Hello and welcome to another Coffee Date with Luna!
Today I decided to speak about something very close to my heart which is dealing with emotions and stress. I suck at it.
From a young age I didn’t know how to handle my emotions and I understand that my upbringing in domestic violence took its toll on me but to this day I still am very bad at handling my emotions, expressing them (even with poetry) and addressing issues that cause me stress.
A lot of people have this problem which is why I decided to honestly speak about this, especially the cheap Band-Aids we use for a temporary fix. I started writing while I was a kid and this problem started. I would be locked up in my room while I was alone with my father and, since there wasn’t much to do for a kid between four walls, I would write everything from poetry, short stories to attempting to write actual books. And I just want to state that I did not have a computer then, all was done by hand. I had like a million notebooks. This did ease my emotions and the stress a bit but I never adopted a healthy way to deal with my emotions.
Around the time I abandoned writing all together for a few years, I started to go out, smoke and party. I started to smoke around the time I was 16. Cigarettes helped me relax, get my head straight and calm down if my nerves were getting the best of me. I know it’s an unhealthy habit but as I said, these were all quick fixes, I just wanted to instantly feel better about the world. I had my last cigarette more than two months ago and I am still struggling not to fall into this old habit.
Another quick fix for me is binge eating. I know that I maybe don’t look like someone who has problems with food, but I do. I could do a whole post about this so I am not getting to much into it now because we all know what binge eating is. (if you want that post, let me know).
This blog has been a great help for me in dealing with my emotions but I still do not have a healthy way to deal with them. I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to my mental health which is why I believe people need to talk about it more. People who have some types of healthy emotional upbringing are rare. I am not calling people bad parents but I have a feeling that people are not being thought from a young age how to address and give a voice to all of the feelings which go on inside of them which is why, when we are older, we resort to unhealthy ways to deal with our emotions such as smoking, drinking, eating, violence and drugs. If I had any say in what the world should be like, I would put the subject “Handling emotions” to kids in school.
We ignore how we feel, go above and beyond to hide our emotions and they just go wild inside of our heads. Not being able to handle one’s emotions can leave us clinging to unhealthy relationships because not voicing our opinions and expressing our emotions became normal to us.
Well, this is just my opinions about this. What do you guys think – do people know how to handle their emotions, did you find yourself somewhere in this post? Tell me all about it in the comments and also let me know what you would like to read about in the next Coffee Date.
Sending love and positive vibes,
Luna