Your Emotions Are Not the Problem
From birth, we are taught to feel guilt or shame about our emotions.
Sadness, anger, fear, envy, and pride are framed as negative aspects of our lives. They are seen as signs of weakness and immaturity — things we must learn to push away to make room for prettier, more correct emotions.
But your negative emotions are never the problem.
Instead, the problem is something entirely different.
Your emotions tell you something important.
Feelings are like compasses.
They tell you what you need to do in order to accomplish a specific goal. This is because emotions are natural (psychological) reactions to various events that either assist or interfere with your needs and desires.
- You might feel sad when someone oversteps your boundaries
- You might feel afraid when you lack a sense of trust in yourself or others
- You might feel jealous when you lose something from someone you love
- You might feel ashamed when you notice a personal shortcoming
Your emotions are always valid, regardless of whether the situation objectively warrants that response. (After all, fear occurs even in the safest of circumstances.) When your mind and body sense that something in not as it should be, it signals a negative emotion to help you right that wrong.
Realizing this can make you more adaptive in terms of handling daily challenges. You can become more sensitive to the things that are right and wrong for you, and for this reason, you might become more equipped to select the correct course of action to balance the situation out.
Thus, if you know what your emotions are telling you about any given situation, you might unlock a superpower that most people fail to attain.
You cannot control your emotions — so why try to?
There are two extremes within poor emotion regulation:
- Overwhelm is what happens when you allow your emotions to overpower you and decide your course of action. (ex. When you start intruding in other people’s personal lives because you feel jealous.)
- Suppression is what happens when you seek to overpower your emotions instead. (ex. When you push down your jealousy for so long that it festers and comes out in petty, passive-aggressive remarks.)
Neither of these are healthy, because neither of these does what your body needs you to do in order to move on. (When your body is afraid, it is afraid, and only once it has been acknowledged and worked through properly, can your body relax. No amount of logic and reason can change that fact.)
Sadly, most people do one of the two without knowing it. They allow themselves to be overwhelmed by feelings they cannot control, or they ignore the demands of their emotions and stew in their own negativity.
And really, those are the actual immature ways of handling your emotions.
The only way through is through. You cannot control your feelings, so there is no reason to try. Instead, you can listen to what your emotions are telling you and choose the most constructive response you have for that situation.
That is, after all, the only thing that you can truly control.
Your emotions are not the problem. Your approach to them is.
The problem lies in your decision to choose the wrong response.
And the solution lies in your decision to choose differently:
(1) Acknowledge your emotions, and listen to what they are trying to tell you. (2) Allow yourself to feel these emotions without seeking to alter them or be altered by them. (3) Communicate what you are feeling, honestly and directly, to those who might be affected by these emotions or decisions.
When you learn to truly process your emotions this way, they no longer hold power over you, nor will you need to exercise your power over them. They simply occur and disappear whenever your mind and body feel ready.
The negative emotion you are feeling at any time is never the problem.
So why make it one?
