Belittling The Right To Feel

In the past few days, I have been thinking a lot about how I really dislike the aspect of our culture that belittles emotional pain.

As Americans, we have a good life and constantly are reminded of those that don’t have all the blessings that we do. I don’t think it is a bad thing for us to be mindful of those less fortunate, but I don’t like when people start to think that they have no right to feel depressed when someone else has it worse off than they do.

The moment that someone believes they don’t have a right to feel anything but good emotions is the moment that terrible things start to happen. Telling yourself that you shouldn’t feel sad just makes you suppress those feelings. That just leads to the endless insanity of denial, which leads to greater problems.

If things are going wrong in your life and it’s got you down, then you have to address that pain. You can’t bury it or belittle it if someone else has a better excuse for being sad. Sometimes depression just happens without a clear reason and saying that you shouldn’t feel it won’t make it go away, or make anything better.

We all have a right to feel. Not feeling makes us numb and unable to deal with our problems. We also need to have potent emotions so we can empathize with others. Feeling prepares you for helping others that are going through hard times. Feeling makes you stronger.

I’ve heard so many stories of people denying their pain and that only ever leads to a big break later. Those emotions don’t die when they are suppressed, but they just grow stronger as you keep feeding them with more bottled feelings. One day they rear their ugly heads and rip you apart.

That’s what happens when people are told they shouldn’t be feeling sad, or when they hear about worse pain that others are experiencing. (Now, don’t misunderstand me, when there are other that are suffering more, those people should still be cared for and have just as much of a right to feel as everyone else. Sure, they may not want to feel any of that pain, but that’s another whole thing.)

We all have emotions for a reason and we are created to feel. We need to work through pain and not brush it off.