Can’t I just ignore my feelings?

Emotions are interesting. They are intangible which is maybe why so many of us believe they are something that we can or should ignore. We don’t like to give them too much importance because we think they don’t have any real impact. We will say things like “How is talking going to help?” or “What’s the point of crying?”  because we fear that looking into our emotions will make us emotional.

Neuroscience now proves that our emotions impact every aspect our lives. Our feelings get the first crack of every life experience, it’s our emotions that get affected first and that impacts our thoughts and our behaviour, so our emotions dictates how we think and what we do.

A friend of mine recently told me, ‘My sister called me lazy because I didn’t have time to help her, it really upset me but I am just going to ignore it, it’s not worth bringing up.’ Six months later, my friend is STILL trying to ignore her feelings and won’t bring it up, but now she keeps a distance from her sister.

Hurt doesn’t go away just because we ignore it. The consequences of ignoring your emotions are still very high, Emotions that are left unchecked grow, fester, and lead to behaviors that are not in line with who you want to be.

Just because we feel all the time doesn’t mean we know how to manage our feelings. Pain and our emotions demand attention, they needs to acknowledged and embraced before we can move on.

There is a famous zen proverb that states ‘the surest way to suffer is by resisting your pain.’ when we give ourselves the permission to feel and learn how to manage our emotions we begin to manage our lives.