I’ve always been extremely uncomfortable with crying in front of people.
I feel physically tense when I start to cry; you might even see me looking around for a turtle shell to sink into.
I happily cry with others out of empathy; I enjoy that feeling of sitting with someone and feeling their pain with them. But when it comes to personal sadness from loss or hurt or disappointment… That’s a different story.
This is something I’d like to change.
I have personally worked on growing in this area over the past few years, and I’ve also spoken about it with my psychologist.
Even though I do still feel uncomfortable with it often, I intentionally remind myself that my emotions aren’t expressions of my inherent weakness, instead they are rich in truth.
Rather than viewing feelings as mysterious personality changes, my psychologist and I often speak about feelings as information about what we value.
When I feel sad and angry about something, I find it really helpful to think about the situation like this.
For example, if you have a friend that is always making excuses, and you feel really frustrated with them, that might tell you that you value when people own up to their mistakes.
If you feel thankful when someone cooks you a meal when you’re sick, you might value a person who can go out of their way to help you, or that you value selflessness etc.
It’s good to feel your feelings
So, feeling our feelings is not a weakness or flaw.
Acknowledging our feelings and following their arrows can help us to uncover things about ourselves and our values.
Feelings are actually here to help us.
After all, it’s a very human thing, to feel. The people who don’t feel feelings are known as psychopaths, so I wouldn’t encourage setting a goal to cut out your emotions (even if it might seem like that would be easier sometimes).
It’s not the emotions that are the problems, but how we view them.
They are only visitors
Viewing emotions through the data-lens is so helpful for me.
It helps to dissociate the feeling from my identity, and it helps to discover why I’m emotional, what I value and most importantly how to deal with the situation.
Emotions can feel overwhelming at times, especially when they’re extreme or feelings we’ve never dealt with before.
When you feel like this, it makes it easier to attach your identity to how you feel.
This isn’t ideal; it’s neither helpful nor accurate. You are built of blood and bone, heart, mind and soul and have so much more to offer to the world than your feelings.
You are a complex architecture, and your emotions are simply visiting.
Watch your thoughts
Since thoughts bring on feelings, tweaking these thoughts can significantly lessen the impact of the associated negative emotions.
For example, “I’m a really sad person,” might be more balanced as “I’ve been feeling quite sad recently, but I still have so much more to me.”
Making small changes like this might seem silly, but I can personally vouch for the impact this can have.
How are you feeling right now?
Are you feeling upset or frustrated?
If you could sum up your thoughts in a sentence, what would it say?
Does it sound like, “I messed up so badly the other day, I’m completely worthless,” or “I’m always sad and I’m never going to get any better.”
If it sounds like either of those statements, I encourage you to rewrite them in a more balanced way.
It doesn’t have to be fake or overly positive, but just something more balanced.
For example, the first sentence would be more realistic as, “I made a big mistake and will have to accept the consequences, however I can genuinely apologise and continue to learn from this.”
See what I mean? Give it a try, it might make all the difference.
Laura Murphy is an excitable and fast-paced Brit, living in Australia. She can’t sit still; she has a serious addiction to sudoku, and she can be won over by a good cup of tea and a laugh. Studying to become a doctor, she is expectant and excited to see all that God is going to do with her life.