Emotional Strength
This year has been the year of emotional intelligence. How do we learn to connect with our emotions, to understand what we need so as to not allow our emotions to drive us? How do we connect with others and show empathy for their struggles? While I completely agree we must learn these skills, we must also speak on emotional strength, on how we choose to push ourselves and ignore our emotions.
The nuances of emotional intelligence, EI, are many and profound. When you choose to embark on the journey of increasing your EI, you embark on a journey of discovery. You encounter hurts and traumas and learn to process them, to learn from the experience and wear the scar with pride, refusing to allow them to drive your responses. You learn how to better express yourself, to identify your needs, and meet them. We learn to recognize when others are struggling and be empathetic and patient. But the process does not teach us that we don’t always have to be strong. Sometimes what we really need to do is to stop and just feel.
Feeling emotional, allowing it to take over our bodies, to listen, process, accept, and recover provides true freedom from trauma. There is no rhyme or reason to what we feel and don’t feel, to what pushed us to our edge this week, sometimes the littlest things are the masterminds behind our demise. I would surmise this is because we do not stop to feel. We have jointly come to the conclusion that feeling emotions is wrong, to be seen as emotional is a weakness. We must be calm, cool, and together at all times. I would challenge this. Feeling emotions does not mean we react, lash out, or make others suffer. It means we allow the emotion to work through us and we find creative ways to release the energy. As we go through this cycle, as we feel, process, accept and recover, we become stronger, more in tune with ourselves, and learn more than if we had just pushed on.
Perhaps emotional strength should be the next hype, the next focus. Learning to embrace our emotions, to feel the next challenge. It takes more strength to face our feelings, to process our trauma than to push it aside. As we process, we begin to see others differently. The world becomes brighter, clearer, our perspective broader, and our focus crisper. Make no mistake, I am not promoting fits, yelling, or hurting others. I am encouraging you to find safe places to experience emotions and creative, positive ways to release the energy.
The scariest piece of reality is the emotions we repress, the feelings we hide. They will not stay hidden, they will take over, consume us and leave rubble in the wake of the experience. In order to truly become who we are meant to become, to realize our true potential, we must learn to be emotionally strong, to bravely welcome the feelings, and process them. Imagine what the world would look like if we all found creative, positive ways to release our emotions. I suspect the rate of heart disease might drastically drop. Anger and rage would also decrease.
Join me as I embark on this journey. Let’s learn to feel again, to allow emotions to happen. And then use the energy creatively and positively. Let’s choose to be healthy, to be aware of our feelings, and to bravely welcome them.
Sincerely,
Sara
