Suppressing, Addressing, and Expressing Emotions
The ideal is to address our mind-based emotions and express our experience-based emotions.
Suppressing our emotions on the basis of external, life-denying moral standards (Being angry is wrong. Feeling lust is wrong. It's wrong for a real man to express fear) is often harmful to our health and well-being. It denies our spirit and life. We do well to avoid suppressing our emotions.
We do well to address mind-based emotions. We can address them by deliberating with our spirit, revising our self-talk and mental images, and thereby removing what our spirit is responding to.
For example, we can address mind-based fear by telling our spirit that its fear is a response to our own mind rather than our in-the-world experience. We can then change our self-talk and mental images to shift our spirit to a neutral or emotionally pleasurable response like contentment.
We also do well to express our experienced-based emotions. We can express our experience-based emotions in two ways: directly and indirectly. Directly expressing our experience-based emotion is the better choice when doing so does not increase our risk of being harmed.
For example, when we can express our anger directly toward the one who wronged us at work, without putting ourself at risk of additional harm, we do well. However, when directly expressing our anger toward the one who wronged us puts us at risk of additional mistreatment, indirectly expressing our anger is the wiser choice.
We can express our anger and other emotions indirectly in a variety of helpful ways: consciously and deliberately choosing to forgive the offender, talking it out with someone we trust, journaling, writing a letter to the offender but not delivering it, and physical exercise are some examples of indirect emotional expression.
