How to Cope with Our Emotional Inconsistencies

We all have days when we feel a bit strange, out of sorts and rather contradictory. These are moments when we need the warmth of a hug, and the feeling of warm skin that shows us affection and closeness. However, almost at the same time, we feel like escaping to a private spot where no one can see us, and where we can think in the stillness, with loneliness as our only companion. Sometimes it’s difficult to know how to cope with our emotional inconsistencies.

What is happening to us? Is anything wrong with us if we experience this type of situation or emotional condition on more than one occasion? The answer is no. You don’t have to consider these completely normal isolated moments in our lives as a sign of illness. The only problem would be if this were to become chronic.

What is more, it should be noted that this type of emotional contradiction arises on multiple occasions and for the many different reasons. At times, they are due to small hormonal fluctuations or even to a simple change of season, where the potential of serotonin adhesion (a neurotransmitter in our brain) decreases and, as a result, we experience small alterations in our mood.

However, one of the most common origins is in our own surroundings and in the way we deal with and face many everyday situations. This is because the world and human relationships are also very contradictory, chaotic and even capricious. There are mornings when we get up filled with hope, but when evening comes something happens that disappoints us and the solid things in our lives collapse one after the other.
How can we deal better with these disharmonies and ups and downs that attack us from within and without? Read on and find out more…

Learning to live with contradiction

We would all like to live in a world of certainties. Of definite feelings, precise logic and no ambiguity. However, we must accept that the world, our society and even ourselves, with our complex emotional world, are all contradictory and changing. Almost unintentionally, we must make great efforts to find harmony in the midst of chaos, because that is how we mature and grow. That is how we learn how to slowly self-regulate, day by day, and find the perfect balance.

We need to learn to accept all these types of contradictions, both the external ones and our own. There will be days when everything will turn out perfectly and there will be times when everything seems to go wrong and where hope is nowhere to be found. We will feel lonely, hurt and even filled with anger with everything going on around us, but at the same time needing to feel close to someone for a hug and some cheering up.

We have to be able to coexist with both complexity and uncertainty. If we accept that nothing is completely certain, that life goes in cycles, that relationships change and even that we also change in our needs and priorities, then we will be able to break the spell of restlessness. If we become obsessed with things always having to last for ever then we will suffer as a result. Those who don’t accept change, loss or even the challenges of life, will stop growing as people.

Those days when I need a hug as much as being alone

We must admit, there is no worse feeling than being angry with the world, but at the same time needing the simplest, purest and most intimate love. To experience this sensation, as strange as it may seem, is something completely normal –  a reality that we will live through on numerous occasions.

Igor Grossmann, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Waterloo, Canada, explains that these instances of emotional inconsistency can actually be very productive. They happen for a reason: they can help us to see a certain situation from many different perspectives. However, if we do not manage these conflicting emotions properly and allow them to become a constant feature in our lives, we run the risk of developing depression.
Let us learn how to analyze these emotions to get the best out of them. Here’s how…

Learning to manage our emotional inconsistencies

The first step in unravelling our little ball of emotional chaos is to start to accept. It’s important to point out that accepting doesn’t mean surrendering to suffering. It is recognizing what is happening to us in a realistic, sincere, courageous and sensitive way.

• Put all the things that are upsetting you under the microscope of your conscience. “I feel angry because I’ve been let down”, “I feel afraid because I don’t know which direction to take”, “I wish that such and such a person understood what is happening to me” …
• The second step has to do with the need for productive and effective responses. To do this, we must invest some courage, a lot of ingenuity and plenty of good will into the whole process. “If I want such and such a person to understand what it happening to me then I must tell them.” “If I have been let down, if I have been hurt, then I must turn the page and meet new people and have a change of scene”
• The last step in this strategy of emotional self-management is perhaps the most important. We are talking about the need to control all those beliefs that limit us in some way, and all our intrusive thoughts, negative obsessions, and the psychological artillery that we destroy ourselves with.

Knowing, controlling and managing all our emotions is a weapon of power and well-being. To do this is to find inner harmony in the contradictory world we live in, and to find a balance in those times when everything is coming at us and our emotions are frayed.

We all deserve a hug from time to time, a hug that protects us. But, above all, we have an obligation to look after ourselves as prized beings, as treasures of our own universes.