This week started more anxiety driven for me than most. I found I woke up with a lot of existential dread without really being able to pin point why.
This week ended up being about finding ways to express the emotions outwardly, without necessarily trying to analyse them. Spending too much time trying to think about ‘why’ usually ends up worse rather than better.
Emotional reactions aren’t exactly hard to find. Online, the world can feel very polarised, so it can be a challenge to keep a cool head when discussing divisive topics – be that climate, diversity, war or anything else.
For many of us, we’ve been taught the value of avoiding emotional reactions. It’s important for us to be able to listen to others without reacting straight away. Yet whilst we are better off not reacting to the first emotion that we have, I also feel we have gone too far the other way.
We have inadvertendly idealised the idea of being cool, calm and collected over the ability to express genuine feelings.