This blog post is all about how to accept our “negative” feelings and emotions, work through them, and overcome them. If you’ve been struggling with fairly constant negative thoughts, feelings, or emotions this blog post is for you!
Why We NEED To Know How To Cope!
Mental and emotional pain is clearly a worldwide crisis. Besides depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses being extremely prevalent (1 in 5 U.S. adults), suicide is one of the leading causes of death. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 700,000 people die by suicide every year. In the U.S. alone, suicide is the 12th leading cause of death overall, and is in the top 4 leading causes of death for people ages 10-44. This is a tragic and alarming indicator that humanity is in need of a proactive solution! That solution is teaching individuals how to effectively cope with mental and emotional pain (not mask it or merely distract us from it). Teaching this information could quite literally be the difference between life and death, which is why I decided to write about it.
Feeling Our Feelings
There are a few key factors to effectively coping, and allowing ourselves to feel our feelings is the first. Oftentimes, just the thought of facing our pain seems overwhelming and our tendency is to want to avoid it at all costs. Trust me, I can relate. After both of my parents passed away while I was in high school, I tried to avoid my emotions surrounding it completely. I’d attempt to do things to keep my mind busy and I don’t think I ever really opened up about the way I was feeling to anyone. However, we cannot heal if we do not learn to accept our emotions, sit with them, and work through them. We have to allow ourselves to feel the pain before we can heal the pain.
Attempting to mask our feelings is a form of avoidance as well. Seeking refuge in drugs, alcohol, overeating, overworking, over-consuming entertainment, and many other unconscious activities is only going to prolong the inevitable. It is only going to mask the symptoms instead of addressing the root cause. I understand this reactive rather than proactive approach has become quite normal in our society, but it is NOT healing. “The only way out is through” -Robert Frost. Meaning the only way to “escape” our pain is to face it head on, ironically enough.
Feeling our emotions is healthy. It’s necessary for deep healing to take place. This is NOT a step that can be skipped if you truly want to heal. Although sometimes people may make it seem as if you’re weak for feeling things deeply, you’re not and it isn’t. It takes much more courage and strength to face your emotions than to run from them. Perhaps you heard it was wrong to cry growing up, or created that false-perception on your own. Either way, let’s make a conscious choice to step away from that false belief in this moment.
Crying is okay. Feeling things deeply is okay. These are NOT signs of weakness.
Accepting Our Feelings
Now that we’ve allowed ourselves to feel our feelings, the next step is accepting what we’re feeling wholly and completely. This means that we do not offer any inner-resistance to our thoughts, feelings, or emotions. We do this by acknowledging the fact that we are feeling certain emotions without becoming them. We do not judge ourselves for the thoughts or feelings that we have, we simply notice that they are there. We also do not perpetuate more negative feelings with negative thoughts. We simply let the feelings be.
But how do we even do that?? It takes practice and awareness to turn this into a daily habit. It is something that we have to be intentional about. The most important thing to be aware of to achieve this level of acceptance is our self-talk. When you’re feeling down, pay attention to the thoughts going through your head and the way you are speaking to yourself in your mind. If you notice you are being harsh or unkind towards yourself, become aware of it. Ask yourself if you’re being fair to yourself? Is this the way you would speak to someone you love? What advice would you give to a friend or loved one if they were going through this same feeling? Or how would you want someone to respond to you if you told them the way you’re feeling?
The answers to these questions should help you respond to your emotional pain from a place of love, which should lead to complete acceptance of whatever is going on within you.
(RELATED POST: What It Means To Love Yourself)
Expressing Our Feelings
After we’ve accepted our feelings, it’s time to express them. Why is expressing our feelings a necessary component of healing? Well because everything is energy, and that includes our thoughts and feelings. Energy is meant to move– it is meant to flow. When we fight our emotions and keep them bottled up without expressing them, we quite literally trap negative energy inside of us. We put a stop to the natural flow that energy is supposed to have. If we do this for long enough, we will see that trapped energy manifest as depression, anxiety, physical illness, etc. It puts our bodies in a state of disharmony.
So we need to let this energy out. Crying can be an amazing release of energy and may be necessary to cleanse your body of trapped negativity. Writing, praying, or talking about your feelings are all forms of release. Physical movement such as yoga, running, exercising, or boxing can all be healthy forms of release. Just remember these things can only be healing after we’ve acknowledged and accepted our feelings. There are many different ways to release built up, trapped energy and I encourage you to find what works best for you. I promise that you will feel SO much better once you do!
(RELATED POST: 11 Self-Care Ideas That Will Help You Love Yourself More)
Conclusion
I decided to conclude this post with a quote I wrote some time ago: “Pain is a necessary part of the human experience. It serves a purpose. Pain makes us stronger, it makes us wiser. It makes us more compassionate and understanding. To block out pain is to block out life…which will undeniably cause us more pain.” But making the conscious decision to face our pain will produce feelings of empowerment and allow us to heal. I pray this post has inspired you to stop running from your feelings if you have been. Instead, dive into them and let them flow through you so that you may be healed.
*Side note: I found this episode from Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast extremely inspiring and reassuring on this topic!
