Stop Fighting Your Own Feelings

I keep hearing people talk about naming the thoughts in their head they do not like. They give that voice a name, and whenever something comes up that makes them uncomfortable, they say something like, “Shut up, Brenda!” Now poor Brenda is catching hell, and she does not even exist. I understand what people are trying to accomplish. They are separating themselves from a thought so it does not automatically control what they do. But I started thinking about the whole concept, and naturally my brain took the scenic route. Why are we attacking the thought in the first place? More importantly, who taught us which thoughts and emotions deserved attacking?

Think about language for a minute. Words only have the meaning humans give them. Somebody, somewhere, decided that certain combinations of letters would become insults. Slut. Asshole. Nasty. Those words did not fall out of the sky carrying instructions explaining which human beings deserved to be called them. People created the meanings, other people repeated them, and eventually we all learned the association. Nobody has to explain what somebody is trying to accomplish when they call another person a slut. Society already taught us what the word is supposed to communicate. That is branding, plain and simple. Humans created a meaning, attached it to people, repeated it for generations, and eventually forgot that we made the whole damn thing up.

We did the same thing with emotions. Jealousy became something people are embarrassed to admit. Loneliness became something people try to hide. Anger became something we are supposed to hurry up and control before anybody bothers asking why we are angry. Hurt became “butthurt.” Sensitivity became something people mock. Fear became weakness. Wanting reassurance became insecurity. At some point, I would really like to know who became the official emotional spokesperson for humanity, because apparently somebody has been making rules without showing us the paperwork.

We have spent generations attaching character judgments to normal human experiences, and then we wonder why people have such a difficult time understanding themselves. Maybe the issue is not what we feel. Maybe it is everything we were taught to associate with feeling it. If I feel jealous, why do I need to immediately shame myself for experiencing jealousy? Why can I not acknowledge it and figure out where it came from? If I am lonely, why do I have to pretend I am perfectly content because somebody decided loneliness means I have not learned how to love myself? I can love myself and still want company. I can enjoy being alone and occasionally wish somebody were sitting next to me. Humans are complicated enough to hold more than one experience at the same time.

If I am angry, perhaps I should figure out what pissed me off instead of immediately trying to become calm enough to make everybody else comfortable. If I am hurt, perhaps I should allow myself to acknowledge that something hurt. If I am jealous, maybe I should ask myself what I am afraid of losing, what I want, or what the situation brought up in me. Feelings do not need public approval before we experience them, and they certainly do not need somebody standing on the sidelines yelling, “Stop feeling that!”

Yet somehow we have become so accustomed to labeling everything that we even label the voices in our own heads and start arguing with them. We take a thought, give it a name, turn it into an opponent, and tell it to shut up. Then we wonder why we have such complicated relationships with ourselves. How about we stop telling ourselves to shut up and actually have a conversation? If a thought keeps showing up, ask why. If loneliness keeps visiting, sit with it long enough to understand what you are craving. If jealousy appears, get curious about what triggered it. If anger walks through the door, find out what happened before throwing it back outside. If something hurts, admit that it hurt. You do not have to build a permanent residence for every emotion that visits, but you also do not have to pretend nobody knocked on the door.

Sometimes your mind is trying to tell you something, and I think we have become far too interested in controlling the conversation instead of listening to it. We tell people to stop being jealous, stop being sensitive, stop being angry, stop being lonely, stop being afraid, stop overthinking, stop taking things personally, and stop getting their feelings hurt. Good grief. At this rate, what exactly are humans allowed to feel? Apparently we are supposed to walk around emotionally neutral until something socially approved happens.

Then, with a completely straight face, we tell people to “be themselves.” Be yourself, but do not be too sensitive. Be yourself, but stop being jealous. Be yourself, but do not get angry. Be yourself, but do not admit you are lonely because somebody will immediately tell you that you need to learn how to enjoy your own company. Be authentic, but apparently run your emotions through society’s quality-control department before allowing anybody to see them. That is not allowing people to be themselves. That is allowing people to be whichever version of themselves makes everybody else comfortable.

There is also a difference between experiencing an emotion and choosing a behavior. Anger does not require cruelty. Jealousy does not require controlling somebody. Hurt does not require retaliation. Loneliness does not require another person to fix it. We can acknowledge what is happening inside us, understand where it came from, and decide what we want to do with that information. Somehow, that very simple part of being human got buried underneath centuries of labels, accusations, expectations, and emotional rules.

We taught people how to hide emotions before teaching them how to navigate them. We taught them which feelings would get them mocked, gave those feelings labels, and then created even more labels for the people who admitted having them. Now we have adults walking around telling pieces of their own minds to shut up because somewhere along the way they learned that certain thoughts were unacceptable. Maybe Brenda does not need to shut up. Maybe Brenda needs five damn minutes. Maybe she is saying, “Hey, you have been feeling lonely lately,” and instead of answering, “Shut up, Brenda,” you could simply say, “Yeah, I have. Let me figure out what is going on.”

That does not mean you have to stay in an emotion forever. It means you stopped running from yourself long enough to listen. Sometimes you are jealous. Sometimes you are lonely. Sometimes you are angry. Sometimes somebody hurts your feelings. Sometimes you are scared. Sometimes you want attention, reassurance, affection, connection, or somebody to choose you. Sometimes your thoughts are all over the damn place and you cannot immediately explain why. Congratulations. You are human.

Perhaps we need to stop teaching people how they are supposed to feel and start teaching them how to understand what they actually feel. We need to stop turning emotions into character assessments and thoughts into enemies. We can experience something without becoming it, listen to ourselves without obeying every thought, and work through a feeling without attacking ourselves for having it. We might discover that some of what we have spent our lives trying to silence was simply information we never learned how to interpret.

If we really want people to be themselves, then we have to allow them to actually be themselves. Not the edited version, the socially approved version, or the version that has learned to hide every emotion somebody might use against them. Allow people to feel what they feel, figure out why it is there, talk themselves through it, work with it, and decide what they want to do from there. Emotions are part of being human, and maybe it is time we stop treating them like accusations.

And for the love of Brenda, can we finally stop yelling at ourselves?

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