Feelings and Emotions Are in a Constant State of Flux
This is why toxic positivity is so dangerous.
Nobody lives a perfect life.
You’ve had both good days and bad days in your life. Like it or not, life has had its ups and downs.
Nobody ever experiences just one emotion or feeling. And that’s a good thing.
Why? Because you need to experience it all. That’s part of living life.
Life is made up of many a paradox and uncountable extremes. But most of life occurs somewhere between any given extremes.
Good/bad, happy/sad, positive/negative, light/dark, and so on. While you’ll sometimes find yourself nearer to one extreme than the other, most of the time you’re still somewhere between them.
That’s why extremes aren’t opposite sides of a coin, but opposite ends of a cylinder. What’s more, that cylinder is flexible, because the extremes can change, too.
Something bad today can become good tomorrow. The thing that brings you sorrow today could bring you joy tomorrow.
This is why toxic positivity is dangerous. Because it denies, ignores, and doesn’t recognize or validate other feelings and emotions. That’s counter to reality.
You will have bad experiences, negative emotions, and other things that occur throughout your life that – at the time – aren’t positive. Hell, they might never be positive – just less or differently impactful over time.
The truth is that feelings and emotions are in a constant state of flux.
Change is a constant inconstant
You have experienced change in one form or another all your life. If you’re no longer a child, you’ve changed your body shape, size, hairiness, and more as you aged. What thrilled and motivated you when you were 10 has likely changed – or at least changed in perspective.
Change has been with you and a part of you and your life all the time.
Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. It is always happening and can’t be stopped.
You can choose how it impacts you. Sometimes you can shift it, alter it, avoid it to a degree, and even change it again.
This is where the Buddhist ideal of impermanence is super helpful. Recognizing and acknowledging that nothing is permanent and everything changes lessens attachments. That makes it at least a little bit easier to deal with sudden, unexpected, and unwanted changes.
Change works visibly, invisibly, tangibly, and intangibly. Hence, it can and will impact your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual being.
This is why nobody can exist in one single emotion. Your feelings are often a direct link to change – even when invisible. Something happens that makes you feel a certain way.
Know that there is nothing wrong with this or wrong with you. It simply is.
Feelings and emotions are in a constant state of flux because change is constant. Feeling and emotions regularly tie to change.
Feelings and emotions are in your control
This is another place where toxic positivity gets it all wrong. The implication that you can ignore, disregard, and put on blinders to all other feelings and emotions in favor of positivity is disingenuous.
Things happen that cause a visceral emotional reaction and/or feeling in you that, when it occurs, just is.
And it’s different for everyone.
That’s because the what of a feeling is different from the how. The what is the label and the how is the presentation. Mostly, the what is the feeling while the how is the emotion.
Anger, for example, comes in many forms. Red hot, ice cold, slow burn, flare-up, and more. And you likely don’t have the same how of the emotion every time you feel it. Different situations cause different feelings and emotions.
Beyond that, when something happens to set off an emotional response – good or bad – you don’t control that immediate, visceral reaction.
When you’re running late, stressed out, and already in a bad mood – getting into a car accident might enrage you. Or it might utterly depress you. You might feel like exploding or curling up in a ball and dying. But that immediate, visceral reaction – in the moment of that happening – just is.
Not long after, however, you gain the ability to be fully, actively consciously aware – and use mindfulness to control what your feelings and emotions are.
But that’s not permanent.
Life is in constant motion
One of my favorite quotes from Yoda says,
“Always in motion is the future.”
No matter what you plan – you have no control over what might occur. Random happenstance might utterly shock and surprise you.
The present is knowable via active conscious awareness. Practicing mindfulness by inquiring about what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what you’re intending, and what you are or aren’t doing to make you present here and now.
That’s great, now. Five minutes from now? Maybe not. Tomorrow? Probably not. Next week? Almost definitely not.
Life is in constant motion. And that’s a major part of why feelings and emotions are in a constant state of flux. Because they’re changed both from within and without.
Let’s say you’ve been crushing on a person. You’re just really into them. Every time you see them, you get those nervous butterflies in your stomach. And then, unexpectedly (but consensually), they kiss you.
The feelings and emotions in that moment just are. And they occurred as part of life’s constant state of motion.
While you can choose your feelings and emotions, it’s only possible at this moment, in the here and now. Sometimes it takes a lot of concentration and work for you to do. But you can.
It doesn’t always feel like this is true. But recognizing and acknowledging the constant state of flux of feelings and emotions empowers you to use mindfulness for control in the present moment.
Recognizing that feelings and emotions are in a constant state of flux isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that your emotions are never one thing only – and constantly changing – you can seek opportunities to use active conscious awareness to control changing them. Knowing that everyone has good and bad feelings and emotions – and nobody can ever have only positivity or the like all the time – you can work with changing emotions because you are less attached to them, whatever they are.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way to open more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you’re of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Don’t you think that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share?
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the four hundred-and-ninety-sixth entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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