Processing Emotions Cont'd

Another tidbit on processing our emotions: Have you noticed how our society wants everyone to just be ok, just fine, good? It is in our nature to want to make someone feel better or get better sooner rather than later, but at some point it seems it has just become a little extreme. I was reading an article recently, and forgive me for not remembering where, but a lady was talking about how at her mother's funeral she felt as though she could not grieve. She asked, "Whatever happened to the time allowed to people to grieve"?

And it is not only for grieving, but it seems that it the case for all emotions. We are taught to just be ok and stay at this, what I call, an even keel. Don't get too excited, don't get too angry, don't get too sad, don't get too happy.

What can end up happening is that we learn to not express our emotions and that turns into suppressing them. Suppressing our emotions then turns into pathologies i.e. anxiety, obsessive thoughts, excessive fears, depression, because remember, we have no control over our emotions.

Again, I am going to suggest an alternative. Sit with your emotions, talk to yourself, and make that connection between your emotions and your thoughts. Experience the full range of emotions internally, because we have no control over our bodily reaction of emotion, but we do have control over how we express it and handle it. The healthiest thing to do is to acknowledge your emotion and experience it, feel it, label it. After you experience the emotion and label it, then you can do some self-talk to get back to that even keel if need be.

The standards that society puts on us to fit in with everyone else is then to not express our emotions, but what you can and should do is still experience them and go with your body.