Do Yourself A Favor, And Stop Denying Your Feelings

Yeah, you with the feelings that have been taking up all your brain space for the past week and a half. Stop pretending like they aren’t there and that they don’t matter and embrace them because they ARE there and they DO matter. They matter a lot, actually.

You can try and distract yourself by listening to happy songs and pretending like you’re not feeling totally worthless. You can push and push and push those feelings all the way down to your toes and step on them all day long to make them disappear. You can act all fine and dandy for as long as you want to, but as soon as you’re alone, those feelings will resurface and chances are pretty good that they’ll be worse than they were before you tried to squash their power.

You can try to carry on a “normal” conversation with someone, anyone, but we all know you’re secretly hoping the person you’re talking to will ask how you are or bring up whatever you’re feeling about so you can say “Oh, that? I hadn’t thought about that in ages!” or “I’m fine, really” so they’d call bullshit and then you’d have to talk to them because they asked. Not because you subliminally messaged them to ask you about it.

But denying the fact that you are having these feelings and ignoring them continuously will not make them go away. Ever. Under any circumstance. Usually it’ll make things worse. Just feel your feelings. That sounds so stupid and really easy, but sometimes it isn’t — especially if you’ve been avoiding your feelings for a while. Take a minute, an hour, or even a day and just feel.

Don’t worry about the work you have yet to do for class at 8AM tomorrow morning, don’t worry about the fight you got in with your roommate last night because they didn’t understand why you were being pissy and you couldn’t explain it because you hadn’t embraced your feelings yet. Don’t worry about any of that. Put the world away and turn on your “sad songs” playlist that we all know you have and just feel it out. For as long as it takes.

Indulge yourself in rereading old text messages or letters and listening to songs that make you think of whatever it is you’re feeling about. Make yourself remember things you may not want to remember. Watch The Notebook, Forrest Gump, and Toy Story 3 as many times as you want. Maybe throw in the first fifteen minutes of Up if you feel like it.

I read something on a bulletin board outside my university’s dining hall one night that just said “Everyone feels the feels.” It was written in sharpie on an orange sticky-note and just stuck on the wall. Everyone feels the feels. Everyone has feelings, everyone has ups and downs. Everyone has their own back story of emotions that contribute to who they are today. You’re not the only one. It’s normal to feel exactly how you feel right now, because feelings are something all humans have, and you’re a human. So please do human things and feel your feelings.

You will find that as soon as you accept and acknowledge you feelings, you’ll be instantly happier. Maybe not at your full capacity of happiness, but you’ll be happy enough to carry on a normal conversation without anyone stopping you mid-sentence to ask if you’re doing okay. Just remember this – everyone feels the feels.