Emotions

Throughout a large part of my life, I believed that I must be happy all the time. I have thought quite a lot about why I had this belief. Reflecting on research I did on this as well as on conversations I had not least with my mother, I believe that this belief goes back to the time when my parents divorced. Following the divorce of my parents, my mother had a strong will to make it work for her and me. And she wanted me to feel happy. She did not to accept negative emotions such as sadness. She wanted to cover those negative emotions up and push them away. Naturally, I did not feel happy all the time. For example, I recall that in different situations in life, I felt rather negative emotions such as anger, sadness, fear and shame. In several situations, I think I felt these emotions as a natural consequence of the divorce that my parents went through.  For example, I recall feeling fear that if I could lose my father, who moved out of our home, could I also lose my mother? I also recall feeling shame when I was with class mates, whose parents were not divorced. And I recall feeling anger because the divorce of my parents had happened when I was only 5 years old. I experienced that when I felt negative emotions, my mother was focused on fixing that and relatively quickly make me feel happy again. In particular, I remember situations during which I felt anger. Often, I felt criticized by my mother for feeling anger. And in those situations I did not experience that my mother accepted that I felt anger and tried to understand where that anger came from. Thinking back on my childhood, I recall that it was important for my mother to make me stop feeling anger and become happy as soon as possible.

 It took me more than 40 years years to develop the capability to change the belief "I must be happy all the time" to the belief "I accept emotions that I feel and believe that emotions come and go." How did I succeed with this transformation? It happened, I think, primarily through reading books such as Permission to feel, The language of emotions, The truth about children and divorse, Rising strong and Emotional Agility. Reflecting individually about what happened in my life and what I learned from conversations I had with other people have been beneficial to manage emotions well. In particular, I have found it useful to avoid fighting emotions I feel and instead accepting and understanding them.