The importance of respecting our feelings

Did you ever feel ashamed of your feelings as a child? Silenced when you wanted to cry, given messages to suppress your emotions? The overwhelming majority of people live disconnected from their emotions, they don't know what to do with them. If we grew up in a family environment where our emotions were ignored, ignored, and we could not express our emotions freely, it is not surprising that we are now strangers to our emotions as adults.

However, our emotions are one of our greatest characteristics that make us human. Although some thinkers argue that it is not possible to define the word emotion, according to Young, emotion is the sensory process that emerges with the perception of the environment and includes physical, behavioral and mental characteristics that activate the inner world of the individual. Lazarus, on the other hand, defines emotion as the internal experiences that occur as a result of the individual's perception and evaluation of the stimuli in the environment.

Undoubtedly, emotional intelligence is required to know and manage our own emotions and the emotions of others. There are various definitions of emotional intelligence put forward by different scientists. According to Goleman, emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one's own and others' emotions, distinguish between different emotions, label them appropriately, and use emotional information to guide one's thoughts and feelings. Goleman identified five components of emotional intelligence, the first being knowing our emotions (self-awareness), the others being managing them, motivating ourselves, recognizing emotions in others (empathy) and handling relationships.

Emotional maturity develops when people know and respect their own and others' emotions for every life situation. Respecting our emotions has a great impact on our psychological health. To find out if you respect your feelings, you can ask yourself these questions

When someone is rude to you, do you ignore the fact that you feel bad and trivialize it within yourself?

When you feel sad or angry, do you force yourself to feel more positive emotions instead of accepting them?

Do you prefer to suppress your feelings because you are uncomfortable with them?

If your answers to these questions are yes, you may not be respecting your feelings. Respecting our emotions means accepting them as they are, without judgment. Respecting our emotions means having the ability to express them in a healthy way. Of course, not every environment may allow us to express our feelings. Or we may not want to share our feelings with everyone. But in such cases, at least we should always be honest with ourselves about our feelings. Because repressed emotions have a habit of eventually coming out.

Sometimes with a physical symptom, sometimes with a behavioral reaction, emotions try to make themselves heard one way or another. "I am here, see me now," they whisper in our ears.

Yes, emotions want to be seen, understood and expressed. Their least favorite thing is to be suppressed. You can get support from psychologists to get to know your emotions better.