Emotions Sometimes Suck

I have a love/hate relationship with emotions.

I am an empath so I spend a lot of time with my emotions and those of others. At times this is a gift, and at times it feels like a curse.

It can be amazing and energizing to sit with intense emotions. After all, it sometimes means that I get to experience favorable emotions like joy and pleasure with an intensity that some would envy.

However, it can undoubtedly be exhausting if I am not careful to manage my emotions, distinguish my emotions from those of others, and put up an emotional firewall to block the internalization of other people’s less favorable emotions.

In realizing that I cannot escape my empathy, no matter how hard I try, I am learning to refine my superpower and use it to serve a greater good through counseling. And so, I believe that emotions can be awesome. All of them. Even the ones we typically label “bad” like anger or grief.

Being happy is great. But so is being literally any other emotion at the opposite end of the spectrum and realizing that if you can stop yourself from setting up camp there you will be okay. If you can allow your unfavorable emotions to surface and pass through you, you will be okay.

Better yet, you will most likely get back to a preferable emotional state again.

However, it is important that you can recognize when you are not able to stop yourself from setting up camp in your emotions. It is important to know when it may be time for you to seek help with managing your emotions.

Help that works for you. Which can be anything from writing in a journal, to prayer, to venting with a friend, to therapy, etc.

Because let’s face it – even though they can be awesome – emotions sometimes suck. I mean really fucking suck. They just do.

The sucky ones are usually not all bad as they tend to serve a purpose. To warn us that something is not for us. To alert us to a threat (real or perceived). To motivate us to change, or to fight for change. 

If we allow them to come, sit for a while, and then move on like guests in our homes then emotions may – like guests in our homes – leave us with a great hostess gift, a new story to tell, or a mess to clean up. But they will make their mark and move on.

It’s when we get stuck in emotions that create distressing narratives, and play those narratives on repeat until the lyrics negatively impact our day to day functioning, that emotions can become problematic.

So if you find that your emotional guests are setting up camp and playing distressing narratives all day long on repeat, consider whether it may be time to seek help dealing with them.