Emotional Maturity

This episode is about dealing with emotions in a healthy, emotionally mature way.

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Transcript

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Hey, my friends, I've been dog sitting this one dog for nearly two weeks now. He's really cute, he's really sweet, but he's extremely clingy and anxious. And he has this habit of non stop whining. Unless I am sitting and just petting him, he is whining. And I have had other things to do the last two weeks. I've had to work full time. I've had things to do around the house, like just normal stuff, like cooking, cleaning, laundry. And he just follows me around and whines while I do that. And it's really irritating. And so I've been really irritable. And my first instinct was to shame myself for that and tell myself that I shouldn't be irritated. It's just a dog. It's not a big deal. I think it is a result of my upbringing that shame is such a default for me. Like there were just certain emotions that we weren't allowed to feel or express without it being shamed as being under the influence of Satan. Which I know now is complete horse shit, but the shame is still there. It's just so ingrained that when I feel irritated and irritable, I feel shame around that, and I tell myself I shouldn't feel that way. Shaming ourselves is a another way of resisting reality, which we talk about a lot on here. Anytime we are resisting how things actually are, I call it resisting reality. Telling myself I shouldn't be irritated is resisting reality because it is denying the reality that I am, in fact, irritated. Telling myself I shouldn't be irritated does nothing except provoke further irritation because I am then irritated that I am irritated. When I noticed that shaming, that resistance, I had to take a step back and move into acceptance. I am irritable. The whining of this dog is touching my last nerve. And so, given that I am extra irritable, how can I support myself during this time? Do you see how different that feels than telling myself I shouldn't be irritated? How can I support myself during this period of irritation feels like love rather than shame. It is what allows me to actually deal with the irritation in a healthy way. I can give myself time outs where I am by myself to decompress. I've been doing that a lot. I'll go in the bedroom and just hide out from the dog for a while to give myself a break from the whining. I can avoid adding other irritating things into my schedule right now, because I know I am maxed out on irritation. These supportive things I can do help me to be irritated without exploding. That doesn't happen when we resist or shame the irritation or insert whatever other emotion is being shamed or resisted. If I were to just keep insisting to myself that I shouldn't be irritated, not only would I not stop being irritated, because shaming doesn't actually help change anything, but I would also not be dealing with it or supporting myself in a healthy way. I would be trying to power through without that support. And I would be much more likely to explode. Shaming or resisting emotions is an emotionally immature way of dealing with emotions. It is not actually dealing with them at all. Dealing with emotions in a healthy way requires acknowledging them and allowing them to be. You never get to the point of supporting yourself through an experience if you are trying so hard to deny the experience itself. This has been especially important for me with the emotion of anger, because for me, anger is a masking emotion. I usually don't know what is hiding beneath the anger at first. It usually takes me a few days of just letting the anger be before it will reveal its true identity to me. And that never happens if I am trying to resist the anger. It blocks that discovery. I have to allow it and accept it before I can move past it. This has been a lesson I've had to learn with physical stuff too. I injured my hip in June. And that injury has yet resolved. I still have constant pain from it. And sometimes I have just tried to power through and pretend that it's not hurting. And that always makes it worse. When I try to resist the reality of my injury, I make it worse. I do a lot better when I'm mindful of it. Even if I need to do something physical, I can take precautions so I don't injure myself worse when I'm not resisting the fact that I'm injured. I can acknowledge that going to the grocery store is probably going to hurt, so I need to take some extra time afterwards to ice before trying to do anything else. I can make sure I have breaks to sit down or ice after doing something. It allows me to actually take care of myself. The lesson of not resisting reality and learning to work with what is is a lesson I am constantly learning. I feel like this is something that I know. I know it in my head, but my heart doesn't always want to be on board. So I still have more learning of it to do. And I think that's why I talk about it on here so much, because it is the lesson I must learn over and over and over again. Resisting reality creates suffering. Pain is a part of life, but we add suffering on top of it when we try to resist reality. Accepting reality lets us deal with what is. It keeps us in our power. All right, my friends, hopefully this reminder helps you too. Until next time Be well.