Sometimes being an emotional type feels like a curse. If I’m in a bad mood I’m completely useless.
I need to process my emotions before I can take any action.
But the prevailing thought today is that emotions equal weakness. And I don’t disagree, entirely.
The last time I suppressed my emotions, it didn’t end so well. I had a mini breakdown of crying bouts that lasted a few days. Now, I’ve learned to have regular emotional purges so it doesn’t all bottle up.
An Alternative Solution
Society is obsessed with achievement, results, and productivity – there’s no room for feelings. The future is all that seems to matter.
But what about those of us who are hypersensitive types? Must we have to choose between external success or our mental/emotional health? Between achievement or being truly happy?
Perhaps we don’t have to sacrifice one to gain the other. Running from our emotions is not true strength, but either is being swept up in them.
But practicing mindfulness gives us an alternative, more effective way of dealing with our emotions.
With mindfulness, we allow ourselves to fully feel our good and bad emotions without being reactive. We let go of resisting, judging, and attaching to them.
This doesn’t mean we become stoic robots who are no longer affected by anything. Nor does it make us calm and happy all the time.
But we can’t change what we first don’t acknowledge or understand.
Practicing mindfulness improves our emotional well-being in two ways:
- We learn to let our emotions come and go without fighting with them
- We gain greater awareness of their true nature: their causes (negative habits or thoughts) and the actions we must take to heal them
The author Brianna Wiest (The Mountain is You) penned:
“You were not born to be perfect. You were not born to be happy all of the time. But if you can commit each day to doing the work of being fully human and feeling even when you are afraid, you can transcend in a way that is truly beautiful.“
Brianna Wiest
So whether you’re hypersensitive like me, or haven’t felt in months – I urge you to start your own mindfulness practice today. It might be just the tool you need to improve your emotional health.
