I’ll be honest with you…I struggle with embracing and expressing my feelings. Granted, when i’m upset or excited, my emotions show up on my face (rarely verbalized). But when it actually comes to embracing the emotions I feel, I truly struggle in this area. More so, i’m not really comfortable expressing how I feel to myself or others as I don’t like feeling vulnerable. I tend to bottle up my emotions and bury it deep down inside me. This helps me to keep pain as far away from me as possible. And when I do experience pain, I don’t really feel it or experience it as I bottle it up and bury it within.
I am slowly learning that it is okay for me to embrace my emotions as it gives me the opportunity to actually feel and experience everything that is going on around me. It allows me to live that moment. As the days go by, I am being reminded that life is as short as it is long. It is brief and moves swiftly like the wind. One of the ways to experience self-love (philautia love) is to embrace your emotions and these are some of the ways i’m learning to embrace my emotions:
- acknowledge the emotions i feel in the moment
- accept them and understand that there are no right OR wrong emotions; it’s the actions following on from them that are debatable
- releasing my emotions is a healthy process and i can achieve this by talking through how i feel either to myself or to a close friend, writing down my feelings
- i can’t control how others feel or react, but i can control mine
- i will not always understand all the emotions i feel, and that is perfectly alright
Do you struggle with embracing your emotions or do you find it relatively easy? Do you have a process that allows you to embrace your emotions easily? Do share in the comments section below.
