While thinking about emotions and their place in my life I found this coming out of my head:
By telling myself not to feel something (by burying it or by other means) I am telling myself I am wrong. No one wants to feel wrong - it hurts and you makes you feel less of person. I once heard, and I may be a little off on the numbers, that it takes nine positive encounters to fend off one negative experience. Then burying most of my feelings tells myself, constantly, that I am wrong - creating a perpetual negativism within me.
If I was dealing with another person's incorrect emotion, the appropriate response would be to first validate their feelings before anything else is done. The emotion is real and is a part of them. Even if it is based on a false idea, to them it is truth. You cannot progress until you let them know they can trust you and you believe in them. The same standards must be applied to ourselves or we invalidate our own lives and create torment on top of buried emotions.
2 comments:
"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel." --Carl W. Buechner
"Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you." -- Roger Ebert
"The sign of an intelligent person is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason."
--Marya Mannes
The heart and the head don't always agree. But it is the heart and soul that guides a person when all other logic fails them. The heart will know something that the brain can't comprehend (the Gospel comes to mind...), just as the willpower of the mind will overcome heartache. The trick is to find a balance between the head and the heart.
Everyone feels emotions, but few can articulate which emotion(s) they feel at any given time, and why they feel it (in other words, what was it that triggered that particular emotion), and use the tools and coping mechanisms available to appropriately act to a given circumstance.
In my personal opinion, it is much easier for me to validate my own thoughts, opinions, and feelings, if I am acting and thinking in a way that is in harmony with my goals, desires, and ambitions. Of course negative feelings get in the way (overcoming negative feelings from ten and fifteen years ago also is a struggle), but how I choose to reflect upon those feelings determines my thought process and ultimately my actions. Learning to trust one's self is much more easily accomplished if head and heart (logic and emotions) agree, but that is not always the case, so the natural coping strategies will usually favor one or the other... but that is not a bad thing!
How people handle stress, excitement, death, surprise, and love differently is exactly why Heavenly Father put us here on earth! We need to learn to have empathy for others, and to validate their feelings, even if we don't agree with their choices.
You can trust your emotions Justin, and you can give yourself permission to feel everything and anything, but you can also control how you respond to those emotions and you don't have to let them dictate your life. Your emotions make you human, but they don't define you. Use your head, but don't let it control your heart and soul.
"The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
Good luck this week and take care!
C&A
As always those that love others deeply and serve so willingly are seldon those who give themselves the affirmations they need. You are an amazing son of God, whose every emotion is spawned from Deity. I'm so glad you are beginning to cut yourself some slack, you deserve it.
Love,
Dad
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