Valid, Yes; Necessary, Not So Much

All of our emotions are valid. They may feel irrational and illogical at times, but they are valid nonetheless because we are experiencing them. While there is no such thing as “bad” emotions, there are emotions that we experience that tend to be more harmful and can sometimes lead to self-destructive behavior, increased levels of stress and anxiety and have a negative impact on our physical well-being. Here are 6 valid yet totally unnecessary emotions:

1. Anger – A lot of things cause us to feel angry; the high price of gas, being cheated on, Donald Trump talking mess about Obama, the Kardashians making $65 million last year. However, anger is most often a masking emotion. It covers the emotion we're actually feeling because anger feels a lot more powerful than fear, hurt, disappointment or the myriad of other emotions that make us feel vulnerable. While there are many situations in which we are entitled to feel anger, if we are constantly exploding or suppressing our angry feelings, it can lead to physical and emotional issues, including heart disease and depression. It is crucial to learn how to deal with anger in an emotionally healthy way, such as taking deep breaths before responding or taking a step back and looking at the situation more objectively. 

2. Guilt – Many times, we use guilt as a way of shaming ourselves or others for engaging in behavior that causes pain and hurt. We hope that doing this will cause the behavior to end, but more often than not, it doesn't. How many times have we felt guilty about calling in sick to work when we're really not? Or eating that pint of ice cream for dinner? Or not following through on plans with friends? I'm going to guess that it's happened more than once...and will probably happen again, regardless of how guilty we may feel about it. Unless we can accept responsibility and make changes in our behavior, guilt will get us nowhere.

3. Hatred – The word hate is often used in a lighter context. “I hate exercising.” “I hate waking up early.” “I hate this big zit on forehead.” But for some people, hate is a belief system. They hate gays, Jews, minorities, Christians, Muslims, liberals, republicans, etc.; basically anyone/anything they perceive to be different from them. Hatred leads to extreme and destructive behavior that may lead to a cycle of vengeance and retaliation. It is also believed that carrying around hatred has the same physical impact of carrying around anger.

4. Worry – We all worry; its purpose is to help us focus our attention on solving problems as they arise so we can eliminate the worry. Did I pay my cable bill this month? Will I make my numbers at work? When I mentioned booty-do to my new guy/gal, did I sound stupid? Although worry can be a great motivator, it can also be a great debilitator. Some of us spend a lot of time worrying about everything, including many things that are generally out of our control. Will I receive social security 35 years from now? What's going on with the ozone and the ice caps? Am I going to die of breast cancer? Is my cousin going to stop dating that jerk? Will my dad be laid off? Excessive worry can be an indicator of generalized anxiety disorder, especially when we can't control it despite knowing that it's irrational. It can also lead to panic attacks if it becomes too overwhelming. One tip given on webmd.com: Change what you can and accept the rest.

5. Regret – Anyone who has survived adolescence and made it through their twenties (and maybe their thirties too) relatively unscathed definitely has a few regrets. I definitely can think of a few choices in my life that make me shake my head in disbelief (slick nasty if you ask me). If I hadn't made some of those mistakes and suffered the consequences, I would not be the person I am now. Nor would I have had the necessary experiences to learn how to make better decisions for myself. As I've gotten older, I've decided to regret nothing; all life experiences have value in some way. However, there are some people who fixate on their regrets and it can be paralyzing; they become so fearful of making a mistake, they don't do anything and allow life to pass them by. Living in constant regret can have some harmful physical affects as well.

6. Jealousy - Jealousy is the result of a perceived threat to something we believe belongs to us, whether it be a person, a thing or even a concept, such as success. Often it is rooted in feelings of insecurity or anger. When we experience jealousy, it's important to examine the cause of our feelings. Why am I feeling this way? How am I dealing with these feelings? Once we figure out the cause, how we choose to deal with the feelings can be either positive or negative. For example, if you're feeling jealous because your partner is spending a lot of time with their friends, a positive way to handle it would be to communicate those feelings to them. Following them to their hangout spot and surprising them is not.

Being human means that we all experience some or all of these emotions at any given time. Again, these are all common reactions to the various situations we deal with on a regular basis. What we decide to do with these emotions is the difference between handling our emotions in a healthy and intelligent manner versus letting them fester and cause us emotional distress.

Love as a Verb

I don't know if it's because of spring, but I've been thinking about love a lot lately. It's such a powerful, irrational, crazy, awesome, terrible, magnificent emotion. It can render you senseless; you become silly and happy and sad and giddy and depressed all at the same time due to the same emotion. I've had my fair share of experiences when it comes to love and it's been beautifully horrible and horribly beautiful. Regardless of the people I've been in love with, one thing I have definitively walked away with is the knowledge that love does not conquer all.

I'm sorry, did I just burst your bubble? My bad.

Despite the statement above, I'm actually not (too) jaded. I believe love is the foundation upon which a relationship is built, but it is not enough to overcome the obstacles that we often face in our relationships. The people involved have to be committed to not only doing the work but also doing the love. Often, we get caught up in the emotion and forget that love is also a verb. While you may feel love for someone, are you doing love to them? (Doing love is not just about sex, by the way.)

We all have a different understanding of what love means, how it feels and what it looks like. Regardless, loving someone means loving them in the way they understand it, not only in the way we do it. It also means compromising...a lot. Even if we don't understand why they need whatever, we do it anyway because it means something to them. Yet, it seems like this is a fundamental problem within many relationships. Is it because we're selfish? Stupid? Lazy? Confused?

Yep. All of the above.

Our idea of normal is shaped by what we've experienced throughout our lives. If you grew up in a family that was affectionate, you're more likely to be affectionate. If you grew up in a family where emotional expression was not encouraged, you're less likely to be emotionally expressive. It can be difficult to comprehend someone else's normal when it is counter to our own. However, when we do love to someone, we work our hardest to get over our confused, selfish, lazy stupidity and do it to them in the way they understand. Hopefully, it will be reciprocated. Sometimes though, it can't. What we understand as “normal” love may be so counterintuitive to our partner, that they just can't do it. Their history, their baggage, may be the biggest obstacle to them doing love, even though they feel the emotion. There's also the possibility that their way of understanding love may be unhealthy; ever dated someone who thought that fighting and screaming at one another equals love?

Although I'm mostly talking about romantic love, it also applies to familial love. Our family members have their own baggage that prevents them being loving, despite the desire they may have. If we aren't emotionally expressive, it's most like due to the fact that it wasn't role modeled by our parents. It can be extremely difficult to change those relationships and sometimes we have to accept them as they are. Your mom is always going to be your mom; we can't control how they are going to be but we can control how we react to them. Once we stop looking for something they can't give, it's much easier to be in a relationship with them. Or we can decide that we no longer want to have a relationship with them, particularly if relationship is toxic. Your mom may always be your mom, but she doesn't have to be a part of your life once you become an adult.

Even though I no longer believe that love can conquer all, I do believe in its power and necessity for humanity to survive. Love is a helluva drug. Be careful who you give it to and who you get it from; you never know how it will affect you.

Have you ever loved someone but couldn't be with them? Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Have you ever done something crazy because of love? How is doing love and feeling love different for you?

You Can't Handle the Truth...Right?

Many years ago, a friend and I were discussing something. Probably boyfriends, girlfriends, family; whatever it was, it pertained to relationships. I can't remember the details of our conversation, but the most important thing she said has stuck with me over all this time. I'm about to rock your world. Ready?

“We can't take responsibility for other people's feelings.”

If you feel like time has frozen and everything around you has stopped moving, I'll give you a moment...I completely understand.

…...

…...

…...

You okay now?

I know, it's pretty mind-blowing. What's even mind-blowing-er is that I still can't seem to fully grasp this concept and apply it to my own life and relationships. It's one of those things that me and Beverly are working on – we actually agree this is something I should be doing with a lot more regularity (along with her long laundry list of other things, but I digress).

At first, when my friend was talking about this concept, I didn't really know what she was talking about. After several examples of how we as humans do this (especially women), I finally began to understand what she was saying. It was a revelatory experience; I didn't realize I'd been doing this in most of my adult relationships, both romantic and platonic. In taking responsibility, we're assuming the other person cannot handle any negative emotions and it's our job to protect them. However, in “protecting” them, we tend to cause more harm than good. It's very easy to move from protection to resentment; when we're protecting someone else's feelings, we're often putting our own feelings aside. How rude are we to assume that who we're dealing with cannot handle their own emotions?

Here's the twist; in taking responsibility for someone else's feelings, we get to avoid dealing with our own feelings! We're some real tricksters, aren't we? When we're telling ourselves “I don't want to break their heart, it will devastate them,” what we're really saying is “I don't want to feel bad about myself for hurting their feelings.” We're also avoiding dealing with any potentially negative fall-out from our relationships. We over-empathize with the other person and become fearful of how we will be interpreted. Here are some examples of what I mean:

Situation: You don't want your mom to invite her canasta group to your wedding.

Potential Interpretation: You don't care about her friends and how it will affect her social standing. You don't want to include her in the planning. What she wants is not important to you. You hate her.

Fear: Upsetting/offending your mom, making her angry, looking like a spoiled brat, setting a boundary, owning your feelings.

Situation: Your financially irresponsible friend wants to borrow some money.

Potential Interpretation: You're not a good friend. You don't care about their well-being. You're stingy. You hate them.

Fear: You'll lose their friendship, you'll never see your money again, setting a boundary, owning your feelings.

Situation: You want your mother-in-law to stay at a hotel.

Potential Interpretation: You don't like having her around. She's nosy. She's bossy. You hate her.

Fear: She'll know for sure that you don't like having her around because she's bossy and nosy and you hate her. Just kidding! She'll be upset, you'll offend her, it will upset your relationship, setting a boundary, owning your feelings.

Situation: You want to end a relationship.

Potential Interpretation: You're uncaring, you're mean, you hate them.

Fear: You'll feel bad about hurting someone else, setting a boundary, owning your feelings.

Did you notice a theme in all those situations? Setting boundaries and owning feelings...boy, does it pop up a lot. It's like some kind of mature, adult thing to do that most of us try to avoid doing! It seems less painful to avoid dealing with those situations because they evoke uncomfortable feelings all around. But then that resentment creeps in and infects the relationship because you're doing something you don't want to do; the other person is "making" you. Ironically, once the elephant in the room is addressed, almost everyone feels better...or can at least move through their emotions more fluidly.

Imagine how it could be if we were honest with each other about our feelings? Or more importantly, with ourselves? Wouldn't it be a relief to know that people are actually saying what they mean? Although I continue to struggle with this concept myself, I have seen the value in being honest about my emotions, even the uncomfortable ones, at least in my platonic relationships. If there's an issue, we talk about it, it's over and we move on, friendship still intact, if not stronger. We forget that being honest doesn't mean being tactless. Being honest and preserving the relationship takes some creative genius and sensitivity. But it is possible. Try it and see. Just don't forget the tact!

 

Do you take responsibility for others' feelings? How has that impacted your relationship? Do you believe honesty is the best policy at all times? Have you experienced someone trying to "protect" you?

Are Your Glasses Rose Colored?

In some way, we all live in a state of denial. For most of us, it's pretty mild and mostly harmless. With the help of really good friends (and sometimes an excellent therapist), it's difficult to live there all the time. They are there to kindly hold up the mirror and point out the discrepancies between what we say and what's actually there. Of course, we have to be open to receiving this feedback. Otherwise, we may be living in denial a lot longer than is healthy. For example, several years ago, I lost a lot of weight. I've never considered myself to be a skinny woman, so when friends started calling me skinny, I didn't really believe them. However, when a friend told me my head looked too big for my body, I realized that maybe I need to eat a burger...with fries...and a shake. (Problem has been over-solved at this point!)

A little bit of denial can be good for us; it's a protective measure that allows us to see ourselves in a good light. It helps us believe in our strengths and abilitites and to interact with the rest of the world. It doesn't mean we're unaware of our flaws and issues necessarily, it just gives us some respite from them and time to work on them. When we discover something about ourselves that we don't like, it can be very easy to fixate on them and allow them to define who we are. A dollop of denial gives us the chance to walk away and come back to it when we are ready. There's only so much work we can do on ourselves at a time; it's a life-long task. However, serious problems can arise when our denial runs too deeply. It often starts manifesting in detrimental and sometimes very risky behavior. What if my friend hadn't said anything? I could have continued on this weight loss path and lost all of my booty!

In all seriousness, when we don't deal with things, even at a snail's pace, we find some way to cope. This often involves finding some way to stay in denial, including using drugs and/or alcohol. We may also create more issues to avoid dealing with the real problem or engage in behaviors that cause our fears to be realized. Low self-esteem? Let's be friends with someone who belittles us and makes us feel bad. Fear of abandonment? Let's be a jerk to our partner and push them away. Don't want to be considered a bad parent? Let's ignore our child's developmental issues and hope they outgrow them.

It can be difficult to know when we're in denial, but there tend to be signs that we actively choose to ignore. Here are 7 signs that you may be in denial about some things in your life:

1. Several close friends/family have brought it to your attention.
2. You find yourself in the same situation over and over again.
3. It's never your fault.
4. Everyone else is wrong.
5. You're hiding it from even those you trust the most.
6. You rationalize the behavior/feelings.
7. You believe your situation is unique and the exception to the rule.

Any of these sound familiar? Of course not, there's nothing in your life to be in denial about!

Number 6 stands out the most for me. I always know I'm doing something “wrong” when I don't share it with my closest friends so I do a lot of confessing. I barely give myself enough time to eat a meal in the land of Denial. But that's just me. I encourage you to do things at your own speed – just don't sign a lease for a residence there.

Do you have friends that are in serious denial about something? What do you do when you see it? Do you feel it's your job to bring it to their attention? Under what circumstances? How long do you stay in denial before you feel compelled to do something about it?