Your Emotions Aren’t Facts
Emotions Just Are
I wanted to revisit one of the newer pieces of education that I’ve learned about emotions. Emotional wellness is a journey that I’m still working to fully understand. However what I have learned so far, brings it to a value that’s priceless. It seemed as if the first day I ever heard an expert tell me that emotions are not facts, I seemingly had an instant awakening. My view of my emotions, and emotions in general quickly changed, and I felt as if my mind fully opened for the first time ever.
This process takes us to a point of thinking, where we learn a couple things. All to make one solid mission. Coming in two parts, we have to first learn that we should approach our thinking in a non judgemental way. And with that, we can then begin to learn that emotions really aren’t facts.
Just because we think it, doesn’t mean it’s true.
So brilliant, yet so simple. It was if this new lesson in emotional learning, provided me with a huge feelings of relief. Because it made me believe that perhaps finally, I could get a better handle and a better grasp on my emotions.
Throughout my life, especially some of the more erratic times, I always knew I had plenty of emotions, and I always perceived them as troublesome. I always thought that they were things that just got out of control. A control of which I was powerless over.
When I started learning about emotions in treatment, I slowly began to realize being powerless over my emotions didn’t mean that I was totally out of control.
As I looked back, I saw myself as a person who didn’t quite understand handling emotions, and when I tried to, I did it in a very irrational and somewhat reactionary way. Sometimes it is the reacting that totally sets us off, and we have to find that niche where we can be able to respond, rather than react.
Reacting and responding are often times polar opposites, and I am usually able to offer examples from my own life. I can have a very difficult emotion come about. And I can react in ways that see me flying off the handle, going back to old negative behaviours, lashing out at someone who doesn’t deserve it, and totally shutting down, right back into isolation.
If we are to instead choose responding, instead of reacting, we can work more efficiently to find the root cause of things like emotional unrest.
This relates back to my history of addiction and substance abuse too. It is the best factor for comparing the two. For a long time, my problems, depression, heartache, and anger were buried and numbed with drug use, day in, day out, week after week, after month, after year. That is how one reacts to those mental health type of issues.
I never was able to get clean until I stopped reacting, and started responding. Responding to emotional problems was done by actions like going into treatment and asking for help. Practicing honesty, with everyone including ourselves. Finding the right way to stop the head on collision that my addiction was headed into.
This comparison of reaction and response can show itself in many ways. It can be a great lesson for any types of problems, emotions, or difficult times. Far beyond just things like drug addiction.
Reactions to me, are defined as the same erratic deflection to a problem, that is done over and over again as a way of avoidance. Response is the determination of a root cause, and it’s a way of finding an answer, that finally puts a stop to whatever issue may be going on.
We can solve most problems by responding. Reacting might seem to solve problems instantly, but it mitigates nothing. It numbs, and hides, and covers up, but never solves. We solve, by responding. It may be more timely, but it can put a total end to things that cause us unrest.
By MICHAEL PATANELLA
