We live in a culture that wants us to be in touch with our feelings. We’re encouraged to lay ourselves open so we can examine every nuance, every tone, every chord of our emotional states. We have cheerleaders–from celebrities to magazine articles to self-help gurus–to tell us our feelings are the truest part of us, to exhort us to listen to ourselves, to let it all out.
Can I offer an antidote to all this emotionalism?
Don’t. Don’t put feelings first. Don’t let them reign supreme in your life. Don’t let them control you.
See, I’ve been there. I’ve listened to my feelings, I’ve dived deep in them, swam in them, rolled in them, wallowed in them. I’ve held pity parties in my head, and invited all my emotions to come hang out and be loud and tell me what they really really think feel.
It’s not pretty.
Feelings are valid, but they are not always right. Feelings are ephemeral, fly-by-night, dependent on body chemistry and external circumstances.
Feelings, if you let them, can sap your will, overrule your mind, and sabotage your dreams. I’m tired, they whine, I’ve had a hard day. I deserve to sit down with my feet up and watch Numb3rs all evening. Or, No one’s called me in three days. They don’t love me. They don’t appreciate me. Or, How come she got published, and not me? She’s a no-talent hack. Or, I’m just a failure. Nothing ever goes right for me. I’m unlucky, misunderstood, underappreciated. I need a chocolate truffle.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting we find the Emotions Off switch and flip it. Because we are not robots, and emotions are an important part of us. Often, emotions are symptomatic of underlying problems. Hey, I’m sad all the time. Maybe I need medical help or I’m angry a lot. I need to find a way to deal with the stress in my life. We need to deal with our feelings in a healthy way, not let them rampage all over our lives.
Stewing in ones own emotional juices just leads to a funk. I speak from experience.
So, how to deal with strong feelings? Here’s what I’ve learned from years of internal conflict with moodiness and negative emotions.
Recognize where particular feelings come from. Tiredness, stress, hunger and other physical conditions can magnify our emotions (as a parent, I am very familiar with this). Earlier in our marriage, I kept my poor long-suffering husband up wayyyyy too late some nights, detailing every nuance of my feelings of failure, inadequacy, and sense of being slighted. It didn’t matter what he said; I was determined to wallow in my exhaustion-magnified misery. If only a divine voice had spoken up and told me to shut up and go to bed. Funny how things always looked so much better in the morning.
Talk to ourselves, instead of just listening to ourselves. Let reason assert itself over the emotions sometimes. I know, reason gets a bad rep these days, but sometimes you do have to give yourself tough love. You do have to tell yourself that you are being unfair and kinda of a jerk for being jealous of someone else. You do have to say “Too bad” when your feelings complain that they just neeeeed and deseeeerve to kick back and relax, instead of work on that story.
Find something else to do. Spinning wheels, going around the same emotional track over and over again, is not helpful. If you can’t deal with the situation that caused the feelings in the first place, or they are beyond your control, do something else. Sometimes we can deal with feelings by just changing out circumstances. It might mean unplugging from the Internet, if a volatile issue is making you see red. Go outside and talk a walk. Exercise. Meditate. Do the dishes. Whatever you can to clear your mind and subside the raging rapids that is your emotional state.
Do you find yourself giving far too much airtime to your emotions? How do you cope?
“Go outside and take a walk. Exercise. Meditate. Do the dishes. Whatever you can to clear your mind and subside the raging rapids that is your emotional state.” – bingo!
Great post. Of course, we all know it’s easier said than done, which is what writer friends are for! 🙂
Three cheers for this post! 😀
Feelings are tremendously important – they tell us if we’re ok or not. So listening to them is good. But as you so rightly say, stewing in them is a trip to nowhere.
I try to work out what my feeling is about and then do something about it – perhaps i’m stewing about the way someone behaved towards me, or maybe I’m feeling frustrated because I’ve said ‘yes’ to too many people when ‘no’ might have been wiser. My grandma used to say ‘count your blessings’ and that can be helpful. When I think of all the wonderful people I know. all that I have and know and have accomplished, it balances out the crap.
And sometimes I just need to put on a funny play or dvd and have a laugh – preferably with a friend. That works wonders 🙂
Thanks for the positive comments, Prue and Jo! I was nervous posting this, but I’m glad you got what I was saying. And yes, it is really is hard to ignore those feelings sometimes, but we need to get our emotional states in hand before they ruin our evenings… or more. (Been there, done that, got the T-shirt).
Rabia, What a thoughtfully written post. I’m a firm believer in dwelling and focusing on the positive – not in a naive manner – but for the sake of sanity. Each night I was griping at myself for not accomplishing this or that… what a great set-up for a good night’s sleep, eh? So at the beginning of 2011 I started writing down “3 good things” that I did that day. Things for myself or my family or something that improved our lives in some manner (even if that was cooking a stir fry instead of ordering pizza). Like we do with our kids, we can distract our crappy emotions with other activities and ideas.
We focus so much on the things not done, don’t we? I like your idea of writing down three good things each day.
This was a very insightful and well-timed post. I try to remember that my emotions are tools. They make life good or bad, easy and fun or a nightmare to trudge through, and they are completely subservient to my decisions. If I’m feeling lousy, figure out what decisions I need to make to change that, and make them! Sometimes, that means getting to the heart of what I’m not liking and changing what I’m doing. Sometimes, that means telling my pity party or overwhelmedness, etc. to get lost; I’ve got work to do.
YES. We need to be the voice of reason–the grownup–to ourselves sometimes.
A thought-provoking post, and one that hit very close to home for me.
More often than I care to admit, I let my emotions tell me that what I create has no value. It really helps for me to realize that I’m not the only one who feels this way, and that how I FEEL is not in any way a reflection of the quality of my work.
In fact, letting what I ‘feel’ keep me from it was/is one of the biggest barriers to getting better at it.
To keep myself grounded in reality, I keep mementos of success in my workspace (positive comments, other writers’ inspirations) to remind me that, though writing is a journey fraught with difficulties, I am not on it alone.
It sure helps to know that so many people deal with this issue!
I remember reading on a blog–which I can no longer find, alas–about keeping an “I don’t suck” file, where you put in all the positive comments you’ve received about your writing to keep you going through the lean times. Sounds like you do something similar. 🙂
Some years ago I did a course about feelings. I just remembered that I was told ‘feelings aren’t facts’.
So true. And with strong feelings so easy to forget!
Oh, I like that! A pithy way of making the point it took me several hundred words to get across. 😀
It took your words to access that memory locked in the depths. It might never have seen the light of day again. No. There’s no might about it. It wouldn’t have seen the light of day! 😀