How to live with your desires, feelings and emotions

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Let's be honest with ourselves: we live in a society that is afraid of feelings and resists emotions. From childhood, we are taught to switch from negative feelings such as anger, sadness, or pain. But, getting used to suppress or control emotions, we forget about serious consequences.

If we try to suppress our feelings, we lose sight of who we really are. We limit our capacity for self-knowledge and we narrow the field of experience. The methods we use to remove pain and other emotions are firmly rooted in us by the age of five - just by the time we begin to understand the concepts of loss and death.

This method of psychological defense exists in order to maintain consciousness in stressful situations. However, he can harm us in adulthood. Apparently, the question is acute: is it worth experiencing emotions or should they be suppressed?

When we suppress emotions, we become tougher in general, we lose the feeling of fullness of life, connection with desires. We often turn to our past, looking for recipes for a happy life in childhood memories.

To find meaning in our daily actions, we must understand and study emotions well. They can be healthy or unhealthy, primary or secondary.

• Primary emotions are healthy emotions that help us function, survive and develop.
• Secondary emotions are considered unhealthy. We experience them as a result of making decisions, developing beliefs, in the process of growing up. If we try to suppress emotions instead of learning from them and working with them, then we only increase their negative impact.

Although some emotions get in our way, we can use them for self-development. Many people are afraid of their own feelings, but they are not as scary as it might seem. We can learn to give them a way out and do it safely for ourselves.

Emotion is not the opposite of rationality. They complement the cold and calculating mind and help guide its work.

By allowing ourselves to experience feelings to the fullest, we begin to better understand what we really want and what we are thinking, modeling behavior according to this new knowledge.

Feeling emotions is not the same as letting them control our behavior. By learning to experience even the most unhealthy emotions in a safe and healthy way, you can minimize their damaging effects. For example, you will learn to feel pain without becoming a victim or experiencing anger without aggression.

This problem is especially relevant for men, who are taught from childhood not only to suppress emotions, but also to separate feelings "for girls" from feelings "for boys." Because of this, men often have a distorted understanding and perception of emotions. Psychologists have the following features:

• Men tend to "convert" one sensation into another. They transform stereotypical female feelings, such as sadness, into anger or pride, because they believe that the manifestation of such emotions will make them worthy members of society.
• Men show their emotions where it is considered acceptable. For example, they might hug after a goal has been scored on the football field. Unfortunately, in other situations, men are less likely to show positive feelings for fear of being misunderstood by society.
• Men can experience feelings physically. Most often this is expressed in headache or back pain.
• Men limit themselves twice in expressing emotions. First, they fear public disapproval. Secondly, even when a man is ready to experience his emotions openly, for example, to open up to a partner, he does not always know how to do it correctly. As a result, even a loved one can negatively perceive the manifestation of feelings and be afraid of a storm of emotions. In such a situation, the need to correctly express, experience, regulate and interpret emotions becomes obvious.

But none of us are born with the ability to manage emotions. You need to learn this (preferably from an early age) and not stop there.

Emotional therapy practice can help us understand and accept emotions and transform them in a positive way. Its meaning is to constantly remember feelings, without trying to suppress them, to increase tolerance for spontaneous emotions and live in harmony with them.

When emotions take over, start breathing deeply

One of the most common practices used by people with chronic pain. Don't suppress your emotions, instead relax and allow yourself to feel and accept everything to the fullest. It's okay to feel angry, sad, painful, or desirous. You just need to learn to live with these sensations without discomfort. And for this, start experiencing emotions.

Don't judge your own emotions

There are no bad emotions. This is a specific type of adaptation that shows how you dealt with difficult situations at the beginning of your life. Emotion is not a rational response to a given situation, but it shows that you are mindful of such circumstances and a sensual reaction to them. Memories and the reproduction of emotions makes us more open to the world around us, because now we know what exactly causes this or that reaction in us, and do not seek to evaluate it.

Find a way to calm your emotions, not feed them

In other words, you need to find a way to experience the feeling, but not activate or nourish it. If you are in pain or angry, do not waste time mentally simulating the situation. Go through the pain and just wait for this wave of feelings to subside and then let go. Don't try to identify with this emotion, don't focus on this state. Even negative emotions are important: they educate us in a natural response to adapt to the situation. This will lead to a feeling of self-compassion. This means that there has been a significant shift in self-awareness, which, in fact, is quite difficult to achieve.

Remember, we can learn to experience all emotions while remaining rational enough to analyze or make decisions. To learn to live with feelings, you need to understand them. This way you will gain the ability to process and regulate your emotions. This is a must if you want to ever build a truly healthy relationship and improve your life.