Honouring Our Emotions- EcoTrain Question of The Week-(What Does It mean to Own your Emotions)

in #ecotrain6 years ago

EcoTrain Question of The Week-What Does It mean to Own your Emotions

I have mixed feelings about this Question, firstly because I am not a fan of ownership. When we own something it usually brings out this need to hold onto it, to not want to part with it, to try and control it.The only thing I believe we own is our bodies because that is the one thing that we should strive to hold onto. In all other areas of our life I have seen ownership change people and not for the better. But that is also what makes this question such a good one, because if I don't believe in owning my emotions, what do I believe in?

Before I get into that, I want to look at how emotions are received within Western society. It seems that everywhere you go being happy is the one emotion that people feel comfortable with. Of course this makes sense, because we all strive to be happy, and seeing some one over joyed makes everyone else around them feel the same. It is almost infectious. So much time and energy is put in making ourselves happy, we are meant to be happy right? But if we are happy all of the time what happens to the other (lets say)90% of ourselves.

So much energy and money is spend on making ourselves happy, or trying to find ways to stay happy. It seems to be the main focus for lots of people 'The Importance Of Being Happy'. I don't think I need to go into how important it is or how natural it is to want this. But it is also natural to feel sad, angry, fearful, anxious and frustrated yet expressing those emotions in public is not really acceptable. We are expected to be happy or just blase when we are out in public, otherwise we begin to make people feel uncomfortable.

I see it all the time, especially with children, so many times they are being forced to suppress their emotions. I have seen the scorn in people's eyes when a child gets upset, I can almost heard their opinions in my head, always judgemental. Children should be seen and not heard. I still cannot quite believe the amount of people who still believe this and expect it.

This is the root of the problem, because everyone is happy to see a happy child, but once that child is upset, whoa, nobody wants to see or hear them. So of course from a young age we are being told not to show emotions in public, that it is shameful, that it is something to hide. So when we feel anger for example we need to push that down, because it is not a good emotion, no body wants to be around people who are angry right? Well actually no, anger is a very strong and powerful emotion, it has the potential to really make people become pro active and creative. But when we have spend a large part of our life suppressing it, it really only comes out when it is boiling over inside of us, it comes like a rage and so many do not know how to deal with it.


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But anger can be used to create something positive, to create change. Anger gets things done. Like all of our emotions we need to acknowledge them, to embrace them, to really honour them. Emotions are there to help guide us on our life journey.

Honouring Our Emotions

As I have said, I do not feel comfortable with the term of owning my emotions. We are meant to be fluid, our lives are meant to flow. It is something that I write a lot about. In order for us to move forward, to progress we need to be able to let our emotions out. To express them. To acknowledge and understand them, to really honour them. They have such an important place in our lives. It is feelings of anger, feelings of love and fear that have got me to where I am today. My sadness, has forced me to stop and really assess where I am in life and what I am doing. It has also allowed me to grieve, to process all of pain that I have experienced. It has allowed me to let go of so many things that I have held onto for too long.

Yet some people still feel very uncomfortable seeing others cry. Some still see it as a weakness. As a male in today's society men and boys are not supposed to cry in public, as it is not the manly thing to do. I have heard too many times little boys being told to stop crying, because 'you are a big boy now'. But crying is such a powerful form of release. It helps release pain, anger, sadness and grief and joy. It is such a powerful expression of all of these emotions, yet it is something that is still not embraced. How many times do you feel the urge to comfort someone when they cry, to reach out and hug them, but even this seemingly small act of kindness is actually making them stop. We really need to encourage people to let there emotions flow.

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If you are sad, be sad be open about it, it is okay to be sad, sadness makes us take stock of what is happening in our lives. It is our time out from what we are doing, it is our time to reflect, don't fight it or hold it back let that sadness be present and honour it. The same can be said for anger of fear. Both of these emotions have resulted in me making decisions that have really shaped my life. The thing is though to deal with them as they arise.

Love, another powerful emotion that has such creative and destructive capabilities, we need to honour it, we need to enjoy it, but we also need to let it go. Let the love that enters our lives, let it fill us with joy but then let it flow out of our lives again. We can hold love inside and let it consume us, take over our lives or we can let it flow in and flow out again. Always ready to receive it once again. This way we have a much healthier relationship with love, with all our emotions.

Finding the right way to express yourself and to channel your emotions is so important. It really starts with getting to know yourself, with loving yourself. Taking the time to sit with yourself and sit with your emotions, to acknowledge why you are feeling that way and to take the time to find out how that feeling can be channelled in a positive way in your life. By channelling it you are releasing it. You are letting it go.

Honouring your emotions starts with loving yourself, accepting yourself for who you are and what you feel.

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I practiced meditation and many other disciplines where I could go deep and observe things they really are. One of thing I observed are my emotions.

To explain this, I must clarify one thing... There is real you that live forever, pure presence and there is awareness of your body/mind which has many levels of course. One of those level are emotions.

Nothing bad about emotions if they are not used to control you. For example, many can feel emotion to cry when anthem is playing. For what are they feeling emotion if country don't exist? No country don't exist, that's all concepts in our mind. On 9/11 some people who consider themselves as American, felt emotions of sadness and anger, which manipulators take advantage to send troops in false war. Under influence of emotions, people are easily controlled. There you have one of examples how we can be controlled by 'our' emotions.

Emotions are sort of way our/body mind express itself. Those emotions can fake someone into believing they are theirs, but of course they can be product really from your mind.

When my dad left this reality, I was really sad. Real me and my mind. I cried a lot because we were really connected. Those emotions were real for example.

I would disagree with you on one thing:

Love, another powerful emotion...

In my opinion love is not emotion. Love just is. It exist beyond mind/body and it is infinite, so I wouldn't count love just as part of emotions.

thank you @cmoljoe for your great feedback and for sharing your wisdom with me. Love is many things to many of us, I identify it as a emotion and so much more besides but I do accept your opinion with regards to love also.

This is wonderful, as always. You are so talented when it comes to express yourself. You should write a book darling! I am still thinking about this topic and what I want to write about it. Will see how it goes!

thank you Niina, a lot came out when I was writing this, I just let it flow hoping it would make sense xxx

That is the best way to write!

Ah Emotions, emotions, I am struggling with these right now! I have had to take some time away from Steemit because of them too! But I have decided to try and Own my emotions by taking back 'me time' and part of that me time was steemit. So even though it is hard, I am making an effort to come back :) I hope you are well xx

oh I was wondering where you were, I gave a little shout out in teamgirlpowa as I missed connecting with you on here. I am glad you have taken time for you, always be gentle with yourself and maybe write about it, I can't put into words how much it has helped me xxx

Awww so sorry I didn't see it, I have just been clicking the 'mark as read' buttons because there were so many @ everyone tags lol I didn't think any of them were actually tags for me! :) Yes, I think I will try and write about it. Up to now I haven't had the energy, but I am finding my feet again. Big hugs! xx

I can really relate to what you said about a child not being heard when they are upset. just the other day my 6yr old son was playing for ages with a friend at a party and they were having such a good time...they were getting pretty rambunctious and then boom - he's crying and screaming (over tired, over hungry, over heated) people started giving the looks....sort him out, make it stop, he's being a baby. It's these kind of situations of feeling embarrassed about expressing your emotions that can have such repercussions for the future.

thanks Star, that is one think I find that really still upsets me, we are all emotional beings, it is so time everyone accepted that xxx

thanks for this different perspective.. it sounds like you are talking about letting GO when you speak of being in the flow.. which is a REAlly important part of owning our emotions as i see it.. because when we learn to give up all our trespasses done unto us we can i think start to live In the flow of life rather than holding on to all our feelings..

<3

exactly Alex, for me being in flow is letting things come into our lives and learning from them and allowing them to move out, we are energetic beings we need this flow so that we can receive all we need, so that we can exchange and grow xx

Wow Aishlinn! This was brilliant. You are right, people do see crying as a bad thing especially when children cry publicly. They are kids and not always know the best way to express themselves especially infants and toddlers. I remember my son was barely 3 and he was throwing a huge tantrum in a mall and bit my hand in the process and a family around us laughed hard at that and some were even pointing fingers at us. It made it so hard for me to stay calm, but gladly I did and that helped my son calm down too. And some time later, I read a post by a father on how her daughter threw a tantrum in a store and how he let her act out and cry because she was just a 2 yr old who didn't know how to express herself in another way. That was so beautiful that I stopped letting my son cry when he wanted to. Often, our elders advise us to bribe kids with sweets or something else to make them stop crying but honestly, this worsens things later on and makes them needy. I am not saying one shouldn't trying to soothe crying babies- we should, but we should also see why the baby is crying about.

Your introduction is wonderful @trucklife-family. I like the way you bring out the beauty of emotions from the other side and its true that its very natural to feel sad. Sadness and other negative emotions are what givehappiness it's value. Its true that anger gets things done. In fact i really enjoy the fact that you bring out the positive power of negative emotions. Sometimes our negative emotions get things done faster and giives us the opportunity to evaluate our lives. I have really gathered a lot wisdom reading the different entries of #qotw.

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