We all feel a multitude of emotions every hour, every day.
So why are we so frighten of our emotions?
Babies use their voices, their faces their whole body to express EVERY emotion and it’s expressed INTENSELY and LOUDLY. But it is what we love most about babies. The authentic beaming of happiness that radiates from them is infectious. No filter! No tempering of their emotion. Showing their authentic self.
Children are unlike adults who have learnt to temper, control, suppress and handle our emotions. Little children are not yet conditioned to behave and express emotion in the way society has decided it is ok to express.
If only I had known that Emotions are information. That emotion is there for a reason. What was it trying to tell me? If I had have known that my suppressed anger was a sign that people were walking over my personal boundaries and that I needed to really set firm, better boundaries. Oh that would have saved me some heartache.
Our society is increasing becoming very uncomfortable with people expressing their emotions.
Of the 1000’s of different emotions we have our society is comfortable the expression of two of them, anger and fear to almost the exclusion of all else. Watch when an adult starts to cry and see how uncomfortable the room of people get. Our eyes drop down, our gaze will turn and we recede back into ourselves. Heaven forbid a man cries.
An animated children’s movie called “Inside Out” Is a wonderful movie for showing children that all emotions are ok and that we need all of them. We shouldn’t label them good or bad.
It’s ok to feel an emotion you just don’t need to live there permanently.
The epidemic of addictions, depression and anxiety today stem from our society’s inability to sit, feel and express and most importantly understand our emotions.
So what can we learn from children?
- That authentic emotion is what we love the most as evident in babies.
- That there are not GOOD or BAD emotions – all just emotions and we don’t have to be scared of them.
- And most importantly EMOTIONS ARE OK, THEY ARE JUST INFORMATION
