I have been thinking and reading a lot about emotions. I have been taking off a bit of my “nice” mantle, and seeing how nice serves as a smoke-screen. It blocks me from the real work of handling my own emotions. Distracted by outside demands, I can  avoid the hard work of taking responsibility for my own self. […]

Understanding our emotional lives is important for all of us. But, handling our feelings is something we are never taught. Whatever we learn is usually through a process of trial and error. We also learn to label emotions as “good” and “bad” depending on the reactions we get when we express them. If, as a child, our anger was never acknowledged or looked at, then we might have a loaded relationship with it. […]

Anger is an emotion that hisses and burns. It curls inside, wrapping itself around our hearts, crushing them. It burns our insides with its vitriolic fumes.

Anger also rises like a magnificent wave, and offers protection when we most need it. It helps us right our wrongs and address injustices. 

[…]

I have a cut-off, discordant relationship with time. I try to ignore it a lot of the time, but it seems to be slipping so fast from my fingers that I need to find a way to relate to it better. I am someone who resists schedules and planning, and some of it, I think, is related to removing a sense of reality, of getting disconnected from things so that they don’t quite touch you so deeply.

[…]

We are never taught about feelings, about what they mean or how to listen to them. The world inside is lost in shadow, and our attention is fixated on the outside. When feelings become insistent, they just feel problematic to us – something to be fixed or eased. We never get right to the heart of them, to try and understand what they are trying to tell us.

We don’t know how to use their energy, or how to respond to their call.

[…]