One of the difficulties we face when exploring our emotional process is the automatic reaction: not allowing the emotion to grow and unfold, to be lived from beginning to end - and thereby give yourself a chance to understand what action it leads to and what meaning lies behind it. The main mistake here is to immediately assign a familiar, already known meaning and nip the feeling in the bud, especially if we are faced with so-called negative feelings - difficult, unpleasant, socially disapproved: anger, shame, guilt, pain, anxiety... But the fact is that meaning can only be found when the feeling is sufficiently obvious, when we allow it to be. When we consciously or unconsciously catch the beginning of a difficult emotion, we often say to ourselves: “This is unpleasant, I don’t want to deal with it,” and then we suppress the feeling at the very beginning, not allowing ourselves to realize what it is about, what it signals, what it invites. More precisely, based on past experience, we seem to know in advance where it leads and what it invites, and we don’t want to deal with it. This is what our parents once did to us, and then we learned to do it ourselves - in dangerous situations, in places , when there was not enough support: then it was really better to stifle emotions, not to feel, to disconnect from experiences... In the beds, weeds are often disguised as useful crops, and at the very beginning, when the sprouts have just made their way to the light from under the ground, when they are tiny , it can be difficult to distinguish where the radish we need is and where the weed that looks like it is. And now we often “weed out” feelings, mistaking them at the first supposedly recognized tops for weedy, useless and even harmful. And if this works successfully with weeds (although there is always a risk of mixing it up and weeding out a crop instead of a weed), then with feelings it does not, because they are all useful. Even if it’s hard to believe it, because they seem inadequate. Yes, they really are sometimes like that - inadequate to this current situation, when we realize: my anger is too off the charts for this irritant - but even this does not mean that it is necessary tear it out of your soul. This means that it needs to be investigated: why does it still arise over and over again? what is important behind it? What scenario is my psyche trying to replay, change? what fruits do I want to get?.. Other articles on the topic: Too fast. How we deal with feelings "Negative" feelings Inappropriate reactions?