Have you ever felt this way?
You worked late into the night to finish a plan, only to have your boss nitpick every detail. You had to swallow your pride to keep your job.
Your company laid off workers, and you worried about losing your job. You stayed up all night, but you still had to put on a happy face for clients the next day.
Your clients kept making unreasonable demands, leaving you exhausted. But you had to force a smile and greet your coworkers.
Someone asked, “What’s the most important skill a person can have?”
“Controlling your emotions.”
Suppressing our emotions seems to be the standard for a successful adult.
But without us knowing, we’re already overwhelmed inside.
There’s a saying: “Emotions are part of who we are. All emotions are natural. There’s nothing wrong with emotions, and we don’t need to control them.”
Emotions are always with us. If we learn to live with them, we’ve already won half the battle of life.
We need to accept that our emotions are valid. We don’t need to fight them or suppress them.
If we treat our emotions like monsters, trying to force them down, we’ll only make things worse. We’ll get stuck in a black hole of emotions.
Only by living with our emotions, achieving emotional freedom, and letting them be our life’s harmonizers can we have a happy life.
Suppressing Emotions Hurts Our Bodies and Minds
Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.
A little bit of holding back might not affect our physical health, but suppressing our emotions over the long term will definitely hurt our bodies and minds.
Suppressing our emotions for years is like constantly pumping up a balloon. If we don’t let the air out, the balloon will eventually burst.
American psychologist Oliver treated a female patient named Carol.
Carol had to work and take care of her two kids every day, while her husband did nothing.
This made her feel angry and wronged, but she felt she shouldn’t complain. She should control her emotions.
But her life didn’t get better because she controlled her emotions. It actually got worse.
She often overreacted to her children’s normal requests. She even had violent tendencies.
A normal question from her husband could make her lose her temper and become aggressive.
After a while, she developed a serious mental illness.
Some trauma is both mental and physical. It exists in the form of disease.
Suppressing emotions hurts your body.
Fear damages the kidneys, sadness damages the lungs, anger damages the liver, and worry damages the spleen.
Data shows that most diseases are closely related to our emotions:
Being constantly nervous and anxious can cause a cold.
People who are anxious and have trouble sleeping lose their hair.
Long-term pessimism and disappointment can lead to high blood pressure and blood sugar.
People who habitually suppress their emotions and hold things in are twice as likely to get cancer.
We always silently bury our emotions, thinking they’ll disappear like time.
But those suppressed emotions are like ants. Without us knowing, they’ve already started eating away at our health.
Only by letting our emotions flow naturally can we be relaxed and comfortable and have a healthy and happy life.
Accepting Emotions Is the Biggest Wisdom of Adulthood
I heard a psychological fable.
A little monster snuck into the palace. The soldiers tried everything to get rid of it.
Then, a strange thing happened. The more the soldiers fought it and tried to get rid of it, the bigger and stronger it became. Eventually, it took over the whole palace.
The king came back, but he didn’t treat the monster like the soldiers did. Instead, he gave it delicious food to eat and invited it to take a bath in the bathtub.
With the king’s kind treatment, the monster slowly got smaller and eventually left the palace on its own.
We can see that the little monster is like our own emotions.
When we fight them, they bounce back even harder.
On the other hand, if we try to accept them and view them with an open mind, they will naturally disappear and stop bothering us.
As we get older, we seem to become “immune” to emotions.
To play the role of an emotionally stable adult, we habitually hide our emotions.
But those hidden emotions still exist in our bodies. The longer we hold them in, the more damage they cause.
Smart people have already learned to acknowledge their emotions and accept them.
The best way to deal with emotions is to believe that no emotion is wrong.
When we have emotions, the wise choice is to let them out. Don’t let them leave a mark on our bodies.
Truly powerful people already realize:
Emotions are part of who we are. They allow us to experience the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows of life.
When we’ve been betrayed, we can shout at the ocean and let out our anger.
When we’ve been hurt, we can cry on a deserted street and release our sadness.
In life, we must learn to live in harmony with our emotions.
Living with Our Emotions, Achieving Emotional Freedom
Emotions have a unique quality. The harder we try to solve them, the deeper we sink into the swamp of pain.
Smart people allow their emotions to exist and live peacefully with them.
But most of the time, even though we realize the dangers of fighting our emotions, we don’t know how to live with them. Here are three little things you can try:
First, cultivate emotional dullness and become “immune” to emotions.
Two coworkers were both criticized harshly by their boss.
One coworker was very sensitive and felt humiliated. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being scolded and got stuck in his emotions. He had to quit his job.
The other coworker continued his work calmly, as if nothing had happened.
Faced with the same situation, fragile and sensitive people easily get stuck in the mud of emotions and burden themselves.
People with strong emotional dullness are used to focusing on the facts and aren’t easily swayed by their emotions.
In the second half of life, we need to cultivate our “emotional dullness” and improve our “immunity” to emotions.
Second, when emotions come up, cool them down.
A storm of anger usually lasts no more than 12 seconds.
So when emotions arise, don’t worry or rush to deal with them.
Instead of panicking and reacting inappropriately, it’s better to wait and see what happens and follow the principle of cold treatment.
When we calm down and cool our emotions, we can be indifferent to them and make peace with them.
Third, after emotions come up, evaluate them correctly.
There’s a saying: Emotions themselves aren’t good or bad. It depends on how you evaluate them.
When we encounter a problem, we can first evaluate:
Is this matter important? Is it worth getting angry, sad, or anxious about?
Have I misunderstood the situation?
By doing this, we might be able to correctly understand our emotions, learn to deal with them, and live in harmony with them.
All emotions, feelings, and experiences arise naturally. They’re all telling us something, guiding us on the path to good growth.
By suppressing our emotions, we’re artificially cutting off our feelings and experiences of the outside world. It’s like setting up obstacles on the path to growth.
By accepting our emotions and living with them, we can be free from their influence and live our own rhythm.
Emotions are about letting them flow, not blocking them.
Excellent people have already learned to understand them, accept them, and live peacefully with them.
In the second half of life, let’s live a little more authentically:
Whether we’re happy or angry, let’s go with the flow and let our emotions flow naturally.