We all cope with our emotions in different ways. But why do we choose to cope with our emotions the way we do? Do we want to escape them? Do we fear the truth that can be brought up and do we fear facing it? What about having to embrace our vulnerability and feel what we have been bottling up? With all the different ways that we cope with our emotions, there are always the ones that lead to self-sabotage and those that benefit us and help us face what we don’t want to.
For instance, this past week, I realized I have been avoiding a lot of things that weren't exactly present physically, but more so at a distance and in my mind. My go-to coping mechanism is eating - eating whenever I feel any type of emotion. However, when this coping mechanism is brought up to the surface once again, it is when I am not wanting to face something in particular; and that is what I discovered this week. I started looking into what it means to go towards food as a way to look for comfort. And one thing that struck my attention was the question: What is the relationship of your coping mechanism with a memory you have? What does the feeling you get or what memory is brought up when you use that coping mechanism? I thought it was quite a revelation because it made me realize that I had not faced this self-sabotaging coping mechanism in the way I thought, and it was still haunting me. I can’t say for sure if I am cured, but I can say that it helped me become aware of something that I was bottling up for so long.
I think the moment we decide to sit down and face the truth, which is expressed through our emotions (or the bottled-up ones), can be a sense of relief. And even if we all have different ways of coping with different situations in life, I feel like there is one that may not be the healthiest that we tend to go to when we need instant comfort. Sometimes it may be hard to even realize that we have this coping mechanism, but once we do, we can work with it. I feel like there is a lot that we have yet to discover about ourselves, that are layers that haven’t been peeled off yet. The layers that we use to cover up our past, who we are or even how we truly feel. So, I invite you to peel off those layers, bit by bit, and start to discover more about yourself.
Z.
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