Basic studies of brain patterns show that facing ones emotions seems to work in calming us down.
“Meditation and other “mindfulness” techniques are designed to help people pay more attention to their present emotions, thoughts and sensations without reacting strongly to them. Meditators often acknowledge and name their negative emotions in order to “let them go.””
And all these years people were always telling me to repress my emotions, push them deep down, where they’ll never hurt me again.
Although, in some cases I’ve found that verbalising and justifying abstract emotions can give them a tangible nature, making them dangerous. For example, jealousy. When I’ve talked openly about it in specific encounters, it’s given it credence and made it real, when it was never real to begin with, and now I have a larger problem on my hands.
As I get older I have to be very careful to deal with emotions and the perspectives they cause quickly after their conception, so they don’t have time to cement themselves into my consciousness, to become a fact of some sort. For example, if someone irks me and I don’t deal with it immediately, I begin to justify that emotion, and it becomes a kind of bedrock, a standpoint. ‘Now’, I say, ‘that person angers me’ and I’ll start finding reasons to back that up. That negative perception starts to filter through everything, because being unhappy, as I’ve always believed, is far easier than being happy. It’s almost like I don’t trust myself to maintain an open mind in the future, to allow that person to come up for re-evaluation where they may be found not-guilty.
Strange workings of the noodle.
Quote of the day then, I guess.
“The only way out is through.”
Nine Inch Nails
Fourteen Twenty 
i’d like to leave a comment but i the way i process things i think i’d be leaving a novel! so may just have to e-mail you or tell you in person…
helpful, i know 😛
~ tracy
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So, here’s my comment. I’ll try to recall what exactly I was thinking of when I read this the first time. I feel that I spend a good majority of my day (at work) having to repress my emotions a good part of the time (i.e. dealing with ignorant or difficult clients or on occasion co-workers) in order to “keep the order” on the job… That can usually lead to the occasional outburst keeping all that in, but for the most part I feel I internalize it pretty well. Probably contributing to a brain tumor or something. But when it comes to the people that actually matter in my life, away from work, those that carry some actually weight in that I care what they think- over the years I’ve become better at being more upfront. It’s the scenario of “life’s too short”… to bullshit. For the most part I’ve had success with being open and honest. Mostly in part to the fact that the people in my life can handle that. There are some that can’t, I know. And for the sake of not creating more drama sometimes it’s best to just keep quiet. Choose your battles, right?
I agree with you on the jealousy issue. They call it the green eyed monster- it’ll even feed on nonexistent evidence. But a trait of mine is that I can often realize when I’m being irrational (rationally irrational??) and that drives me even crazier. So I try to quash and worries or annoying issues quickly if there isn’t any stock to it.
I don’t think that was a very good closer but that’s all I got.
Fin.
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