We Must Be Willing To Feel Everything

I posted earlier this week about "hate."

No one likes the word "hate" - it has become "the unacceptable emotion."
It is like Voldemort - hate is "he who shall not be named."

Hate is associated with so many horrific things that we can hardly say the word anymore.
 
Yet as long as we fear any emotion or thought, we are prisoners; unable to grow.


In order to have anything in life, we have to be willing to have the opposite.

In order to get married, we must open ourselves to the possibility of divorce.
In order to have faith, we have to be willing to doubt, to question, to learn and grow.
In order to have courage, we must be willing to fear.
In order to love, we must be willing to hate. We have to be willing to care about someone that much. We have to be that invested, that deeply attached.
In order to trust we have to open ourselves up to the possibility of being betrayed, abandoned, let down.

When any emotion or feeling becomes unacceptable, then we lose the correlating emotion. When we are unwilling to to be betrayed, we lose the ability to trust.
If we are unwilling to lose, we are unable to win.
If we are are unwilling to be rejected, we are unable to be accepted.

We must be vulnerable. All emotions must be a possibility. All emotions must be acceptable.
When we accept the fact that we feel and think horrific things, AND we can still act according to our values - then we have happiness.  Then we have self mastery.
We can think and feel anything, be put through any horror or atrocity, and still be ourselves, living our life. When we can become like Viktor Frankl - be stripped of everything, have our jobs and homes and livelihoods taken, have our family killed, and be forced to work in a Nazi concentration camp - and still live our values, still have a life of meaning - then we have success.  Then we have happiness. Then we have a life worth living.
 

Teach Your Children That It's Okay To Hate

I mean that.  Teach them that it is perfectly acceptable and even healthy to feel hatred.

It is a GOOD thing to hate.

Just like it is a GOOD thing to feel sadness, fear, resentment, anger, loneliness, regret, guilt, hate, etc… 

When we teach our children to “hate” these feelings, to fear them and reject them and deny them and suppress them – we are teaching our children a lie.  We are teaching them that they should always be happy, always be pleasant, always like other people, always be pleased with life and its outcomes.

Really?  We should be happy with death, loss, hunger, abuse, disease, failure and rejection?

We shouldn’t hate anything?  Really?

Any Christians out there?

 - Proverbs 6:16 tells us that the Lord hates some things.

 - Revelations 2:6 tells us Jesus hated as well.

Hate and love are the strongest emotions possible.  They are not opposites.  The opposite of love is apathy.  The opposite of hate is also apathy.

Teaching kids to ignore their strongest “negative” emotions also inevitably limits their “positive” emotions.

If you get rid of the strongest hate, you also get rid of the strongest love.   

Why do Christians believe that Christ’s love is the ultimate love?  Why is it perfect?

Because he felt all our pain, all our sufferings, all of our shortcomings, all of our hatred.  He felt all those things - completely understands us, and he has the most perfect love and caring and concern for our eternal well-being.

Hate isn’t bad.  Doing hateful things is bad.  

You may be tempted to say - "but hate can only lead to bad things - love leads to all good things."

Really?  How many terrible things have been done in the name of "love" or in the pursuit of "happiness."

Telling kids not to hate is like telling Elsa in the movie Frozen to “conceal don’t feel.”

Thoughts and emotions are neither good nor bad – they just are.  Thoughts and emotions happen whether we want them to or not.  The question is what we DO with them.  They are all useful and appropriate at times.

Happiness/cheeriness can be a very bad thing.  At a funeral, in the Emergency room, when admitting your child to the psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt - being happy and cheery and full of bubbly hope and peter pan advice like “think a happy thought” - is not "good" in these situations.  It is not appropriate, it is not helpful, it is bad.

Why do you think the happiest people usually seem to be the people who have suffered the most?  Why do the most inspirational people, the ones who really touch us – usually have horrific life histories of pain and suffering and hate.  Those emotions taught them how to feel true love and appreciation and caring.  They learned how to accept the fact that they feel hatred and anger, and how to use that emotion to live a happy life, according to their beliefs and values.

If we teach our children to fear emotion, to fear anger and hatred and deny that those feelings ever existed - we are setting them up to explode.  The hate and anger are there.  Everyone feels them.  We can either admit it and accept it, or conceal it, fear it, and then await the explosion of the ticking time bomb.

Don't teach kids to fear hatred.  Teach them what to do when they feel it; what it means, and why it's good. 

Teach your kids that it's okay to hate - it's the only way they'll ever learn to love.

Let It Go: A Song about Avoidance

Elsa has some serious talents and abilities, but as a child she almost kills her sister, and then her parents die when she’s still very young.

She learns that emotions hurt. Love hurts. Caring hurts. Fun hurts. Family hurts.  She quickly learns to avoid feeling anything.  Avoid any connection, any closeness, any chance at vulnerability.  She must “conceal, don’t feel.”  “Don’t let them in, don’t let them see.”

Elsa has learned that all feelings are bad.  She has tried to keep herself isolated and alone while surrounded by people trying to love her.  Her sister tries and tries to get her to open the door – but Elsa can’t.  She can’t stand the thought of hurting Anna, or the thought of being vulnerable again.

What does she do when she realizes that avoidance doesn’t work?  That you can’t avoid emotion forever.  It builds and builds until eventually – it’s going to come out. 

And Wow does it come out.  When it does, it looks like it would for most neglected and abandoned kids who feel guilty for things that weren’t their fault.  They lash out with a horrific torrent of emotion that pushes everyone away.  They break all the rules.  All the things they cared for and loved end up getting smashed and destroyed as they run away.

Elsa doesn’t realize it but she has made her emotions only have two settings: High and Off.

She is either calm or in crisis.  She can’t be a little happy, or a little sad.  She has no range of emotions.    She is either holding everything in – or it’s all barreling out of her like a cannon. 

Her reaction leaves behind a broken family asking questions, begging for her to come back. Elsa’s never going back. The past is in the past.

Elsa lets it all go.  She’s now  “a runaway” but she doesn’t care.  She can’t keep loving those she left behind – it hurts too much. 

She thinks she’s free.  She thinks that now she has control.  The fears that once controlled her can’t get to her at all.

She doesn’t see that she has traded one version of isolation for another.  She hasn’t really let anything go.  She is still afraid.  Still isolated.  She still has no control over her emotions.  She’s just traded her stone palace for an ice palace.  She is still hurting those she loves, she just doesn’t have to see it.  She is still avoiding all feeling, still uncomfortable in her own skin.

“Let it Go” sounds nice as a song title or a slogan.  But in reality, it’s just as backwards and hypocritical as her life has been.  She hasn’t let anything go.  She hasn’t “become free.” She isn’t accepting who she really is, or freeing herself from other’s judgments.  She’s just trading one prison for another.

What she needs to let go of – is her avoidance.  She needs to feel, REALLY feel. Not just the happiness, but the sadness as well. She needs to let herself feel the joy, the heartache, the sadness, the love, the contempt, the appreciation, the guilt.  She needs to feel it all.  She needs to learn to accept feeling all those emotions.  She doesn’t need to enjoy them all, just accept that they are there, and be willing to feel them.

When she let’s go of avoidance – then she’ll have control.  Then nothing can hold her back anymore.  Then she’ll truly be free.