Day 212: Feeling Our Emotions
Emotions are beautiful things, they signify the fact that we are alive and that we still have breath in our lungs. Feeling emotions allows us to experience the world in a full and complete way. Even so, it can be really hard to accept some emotions, they just don't sit comfortably inside of us and we do whatever we can to avoid feeling such emotions.
Over our entire lives we have felt the whole spectrum of emotions, ranging from ones we like to others we're not huge fans of. Because some emotions are uncomfortable to deal we, we are lead to the thought that some feelings are just negative and bad while others are good. We enjoy feeling love, joy, and peace, yet we resent having to feel anger, fear, or sadness.
We push these "bad" emotions away, which leads to denial when we do end up feeling them. Who wants to be sad or angry? Isn't it better to just push those feelings down and pretend they are not there? Our minds try to convince ourselves that it's better to just push them away and remove the discomfort they cause us.
However, pushing down an emotion will always lead to more problems than it solves. Suppressing an emotion does not get rid of it, it just detaches us from that feeling and puts a wall up between us and it. When we deny ourselves the natural response to a situation, feeling something, we become numb. If we continue to do this, we begin to journey down a road none of us want to walk.
Emotions are meant to be felt, all of them, even the not so fun ones. They keep us grounded in reality and with what's going on inside of us. Emotions are our inner responses to situations and if we cannot feel them, life just becomes a mass of grey nothingness. We need all of our emotions.
Sadness is how we naturally sit with grief or difficult situations. Fear is how we respond to situations that we do not understand how to handle. Anger is how we respond to situations where we feel there is an injustice. Each emotion has a purpose in our lives and they are all natural responses, just like love, peace and joy. We desire to feel those, but there is no such thing as a good or bad emotion. They are our response to life and should be felt in order to process situations.
Denying ourselves the ability to feel emotions just because we may not like them is detrimental to our mental health and fortitude. Eventually numbness can lead to depression and anxiety, a place none of us desire to go. Pushing feelings away does not rid yourself of the emotion, it simply means it will build underneath the surface until it cannot be denied any longer.
When this happens, our emotions will explode often without us being able to control them. All the emotions we pushed down will come up together and we'll have to deal with more than one feeling rather than taking them one at a time. That is when we realize a simple emotion can become a monster, isn't it better to feel the emotion right away rather than allowing it to build with others?
Our emotions are beautiful things, they give life an array of colors and provide meaning to every situation. We must learn how to live with them, no matter what they are. Every feeling we have is here for a reason, they signify the fact that we are experiencing life and handling situations in different ways.
No emotion can last forever, yet, one must be willing to embrace it for the allotted period of time it exists in our lives. Do not deny yourself a full experience of life, all of our emotions are there for a reason. We must learn to live with that and handle them gently as they come to us. What emotions are you currently feeling and what do you think they might be trying to tell you?
Until Next Time,
Lillian Merritt
(To stay alive; to continue to live)
Life flows just like the water in a river, fluid and ever changing. Emotions surface intermittently and continue to ride the tides until their allotted time is finished and they again sink below the waters.