Emotions

Emotional masquerade

How we trick ourselves to avoid pain

Our instinct is always to avoid or minimize pain. This is a helpful reflex that reduces the physical injuries we might otherwise incur. But when it comes to emotional pain, avoidance almost always makes…

When someone hurts you

How to empathize without remaining the victim

I was angry, hurt, and confused. The last thing I wanted to do was empathize.

“How they could do this? Why did they?”

Hoping against hope

Tough questions about desire, suffering, and feeling deeply.

Buddhism teaches that desire causes all suffering. It’s believed that when desire ceases, pain ceases.

The honest truth about disappointment

Letting our feelings show

Healthy ways to release our emotions so we can process them

I’ve written a couple times about feeling our feelings and embracing difficult emotions. But sometimes that’s really hard to do, despite knowing we should.

Undeserved, unnatural, and freely given

The remarkable nature of empathy

Undeserved, unnatural, and freely given — that’s the remarkable nature of empathy.

Stupid, painful emotions — when it hurts to feel

Learning how to own our emotions when we’d rather not

Our natural instinct is to obscure painful feelings. We often mask one emotion with another depending on our personality. Some may…

It’s okay not to be okay

Will we allow ourselves to sit with difficult emotions so we can get to the root cause?

The urge to “be okay” is probably most pronounced when it comes to raising or working with kids. 

Emotions matter because we matter

We’re emotional beings and to discard our feelings is to dehumanize part of ourselves.

I caught myself the other day muttering, “It doesn’t matter how I feel — I’ll be fine.”

On being emotional

Why does ‘being emotional’ often have a negative connotation?
 
While this question has many possible answers, there’s one underlying reason that even I don’t like to admit.
 
We’re afraid of what those emotions indicate. The unknown, deeper issues scare us.
 
Instead of facing this fear, we…