Once I got tired of feeling that I could not be happy, I started to analyze myself. I asked myself many times what is wrong with me, why I can’t be happy, why I am suffering so much, it felt like everything bad happened to me… I had bad experiences in all aspects of my life, at work, I got divorced, i felt frustrated with my life, I couldn’t finish things i really was interested in because suddenly, I lost interest in, my friends betrayed me, and many other scenarios. It was one after the other one.
Have you ever felt like this?
I started programs, went to doctors, psychologist, psychiatrists, took medicine for anxiety, depression, and I did all kinds of treatments trying to understand why I felt so unhappy with everything i wanted to do, working, studying, relationships. Sometime I felt I was too sensitive, too cold, too worry, or too negative. I tried to fake I was happy to see if I could feel happy one day, but it didn’t happen. So, I started researching about happiness, about love, about God or higher power, and about emotions. Emotions, those were my issue, not all emotions, just a few of them. The ones I felt they were not contributing to my life and mental health positively. The ones that were extreme, the ones I felt they were not helping me in my happiness search, the ones I felt I could not control. People say, being happy is a choice. Really? so why I can’t choose to be happy? I wish I could, how do you do it if my emotions are controllable? After years of researching, I realized that emotions are like a virus, once you have it, you will have to let it pass through your body (feel it, cry it, scream it, get angry to it, etc) and then you will start feeling better, just like a virus.
To control your emotions first you will have to learn about them and question yourself… what i am feeling now? ANGRY? SAD? NEGATIVE? SCARED, JEALOUS? then once you identify it, you will have to see why do you feel this way? Think about your childhood experiences. If you are sad for example, try to remember your first time feeling sad. Try to experience the emotion that you would like to control. Think about what happened to you that it made you feel sad for the first time?
Many of these emotions (viruses) come from our childhood and by trying to discover your first time feeling that emotion you might start getting into your the root of the emotion and that will take you to a self healing path for you to be able to control the emotion that is hurting you mentally and emotionally. Many years of emotional and or physical abuse can cause many scars in peoples’ personalities and it can make you feel unhappy and take you to a sad and negative way to live.
It is a long process but as long as we go forward it is worth it and the most important thing you need to know it is that there is hope, there is a solution, nothing is wrong with you, and this process it is doable and you can do it.
By Andrea Dinklage