Human in being.
Being human is hard. Do you feel that, too?
I am sure you do.
Lately, I have been observing humans very closely, especially their emotions. When I talk about observing and making inferences, I always begin with myself. I notice my own emotions and how they make me behave in certain ways. If I am happy, I bake, paint, make fun of people around me, and suddenly everything seems extra funny, even the not-so-funny reels. But if I am sad, I interpret, attach meaning to my sadness, and tell myself why I shouldn’t be sad, and eventually everything that is making me sad should go and fuck themselves.
If you see, I am not allowing myself to be sad. It is an uncomfortable emotion, yes. But also an emotion that demands to be felt. Recently, in one of my therapy sessions, I realised it does not happen just with me, but with most of us. When I asked my client what he does when he gets sad, his answer was, I don’t get sad. Infact people call him “Mr Joy” because he stays happy all the time. Now, I am going to tell you the exact same thing that I told him. We, humans, feel both comfortable and uncomfortable emotions. But we want to keep feeling comfortable emotions a little longer.
And Uncomfortable emotions?
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We suppress them. Why? You may ask.
It makes us vulnerable. And who wants to seem weak and vulnerable in the world of control and power? Well, of course, no one.
Then what to do with this sadness, I asked myself. I usually use a defence mechanism called “Intellectualisation”. I would like to share an instance of how I intellectualise my sadness. When I did not get into my first choice of college for MPhil, for which I prepared for months and couldn’t sleep properly before my entrance. I was sad, but instead of feeling it, I started telling myself, “ Entrance exams are competitive, and selection depends on n number of factors. I did the most I could have. No point being sad about something which wasn’t mine in the first place. Let it be”. I kept telling myself this until, at a family get-together, I immediately broke down when someone asked, “Did you get in?”
I swear it was very embarrassing, both for me and the one who asked. After that, I decided to do myself a favour. That is to feel uncomfortable emotions, maybe privately or with someone I trust.
I learned that not allowing ourselves to feel uncomfortable emotions does not magically make them go away. In fact, on suppression, the intensity increases, and I can assure you they come out in the most unexpected, dramatic way possible. It’s time we start accepting that these very emotions make us more human, not less.
So, next time sadness knocks on your door, instead of asking who’s there? Say welcome. The earlier you welcome sadness, the more space you make for happiness to stay.
