“jealousy is so disgusting” “anger is so toxic” did u know? these are emotions every human has
I’ve always been a fan of an analogy I heard once. Your emotions are like one of the lights on your car’s dash. When one of them turns on, it means you need to check under the hood and fix them. It’s not bad that the light turned on, per se, and it doesn’t always mean something is broken. But what IS toxic, dangerous, and likely to break something, is when you let that light stay on, pretending it’s normal, until that braking fluid finally fails and you crash into someone, or your engine fails completely.
Feel jealous. Feel anger.
Just don’t let it fester. You need to look inside of yourself, find out why you’re feeling the way you are, and bring yourself to a satisfied, stable state of mind. You can look at philosophy, meditation/introspection, religion, or actual therapy, or at least talking to someone about it. You’ll find you’re much more content and happy when you do something about those feelings, and come to some sort of conclusion or resolution.
That is a wonderful way of looking at it, thankyou. Makes me feel better about myself when I DO feel that way.
No one every explicitly taught me it was okay to be angry. No one ever taught me to feel jealousy. No every taught me to express my hate. No one every taught me how to recognize these things, feel these things, and confront these things.
Left on my own, it wasn’t until my early to mid twenties that I figured it out.
This is so important but I feel like I have to add:
Sometimes the anger or jealousy is a red flag that “something is not right about this situation”.
If you’re angry, that might be a sign that someone is overstepping your boundaries, it might be a sign that you feel in danger or cornered, it might be a sign that someone else is acting badly and they’re not supposed to.
It’s up to each individual person to access their situation to figure out if they’re overreacting or if they are angry for good reason. The conclusion or resolution may need to come from confronting the person causing the negative emotions OR it might need to come from working on emotional control.
See also: The Gift of Fear – Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence
Yes this. I initially read this part:
Just don’t let it fester. You need to look inside of yourself, find out
why you’re feeling the way you are, and bring yourself to a satisfied,
stable state of mind.to mean figure out what in your living situation is driving those feelings, and fix as needed. Whether that’s doing some journaling to get the feels out in a safe environment, or walking out of a relationship, or setting some new boundaries, anything really.
When people say ‘you have to forgive or else you’ll poison yourself’, they’re failing to imagine other ways to turn off the check engine light. Yes, living long-term with strong negative emotions will cause problems, but there’s more than one way to work through them and they don’t all involve giving up your right to be angry at the person who hurt you.
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Thoughtfulfangirling 