26/02/2024
"Sure, tell your children it's okay for them to feel sad and you will get a generation of depressed future adults."
"Sure, tell your children it's okay to feel anger and you will get a generation of aggressive and uncontrollable future adults."
When have we started mistaking normalizing for encouragement? Telling someone it is okay to feel into their emotions, to allow themselves to feel without guilt or shame or inadequacy is not the same as encouraging them to follow up on those emotions with behavior/action.
Because that's where there seems to be a gap in understanding: feeling angry doesn't equal retaliating against the person(s) that caused the emotion. Feeling sad does not equal throwing in the towel and resigning to the tune of "oh, what a cruel fate I have!". The list goes on, of course, with other seemingly "inappropiate" emotions.
My personal example is with anger. I used to think that it's unladylike for a girl/woman to be angry. We are delicate and fragile human beings, concerned with the most delightful and gentle of things. Well, I could go on about generational baggage and socially-perpetuated beliefs, but it's not about that here. I used to believe that there was something wrong with me for feeling anger. Because if I were to be this enlightened feminine being, I would not feel angry. So I blocked it for years on end. I refused to feel it. It was beneath me. And, of course, it found ways to ooze through (like becoming inexplicably upset about completely meaningless details, or suddenly feeling irrationally frustrated about a situation, or having an abrupt mood shift after a long period of playing the peaceful Buddha), until I had to accept that ✨️"It's okay to feel angry"✨️. What isn't okay is to let your emotions take over you and turn into behavior that you will most likely regret after the emotional storm has calmed down.
So, no don't "just stop" being sad/angry/lonely/disappointed /frustrated/abandoned/cheated. You feel whatever you need to feel to understand the root of it and then let go. And maybe find support on how to navigate what you feel. Because IT'S OKAY.
