Part of life is expressing emotions, including anger, sadness, joy, fear, and more. However, many feel only one emotion for long periods.
Spoiler Alert!
The movie Inside Out by Disney and Pixar studios helps dig into the emotions inside each one of our minds. Even though everybody’s story is different, one of the main things that you can notice in this movie is that without Joy and Sadness and overrun by so many other feelings, such as Anger, Fear, and Disgust, Riley’s life becomes completely different. By the end of the movie, the character Sadness saves the day, allowing Riley to return home to her family and appreciate her surroundings.
Sometimes though, especially common around people who deal with anxiety and depression, they frequently wonder what it would be like to not deal with these feelings anymore at all. Depression, although everybody’s case is different, is defined as intense feelings of sadness. Likewise, the definition of anxiety is intense feelings of worry and fear of things happening in the past, present, and future. When we experience feelings such as these, the most common escape that comes to people’s minds is never having to experience these emotions again. After an interview with a therapist (the same therapist in my previous article, linked here.) She decided to tell me about her thoughts on only happiness. “Just happiness is irrational.” She explained it by telling me that all of our emotions are very important to our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. There is a medical condition called “Euphoria” in which people can only be happy. They can’t express any other emotions, so they have to get prescribed medication to help them display their feelings. Balancing out your feelings is similar to balancing out your diet with the correct carbs, proteins, and fats.
People express their emotions in a variety of ways, frequently using coping skills. Whether or not these are healthy coping skills is something that also needs discussion. When dealing with tough times in our lives, we tend to take out our emotions on other people or ourselves. People can take things out on other people by exploding at them and physically and emotionally abusing them. People take out their emotions on themselves through drugs, alcohol, self-harm, bottling up, and committing crimes. There are so many other things that people do that I can’t even begin to list out. However, speaking to others and reaching out about your struggles is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
I know it seems like I am discouraging happiness, but I’m doing the opposite. Expressing all of the emotions is the healthiest way to go throughout life. You need to feel joy, and you need to feel pain. You need to feel fear, and you need to feel confident. You need to feel anger, and you need to feel peace because that is life. But, at the same time, whatever life puts in front of you, go through it with a confident mind and heart.
Finally, I want all of you guys to know that:
- You are enough.
- You are worthy.
- You deserve everything.
- You deserve joy.
- You deserve somebody who brings joy out of you, but you also need to bring joy to yourself.
- You deserve to laugh, and you deserve to cry.
- Your emotions are 100% valid.
- You are capable of so many things.
- You are beautiful.
- You are loved.
Have a wonderful day!