Sharing – Feel Emotions—Don’t Fight or Feed Them
You know, many of us are guilty of this. We like to suggest that people feel their emotions, but we never really define what that means. I enjoyed the article below because it talks specifically about what it’s not, fighting not to feel them, or feeding them so much that they swallow us whole.
But to just feel:
“It turns out that the instruction to just feel your emotions hinges on the word “just.” All that other stuff—stewing in them, endlessly journaling about them, expressing them to your buddy over three or four or 14 beers—is stuff we do in addition to feeling them. Some of these responses are useful. Some of them are not.”
Read the whole thing for some practical advice, but I found this reminder that we don’t fight our feelings, we don’t try our best to ignore them (see Toxic Positivity), but we also don’t continue to focus entirely on them. We see them, we recognize them, we even value them as an important part of us, and then we continue on with our lives.
There’s a simplicity about this that I love, all the while recognizing how difficult finding this balance can be.
