We are all guilty at some point in our lives, and maybe even right now, not expressing our feelings. We don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings, we aren’t sure how to say what we are feeling, we have a fear of rejection. Whatever the reasons, we choose to not share our own feelings.
Unfortunately, this is very common, and I have been guilty of this far too many times myself. We have a right to ourselves to consider our own feelings as well. Sometimes it’s not the right time, or maybe we feel selfish for how we feel, but we are discrediting our own feelings when we do this. When we use these reasons for not expressing our feelings, we are saying no to ourselves and yes to others. We are telling ourselves that our feelings and opinions are not important.
And many times, we just bury the feelings all together.
This is even worse, those unexpressed emotions will never die, they are just buried alive and will come back later in uglier ways. Sigmund Freid shared this quote and it’s so very true. I’ve said several times, when we don’t heal from our old words, we bleed on those who didn’t cut us. And this is our buried alive emotions and feelings coming back even uglier. Over the years, we have made it a habit of putting ourselves last, we stopped believing in our own value and our own worth and put everyone and everything before us.
When we learn how to express ourselves, our emotions and our feelings in our own ways, we are building a confidence and authority that supports our growth and validates how we feel, even if others don’t. So how can you express yourself in your own ways? I’ve got a few things to help you with this!
1) Start with self-awareness and acknowledgement. Be actively away of your emotions and feelings. Acknowledge that you have feelings and they matter to. The self-awareness and acknowledgement step to your feelings and emotions overall is very important to being able to express yourself. Identify where you have struggled with the ability to express yourself and acknowledge the areas for improving. We aren’t perfect, we have flaws and if this is one of yours, it is okay. You’re doing something about it now.
2) Acknowledge the emotions that you are feeling. Now that you’ve acknowledge the issues and become self-aware of your feelings and emotions being important. Now you need to acknowledge what those feelings and emotions are. Consider why you may be feeling this way, what they are exactly, and are they feelings that you want to have or are they feelings that you need to work to remove (this is a later topic).
3) Write about your feelings. While we acknowledged the emotions, now we but them into actual words. Providing context around the feelings, identifying what causes the feelings and then writing about those feelings and situational experiences will allow you to move into actually expressing those feelings. This allows you to have a more level thought process on how you will express these feelings. The writing process allows you to actual remove some of the emotion behind those feelings and be more aware and honest as to the reason for those feelings.
4) Verbalize what you write. It could be in song, story, poem, or maybe your verbalization is a form of art. This is how you start to express your feelings. You have to find that outlet of expression that works best for you. Whatever is most comfortable and realistic to who you are and what is reflective of you will be done in this step.
5) Find the ways that are easy for you, sometimes writing our feelings out first and then putting them into a different form of communication allows us to express ourselves in ways that we feel most comfortable. Once you’ve done the previous step you know have to actually express and communicate those feelings to the person(s) who are most impacted and need to be made aware of how you are feeling.
Understand that the expression of your own feelings and emotions, are never lies or inaccurate. They are your feelings. They are your emotions and they belong to you. There is no right or wrong when it comes to how you feel and what emotions you are going through.
Most importantly, when someone is expressing their feelings or emotions to you — you cannot ignore them or discredit how they feel. Because you’ll get the same responses when you express your feelings or emotions. One of our biggest faults as humans is not feeling compassion and understanding. This applies to you AND those around you. Have compassion for yourself and understanding for others as well. This makes it easier to express yourself because you have opened a clear and direct path of communication.
NOTE: Not everybody is going to read this or understand; and some people are just assholes who don’t care about your feelings or emotions — it may not be easy to express yourself in your own ways because of the blurred and messy path of communication – but do it anyways. You matter. Your feelings matter. Your emotions matter. Don’t discredit your own feelings or emotions just because others don’t accept them.
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