Sadness. Anger. Frustration. Loneliness. Helplessness. Grief. These are all universal emotional experiences.

Many people don’t want to allow themselves to feel these emotions, and so often in our culture there is not room for you to feel them. You feel pressure to continue through your day to day routine, looking and acting as though everything in your life is going fine and you’re able to handle it all. Acknowledging and talking about these emotions makes us feel weak or vulnerable to attack.

Many of us shove these down, saving our “breakdowns” for stolen moments crying alone in the bathroom or car, or late at night when no one can see us. The expectation is that while feeling sadness, anger, or hurt is normal, you will almost immediately move past these feelings to acceptance, peace, and happiness. You’ll find a way to “fix” these bad emotions and get back to being your best self.

What if feeling, acknowledging, and accepting these emotions is the path to truly being your best self?

Accepting that in order to truly experience the whole range of what it means to be human, you have to take the uncomfortable and icky emotions along with the joyful and uplifting ones? Give yourself permission to be human, to be imperfect, and to feel the pain that is a normal part of living. Make room in your life to take care of yourself when you’re feeling these things, and you may find that the experience eases when the pressure to fix it is lifted.

Molly Halbrooks, LAMFT
mhalbrooks @ growcounseling.com