We tend to suppress feelings simply because we don’t know what to do with them. How to learn to hear yourself, accept your feelings and let them go free?
“The first two years of marriage, my husband and I fought every now and then. Getting married, moving into a new apartment, having a baby – we had to adjust to these stresses. At first, we poured out the accumulated fatigue and anger in endless claims to each other, saying offensive and unpleasant things. Once, in a fit of anger, I even broke a plate. At that moment, we both realized that we couldn’t continue to live like this – we need to learn to behave in a civilized manner and respect each other’s feelings,” 34-year-old Maria describes the situation that many young families go through with more or less success.
“After a few hours, we calmed down, talked about what was happening, found the strength and wisdom to apologize to each other. Quarrels and conflicts have not completely disappeared from our lives, but new levers for controlling our mood have appeared. Since then, 8 years have passed. We have learned to speak.
At first, they discussed the problems that arose for several days, not finding a solution and a compromise, they were offended, but without shouting. The most interesting thing is that after a few days of talking, the subject of the dispute disappeared by itself. Now the periods of mutual insults have decreased to a few hours. Perhaps we suppress our feelings by leaving too much unsaid. I prefer to think that we have learned to separate the main from the secondary and negotiate.”
This example well illustrates a simple truth: you cannot influence what and how we feel, but an adult can control his mood and behavior. What to do with feelings – only we decide.
Determine source
“You experience this or that feeling for a very specific reason, and your task is to understand it,” says Joan Harvey, a psychologist at the University of Newcastle (UK). If you miss the cause and succumb to the flow of feelings, it can take you far from the shores of reality.
Often, irritation or anger is a signal that someone has violated your boundaries, and you did not have the courage to defend them.
Anger forces you to say or do stupid things, endangering you and those around you. Anxiety, fear, sadness can knock the ground out from under your feet and lead to depression, when you are not able to do even what you usually liked. Bad mood reduces the defense mechanisms of your immune system.
Ask yourself: what is going on? Why is this happening to me? When you are angry, anxious or sad, do you always understand the reason for your condition? Many don’t even think about it. At best, their response is “I’m angry because he didn’t do what I want”, “I’m worried because I’m late for an important event.”
This is a reaction to external circumstances or the behavior of other people, you did not go further, did not analyze your own experiences. After all, regardless of who said what, it is you who react emotionally. The better you learn to understand your emotions, the easier it will be for you to deal with them.
For example, often irritation or anger is a signal that someone has violated your boundaries, and you did not have the courage to defend them. Could not refuse someone to help, and then you feel overwhelmed and tired? Probably, fatigue here masks anger. If you allowed yourself to get angry well, you might not have to sacrifice your well-being.
Anxiety and excitement often arise in situations where we are afraid of not living up to the expectations of others. Ask yourself: Whose expectations are you really trying so hard to live up to now? And why does deviating from this task become a disaster for you?
The Gift of Attention
Four years ago, Anna (now 37) found herself feeling guilty about her state of mind. “I was married, had two children, but I felt worthless, it seemed to me that I was wasting my life. I understood that my mood was a reaction to circumstances: an unloved job, problems with money, but I didn’t know what to do with it. ”
One day, the teacher of her youngest daughter asked Anna for a meeting – the girl often cried at school. “I was on the verge of despair and stopped noticing the good things in my life. But it’s even worse that I stopped noticing those closest to me – I completely lost sight of the condition of my children, ”she says.
This incident helped Anna to realize that only she is responsible for her feelings. We must not wait for changes, but change ourselves. She learned to be more attentive to herself, her children and her husband, changed jobs and began to enjoy life more.
We cannot prevent unpleasant events, but we can change our attitude towards them. Fixing a feeling, giving it a name and a place within yourself is the first step towards gaining the ability to control your mood.
If something upsets or makes you angry, it is important to let this feeling through your mind and try to understand its meaning.
A diary will help you with this task. By formulating feelings on paper, you simultaneously pass them through consciousness and release them so that they do not accumulate inside.
“The next step is an internal dialogue about feelings,” explains Willem Kayken, head of the psychological center in Exeter (UK). – Often we give feelings a logically incorrect assessment, it leads us into a dead end. Identify what unsettled you, and feel free to change the wording. For example, a typical situation for motorists: you were cut off. You are scared, angry.
Anger is the hardest thing to control. It starts when we feel a threat to our health, self-esteem, dignity. Try to change the course of your thoughts, replace: “Who drives like that? He could have killed me…” to “Maybe he just didn’t notice me or is too nervous today. In the end, everything worked out, no one was hurt.”
Live and grow up
Every feeling has a reason, meaning, and teaches us something. Psychoanalysts call this learning function “psychic structuring.” When a person discovers that some of his needs cannot be satisfied, he experiences not only anger, but also sadness. It is she who allows you to realize that in life it is not the principle of pleasure that dominates, but the principle of reality, that both you and the people around you have boundaries.
Frustration and sadness when we cannot get what we want teach us to respect the choice of another person and find support within ourselves. This is a necessary stage of growing up, which is often ignored by the desire to see only the good in everything and avoid negative experiences.
Learn to accept yourself in different moods. It is impossible to always be cheerful – periods of sadness, disappointment, frustration are common to each of us. In addition to making our lives more diverse, they represent an invaluable experience of inner maturation and rethinking of life. So if you’re wondering what to do with feelings, let them just be there first.