Recently, I have been doing my best to change and alter how I process emotions from repression to fully accepting and processing them. As a woman, I have been taught to hide any anger because it is not lady-like, to not cry in front of people because you don’t want to show weakness, and to be a positive ray of sunshine at all times. This motto has been detrimental to my mental wellbeing and I have been doing work on myself to escape this sort of mindset, and wanted to share what I have done (and am still doing) to review and process my own emotions.
The first thing I did was acknowledge that I am human, and being human means feeling emotions that are hard and uncomfortable. For the longest time I have gotten mad at myself for getting sad over something that, in the grand scheme of things, seems so small and pushed that emotion away without fully processing it. This would snowball with the next “small” event that hurt me and would also repress and so on until I would reach some sort of breaking point. This has been extremely unhealthy and has only made my anxiety worsen over the years. What I am trying to be better about doing now is acknowledging that I’m upset and taking time to exist in that feeling and acknowledge that I’m human and that this is something that I am meant to be feeling right now. It’s natural to want to push it away, but in the long run it’s better to feel that uncomfortable emotion in that moment instead of along with other sadness that has been built up.
Another tactic I have found helpful is journaling. I have no criteria for how I journal and what I say; I just sit down and write a stream of consciousness and allow whatever I need to come up for the day to come out of me. In this sense, it is not just me feeling these emotions or sensations, but it is now the paper and the pen experiencing them with me. The paper and pen can take it and it’s what they are there for. After writing I close the book and I’m able to put a piece of that away and into a drawer where it isn’t as attached to me anymore, and there’s something quite beautiful in that process of release.
Something that my therapist has told me to do is to write down whenever something comes up and I don’t have the time to deal with it at that moment. I can call it a date with doubt or a date with really anything you want to call it. This gives you a reminder on why you may be feeling more run down by the end of the week and give you time to process it at a later date before it gets to that inevitable snowball. Writing it down on a piece of paper alone lets a percentage of the weight be free to another place and lets you know it’s okay if you can’t process it at this moment because you will when you are ready to.
Overall, processing emotions and handling uncomfortable feelings is hard and isn’t fun to do for anyone. It’s a journey that each person takes at their own time and there is no correct way to do so. I make so many mistakes on my own journey to finding happiness within myself and my experiences and have to remind myself daily it’s okay to breathe and feel what I need to feel. Those around me will understand and I don’t need to always be on top of my game for others or for myself.