Not every emotion we carry is fully acknowledged, understood or felt. Some feelings are 'unprocessed' from within. For example, many of our uninterpreted worries may show up as powerful directionless anxiety. Someone may have abused our trust or violated our self-esteem. We may feel compelled to remain busy, fear spending time on our own or do activities that ensure we don't meet what scares us head-on. These activities can include internet pornography, tracking the news or exercising compulsively.

We don't understand our emotions

Our minds may grow unoriginal. We grow depressed about everything because we are sad about something.  We can no longer sleep because we omitted to process all the thoughts of the day.   We avoid processing emotions because what we feel is opposite to our self-image and threatening to our society's ideas of normality. However, we need compassion for ourselves.

We pay dearly for failing to process our feelings

We fail to know ourselves simply because it hurts a lot. Processing emotions requires good friends, therapists and ritual moments like meditation, where we can drop our defences.  When we process our emotions, we always feel elevated in our overall mood. But first, we must go through a period of mourning where we acknowledge that life is sadder than we want it to be.

Why we fail to know ourselves

In order to be calm and at ease with ourselves, we need regular periods where we do something rather strange-sounding: process our emotions. Here is a guide to this essential psychological move. If you like our films, take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): https://goo.gl/GTunD2 Join our mailing list: http://bit.ly/2e0TQNJ Or visit us in person at our London HQ https://goo.gl/qMLe4B FURTHER READING “It is a quirk of our minds that not every emotion we carry is fully acknowledged, understood or even truly felt. There are feelings that exist in an ‘unprocessed’ form within us. A great many worries may, for example, remain disavowed and uninterpreted and manifest themselves as powerful directionless anxiety. Under their sway, we may feel a compulsive need to remain busy, fear spending any time on our own or cling to activities that ensure we don’t meet what scares us head on (these might include internet pornography, tracking the news or exercising compulsively). A similar kind of disavowal can go on around hurt. Someone may have abused our trust, made us doubt their kindness or violated our self-esteem but we are driven to flee a frank recognition of an appalling degree of exposure and vulnerability. The hurt is somewhere inside, but on the surface, we adopt a brittle good cheer (jolliness being sadness that doesn’t know itself), we numb ourselves chemically or else adopt a carefully non-specific tone of cynicism, which masks the specific wound that has been inflicted on us…” You can read more on this and other subjects on our blog, here: https://goo.gl/FxY6e6 MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Our website has classes, articles and products to help you think and grow: https://goo.gl/jWiJE7 Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLself You can submit translations and transcripts on all of our videos here: https://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_panel?c=UC7IcJI8PUf5Z3zKxnZvTBog&tab=2 Find out how more here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6054623?hl=en-GB SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Vale Productions http://www.valeproductions.co.uk/ #TheSchoolOfLife

Stashed ideas

How to Process Your Emotions

As human beings, we're very good at keeping going. We live up to our demands and carry out demands others place on us. We keep on showing up and can do this for decades at a time.
Then, one day, much to everyone's surprise, and our own, we break. We can no longer get out of bed. We fall into depression. We don't feel like eating. We refuse to play by the normal rules we've lived by.
But breakdowns are very inconvenient to others, so there's a rush to medicalise the problem so that it can be business as usual. To do this is to misunderstand what's going on.

Breaking down

A breakdown is an attempt of one part of our minds to force the other part into growth, self-understanding and self-development that we refuse to undertake. In essence, it's an attempt to jumpstart a process of getting well. 
There is then a danger to merely medicalising the breakdown and attempting to push it out the way. 
We break down because, over the years, there were messages we needed to hear but didn't pay attention to; emotional learning and communicating we didn't do until the emotional self became desperate to make itself heard.

A breakdown is a bid for health

A breakdown lets us know that things have to change. 
But we find it difficult to simply listen to the emotional need in good time because the conscious mind is inherently reluctant to engage with what the breakdown eventually has to tell it. For years it refuses to listen to sadness or to the dysfunction in a relationship.

A breakdown is telling us that it must not be business as usual

After a breakdown, many people will say that they don't know how they'd ever have gotten well if they didn't fall ill.
During a breakdown, we have not gone mad. We behave oddly, but deep inside, there is a search for health. If we can get through our crisis, it can dislodge us from a toxic status quo and call us to rebuild our lives more authentically.

Rebuilding our lives

Having a nervous breakdown could seem like the ultimate calamity. Far from it. Handled correctly, it can be a unique opportunity to learn - and to get properly well. For books and more from The School of Life, visit our online shop: https://goo.gl/xQbjf7 Join our mailing list: http://bit.ly/2e0TQNJ Our website has classes, articles and products to help you think and grow: https://goo.gl/UKp6aa Z3L41X FURTHER READING “One of the great problems of human beings is that we’re far too good at keeping going. We’re experts at surrendering to the demands of the external world, living up to what is expected of us and getting on with the priorities as others around us define them. We keep showing up and being an excellent boy or girl – and we can pull this magical feat off for up to decades at a time, without so much as an outward twitch or crack...” You can read more on this and other subjects on our blog, here: https://goo.gl/we9Rvx MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Visit us in person at our London HQ: https://goo.gl/P3jM5H Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLself You can submit translations and transcripts on all of our videos here: https://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_panel?c=UC7IcJI8PUf5Z3zKxnZvTBog&tab=2 Find out how more here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6054623?hl=en-GB SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Z3L41X Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Gemma Green-Hope http://www.gemmagreenhope.com #TheSchoolOfLife

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

#schooloflife

IDEAS ABOUT #schooloflife

How to Process Your Emotions

The Importance of a Breakdown

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

#schooloflife

IDEAS ABOUT #schooloflife

How to Process Your Emotions

The Importance of a Breakdown

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career