What I’m about to describe is a false front reality that very unhappy people try to put up: Let’s act like we have no problems. Let’s act like bad things don’t exist. Let’s ignore the unfavorable emotions in life. Lets get silent and distance ourselves from someone when they’re having a hard time. Lets just move fast tough things as fast as we possibly can without and acknowledgement to how severe the actual circumstance was.

In a tech society where the norm is instant gratification, fast speed, low attention spans, don’t settle, and move on as fast as you can: Its natural for humans to develop priorities that are only related to work, money and success in terms of how flashy their instagram, car, and house look.

Something that hasn’t changed since the beginning of time is this: Quality of life is our quality of relationships with people. Something that is actually naturally devalued in the average person’s mind today since a majority of interaction is through social media and tech.

Now that we handle everything through social, what about when you get closer to people? what about the skills developed to stay during challenging times? You don’t necessarily develop those through tech interaction. We push away challenges. We push away problems. We want to run away like they don’t exist. “Move on, do whatever it takes to be happy.”

Media has made it seem like problems, difficult times, and difficult emotions are things we should not experience.

The reality is: no emotion is actually good or bad. Maybe the environment and what you’ve been though has caused you to believe that you shouldn’t feel a certain spectrum of emotions, or that we shouldn’t be able to express our feelings in relation to these time periods where we’re actually experienced a heightened emotion.

take me for example: I went through cycles of continuous abandonment from my Mother (the woman I trust with all my heart, listen to and rely on for safety) to living with grandparents that have a parenting style that is more analytical, organized and high performance. The era of pain between living situation changes during my childhood naturally made me close off my heart. I felt I wasn’t able to communicate my emotions because I simply didn’t know how to. My mind put up a defense mechanism that made me believe that trusting would lead to pain.. thus I just remained silent and did whatever it took to move forward..you can obviously imagine how this impacted my views on relationships and also my views on what communication in relationships even meant.

This is what I believed for so long. This was how my environment shaped me in my adolescence. Hold stuff in. Problem solve as fast as possible. This naturally made me very anxious in situations where I had to remain patient while people close to me were feeling the spectrum of emotions that I had yet never understood. This led to lots of unhealthy broken relationships. Ones where I self destructed and would find lots of little ways to distance myself. lots of ways to push away and fight for myself when faced with certain emotions that were similar to the cycle of my childhood.

I’m 28 now. I had to come to lots of these brutal realities the past 6 years on what healthy relationships and healthy communication even meant. Lots of mistakes. Lots of stubbornness. Lots of remaining distant and not wanting to deal with the tough times. Lots of anxiety and anger from not trusting that the other person will stay in emotionally elevated situations.

Am I perfect today? No. But something that connected with me was, “drop expectations. breath slow. stay calm. you’re safe. its not about you. think of how the other person is feeling and let them experience that emotion.” its not until I stayed for these emotions, and trusted that things would be okay that I actually started to realize that all spectrums of emotions could be experienced either by myself or by others. They’re all okay. I naturally associated heightened emotions with chaos, pain and detachment for so long… I would do whatever it took in my mind to believe that I was alone when these feelings would arise.

What helped me move toward developing these awarenesses? Continuously telling myself that Im not that much different than everyone else on this planet. Don’t take anything personally. It’s a practice and intention that I try to keep in my forefront today.

Also, making sure I don’t devalue emotions. Making sure I take them all seriously. This is where journaling, writing, meditations and reflections come into play… it’s easy for high performance people like myself to want to “move past emotions as fast as possible” so we can get going with our life. Sometimes those emotions need to be reflected on. Sometimes those emotions have to be communicated to someone close to us. Sometimes those emotions require certain needs.. These are all things that I’ve tried to get better at practicing.

Some people say, “now I see who you really are,” when they get to know someone deeper or experience things on a deeper level.” I’d say these different versions of self can be developed, adjusted, and people can still remain moldable. Most of the time ,these deeper parts of us are things we need to pay close attention to. They’re parts of us that have to be sorted through. The last thing we want is to lose control in situations that become challenging. This happens I believe most of the time because a build up from lack of communication with our deeper emotions + some triggers that aren’t necessarily being brought enough attention and understanding to that trace back to situations we’re been through.

I’ve gone to counseling for awhile now. this doesn’t automatically make someone a good person. Just like how going to church doesn’t mean you’re a good person. But what it is is a practice. A place that I trust as safe to communicate my emotions. A place that also tends to feel uncomfortable IN A GOOD WAY. I can feel it in my chest/stomach when things start to get uncomfortable. I can tell those are the parts of me that my body doesn’t want to talk about. It’s that defense sign coming up that says “hey, this is a little bit of a unsafe place where unsafe emotions have caused some serious pain.” But constantly reminding myself that I need to let those come to light. Trusting that the only way is to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THOSE DEEP EMOTIONS BY NOT ISOLATING, SHUTTING DOWN, OR TELLING MYSELF DESTRUCTIVE THINGS LIKE “NO ONE WILL EVER UNDERSTAND.” Its never easy. but it feels like a weight lifted off of your shoulder when you can have this healthier realtionship with you and your deeper emotions of pain/depression/sadness caused by environment factors/experinces you’ve been though.

It takes time. It takes dropping the ego. it takes apologizing. It takes being the one to give the call or text before the other person does. it takes being the one to do whats right for the bigger picture. it takes not giving a shit about who wins or loses. do this for you. to free your soul. forever let these inner tough points limit you, or change your perception by looking at these tough points not as demons, but as parts of you that sometimes need to be spoken to.

shit really is okay. believe it. the world is filled with lots of joy and pleasure. only you are telling yourself you deserve the opposite. we all deserve the best. do not fall back into past patterns of pain. take responsibility and CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL, which means not blaming circumstance or people.

We don’t need saved from pain. We need to understand, communicate and have a relationship with pain. pain is okay.

realize this shit so you can grow, or continue being a victim and remain stagnant. your choice.