Emotional Growth Starts With Facing These 16 Hard Truths, According To Experts
Real emotional growth begins when you stop avoiding these truths.
Bave Pictures | Canva Feeling pain and discomfort is a part of life. Irrespective of how much we want to avoid them, these uncomfortable feelings sit comfortably inside us. Whether it’s embarrassment, hopelessness, guilt, sorrow, regret, anxiety, anger, fear, or any other painful emotion, dealing with uncomfortable feelings is crucial.
Running away from what you feel will simply hold you back and prevent you from experiencing life as it is. Get comfortable with discomfort. Dealing with discomfort is an art. Research supports that most of us have not been taught to deal with such emotions effectively. Hence, we have mastered the art of avoiding uncomfortable and painful feelings without realizing that these emotions can help us live a better life.
However, dealing with uncomfortable feelings is easy to learn. Once you know how to deal with your emotions, you will be able to improve yourself and create a better life for yourself. If you want to be healthy, successful, and happy, you'd better start facing your emotions instead of avoiding them. Face what you are afraid of. It’s going to be hard, but it’s doable.
Emotional growth starts with facing these hard truths, according to experts:
1. Being alone with yourself
There is a subtle difference between loneliness and solitude. When you find peace and comfort in being away from society and in the company of your own self, solitude can be the most liberating experience.
You can truly be yourself without playing any roles for anyone else. By being self-aware, you can rediscover and explore who you are.
2. Admitting your mistakes
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To err is human, and to forgive is divine. We all make mistakes. We all screw up at times. We can’t be right all the time. We can’t be perfect all the time. We are not supposed to.
That’s how we learn. Knowing when you are wrong and admitting your mistakes can be hard, but it allows us to see our faults and enables us to better ourselves. You are allowed to make mistakes, as long as you don’t make the same ones repeatedly.
3. Not knowing what you want
It’s okay not to have a long-term plan. It’s okay not to know exactly where you will be a few years down the line. The entire concept of planning out your future is simply an illusion. It may offer you some comfort to think about where you will be, but it’s not the truth.
None of us can fully guarantee that life will happen exactly the way we planned it. So, it’s better to take one day at a time without getting attached to a destination.
4. Not doing anything
"Our minds are constantly overrun with information in today's age. This is why boredom can be a haven in a way. It allows our brains to take a step back and turn off for a bit, which is one of the best ways to take care of our mental health."
—Brittney Lindstrom, Professional Counselor
Sometimes, doing nothing can mean doing a lot. In this modern world, we are programmed to multitask, which may be helpful at times.
However, when you do nothing, you will find out how truly gratifying life can be. Put down your smartphone, drink some coffee, sit on your couch, relax, and just breathe in some fresh air.
5. Getting stressed for no reason
We all get anxious and worried for no apparent reason, most of the time. These feelings often stem from our inability to understand a particular situation or our inability to cope with the uncertainty of a circumstance.
However, allowing yourself to feel anxious and tense can allow these feelings to pass, despite how uncomfortable you might feel. Your therapist might disagree on this one, but distracting yourself from your true feelings doesn’t work all the time.
6. Accepting criticism
"View criticism with curiosity rather than reacting to it. Do not fall for the attractive lure of believing the opinions others have of you. When you can genuinely internalize this, you are immune to the most common fear."
—Alex Mathers, Life Coach
Getting criticized by others hurts, and it can even make us defensive. But it's important to take criticism without defending yourself or avoiding it. Critical feedback can help you focus on your weaknesses that you never thought existed. However, it can be easier said than done.
So whenever you are being criticized, be conscious of how you accept and react to the feedback and what you wish to do about it. Understand the criticism with an open mind and think if it can add any value to your life.
7. Judging ourselves like how we judge others
The way we judge people is often a projection of how we judge ourselves. These judgments are a result of our experiences and wounds.
However, the way you judge someone reveals what hurts you the most and what you are unable to heal. What you believe others should heal in themselves is often the thing that you need to heal in yourself. This is perhaps one of the hardest aspects of dealing with uncomfortable feelings.
8. Accepting the coexistence of multiple truths
"This makes way for an essential Buddhist principle: to abolish binary thinking. We sense the world objectively. However, we perceive it subjectively. Whatever opinions and beliefs we embody result from our individual experiences in life. Truth, then, does not exist. Only perspectives do."
—Akshad Singi, Physician
Different variations of truths exist in the same reality. No, I am not talking about multiple realities here. But, the fact is that what you believe to be the truth and what someone else may believe to be true, even though it may contradict your belief of the truth, may both coexist and be true at the same time.
This is one of life’s greatest paradoxes. Accepting the existence of conflicting ideas and realizing both can be true will enable you to open yourself to different perspectives.
9. Respecting your judgments
We all cope with different situations in our way. Sometimes we are proud of them, sometimes we feel ashamed. But, we all do what we feel is the best course of action at the time to survive.
Granted, our judgment might have been clouded at the time due to the weight of the situation, but we did survive. Didn’t we?
So, instead of criticizing and punishing yourself for what you did to survive, acknowledge the fact that you went through the challenges of life and endured. Once you learn to honor your judgments, you can figure out how to make things better.
10. Doubt means don’t
"We’re all going through doubts, no matter how seemingly together we seem — please trust me on this. Doubt isn’t reserved for a select few weirdos. A sense of doubt is a normal human response to existence and our growth within that reality."
—Alex Mathers, Life Coach
If you are indecisive about something more than you should be, then you need to realize that it is a decision. You know that the answer is a hard no if you need to think too much about making a decision.
If something is meant to happen, it will happen naturally. You don’t need to rack your brain to make a simple decision.
11. Allowing yourself to be angry
We are often the most honest when we are angry. Although we might say the meanest of things, these are things that have been bottled inside of us for too long, things we believe, things we feel, things we feel passionate about, and things we want to change in our lives.
By allowing yourself to feel anger, you will enable your deepest thoughts and emotions to come out in a more constructive way. Anger becomes destructive only when we suppress it for a long period.
12. It’s okay to feel ashamed
"People often avoid being themselves publicly because they believe they have something shameful to hide. If you can change what you don’t like, do it. If not, own it. Insecurities dissolve the moment you own them."
—Alex Mathers, Life Coach
When we feel we have done something we are not supposed to, something that goes out of character, we often feel shame. Feeling ashamed can help us get on the proper track and right our wrongs. As long as you don’t engage in self-punishment too much, shame can help us become better people and create the life we want.
13. Doubting ourselves
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There are days we all feel unsure about ourselves and who we truly are. This feeling can intensify when we face challenges and hardships, as we tend to doubt ourselves and our abilities more.
Although it may seem like you are lacking confidence and your self-esteem is taking a hit, in reality, you are simply becoming a more mature person. It is only by facing challenges, we undergo necessary self-improvement and grow as an individual.
The person you were until now is changing before your eyes and evolving into someone who is complete and better able to deal with life. This can be a very uncomfortable feeling for all of us, but a necessary one.
14. Enjoy the process, don’t rush to the finish line
If you have to love someone, love them for who they are. Don’t love them because you want to be in a relationship with them. Then, you will experience true, unconditional love.
There are many things in life that you can do just for the sake of enjoying them, for enjoying the process, and not for reaching the destination. Gain mastery over the process. Then, you will reach the destination sooner than you think.
15. Realizing that only you are responsible for your happiness
We often tend to rely on our family and our life partners for our happiness. Most of us have this innate belief that they are responsible for making us happy and taking care of us, just as we are taking care of them and making them happy.
But the truth is, we are all responsible for our happiness. In a relationship, we come together to share our happiness, not to make each other happy.
That’s not how a relationship works. Only you and you alone are responsible for your life and how you feel about it.
This can be very emotionally daunting, as it puts pressure directly on us. But, this can also be extremely liberating, as we realize we have complete control over how we feel without the need for relying on someone else to make us feel better.
16. Breathe and live
"Breathe in a consciously connected pattern so you can rewire your nervous system to run at a slower pace and increase your brain focus and alertness. This helps to eliminate distractions, decrease impulsiveness (think social media scrolling), and give us back tons of time as we are in a far more productive state."
—Jessica Brace, Life Coach
Breath is life. We feel, experience, and live through our breaths. It is only when you take easy and deep breaths, you will be able to know what you truly feel inside without being distracted.
There is a reason why meditation has become a worldwide phenomenon today. It allows you to connect with your true self.
When we breathe fully and deeply, we can experience our deepest thoughts and uncomfortable feelings. This allows us to clear the basement and face whatever life throws at us as stronger and more mature people.
Step out of your comfort zone. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. The best things in life are often lined up for you right outside your comfort zone.
So, take a step outside and face the feelings you usually avoid. Decide that you want to feel uncomfortable. Choose to feel discomfort and take certain risks. Facing your emotions and dealing with uncomfortable feelings will make you a better person and make your life a lot better. Some risks are worth taking.
Theo Harrison is an artist, blogger, writer, and former contributor to The Mind's Journal who writes primarily about mental health, pop culture, and relationships.
