How do you really feel, not how you think you should feel! Know your emotions?

One of the biggest eye openers for me in life was learning that it was healthy to have and express negative feelings and emotions!

Anger, sadness, hurt and even fear!

Not only did I deny these emotions in myself but I was also of the opinion that it was wrong for others to express them.

Believing in a whole lot of things that I had heard or been taught along the way such as;

'Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone!'

'Noone wants to be around you if your unhappy'

'Noone wants to be burdened with your problems'

'Negative people just bring you down'

'Anger is so ugly to see and is a sign of weakness'

'Unless you are always upbeat and happy, people will not want you around'

'The moment you get angry you have already lost the argument'

'People lose all respect for you when you cry like a baby'

'Its better to show no emotion when someone hurts you than give them the satisfaction that they have got to you'

I had actually managed to avoid feeling these emotions all together by training my brain to bypass them in favour of what I thought I should feel.

Instead of feel how I did and should have felt, I had disconnected from my feelings and let my head provide me with the text book logic of the happy feelings that I should chose instead of the 'bad' feelings I believed were wrong to feel.

Of course you can not avoid t
your true feelings forever so as a back up plan I had also learned the unhealthy methods to avoid these feelings too which I had observed from those who had taught me that these emotions were wrong to feel in the first place and who had also denied them by drugs, alcohol or by any other means that they were able to use to avoid dealing with their emotions rather than acknowledge  and process them.

Learning to understand, accept and process what feelings and emotions I was actually experiencing was not easy for me at first.

I even had to  refer to a list of explanations that described what I was feeling in order for me to be sure of the exact emotion I was feeling before I was able to even begin understanding why I was feeling that way.

It was not easy to comprehend that I had never known how to accept how I was really feeling or what to do with that feeling and then learn to sit in it which for me was very uncomfortable to begin with.

However I did learn that although initially the feelings were uncomfortable, unless you do acknowledge them, you cannot process them and by doing this, its the only way to let go of them.

You have a right to your emotions and to feel how you feel.

It's not wrong to express your feelings and is unhealthy not to.

A feeling cannot hurt you but the methods you  may use to avoid them such as alcohol or drug abuse can.

Dont be frightened of your emotions as they are in you to help you survive in life!