The Necessity of Negativity.

   Negativity gets a lot of bad press. There is always someone going on about how bad it is for you.
    I honestly think this needs to stop. At first this may seem like a bad idea...but read on and you may just change your mind...
  Most of us have enough trouble feeling emotions without someone telling you there are certain ones we shouldn't feel.
   The idea that your body produces emotions that are bad for you is rather silly and quite a regressive idea. I too have fallen into this trap over and over again, this is especially true if you decided that you are someone who has decided that goodness is your chosen route.
     We have been told that such emotions as jealousy, anger, hatred, pity, sadness and disgust are all to be avoided as much as possible. Most of the religions are pretty much behind this message, polarising people one way or another. Buddhism for example is quite happy to tell us that ignorance, anger and lust are totally off limits, while suffering is a-okay. Christianity is alright with self-flagellating martydom, sacrifice and poverty, but you can't feel pride, envy or any form of desire relating to something that is not "yours". We get these mixed messages all the time. I picked some of the major religions there, but it is just as endemic in the new age philosophy in which hatred is giving a thorough drubbing along with fear.
    These are totally natural emotions to feel! All of them! There will definitely be periods in your life where you  have to feel them or risk dangerously suppressing them in order to remain OK with which ever philosophy you have chosen for yourself or the way in which you are living your life.
   All these emotions are giving us vital signals about things that are wrong with the way we are living. You feel jealousy that your lover is lusting after another..great! It means that you are getting a signal that things are not going the right way. You feel hatred your boss has fired a great co-worker? Wonderful!..now you can see that there is something up. You feel sad that you are single? Spot on! It is showing you that there are parts of a relationship that make you feel good.
     Now don't take what I have said the wrong way,  what the real message is, is that you should not let these feelings dictate your actions. Feeling hatred for your boss's callousness is all well and good and allows the emotion to pass through you, but throwing him/her out of the window is no good for any one, because face it, they will just hire another.
    What is really important is allowing yourself to really feel these negative emotions, let them up...let them out of whichever part of you that you have been squirreling them away in. Let the anger or the sadness rise up. Yes, you may feel bad for a while, but it is going to leave eventually once it has all come up. Once this is done then you will feel much better and maybe when it is all gone you can see what the real reason is that caused it in the first place. If this is a particularly powerful emotion, you may want to seek professional help in releasing it or finding a safe place to do so.
     This squirreling away of negative emotions is what causes those raw wounds that never heal, because you are not allowing the puss and foulness to leave your body so it is constantly fighting it. Another scratch in the same area and you feel it all over again! This is why we armour ourselves in the places we have been hurt so much. But if you let it out..then you won't need the armour!
    This has been a process for me and I am still learning to be okay with negative emotions surfacing. I let myself be angry for almost a whole year...that was pretty good for me. I now have my fire back. I had to warn people away of course, so I did no un-necessary burning. I recently let myself be okay with self -loathing..so now it doesn't have to slink around like a bad dog and try and avoid my gaze and in return it gave me back my motivation. Today self-pity meekly raised it's hand to be noticed. I don't know what gift it will give to me once I am cool with it, but I am looking forward to my new relationship with it. Maybe tomorrow disgust will wave a slimy tentacle and we can be friends too...