There are most certainly going to be times in life where we will find that we are faced with rather unpleasant emotions. While this is obvious, what might not be so obvious to us is the useful nature of such feelings when they arise. In an evolutionary sense these emotions can save our hides if we find ourselves confronted with life or death situations. We wouldn’t want to usher away the fear or anxiety that pushes us to escape from potentially life threatening events but we readily push away unpleasant feelings like fear and anxiety that arise in our every day life without second thought.
In doing so I propose to you that we are serving ourselves a disservice. These everyday difficulties either physical or mental that invoke such an unpleasant feeling are often cast aside by us at all costs and covered up much like a cat treats its own stinking dung left behind in the sand. We often attempt to cover these feelings with their exact opposite, pleasurable feelings. This sort of behavior can be seen in many disorders such as emotional eating and other pleasure seeking ventures like drug abuse. While unpleasant feelings may arrive in many different shapes and sizes the ones that plague us the most are those that continually arise. These commonly experienced frets of life are most usually attached to a specific trigger.
Jiddu Krishnamurti was an Indian philosopher. He touched on this matter and said that unpleasant emotions like envy or sorrow were jewels to us and I believe he was certainly onto something here. If we begin to look at these emotions quite differently we can find that they have more to offer us than simply what we believe them to be at face value. They are here for us to learn. Going deeper into these emotions and framing them as our ally is the first step for us in making changes within ourselves and our lives. Through thorough investigation we can sniff out the root cause of the unpleasant visitors so that we may begin construction toward a real structural fix from the bottom up, a solution that lasts. We must sow habit to ask what we are going to do with these unwanted feelings so that we may reap the change we seek.
I wish for you growth, success, and happy living. Take care friends!
Jordan Hutchison 