Introduction
Zhuoma often feels uncomfortable; she has headaches, her back hurts and she often has diarrhea. She’s already been seeing a lot of doctors but they all tell her that there is nothing wrong with her body. Zhuoma has no clue what’s wrong with her.
Duojie often fights with other people. Out of the blue he can get very angry and just starts hitting people. Duojie has no clue what’s wrong with him.
Both Zhuoma and Duojie have the same problem; they don’t know how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way. For Zhuoma that results in a lot of unexplainable physical symptoms, for Duojie it results in anger explosions.
What are emotions?
We all experience a lot of different emotions but there are four basic ones: anger, fear, happiness and sadness. These emotions give us important information about how we are doing:
- When I feel fear when a big dog comes running towards me I know that I probably need to hide.
- When I feel happiness when I’m together with certain people I know that I like these people.
- When I feel sad because someone passed away, I know that I loved that person
- When I feel anger because someone is being bullied I know that bullying is wrong and that I want to do something about it.
So all of our emotions give us important information and tell us how we can live a life that makes us feel more comfortable.
What to do with emotions?
First of all it’s very important to acknowledge your emotions and allow yourself to have them. Acknowledging your emotions means that you recognize that you have certain emotions, that you say to yourself: ‘yes, I do feel really sad today’. Although some emotions don’t feel so nice for us, they still belong to us. If we suppress our emotions for too long they act as a ball that you want to press under water: the harder you press, the more the ball wants to pop up. But if you let the ball (your emotions) float on the water, they don’t bother you that much anymore.
Secondly it’s really helpful to share your emotions with people you trust. If you can share with a good friend how sad or anxious you feel that can really help you to release stress. Even when that friend cannot change anything about your situation. Sharing with others can help you to realize that you are not the only one who is feeling this way and that at least makes you feel less lonely.
In the next blog we will talk more about how you can help yourself to deal with your emotions in a healthy way.