Command Joy by Expressing Yo’self

We all need to express ourselves.  This isn’t a luxury, this is an absolute necessity. To be fully free and completely ourselves, we must feel comfortable enough to outwardly express our emotions. Whatever form they may take.

When we deny our feelings, we are denying our truth. If we aren’t living truthfully, then what kind of life ARE we living?
Most of us grew up believing that expressing hurt, disappointment, frustration, or anger was wrong. When we are sad, our parents tell us to be happy. When we are negative, we are told to look on the bright side. If we cry, we are considered weak. If we get mad, we are ignored. When we are upset, we are told we aren’t supposed to feel that way. Our society only re-enforces this. Schools & companies ask us to be positive, play nice, and get along with everyone.

We are told that we can’t let other people control our emotions. Which is true, but that doesn’t stop the feelings from showing up! Social personas of being sweet and kind and friendly are everywhere and only work to reinforce the false appearance of having it all together. Families strive to show the world they have a perfect life with happy, healthy kids. Homes are built and made to look like the most beautiful on the block.  

This can lead some of us to start internalizing our emotions. That’s where the problems come in. As we get older, we start to perfect the internalization of our emotions. We can start to feel resentment which is often covering up the fear we have of truly expressing ourselves.

We start denying our feelings, and telling ourselves that any negativity we feel or experience is bad. If someone does something that hurts us, we feel it deep inside our bodies, but we say nothing. We instead start to feel resentment toward that person, that thing, that whatever that evoked that emotion inside of us.

In some ways, ignoring our feelings has its advantages. If we keep our feelings hidden and unexpressed, then we don’t have to risk messing up our relationship with that person. We don’t have to deal with the confrontation, the misunderstandings that might arise. We can avoid, ignore, and keep moving. Not dealing with the confrontation is fear driven.

So what if we look past the fear? If we take a closer look, we may see that the fear is really us avoiding potential rejection. If we do decide to speak up, we may be faced with something that we think we can’t handle.

 This fear can stop us in our tracks. It can prevent us from truly expressing ourselves. Our fear of rejection can act like fuel to a fire. Maybe one time in the past we found the courage to tell someone how we felt and let them know how they hurt us, and maybe it didn’t end well. A bad experience  combined with social conditioning of having to always act happy teaches us to be quiet. To say nothing. So we don’t. We don’t want to hurt someone, we don’t want them to not accept us, so we suffer in silence. We become scared to express ourselves.

The thing is that everyone needs to express themselves! It must be done. To be fully free and completely ourselves, we must feel comfortable enough to say what we have to say. There are healthy ways we can learn to do this.

1)Feel the emotion

• Sometimes we just have to let ourselves feel the range of emotions. It doesn’t mean that we have to do anything about it! Just feel. Let the rage, the sadness, the jealousy come up in your body, then watch as it lessens. If we sit with our emotions, we usually find that the negativity doesn’t last that long. The anxiety, the anger, the angst, it comes up strongly but then it slows back down. The next time you feel the negative emotion, just sit and time yourself. See how long it lasts. Five minutes? Ten? In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t that big of a deal!

 
2)Express yo’self

• It starts by just doing it. It takes tremendous courage and strength to communicate our pain to the people who hurt us. The how is also important –we have to find ways to calmly and responsibly express to another person how something they did made us feel. When we ignore our deepest feelings, we aren’t living truthfully. What kind of life is it if we aren’t living out our truth? We can communicate our feelings in a graceful way. The next time someone’s actions hurt you, try telling them how you feel. We need to choose our words in the right way to convey our feelings.  For example, you can say “when you raise your voice, I feel disrespected,” or “when you ignore me, I feel unappreciated.”  Its best if we can come from a calm and balanced frame of mind. Words tend to have more effect when we can express them from a calm and strong strongpoint. Let me say that again – how we express ourselves is very important. When we are calm, we are more likely to be heard.

 
3)Practice Forgiveness

• Forgiveness is your personal right. The ability to truly and fully forgive is one of the greatest gifts you can ever give yourself. Forgiveness really does set us free. It breaks down the walls that anger built. When we forgive, we stop letting our past dictate our present. With forgiveness, we accept that our past makes us the person we are today, and we embrace that. When we embrace forgiveness, resentment washes away.

So yes, it is true that we can’t control what other people do and that the only control we do have is how we respond and react to it. When we decide to express ourselves fully, we become more confident, stronger, and more aware. With self-expression comes truthfulness. That is living our best lives.