Emotional Burden

Experiencing Multiple Emotions At Once

There are times when you experience multiple powerful emotions at once, and you can’t seem to identify the reason why; an emotional burden at its finest. While not particularly pleasant, there are learning points that can be abstracted after you weather the storm. But sometimes the learning points can become buried in the rubble, if the storm is not handled properly.

An emotional burden can happen for no apparent reason. We are usually so bombarded with stressful factors, unpredictable outcomes and even annoying relationships, that one small trigger can unleash hell. When this happens, you suddenly may experience anger, sadness, emptiness, uncertainty, dysphoria, but even moments of happiness and clarity.

You read it right: dysphoria and happiness in the same bag. How is that even possible is what you’re probably thinking. The reasoning behind this phenomenon is that you’re probably so stressed from unresolved mental conflicts, that your negative emotions linger on in situations that normally make you happy.

Normally, negative emotions should be processed fairly quickly, leading to a seamless recovery. But when they continue to linger on, you may not always be aware of their presence, until another trigger comes along, intensifying them more than usual. Or you could be confronted with good news, and rather than a nice wave of clear happiness, it becomes mixed with a feeling of displeasure.

An emotional burden must be handled with ease, because you don’t want to bury yourself even deeper. These situations are often distracting from your work and relationships, attempting to set you off course; they have the potential to do so! The way you handle them is with gentle and careful processing.

Don’t fight the emotional burden. Rather, recognize that the negative emotions are there and accept their presence. View the emotional burden as an injury: you cannot heal the injury overnight; it takes time for it to heal properly. The same applies with your emotional burden: give it time to swirl in your consciousness before it slowly dissipates.

Are you Ready? (This is Defeating Stigma Mindfully)