Emotions are like teenagers. They don’t necessarily need intense conversation where their innermost source is brought to light and dissected, in fact that’s more attention than they can handle. In most cases what they need is to be acknowledged and heard, validated and left to their own devices. When they get what they need they stop demanding attention and go on with their lives in their only slightly angstful but most mostly happy way.
However, if they are ignored or, even worse, if they are told repeatedly they are bad and unwanted, are then punished or forced back into their rooms away from everything and everyone, they act out. They start plotting our demise, wait until opportune moments, create havoc and wreak destruction, then walk away satisfied in the moment, but bound to return. When we judge our emotions as bad or wrong we do violence to ourselves. Our emotions are us. They are valid. They are neither wrong nor right, they just are. In refusing to validate them, to acknowledge and accept them, we not only do violence to ourselves and lose out on direct spiritual message about our lives and the situations we find ourselves in (repeatedly..ahem..) but we shove those feelings back into their room. They may be out of sight and out of mind for the moment, but they will burst back out and demand our attention at the worst moment, derailing us from the current now and making things a chaotic mess which they won’t help clean up.
Emotions are meant to be like spring storms, coming in, making us aware of what needs to be cleansed, cleansing it. Emotions come in and help us release what is no longer necessary, discover new insights about ourselves and the world around us, and leave us better for the process. It’s not whether we have them or not which should be our focus, but what we do with and about them. Shoving them down is not the answer any more than knee jerk reacting to them is. Being present with them allows them to tell us what they have to say. That’s all they want. So the question is, are you ready to know?
