity that really wasn’t helpful for me or anyone else. And I understand now— That is never what he meant for us with that expression.

We are human and we are divine. We have to accept our humanity if we are ever going to embrace and fully embody our divinity. And that means that we have to allow ourselves to feel what it feels like to be human.So that we can understand what it means to be divine.

Acknowledging our emotions—

• Without attachment
• Without resistance
• Without creating stories around them that keep us stuck

This is what allows us to understand ourselves and others.

To have compassion.

To choose kindness.

To be grateful.

To embody unconditional love—regardless of what is showing up in our lives.

And I think that’s where I’m going to leave it today.

So I hope this message helped you recalibrate or understand in a different way what these emotions might be showing you in your life.

Until next time—Be so gentle with yourself. Stay present with your emotions.

No more resisting.No more reacting. Let’s see if we can soften, surrender, respond from higher love, and flow in collaboration with the divine as it unfolds through our lives.

And remember— You are already whole.You don’t need to be fixed because you were never broken.You just need to keep returning home to the truth. Returning home to love.

And I’ll see you next week, when we Return to Her.

Closing Call to Action:

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You never know—so give them the opportunity to take it or leave it. But they won’t know it’s there if you don’t share.As always, feel free to reach out. Send me a message through the link in the show notes, or join my mailing list. Find me on social platforms—I’m here to walk beside you on this journey. We are not alone on this path. And I will see you all next week. Namaste.