Unlocking Unhappiness: The Truth About Negative Emotions
Allegra (Founder)3 minute read
What is Unhappiness?
Unhappiness is a natural emotional state that arises in response to our thoughts and experience. Our emotions are a valid expression 🪞 of how we relate to something. These emotional states can be feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, being unloved, dismissed, rejected, uncared for, betrayed, hurt and misunderstood.
These feelings can compound upon each other. Feeling heartbroken that we are unloved💔. Feeling angry that we are dismissed😡. Feeling hateful that we are betrayed. And feeling sad that we are misunderstood 😶🌫️.
The array of available emotional responses to experience is the colourful aspect of being human, and the hardest aspect to navigate.
But there is nothing wrong with any emotion.
What we suffer is:
1) A Resistance to our own Feelings- thinking our feelings are wrong.
2) The compounding emotions that build upon the original feeling (e.g: our first feeling is rejection, our second feeling is that we are worthless, our third feeling is self-hatred at how worthless we are or hatred at the person who made us feel it. And so we suffer more. All because we compound one negative feeling upon another.)
3) The strategies we implement to avoid the feeling- defending ourselves from our own feelings often cause more harm to other people and ourselves, instead of just allowing our emotions to pass through us and be expressed.
Our capacity to relate to another person’s feelings really goes as far and deep as our capacity to see and understand that feeling within ourselves.
Negative emotions are not the villains we paint them to be.
Pain is a great motivator, discomfort an indicator of new territory primed for self-growth. Loss, a great reflection of what is important. And understanding ourselves can help us feel connected to others. (Though they connect with us to the extent of their connection with themselves too.)
Though no negative feeling is wholly bad, it is still painful to be in it. And so, I think spiritual connection with yourself and life is the master key 🗝️ to the locks🔒 of unhappiness. The master key to unlocking unhappiness is self-connection.
The Keys to Unlocking Unhappiness:
🗝️ Be honest with yourself first
🗝️ Tell others the truth of how you feel
🗝️ Meet yourself as you really are
🗝️ Let yourself feel
🗝️ Hold space within yourself for your feelings – nobody has to change for you to be free of this feeling.
Happiness is not the absence of negative emotions. It is the ability to be with yourself fully, no matter what you feel, to hold space for it all. Happiness is holding space for yourself as you are right now.
If you want to explore this more, join our next Meditation Class, where we learn to hold to space for different emotions.