I think we could have emotional studies as a subject taught in school, along side combined science and sex education, in there with human biology maybe? What do you think? I suppressed my emotions really well for years, “thick skinned” they called me, “happy go lucky”, nothing seemed to effect or touch me and then one day I exploded, which hurt everyone around me.
I just had no idea, I didn’t even know what a feeling was, no one taught me how to process my emotions, so I just ignored them. In the past, I was covered in a skin disease called psoriasis, as my emotions found an outlet all by themselves. “Just look at your emotions”, one helpful friend said to me but it was not a clear enough explanation for me, especially when I was stuck in the middle of experiencing them and couldn’t even see myself in it, at all. I was drowning in them, smoking and eating lots to keep them down and blaming everyone that let me.
The first time I successfully started dealing with my emotions, was by trying to remember the first time I had felt a particular emotion, this really helped me because I realised I had never quite let go of the initial feeling of when it first occurred years before, I was still hanging onto the feeling from such an old experience, where was the justice? I was hurt, It wasn’t my fault, I realised one of my strongest spiritual beliefs through this, that “it doesn’t matter”, nothing really matters that much, so why get so miffed about stuff. So after that, in effect, I stopped attracting situations where that emotion would normally surface again because it was released and thus my behaviour is different now. I then started to try to see all my emotions with their different characteristics, asking them when they arise, if it has a name? Or noticing if my personality changes along with it, so much that I deserve a new name too, like Poor Lady or Angry Young Woman. I got to know my emotions, they have a name, colour, shape or texture or a place I feel it inside my body. I ask it, “what is the worst of it?” I listen for an answer, keeping in my body and asking again, as it may shift around a bit. I listen to it all. Feel it, in other words, get to know it and myself in the process, and what is best way to deal with it. Now days, when I’m in my stuff, I take myself away from people, stay on my own, until it passes, when I have thought, listened and taken responsibility enough for it by looking for what I can do or could have done better.
Tags: dealing with, emotion