In this day and age, individuals are usually encouraged to suppress their feelings and emotions for several reasons. Your job wants you to remain professional, and kids are taught that expressing emotions makes you weak.
But all this avoidance of feelings can cause them to fester and grow into serious issues such as anxiety and depression. This is why it is time to stop avoiding your feelings.
Mindfulness
The number one tool you can use to stop avoiding your emotions is applying mindfulness to your life. Mindfulness is taking time out of your day to spend with yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings.
Mindfulness will teach you who you are as a person and how to accept yourself just the way you are. It can also teach you about how and why you feel certain emotions, and you’ll learn to express them properly instead of burying them within.
Meditation
Another easy way to begin to confront your feelings and work through them is through the practice of regular meditation. Medical professionals worldwide simply rave about the health benefits of meditation.
Several studies have shown that it can help with even more serious issues such as anxiety and depression. So, it’s time to engage in meditation in your own life daily, so you can spend time processing your emotions in a safe space.
Immediacy
A common tactic in emotional repression is when you experience something that you resolve to deal with later. The problem is, that you rarely actually end up dealing with it later. This is why it is good practice to decide to work through your emotions when they come around.
If someone says something that upsets you, tell them that, right then and there, and then the issue can be resolved immediately. This is much better than burying the pain of the hurtful words until they grow to be something worse when the words may have been a simple misunderstanding.
Summary
Overall, it can be a challenging task to learn to stop avoiding your feelings. But if you are going to live a happy and healthy life, you must learn to express your feelings to yourself, and others, in a respectful manner.
So, start with a bit of mindfulness, meditation, and immediacy, and soon you’ll find you’ll no longer feel like you need to hide your emotions.
