Pay attention to all the colors that form your emotional palette.

We assume difficult emotions, mean demons within, shatter us when they suffocate us. We deny these battles we wage daily their right to feel and end up suffering. We forget difficult emotions, when unprocessed, stagnate and fester. They acidify and become corrosive.

Difficult emotions, when unprocessed, become dangerous.

We can ease our suffering. We can heal. We can allow ourselves to process all our emotions. When we do, we will find a stable ground, perhaps even higher ground, on the other side.

We do not heal when we pretend we’re okay.

A dear friend is losing her mother through dementia, during the COVID-19 crisis. When I talked to her over the phone, I felt like absolute shit. I could only listen as she sobbed for hours. Sadness haunted my nights. These days, I can’t even check on my friend’s mother.

For weeks, frustration at the bleak world we’re living in right now filled me with debilitating pain.

Mood swings darken my days. I get times when I’m not okay. I feel low sometimes. I find myself a victim of my circumstances.

I must process these uncomfortable emotions to heal and move on.

We do not heal when we pretend we’re okay. Worse, we surround ourselves with friends, drinking, doing drugs or looking at our devices, or resorting to anything that might help us escape from ourselves.

Any distraction is temporary. Your feelings of sadness wait for you when you get back. And they typically get stronger while you are away.

I don’t want to pretend. I want to accept on some days my eyes twinkle and others, a rock weighs on my soul.

I want to shout out to the world,

“Sometimes difficult emotions cripple me. And you know what? I’m fine with that. I’m far from perfect. I’m human.”

Just like the rest of us.

We rarely get to move on from difficult emotions when we refuse to process them. If your entire body is down, trying to yank it into not feeling what it’s feeling is the equivalent of not listening to yourself.

For weeks after my talk with my friend, I despaired. One night, I finally curled up like a fetus and sobbed. What a powerful way to release pent-up emotions.

I look back on my difficult emotions and observe depths I couldn’t then. Difficult emotions represent an ancient rite of passage, teaching me about contradictions and uncertainty, and how that’s part of this experience of being human.

When you lie around to sit with what you feel (which, I won’t lie to you, is uncomfortable as hell), you heal.

When you process difficult emotions, it feels both triumphant and contains the complex truth that we rarely get to heal without processing uncomfortable emotions. As much as we wish we can leave our difficult emotions behind, can find separation, they’re part of us and we must move forward with them.

We can learn from children. When they bump their heads or we snatch their toys or they do not get what they want, their piercing wails cringe at us.

They give themselves the opportunity to process their emotions, without judging themselves.

In a little time, they get up and move on.

Whatever emotions force you to kneel need time to process.

When difficult emotions cripple you, you are in a black pit. So black that no light penetrates the gloom.

Not a glimmer of luminosity reaches you.

The darkness of your emotions feels like the bottom of the ocean. Frigid and sunless.

The only conceivable solution is to walk into the room where your difficult emotions wait for you to feel them.

Take your time.

When you get on the other side, you feel much stronger than when all you have been doing is evading yourself.

You deserve your full attention. You deserve to listen to yourself. However long your emotions need you, sit with yourself and let your difficult emotions out. Allow yourself to mope. To sulk. To cry (crying feels both horrible and amazing). Walk or do a yoga class so you can breathe and move, breathe and move.

You feel naked, psychologically. Like nothing holds you up. No pretenses, no facades, no bullshit.

The feeling of release is intense. Cathartic. Like a rebirth.

You feel light. Free. Whole. Weightless.

Reflect on all the colors that form your emotional palette.

From the brightest neon to the brightest grays. From fury to peace. From exhaustion to exuberance. From sadness to happiness. From loss to love.

Examine the different hues and shades that occur each morning, midday, afternoon, and evening. Write about how they play out on a canvas, how they work together to create each day a painting of its own.

Just because at that moment you feel like your emotions bury you alive under the weight of a thousand boulders, helpless, not all your life will be like that.

As you pay attention to all emotions, you become stronger. The difficult emotions you fear allow you to be more compassionate and loving with others.

“Emotions are but one category of the many different mental formations we can have. They come, they stay for a while, and then they go. Why should we have to die for an emotion?” – Thich Nhat Hanh

Resist the temptation – the cheap satisfaction – of bundling your uncomfortable emotions and locking them up.

Process your difficult emotions. When you need to cry, cry. The only tool you need is to feel whatever you feel.