3 Truths You Need To Know About Emotions
What is meant to be felt, is also meant to be released
Feeling emotions is an essential part of being, and it is what truly allows us to associate meanings to what happens within and around us.
We feel happy, sad, angry, mad, confused, overwhelmed, excited, and many more, sometimes each at different times, and sometimes a mixture of many of those together all at once.
However, sometimes our flawed thinking lets us overestimate and/or underestimate the importance of emotions;
We make too much meaning or too little meaning out of what we feel;
But we can make the most out of what we feel if we learn how to make the most out of what we feel.
Since emotions make up a lot of what makes our life, it only helps to know what we can do to have emotions add value to the lives we live.
Being able to understand our emotions better allows us to respond to those emotions better, and in the process of doing so, we can grow to become better people as well.
If we can learn to grow our awareness and understanding of what emotions truly mean, we can also learn to manage them better.
Here are 3 truths about emotions, that we can learn to practice wiring our minds with:
1. Emotions Are Not A Trigger To Act Based On What Is Felt
Emotions are meant to be felt.
It is easy for us to think that we need to take the emotions we feel as “signs” of what we should be doing next.
However, emotions are not the signs we might take them for.
I read a piece a while back, where someone wrote what a Therapist said about emotions, and it goes (I don’t remember the exact words but the essence holds):
“Feelings are looking for space, and not solutions.”
We need to understand that we don’t owe our feelings a solution or an action of some kind that follows;
We don’t need to hustle to figure out what is it that we need to do just because we are feeling a certain way;
We can feel something, and yet choose to not act on them, because that’s what the purpose of emotions are;
To be given a space to be felt, and released.
We need to understand that our emotions are feedbacks to how we feel and not triggers to how we should act.
Once we allow ourselves to feel our emotions completely, we open up to releasing them as well;
Because once the emotions have been felt, they have served their purpose for us, and all we need to do is acknowledge that and carry on.
2. Actions And Emotions Have Their Own Separate Places
We can feel all that we feel and still choose to do what needs to be done, irrespective of what’s been felt.
We need to understand that, sometimes what we feel is just what we feel, in our minds and (metaphorical) hearts;
And those feelings should not get in the way of the actions that are productive and healthy for us (and for those around us).
Lisa Firestone quotes in Psychology Today:
“Feel the feeling, but do the right thing.”
We can feel emotions as truly as possible and still choose to do the (right) things keeping the situation in mind, and keeping those involved in the situation in mind.
We can feel our emotions and still not let them control our actions thereafter;
In doing so, we can learn to manage our emotions so that we can control our actions accordingly.
Part of growing into better versions of ourselves involves doing right by ourselves (and also those we care for), despite us feeling differently.
We need to practice not to let our feelings get in our way of doing what needs to be done.
3. Emotions Pass As Long As We Let Them
Our feelings are temporary, just as most circumstances of life.
A quote by Matthew Flickstein goes:
“Everything comes to pass. Nothing comes to stay.”
Emotions too, pass.
Realizing the truth of transience in emotions can help us to find strength in acknowledging feelings that are hard to feel, knowing that we will not feel that way for any longer than we need to;
While finding the strength to be grateful for feelings that make our lives a happier place to be in, knowing that we will not feel that way any longer than we need to.
When we feel an emotion, it is easy for us to overrate it to the point that we think that we will continue to feel a certain way forever (true for any kind of emotion);
However, all we feel is in the moment, and then the feelings pass as long as we gently allow them to.
Once we have felt an emotion completely, it is our responsibility (for ourselves) to release them.
It is okay to feel all that we need to feel in the moment, and after we have felt all that we needed to feel, we can just continue to be, and feel the next emotion that makes its way to us.
Learning the truth about emotions is a process that we need to put ourselves through, every time we feel them;
Because we always feel something, and it is always needed of us to remind ourselves of how we can get through the process of feeling emotions, as productively and as healthily as possible.
The truth about what we feel becomes known in the truth of what we need to release, once we have felt.
It takes awareness, courage, and kindness to practice understanding the truth about emotions, every time we feel them;
And that’s what makes learning that truth a constant work-in-progress.
If we can remind ourselves of the truth about emotions every time we feel them, we can also find ways to make the most out of what we feel.
