Feelings are ought to be felt

...not acted upon.

Feelings are important. All of them, no exceptions.  

Despite what you might have heard, there is no such thing as a “negative” feeling. Sure, some of them are much harder (and much more painful) to deal with than the others, but they ALL deserve our acknowledgement and safe processing. All feelings are valuable signals, and choosing to ignore them is simply unwise.  

And yet, paying attention to our feelings (left alone naming and processing them) proves difficult when we are often conditioned to believe that feeling things and showing it is to be hysterical, childish, irrational. Emotions are somehow commonly believed to stand in the way of reason and maturity: they blur the vision and lead you off the right path, they make you erratic. No wonder there is a resistance to go anywhere near them.

But contrary to popular belief, heart does not defy the reason – giving up on either leads to misery. We’ve all seen it, and possibly even lived through some version of it. Viewing feelings as your enemies is one of the biggest mistakes in the adulthood book.   

However... important as they are, it is equally crucial to keep in mind that feelings are just feelings, and not some oracles predetermining our whole future. No feeling is ever final; they flow and pass by nature. And as much as they can be very helpful signposts on our path, they're not always the most reliable of advisors. 

Don't get me wrong: feelings are fuel for action. When your boundaries are crossed, you want the anger to push you into defending yourself. Ideally though, you want that defending to be constructive, rather than destructive, right? 

Emotions are an integral part of a well-functioning mind and body: humans are supposed to feel and express a whole wide range of them. It’s what we do with those feelings (i.e. how we process them and act upon them), not the emotions themselves, that cause issues and get us into trouble. 

There is a big difference between processing one's feelings (and using them as the said signposts) and blindly acting on them. There is a significant gulf between REACTING and RESPONDING to what is going on inside us. Reaction is automated, default, unconscious: it tends to jerk us around like lifeless puppets. Response requires our mindful engagement, since it needs to bypass our “lizard” brain and engage our thinking one.  

That’s why emotional regulation is one of the most important skills.   

Being able to stay with our feelings as they are, despite their discomfort and intensity, opens up the space for a pause. And that pause is necessary for us to move from "reaction window" to "response window". It's this pause that presents us with a choice. Not about what we feel (as, once correctly identified, it's never really up for debate), but what we are going to do about that feeling.  

Like every other skill, emotional regulation requires a lot of hard, regular and intentional work before it can become an automated habit.  

I personally believe that we have both lizard brain and thinking brain for a reason. The mind is not set against the heart, and cognitive powers are not designed to suppress intuition: they are supposed to work together, complement each other. Together, they can inform the right choice, rather than obscure it.  

Starting to see mind and heart as a complex team, rather than mortal enemies, is a real game changer, if you ask me!