Emotion: the friend or enemy?

 Emotions are the results of our internal reactions. They are the manifestations of what lies underneath our skin and physical. They sometimes tend to be out of our control and run havoc. We are emotional beings and when put that way it’s rather in the negative sense.

We tend to consider our emotions our weaknesses and we try to avoid associating with them as much as possible. Emotionality is seen as a sign of the weak and regarded as a sign to avoid if possible. It is not the emotions per se that are the problem in our current times but rather the way we handle them.

We don’t usually express them when need be. We tend to neglect them and put them aside. We postpone our feelings and emotions. We schedule that we will deal with them when we get the chance or when it becomes a necessity to do so. This trend of bottling up emotions has become a toxic way of handling emotions, and this has led to the unprecedented level of emotional turmoil we see in our society.

Emotions need care as a child needs one. They need to be fed, cleaned, dressed, and protected. We need to think of them as one raising a child. How the child will be when he is an adult will depend on how we raised him during the time of childhood. So it is that how our emotions will be a decade or two from now will be how we deal with them today.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a problem in dealing with positive emotions. As they are not much repressed and usually quite well expressed. Except for the stoic idea that everything requires moderation. Whichever way we take it there doesn’t seem to be much of a problem in this lane. Although some argue that the current generation is so occupied with protecting the positive side of their emotion that they have become weaker. We would rather avoid the pain of failure than deal with the suffering and achievement of success. We as a generation have been labeled as weak.

Our choice of preference for the positive is also a sign that we are handling our emotions in a rather unhealthy way. We tend to choose those as a way of escaping negative emotions or masquerading them. We take them as painkillers and run for them every time we feel bad or lack happiness. Painkillers are never the cure but just for temporary alleviation. Then what is the cure?

Accepting our emotions is the initiation of curative therapy. We need to accept the existence of these negative emotions in our bodies and give them recognition. Identification is the primary goal. We need to let these emotions run thru our bodies and feel them as they do. We need to know what we are feeling and how it makes us feel. We need to approve that it is our own body that is going thru this and that it is a reality. There is no denying it or neglecting it. As we go thru them the emotions stop getting repressed and become natural. They are not thrown back and kept there until they seem to be forgotten or come to peace with them. They are fully recognized and accepted by us. This helps us see what we are going thru, what we feel while we are at it, and why we are feeling it. 

In the initial phases of this path, we tend to feel multiple emotions at once or when we accept and feel one there is another emotion underneath the initial one and that could go on to a third or fourth. This is due to the multiple times we repressed our emotions, bottled them up, and stacked them up altogether. Hence there will not be any distinction between the feelings that are going thru our bodies. 

As we continue to develop this habit of accepting our emotions and recognizing their existence, we become fully oriented on our emotions and the reasons behind them. We start to grasp why our body reacts the way it does and why we act the way we do in certain situations. When we are fully up and running, we can work our way thru these emotions and find ways to deal with them healthily. We don’t need cheap ways of maneuvering out of them or seeking painkillers. We appease our way in life with our emotions and learn to accept them and even cherish them. 

The existence of these negative emotions truly helps us appreciate the positives we do enjoy having. We don’t become seekers of only positive emotions, but we become people who approve of their negative emotions and find means of dealing with them. Hence handling our emotions well will make us better versions of ourselves.