Paradox of Being Emotionally Strong

Did you remember the last time this happen to you?

You’ve been strong for so long. You were the go-to person whenever your friends need a talk or spit out their grievances. You had a cool and calm smile on your face all the time, despised all the life problems because you believe they are nothing to you at all. People compliment you as being mature, understanding and friendly. One day, you finally lost it… you bombarded others with surprises and they wondered if there was something wrong with you.

If this did happen to you regardless your age, education, or career, it’s ok, and you're not alone. In fact, you acted the way you did has nothing to do with age, education and career.

However, it has to do with the following. Ask yourself truthfully:

1. Are you always true to your feelings, emotions (or yourself)?

2. How often do you walk with a façade just to protect yourself and

please others?

3. Do you often recognize, confront and deal with your feelings/ emotions?

4. Do you understand your emotions, weaknesses and yourself on a

deeper level?

5. How often do you talk about your feelings (other with yourself or

with those whom you trust)?

Being emotional strong is almost a mandate in nowadays society. We look up to those who appear strong minded in face of adversities. However, little did we know that we are fragile in nature and we are in fact emotional vulnerable. Even though there are times that we have to suck it all in and just put up a face and deal with the situation, there is a limit to where you should take a break and just let your emotions flow.

And it's for you to decide: when to put up a face and suck it all in, and when you don't need have to.

If you don't, what you read in the beginning of this article would happen to you. The worst case, it would happen at places you least expected.

If people see it from you, those who know you well would still love you as before; those who don’t know you well would just think you were insane and they would alienate you as a result.

Most people find it hard or embarrassing to talk about feelings because they are private subjects. That’s ok, but at least you want start recognize them. With recognition at the first place, you will gradually gain courage to confront them and talk about them.

Some would say: talking about my feelings makes me appear vulnerable. I don’t want to expose my vulnerabilities to others.

Well, we are vulnerable in nature; and we are taught to be strong to fit into certain molds. Sure, there are places where you have to do so. Overall, we are living human- beings with fresh bloods and meat. That is to say, you need to be vulnerable to express yourself so that others understand you (so that you can healt too).

If you are emotionally strong 24/ 7, you either deliberately shut down your emotions or hide it away from yourself. Then, this is what is going to happen to you:

“When you shut down emotion, you are also affecting your immune system, your nervous system. So the repression of emotion, which is a survival strategy, then becomes a source of physiological illness later on” – Gabor Mate

That’s how mental illness and depression are developed.

If you feel frustrated, sad or hurt, let out your emotions. It’s ok to do it in front of others if it’s uncontrollable. It doesn’t mean you are not mentally strong because you shed tears in public. It’s your immune system protection mechanism jumping out to keep you from mental illnesses.

Believe or not, your emotions never go away. When feeling certain way about certain thing, event or a person, we choose to escape from the way we truly feel by either shutting down emotions or suppressing ourselves.A perfect way to do so is to keep yourself occupied 24/7 so you have no time to have flashbacks. Eventually, you will find these emotions backfire at you: you sink even deeper to your emotional rollercoaster and have no place to escape.

Therefore, we need to recognize, confront and deal with our emotions. Realize the emotions are there (recognize), feel the way you need to feel at the moment (confront), and have a conversation or find a way out (dealing).

Most of us are too shy to have conversations where they are required to solve problems. The reason is obvious: having a talk openly with someone is always risky. At the end of the conversation, you were either understood or given up. Furthermore, it exposed your vulnerabilities even insecurity.

We can’t let our vulnerabilities dictate how we handle our emotions. Being vulnerable and emotional are not that bad. Vulnerability allows you bond with people whom you can communicate on the same level; being emotional makes you compassionate. The key here the way one handles his or her emotions when they are running high.

The best actors in the world couldn’t permanently hide their feelings from their own hearts. When choosing to shut down our emotions, we would only cause harms to our physical and mental health.

It’s improbable to be emotionally strong all the time. From time to time, just be yourself and it’s ok.

We should stop seeing tears as signs of weakness, conversation of feelings as embarrassment, and having feelings and emotions as 'female properties'.

We need to have trust in our hearts: the worlds is full of love and we are here to support one another.

Be true to you feelings and emotions; be true to yourself.

Note:

Above content only represents author’s perspective on certain subjects. There is no real story or person (people) used or referred in this blog post. Author was expressing her thoughts in a board and general term. The purpose is to inspire, motivate and share knowledge and experience with others.