Bring your emotions to the light | Deeper | Post 7

There is something fascinatingly interesting about the way light changes the proportion of objects.

Growing up, I've always shied away from speaking about things that bother me, i.e my genuine, deepest feelings about issues. I thought it was the best way to avoid conflict, and that perhaps if I buried my feelings long enough, they eventually would disappear. I did not know that they do quite the opposite, they build up and at some unexpected point come to rise.

I learnt my lesson the hard way.

So I realised then that I needed to search for a new, potentially more effective method. This for me consists of four words: bring it to light.

Put simply, allow yourself to feel the emotions. This may consist of your speaking about them or even writing them down. The most important thing is allowing yourself to be aware of them. The reason this has been an effective method for me is because of the following:

1) When I allowed myself to feel, I became aware of them.

2) Once I allowed myself the awareness of feelings, I was able to see them in relation to my life. This often made me realise that the problem was not as big as I originally thought it was.

3) The awareness gave me the opportunity to question my real motives for my feelings.

Whenever we shine a light on something, we are able to handle it and deal with it better because we can see what we are working with, which is not the case for those things we choose to leave in the darkness.