A hard pill to swallow

Emma's Enlightenments

This Week’s Advice: Feel It. 

As a kid, I was always taught to be tough.  

I was shown that emotions are weaknesses and only lead to more of a mess. 

As I grew up, my mindset on this obviously had to change. 

To be successful, you need to feel your emotions. 

If not, they are bottled up, shaken some more and explode.  

Not feeling your emotions is worse than feeling them too much. 

Likewise, it’s better to feel them as they come, rather than to feel them all at once. 

I still struggle with this, but I realized it was bad when I would consecutively, over a course of time, have repeated anxiety attacks when things got hard.  

It was to the point where I thought something was wrong with me physically, and I was sick. This led to what I have talked about in earlier columns:burnout. 

I went to the doctor because I was feeling anxious and tired all the time, breaking out into hives and just not feeling like myself. 

They told me nothing was wrong physically, except being low on the normal scale of my iron, which was what made me realize it was all in my head. 

I wanted something to be wrong with me physically, so I didn’t have to deal with myself mentally.  

This was a hard pill to swallow.  

I talked to a therapist, and he told me I needed to stop holding things in. 

When you hold things in, they are harder to digest. If you keep pushing them down, they have to come up somehow.  

Therefore, in these upcoming weeks, with the stress of college, family or even finances, remember to let it out. 

Feel everything. Write it down. Go on a walk. 

Don’t keep pushing it down. 

You need to feel it to work through it.  

What helps me when I am stressed is reminding myself it is not as big as I am making it.  

I start at the beginning of my stress, then work up to where I am now. 

Maybe it was because I dropped my coffee, had a quiz, then realized the dining hall was closed. 

In the moment, it may seem like the world is ending. 

In actuality, though, I can get another coffee, didn’t do bad on the quiz and can come back to the dining hall in an hour.  

All of that was realized because I let myself feel the stress, retrace my steps and think about it.  

Don’t let yourself be swallowed by your emotions. 

Take a moment, sit down and breathe.