We often command ourselves: “Pull yourself together! You can! Do not whine, forbidding yourself to experience emotions — first of all, negative ones. But by suppressing and devaluing unpleasant feelings, we are doomed to experience them again and again.
As a psychotherapist, I see clients’ emotional problems as opportunities for healing and development. These painful, frightening outbursts give them a chance to break free from old habits, experiences and expectations. Everyone has the right to anger, but most express it in an unproductive way, not correcting, but only exacerbating an unpleasant situation. This makes it possible to get at least some emotional discharge.
If a loved one comes home with a cut, we will figure out where to stick the plaster, if his stomach hurts, we will guess to give medicine. And how can we help a person suffering from unhappy love, insecure, tormented by guilt, anger or disappointment? Where can I get such a «patch» and what should it be?
We don’t know, they didn’t teach it in school. We are not ready to deal with emotional problems. Logic suggests that only facts are true, feelings are irrational, which means that experiences are a manifestation of weakness.
But relying on logic implies that emotional problems can be solved by rational methods. Accepting a false statement, we make a mistake — we try to find a rational justification for our feelings and experiences, as if defending them in an imaginary court, we begin to prove innocence, as if trying to avoid conviction and punishment.
The whole process of «suppression — devaluation — eruption» is doomed to repeat itself.
We strive to compensate for the inability to cope with emotions and begin to overreact, defend ourselves, trying to hide signs of our inferiority. Instead of supporting a person who is having a hard time, we say things like, “Don’t be angry. Well, the boss called you a fool. He’s not evil, in fact he doesn’t think so.» That’s it, we discussed the problem of anger, which means that the inability to resolve it already, it seems, is not important. We have completed our task. The pain that we experienced from the realization of inferiority is gone for a while.
Unfortunately, the problem of anger has only gotten worse. We did not live up to the expectations of another person who hoped that we would take his side and help him restore his self-respect. As a result, after the intervention, he becomes even more angry, loses motivation, ceases to trust others, and becomes pessimistic. Anger continues to accumulate in him, and one day it will spill out. But this will not change anything: the loved one has not learned anything new and does not know how to effectively manage anger. Therefore, the whole process of «suppression — devaluation — eruption» is doomed to be repeated.
For example, when someone is angry with us, we often take their anger personally, questioning the value of our personality. Instead, we can choose to respect and appreciate ourselves despite what has happened. And if we learn to do this directly at the moment when we are angry, we will have the opportunity to get rid of children’s self-doubts, replacing them with adult self-esteem. Emotional problems are not a sign of weakness. They are as real as, say, a broken arm or a blood clot, you just don’t see them on an X-ray. And we need to finally learn to deal with our unpleasant experiences as they arise.
Source: PsychoCentral.