All the Feels

I guess part of working on your vulnerability is working on allowing yourself to feel all of the emotions. Including the ones that make you uncomfortable.

For me, the main emotion I try to ignore is sadness. I know it’s inevitable, but I’m an avoider. I’ll start to feel sad and then I’ll do whatever I can to take my mind off of it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except, I never just accept the emotion.

So once I slow down (because eventually you have to) and the dust settles…sadness sets in again. Rinse and repeat the cycle.

            I’ve learned it’s more exhausting running from the feeling than the feeling itself. I also think the avoidance played a major roll in my depression a few years ago. I couldn’t run from the overwhelming emotions anymore, but I also didn’t know how to handle them and I collapsed under the weight. It was to the point where I was lashing at out at everyone around me, I couldn’t sleep at night, I was eating once a day, and I nearly failed out of college. My depression was caused by a multitude of demons, but the main demon was myself. I was inflicting emotional harm on myself and running from the damage. In return, I would make the same mistakes over and over again because – what did I learn if I gave it no attention?

            Life is a constant learning curve. I wasn’t feeling my best today, so I tried to address why, and then let myself feel it. Tomorrow is a new day, and I have hope that it’ll be better. But if it isn’t, that’s ok because the other thing I’ve learned is- this will pass if I let it.