When we experience difficult emotions – disappointment, envy, sadness, fear – our first instinct may be to try to block them out or pretend they do not exist. This is futile: you can push uncomfortable feelings down, but they’ll still be there. Instead, we can take notice of these challenging emotions and get curious about what information they may be offering us. These feelings represent a signpost – “Look over here!” – that points to troubling areas in our lives that need attention.
There is a stigma that surrounds having an authentic experience in our lives today. Revealing that we may not have it all together, and fearing negative judgement from others, we may be tempted to cover up our feelings. We distract ourselves using every possible means: food, substance use, media, other people, and when those feelings pass, we feel better, or at least numb. But we can bet those feelings will come roaring back soon enough.
Why not try taking a different approach? Our emotions provide us with a clue to what’s going on internally. They give us an opportunity to look more closely at what isn’t working in our lives, what issues we may have been avoiding, or negative patterns we may be engaged in that bring us misery. In shining a light on our emotions instead of covering them up, and by having that difficult conversation with ourselves about what needs to change, we can embrace the reality that we are multi-dimensional human beings with problems to sort out, and strengths to help us do just that.
Disappointment During the Pandemic
