“Don’t get angry” as if I can control that!

Why are we so afraid of negative emotions? Why does the thought of feeling sad, jealous or angry scare us so much we try to suppress it? 

Do we get to control any emotions? No but what we can control is how we act on those emotions. Emotions are not directives, they should not be interpreted as telling us what to do but rather they’re inputs of how we’re feeling. And we are allowed to feel. 

What we should never do is act on emotions because they don’t control us. Remember the last time you were over the moon? So happy that you blurted out a promise that you later discovered you had no intention of keeping but was just excited in that moment? 

When you got back to earth and you were no longer elated you regretted on some level promising what you knew now would cost you in some way but you couldn’t take it back now. 

Despite what self help books make you believe you can’t control what you feel and when you feel it, what you can do is how you react to those emotions. 

Conversations around jealous are sworn off in public spaces. ‘Why should you be jealous? Instead practice gratitude for what you have and where you’re at.’ While that is great advice it doesn’t work like that. Emotions aren’t little light switches that you can flick on and off in your brain despite the great depiction in Inside Out.

In the real world you will feel pain, you’ll grieve, you’ll break down and cry, you’ll compare yourself to others, you’ll get angry, you’ll get jealous but all these are normal. They’re all part of being normal and living life. 

What we can do is the boring stuff. The boring stuffs keep you going. You can sit with those emotions and analyze them, you can’t rush this process even if you tried. You can move yourself to boredom thinking about why that action upset you as deeply as it did but you can’t run away from it. Emotions buried will always surface at the worst possible time so why bother? 

Face them, be vulnerable with yourself and help yourself grow because you are your most important flower in the garden of life. Handle you with great care.