Caution - Uncomfortable emotions ahead!! There are 8 major / basic emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Surprise, Anticipation, Anger and Trust. Some of these are pleasant emotions - Joy, Surprise, Anticipation (mostly) - all are emotions we can look forward to. Even trust - to an extent!
Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Anger, those are the not so fun ones, if you ask me.
Emotions are like stories. Each one has a BEGINNING - a reason you are experiencing that emotion, a MIDDLE - where you experience the ups, downs, and in between of the emotion, and the END - where you complete the cycle of emotion and move on to a new emotion. The problem is, most of us get stuck in that middle cycle. It's usually because another emotion comes along and wrecks the day.
Let's say you're having a bout of sadness, you just lost your family pet of 14 years and had to put down your dog. No doubt, a sad emotion to say the least. That emotion may be met in the middle by anger - you're mad you had to put down your dog, that it did not live longer, that you couldn't do more to keep them alive - the anger takes over the sadness. Now you have disrupted the sadness process, and are experiencing anger. Now may move on with your day and have forgotten about that bout of sadness. That raw ugly cry sort of sadness that you had - but the anger took you away. Later, that sadness will manifest in some way - maybe about something completely different and you will have no idea why you are sad all of as sudden. Had you rode out the sadness, you could have avoided this strange sadness that hits you days later. Why?
This happens because you did not allow yourself to complete the cycle of your emotion.
If you got on the train to sadness, ride that train until you get to the end of the line. See it through. Feel the sadness and allow yourself to be TRULY sad. Then, and ONLY then, once you are through, you can move on to the next emotion.
It's almost like dividing your attention. You can't do two things at once. We all want to SAY we can multi task, but at the end of the day - even if we DO two things at once - you're really just doing two things at 50%. Nobody can give more than 100%. So goes the same for emotions - we can't multi-emote, we have to experience one emotion at a time.
The sooner we learn to stop multi-emoting, and experience the feelings we feel to their full crescendo, the sooner we can understand WHY we are feeling the way we feel about things. You focus on the sadness of losing your family pet, then when the sadness returns in a few days, it will not be as pungent, because you already rode out the first wave of that sadness.
Oh - another point here. Just because you rode the train to sad town, doesn't mean the trip back is going to be a cake walk. Because you WILL have to take the train back and experience that sadness again. It will come back, but you will be more prepared. You will know where to sit on the train, and where to sit to get the best view. It won't be as jarring. Soon the train rides will become shorter and shorter until you don't even need them anymore.
Allow yourself to experience the full spectrum of EACH and EVERY emotion. Ride out the JOY just as long as you ride out the sadness. Ride out the PAIN just as much as you ride out the SURPRISE. Experience the full spectrum and full story of your emotions - beginning - middle and End - and feel things one at a time.
Once you get on that emotional train - ride it till the end of the line - it's worth the trip.
Be kind to your mind, friends.
-Riggs