Express Your Feelings in a Healthy Way

Have you ever caught yourself feeling sad, only to realize later that what you actually felt was anger? Or acted angry when the real problem was that you were worn down by stress? If so, you share that experience with a lot of people. Mislabeling one feeling as another happens all the time, and part of the reason is simple: plenty of us were never taught how to express what we feel, or we lost track of it somewhere along the way. The good news is that it can be relearned. For more than ten years I did exactly this, putting one emotion on display while a different one sat underneath it.

Growing up, I never picked up a healthy way of showing emotion. My past shaped how I reacted, and I would get frustrated when people around me didn't seem to understand what I was going through. But how could they? I wasn't giving them anything real to work with. The moment I wanted stronger relationships, and wanted people to actually see what was going on inside me, I had to change the way I let those feelings out. A few of the methods I tried have stuck, and they might do the same for you.

For over a decade I'd snap at someone over a thing they hadn't even said. I'd hear the first few words come out of their mouth and leap straight to a conclusion, carrying baggage from old situations that had nothing to do with the person in front of me. Sometimes I'd cry and genuinely not know why, or what the tears were even about. Left unchecked, that kind of confusion can wreck your relationships. It damaged plenty of mine.

Journaling was one of the first things that helped. I started about four years ago, sometimes writing, sometimes making art in a journal. Often I had no clue what I was feeling until the page was full. Rereading my own words, or looking back at an image I'd drawn, let me name the feeling and understand where it came from. If you don't keep a journal of some kind, it's a good place to begin.

Pausing before you speak is another one. People say things they regret constantly, and I can't count how many times I've done it, or still do. Figuring out that I wasn't much of a listener taught me two things at once. I wasn't really hearing other people, which meant I was reacting to feelings I shouldn't have had in the first place. And I wasn't listening to myself either, to what my own mind and heart were actually saying.

So I made listening something I do on purpose. When someone talks, I work at actually taking in their words, which cuts down on the false assumptions and the feelings built on top of them. I also stopped trusting my first reaction as the truth. I take a feeling and pull it apart: Why is this here? What set it off? Does it even fit the situation, and if it doesn't, what am I really feeling underneath? That habit has done more than anything to get me expressing things in a way that's honest.

Emotions get tangled. There are so many of them that telling one from another is hard some days, and that's the whole point of learning to handle them with more care. Maybe a few of the things that worked for me will work for you. - Cara