3 Steps To Emotional Wisdom

What do we do when a feeling we see as negative flowers inside us? Feeling anger, tension or rage brings with it an instinctive reaction of wanting to control what we feel. But it is not uncommon for us to achieve the exact opposite. So, being aware of this and other emotional inner drive, will let us go into ourselves in a wonderful way towards emotional wisdom.

Thanks to emotional wisdom, we can better process our emotions. This way we avoid exploding unnecessarily at inappropriate moments. And sometimes we prevent ourselves from feeling suffocated by all the emotions that swim around inside us. Or the butterflies for someone who is in love.

1. Do not fill up your emotions

What did people say to you when you were little? You will definitely recognize things like: ” Stop  crying”, “A child your age should not have tantrums”, “See how ugly your face is when you get angry” … All the comments from your parents, who are apparently innocent, have made it so that you have learned to suppress your emotions.

On top of all this, you have grown up with other influences such as how they have hammered it in that men do not cry or that women are too sensitive.  Among other things, this type of belief has made it so that you, without intending to do so, have disconnected your self-expression from the feelings you feel.

It is important to know when to release what you are feeling. For example, if you are in the middle of an important negotiation, giving free rein to your anger or letting go of your tears without control will not be the best thing for the future of the deal. But that does not mean you can not vent afterwards. Or that you can not express anger without damaging the negotiations.

You can express your feelings in an appropriate way. If something or someone annoys you, or is violent, or if you have become angry or do not agree with something, then say so! By saying things like “what you just said hurt me”, you can release some of the feeling that has invaded you. And you can provide a valuable piece of information to the other person. From that, they will understand, “I should not go down that road.”

2. Do not try to always keep the same control

Sometimes it’s not just that you do not express your feelings towards others. Instead, try to control them when there is nothing wrong with them coming out. That is, have you ever tried to hold back your tears, even when you were home alone? If so, try to stop a feeling that it would be better to set free.

All the emotional oppression we talked about in the past has allowed for what we might call “swallowing emotions.” This is something that emotional wisdom does not even think about. The more emotions you swallow, the more they will build up. And sooner or later they will end up coming out. The outcome of the digestion of this, also tends to be a major disaster.

You definitely know someone, it could even be you, who at certain moments explodes (beyond) at inappropriate moments. There are explosions that in reality do not require the level of excessive aggression, rage or sadness that the person shows. This is because they have held in and swallowed many emotions that have now filled the glass.

A single detonator can cause an abundance of everything you have tried to control inside yourself. But ironically, it is uncontrollable. You’re hurting yourself. You suffer by making yourself a storehouse of emotions that do not make you feel good. It’s time to release them when they need to be released.

As human as emotions can be, we must also learn to deal with them

Emotional wisdom does not just suggest that you stop locking your emotions inside. In fact, it also focuses on something very important: learning to do it. Every emotion contributes to something. It is a necessary lesson you need to know how to interpret right before it goes away. In fact, once we have listened to our emotions and become ready to act, they tend to loosen up to contribute energy to our actions.

So,  it  ‘s not about treating them as enemies or putting them on the other side of the ring. If we see them this way, then they will probably play that role. But not because that’s how they are, but because we have made them that way. More specifically, they will do what we expect them to do. If we expect our anger to ruin a party, then it will definitely do so.

On the other hand, a feeling we ignore can lose some intensity. But this can also mean that we run the risk of it reappearing at any time. Stronger, more invasive, and when we are at our weakest… and most importantly, without having learned anything.

When we spend years trying to control and lock in what we feel, our body will eventually begin to give us warning signs that something is not right. That is, it will be a  somatization  of our emotions. Let’s not do that kind of damage. Let us stop suffering and begin to express how we feel when our emotions demand it. We will feel much better.

Photos: Yassher Almajed