For most of us, emotions are this vague, mystical concept that nobody taught us about. On top of that, we have no clue what to do with them when they arise, if we notice them at all. But this unawareness doesn’t defend us from the problems that emotions cause in our lives. Even if we realize we have a problem of emotional nature (anxiety, depression, rage, etc.), we don’t know where to look for a solution, because society and our culture don’t give us a helping hand.

In this article, I am intended to demystify the concept of emotions and provide a short, down-to-earth, and easy-to-understand summary of my understanding of emotions. A debriefing that I would have been grateful to receive ten or rather twenty years ago.

What Do We Know about Emotions?

Maybe this is not universally true around the world (I hope it is not), but I share my sad experience about emotions with you. I was born in the 80’s and grew up in Europe, in a Western Culture. I had a so-called “normal” family. I received a good education. I studied mathematics and IT in one of the best universities in the country. I was socially active, played sports all my life, and I developed “normally” in every way. I was doing good at school and sports, and I was interested in many different areas, I read a lot of books in different knowledge areas. So I was not the guy who didn’t care about anything. I did care. I was curious. I wanted to learn and know things.

Given these circumstances, I tell you what I had known and had been taught about emotions up until I became 30, and started learning about it myself. If I wanted to summarize it in one word, I would say I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing! To me, emotions were these vague concepts people made up, just to create excuses for their laziness, failures, ignorance, and their lousy behaviors. Emotions were unfathomable, cheesy, bullshitty, fantasy things that crazy, unstable people used to talk about.

Anger? Sadness? Shame? Fear? Joy? Love? Jeez. Give me a break! I had to throw up just thinking about it. I knew all about it. Someone in school being angry? Oh yeah, we all knew them. They were the “bad” kids, the troubled ones. You better stay away from them. Or someone being sad, fearful, or shameful? Yes, I know them as well, they are the lame losers. But thank God, I was healthy and normal. I didn’t have any of these diseases called emotions. I don’t remember feeling particularly angry, sad, or fearful. Or at least I was never aware of it, let alone express it anyhow. Those things are for the crazy, the weak, the troubled, and the freak-outs, not for me.

Yes, it is possible that I just misunderstood the whole thing, didn’t listen enough or didn’t get it. But to be honest, I don’t believe this was the case. I am pretty sure this was our common understanding of emotions. This was what we were told, what we were taught, and what adults modeled for us. And the sad thing about it is that this understanding wasn’t only perceived in my “naive” childhood years. Not at all. I had lived my life with such an understanding and relationship with my feelings until deep into “adulthood” until about the age of 30.

What Are Emotions?

But then, what are emotions after all? There are several valid definitions of emotions, but I don’t want to use scientific rigor here. I just pick my current understanding if you let me, and make up a definition. Emotions are our bodies’ and brains’ built-in functions to make us act as a response to something that is happening to us. Emotions show you that something is going on, and they make you do something about it. They are short circuits that give you energy for action, without hesitation, without rational thinking.

They are similar to reflexes, which make you do things automatically and unconsciously. I repeat this because it is essential: just like reflexes, emotions are not a choice, they are automatic! That means you have no direct control over them. You can’t choose them, and you cannot make them go away. The only choice you have is how you handle them, what you do about them, how you react or respond to them. Therefore blaming yourself or someone else for emotions is totally stupid. It is the same as blaming someone for her headache or for her hair color.

Emotions are essential and extremely useful features of our bodies, with particular roles and functions:

• Fear makes you flee when you perceive danger
• Anger makes you fight when you need to defend yourself
• Shame makes you know you have limits when you cross certain boundaries
• Sadness makes you grieve and heal when you experience loss
• Joy makes you celebrate when you are happy or proud

Without these mechanisms, without emotions, you would certainly have a very tough time in the world. I think not much explanation is needed:

• Without fear, you don’t feel danger, and you get hurt in an accident
• Without anger, you can’t defend yourself, and let others walk all over you
• Without shame, you believe you are a limitless God, and this lets you do crazy things
• Without sadness, you can’t handle or process inevitable losses in your life
• Without joy, you can’t enjoy success and happiness

The energy of these emotions is very real, fathomable, palpable feelings in our body. It changes our physiology. It makes your muscles tense, it changes your pulse and blood pressure, it changes the state of your body, to prepare it for the appropriate action. This happens in each and every one of us, whether you are aware of it or not (the majority of us is unaware of it).

What Are Emotional Problems?

You might wonder “That’s alright, but why is it a problem that I didn’t know all this?” Glad you asked! Actually, the problem is not the missing knowledge about emotions themselves, but the missing knowledge about how to handle them. Emotional problems arise, whenever you have an emotion, that you are not allowed to feel, live, and express. When for some reason someone doesn’t allow you to, or you don’t allow yourself to. When someone teaches you early on that your anger, sadness, fear, or joy is unacceptable. And this, unfortunately, is extremely common.

Sadly, disallowed emotions are a general standard in our society. Our parents, family, social environment, or culture doesn’t allow us to express certain emotions in an open and healthy way. No matter how perfect a family you were grown up in, I am pretty sure these are familiar experiences to you too from your childhood: your father, mother, or your teacher gets upset or aggressive and tells you to shut up because you expressed your anger after some perceived injustice. Or they victimize themselves and fall apart because of your anger. Either way, you learn it early on that expressing anger is dangerous and unacceptable. Or you are shamed and ridiculed because of your fear or sadness: “Come on, don’t be such a sissy.” Or someone prohibited you from being sad after a loss you suffered. And you, as a smart child, learn to adapt and ingrain these experiences and repress these unaccepted feelings.

But the problem is, that even if you are not allowed to feel an emotion, and learn to suppress it, it doesn’t make it go away. Quite the contrary! If we think of emotions as an energy that calls us for action, then a disallowed, unexpressed emotion is an energy, a tension that stays in our body. It is held captive inside. And it doesn’t go away by itself. And that’s a problem because that energy needs to go somewhere. It needs to find a way to be discharged. It is like a lion locked in a bird’s cage.

What Happens with Unexpressed Emotions?

That energy needs to be expressed where it belongs. But if that is blocked, then there are two alternative ways for it to be discharged: inwards (acting it in) and outwards (acting it out) to inappropriate targets. Let’s see how this process works with the example of anger.

As a child, my parents didn’t allow me to express any kind of anger. They taught me that anger is a horrible, unforgivable sin. As an adult, when I faced a situation where someone treated me unfairly or disrespectfully (for example someone promised me something but never delivered it), anger was naturally arising in me, but then something unhealthy happened. The block of my parents’ teaching kicked in immediately and automatically, and it prevented me to express my anger in any way. I wasn’t able to let my anger take charge and make me say “What you did to me was very unfair and disrespectful, I am angry about it, and I don’t want to accept it!” My childhood memory made me anxious, weak, and trembling inside, and made me say something like “Okay, no problem!”. My anger was turned inside, acted in, and made me feel anxious and weak. That anger was attacking myself instead of acting along with its very purpose: defending myself. Then, with this experience of injustice and unexpressed anger in me, if I had met someone who I had felt comfortable expressing anger with (typically someone I considered weaker than me, like a spouse or children), and I had experienced the slightest injustice or disrespect, I broke out in rage, and nobody understood what was going on, where that energy was coming from. It was invisible but understandable: that pent up energy found its way out, only not where it belonged and not to the people who deserved it.

Acting out unexpressed emotions this way gives a temporary relief, but the problem with acting in and acting out is that it never discharges the energy entirely, only partially and temporarily. After acting it in or acting it out, the emotion stays unresolved, until you address its source, and direct it towards that. If that resolution never happens (which is very often the case), then the unresolved emotion can stay with you for a lifetime.

Acting in can lead to several self-destructing behaviors and illnesses. Unexpressed anger can result in chronic anxiety, or unresolved grief can lead to depression. And these chronic states can lead to serious physical illnesses in the long run. On the other hand, acting out unresolved emotional issues can turn you into an unstable and unpredictable asshole with rage and frequent outbursts, someone who is very difficult to live with.

How Do We Handle Emotional Issues?

Unresolved emotional issues can easily grow into unbearable burdens, that can sour your everyday life. Since we don’t know much about emotions, we often don’t even recognize our emotional problems, only “feel bad” or are frustrated or irritable all the time. Since we don’t know what’s going on with us, we have no clue what to do about it. What’s even worse, you probably believe that something is wrong with you deep down, that this is the way you are, that you are fucked-up. (I was thinking and feeling like this, so I know how horrible it is.) Sometimes even our environment suggests this to us. This can make you ashamed of your condition (I was), that makes getting help even more difficult.

So what do we do instead of asking for help and solving it? We find or invent ways that alleviate our chronic emotional pain. The most available and widely used tools to ease our emotional sufferings are addictions. Work addiction, sex addiction, food addiction, alcohol addiction, drug addiction, and alike. They give us distractions, by which they help us not to feel our feelings.

Speaking of emotional issues and addictions here, we are talking about serious numbers. The number of Xanax (anti-anxiety drug) prescriptions in the US is around 50 million a year, and it is increasing every year. It is evident that these are not isolated cases of some fucked-up freak-outs. This is more like an epidemic!

What Can We Do About Emotional Issues?

The good news is that there are also healthy and lasting solutions for emotional problems. That’s the reason I started this blog because I believe in certain profound and lasting remedies. The process of “healing” consists of finding your unexpressed emotions, figuring out their root cause, then expressing those feelings and doing something about the root experience. Then you can move on with your life and fly again. This sounds very simple, but actually, it can be very complicated, and it is definitely not easy or quick!