The Invitation of Emotion

Have you ever wished you could just stop feeling something? The anxiety, the anger, the sadness, the overwhelm. It seems like a simple, logical solution: This feeling makes me feel bad: So, if I eliminate the emotion, I eliminate the problem.

If you’ve ever thought this (or still think like this), I encourage you to ask yourself why. Why have you decided that your emotion is the problem? Who taught you that? How is that belief actually serving you? Do you respond this way when others share their feelings with you, or are you able to validate emotions that aren't your own?

I'm assuming you've heard the expression: All feelings are valid. But does that blanket statement actually provide relief to someone who has spent their life being told they're too sensitive? How can you trust that your feelings are valid when you've repeatedly been made to feel that they're too much: Too loud, too dramatic, too confusing, too uncomfortable for the people around you?

When your emotional responses have been met with frustration, dismissal, or an expectation that you should know how to manage them better, you adapt. The feelings remain, but you also begin to see their expression as the problem. You learn to question yourself, repress, rationalize, and even gaslight your own emotional experiences. Eventually, you may not recognize how often you're dismissing your feelings before anyone else has the chance to.

And perhaps you've become really good at it. You've learned to read the room, anticipate how others might respond, and adjust your emotional expression accordingly. You might even pride yourself on being easygoing, rational, or unbothered. But have you ever stopped to consider how much work goes into maintaining that version of yourself?

How much of what you call being emotionally regulated is actually just being really good at making your emotions invisible?

There is a difference between learning how to respond to our emotions and learning how to suppress them. We can express anger without being hurtful, communicate our needs without expecting others to meet every one of them, and tolerate uncomfortable feelings without allowing them to dictate our own behavior. But none of that requires us to believe that the feelings themselves are the issue.

I want to push back on that initial logical solution: That our emotions are the thing we need to get rid of.

When we reject our emotions, we lose the opportunity to explore why we're feeling this way in the first place. What happened? What did this experience mean to us? What are we really responding to?

I like to think of our emotional world as a compass pointing us toward the parts of ourselves we've lost touch with. The beliefs, experiences, needs, and parts of our identity that we've learned to silence or abandon don't simply disappear. Sometimes, they find their way back to us through our emotions.

Have you ever wondered why something seemingly small can evoke such a strong response in you? Why a particular interaction stays with you long after it's over? Rather than using these moments to question whether you're overreacting or whether your feelings are justified, what if you allowed yourself to get curious about finding the answer to the questions that you have already asked yourself? What if that curiosity, before the self-doubt and dismissal set in, is the very invitation your emotions are offering you?

What if the feelings you've spent so much time trying to get rid of are actually invitations from the parts of yourself you've neglected? Invitations to listen, to understand, and perhaps to even reconnect with parts of yourself you haven't allowed yourself to see in a long time.

And if we're so busy trying to make the feeling go away, we miss the opportunity to answer that invitation.

I encourage you to view these invitations as an opportunity to respond differently. To stop repeating the very rejection that taught you to silence those parts of yourself in the first place.

Because if you don’t, you risk spending your whole life longing for someone to accept those parts of you, without realizing you've become the person who refuses to.‍

‍ ‍Isabella ♡