Whatever you feel, expressing it will do you good. Releasing emotions has multiple benefits for your psychological and physical health. You will feel more liberated and with less tension and, in addition, you will gain clarity by not getting caught up in your thoughts.
Emotions: they are all positive
Emotions help us establish a better relationship with the environment. We all have them and giving ourselves permission to feel and not block or deny what we feel is essential to be able to express it later. There are four basic emotions:
- The sadnesswhich consists of letting go.
- Angerwhich is related to action.
- The fearwhich has to do with shrinking.
- Joywhich means celebrating.
All of them are basic functions to be able to relate to the environment and adapt to it. The value given to emotions is a characterization made by our culture. Considering that some are negative makes it difficult for us to express them when we need them as a resource.
1. Give more importance to your emotions
We are used to valuing intelligence more than emotion. We make a hierarchy of these concepts: reason, more masculine, is above emotion, more feminine… and more discredited.
A few years ago the term emotional intelligence was coined and things began to improve. Thanks to recent research, it is known that people make better choices when they also take emotions into account.
Disciplines such as biological decoding consider that the disease occurs when we do not become aware of emotions and cannot express them.
To be an emotional person is to have more wealth; Being able to express what we feel makes us more complete people and allows us to have more decision-making capacity.
2. Act with full awareness
For a few years the uncontrolled expression of emotions, in the form of catharsis, was considered self-healing.
At present it is known that expression without conscience is of little use and that it can even be harmful if the person later feels guilty about things they have said or done.
So that this does not happen, it is important that when we express emotions we do not lose sight of our environment.
Most of the time, emotional expression is best done with eyes open, seeing the person in front of us. Especially when what we are expressing is anger, if we maintain eye contact with the person in front of us, we will respect them and avoid harming or getting hurt.
3. Let off steam in a comfortable and safe place
On certain occasions and contexts, for example when we are in front of an authority or someone who could harm us, it is better not to express emotions. This does not mean that we cannot do it at another time or context. We must find the place where we can express them, at home or in a safe place, saying or doing what we wanted.
- if you feel anger: Find a way to vent your anger, for example, by screaming into a cushion or hitting the bed with a tennis racket…
- if you feel afraid: allow yourself to tremble and assume that you are scared.
- If you are sad: allow yourself to cry and sob, and find someone to welcome you if you need it.
- If you need to express love: say out loud “I love you” imagining the loved one. Another way to express this emotion (joy), or any other, is by writing it down on paper until everything we want to say is exhausted.
4. Do not think too much about things
An emotion is short and intense, it lasts about 90 seconds.. If we spend much more time in it, it means that we are maintaining it from our mind.
This is how an adaptive emotion becomes a created emotion. This happens when the emotion is caused by thoughts or ideas rather than by facts that occur in our environment.
If I tell myself that everyone wants to hurt me, that they are against me, that they surely want to hurt me, my fear or anger towards others will not disappear, but rather it will grow. I can’t stop feeling it! If I also talk and talk, I look for arguments and I don’t stop dedicating mental space to it… that’s not going to help me.
5. May the environment be with you
It is more difficult to express emotions in contexts where others experience them as something to be controlled. There are people who, when they see another express an emotion – especially anger, sadness and fear – believe that they have to do something to make it “well”. So they bring him a glass of water or tell him “don’t cry”, “don’t be angry”…
Many people cannot sustain that others express what happens to them when they do not allow it.
If you ever find yourself in this situation, and you are clear that it is good to express your emotions, You can tell them that nothing is wrong, that it is a need that you have, that it is good for you go through that experience.
To the extent that one is clear that what he is doing is for the best, the others adapt.
Don’t stop expressing what you feel because others tell you not to.