Why you shouldn't manage your emotions

It can be really difficult to cope with your emotions – it can seem too intense, too painful. In understanding them without letting them overwhelm us, we can figure out how they can help us be more present and feel more alive.

Get to know your emotions

Sometimes things make us feel sad, angry, irritated. We don’t like this. We would love to have control over our emotions, to shape them how we like.

It is not possible to live fully if we’re so afraid of how we feel. Let’s try to understand our emotions instead. Our state of mind is like the weather: it changes. Sometimes it’s sunny, sometimes the sky is crowded with dark clouds, sometimes it’s raining. When we practice meditation, we experience those changes: it’s nothing to be worried about.

Emotions are like watercolour worlds, full of life, each with their own rhythm.

Meditation doesn’t teach us how get rid of our emotions, but how to be more careful with them. When we are emotional, we shouldn’t try to stop it through breathing, as I have often heard. That’s a mistake: meditation isn’t about refusing to experience something because we don’t like it, but putting that experience in the spotlight.

Repressing what is happening to us just doesn’t work.

Explore your emotions

Observe your emotion’s features, how it radiates within you, discover how it colours the way you look at the world. You will realize that emotions are not enemies you have to defeat, but friends that are just trying to talk to you.

I often hear we need to “manage” our emotions. What a strange thing to say! Emotions are like watercolour worlds, full of life, each with their own rhythm. We have to learn to listen to them. You’ll learn that emotions are subtler, livelier and more dynamic than you think.

The example of anger

One of the virtues of meditation is that it shows us how we identify ourselves by our thoughts and emotions. When we feel some anger, we are convinced that we are angry, and we soon find reasons to be. Why do we have to embody every little thing that is happening inside us? Why not think instead that the anger is just visiting us temporarily? Why not try and find a healthy way to understand it? Why not say hello to it without giving it complete control over you?

Meditating is not about accepting or denying your emotions, but about getting to know them better.

Through meditation, we learn to recognize our emotions without giving in to them. It doesn’t mean they go away, or that we become detached from them. We are simply un-attached. Do you see the difference?

At this point, you shouldn’t experience emotions as attacks from the outside, like being overwhelmed by anger or sadness. You should experience them as a unique vibration that needs to be listened to. If you are sad, you are sad. No point in denying it. Your relationship with your emotions can be healthier and less conflicting.

If anger comes, it doesn’t mean you have to embody it. You can let the anger be, without justifying or cultivating it. This is truly the best way to cure it!

Meditating is not about accepting or denying your emotions, but about getting to know them better. This idea is the heart of the openness of meditation, and will transform your relationship with yourself.