Stop Pushing Away Your Feelings, They Are Your Teachers by Kendra DeFrank, MA, LCPC
As a therapist, I often see clients push away their feelings. Many of my clients tend to categorize their emotions as either “good” or “bad.” Typically, emotions such as anger, jealously, sadness, or frustration are considered “bad,” while emotions such as happiness, joy, love, or excitement are considered “good.” Many of my clients want to avoid unpleasant emotions. However, they are doing themselves a huge injustice. Emotions are not good or bad, they just are. Emotions help us to understand ourselves and situations, make decisions, and often play a large part in our behaviors, actions, and interactions with others. I encourage my clients not to categorize emotions as good or bad and to see them instead as sources of information.
Our emotions are messengers, signaling that there is something important to pay attention to.
Emotions give us information. They are cues, signals—telling us to approach or avoid, to stay or to go. For example, anger is neither a desirable feeling nor a pleasant one, but it teaches you how to set boundaries in your life. Anger is the part of you that loves you the most. It knows when you are being mistreated, neglected, disrespected. It signals that you have to take a step out of a place that doesn’t do you justice. It makes you aware that you need to leave a room, a job, a relationship, or old patterns that don’t work for you anymore. If we can view an emotion like anger as a teacher, we can learn to listen to it and make it our friend. Asking it, “Why are you here and what are you guiding me to do?” Only then will it leave. Other emotions like frustration can make us aware of our obstacles and push us to look for creative ways around them. Boredom in our careers or our routines can motivate to us to spice things up, to look for something more challenging or fulfilling.
It is the range of emotions that we experience—not any specific one, that opens our eyes and encourages us to grow, learn, and change.
Many of us have been trained to believe that emotions and feelings are not good, especially uncomfortable ones. So we find ways to numb them. This may be just shutting them down or it could be engaging in behaviors that keep us so busy that we cannot feel them, such as an eating disorder. When we are not listening to the very things that are there to guide us, we are also more prone to experience anxiety and depression.
So what can you do?
First, be gentle and patient with yourself. You have been conditioned from the start to control your feelings. We are taught as toddlers not to cry or throw tantrums in public places. Our life experiences are vast. Some of us grew up in households where ‘being too emotional’ was seen as a bad thing. As a result, we learn to numb our emotions. Others grew up in households where they witnessed a lot of anger. As a result, they might be scared to feel anger. Some believe it will overtake them or some doubt their ability to navigate it in a healthy way. Some grew up with family dynamics where they needed to be the good kid. They avoided “bad” feelings as a way to not upset anyone in the family. Whatever the circumstances, avoiding bad feelings feels safer at times.
Emotions are part of our contract with life and when we start to understand how essential they are as teachers it can be very powerful. Next time you have an emotion, unpleasant or not, get curious. Ask yourself “Why am I feeling this” and “What is it here to teach me”. Let these emotions be your guides throughout your life pointing you in the directions you need to go.
If you find yourself struggling, please reach out to Lotus Therapy Group at 708-552-7330.
