Throughout our lives, we experience a great diversity of emotional states. When everything happens according to our expectations, as a rule we feel euphoric and successful. But, when we have to face challenges and frustrations we often find ourselves in a panic . If we could understand that everything is temporary, we could relate to our emotions from a healthier perspective.
Usually, we have an extremely dichotomous conception of the world around us. Everything is black or white, good or bad. In this way, positive emotions become desirable and negative emotions become something we try to avoid at all costs.
Although it is much more prudent to give space to both inside us, this is really complicated for us. Why? Because we feel that they will stay with us forever .
The requirement of constant happiness
Due to our tendency to label, we have condemned negative emotions to banishment. We refuse to look at them, to listen to them, to accept them. We demand ourselves to live in a perpetual state of happiness .
This is a completely unrealizable expectation that leads us to insane and harmful behaviors. We repress our emotions, we hide them, we do our best to distract our mind when they appear. But it is necessary to understand that they are nothing more than natural reactions of our body to what happens, that they fulfill a function .
Just as not everything that happens is positive, neither can we pretend that all our emotions are. Circumstances are changing and therefore emotions too . Generating the obligation to maintain a constantly high mood only takes us away from that feeling of fullness that we seek.
The fear of infinite sadness
Change is part of the road. Whatever our age, we will have been able to verify that neither euphoria nor sadness is eternal – although on some occasion it can give us the feeling of being. A reality that is difficult for us to accept when our eyes are contaminated by negative future expectations or adverse circumstances.
When life hits us, negative emotions make their consequent appearance. Most of us have not been taught to deal with them and we continue to see them as the enemy, so at that moment we begin to want to get rid of that awkward feeling as soon as possible .
Thus, we launch our entire arsenal of strategies to avoid facing that pain. We go out with friends, we rearrange the closet, we get distracted by books and movies.
Until, inevitably, the time comes when there is no other choice but to face reality and we verify that these emotions are not gone . They are still there, creating lumps in the throat and making us perceive pain in an almost physical way. That is when panic takes hold of us: we will never be able to feel good again.
The agony we experience does not come from what happened or from the negative feeling that stalks us. Now our greatest fear is that these emotions do not disappear.
We have already exhausted all our coping resources and have not even managed to alleviate their intensity. So, now, the concern adds to our vulnerable situation.
Everything is temporary
It is in those moments, when we need to remember what we already know and so many times we have checked: everything is temporary. The sadness will go away, the fear will begin to loosen; One day, when you least expect it, you will find yourself smiling again .
The only method to accelerate the healing process is to dare to live it. Dare to feel, welcome the discomfort and accompany yourself. If you manage to remember that everything will happen, you can look at your situation from a new perspective . You will give yourself permission to accept that natural reaction of your body and learn from it.
Sure that nothing is eternal allow you to remain calm during the storm, and wait with optimism the arrival of the sun . Life is not always perfect – in fact, I rarely fry this adjective – and you don’t need it to be. Each experience, in its own way, helps us to grow. Therefore, if your forces falter and your doubts assail you, remember that everything happens.