The things you feel inside are undeniably there, arising and falling away without your will. The last time you broke a mug, at what point did you choose to feel frustration? Did you thumb through an emotional catalog to select an appropriate mental state in that moment, or did frustration blast into your perception like a gust of wind?

We’re typically unable to pick the emotion we feel in any given moment, but understanding what emotions are (natural and inevitable fluctuations of our mental state based on circumstance and biology), can allow us to watch them come and go without being unwillingly overtaken by them.

EVOLUTIONARY TRAITS

Emotions are instinctual. Feelings of Anger, frustration, joy, and sadness arise within us without our conscious thought being involved. Instead of creating them, we notice them (and often become overtaken by them). Emotions are traits of evolution. There’s a reason that eating and sex are two of the most desirable and pleasurable things a human can feel, they benefited the survival and procreation of our species.

Feel jealousy because your partner talked to someone in a completely normal way?
That’s an evolutionary instinct. For a long stretch of human history, that jealousy was beneficial to the procreation of our species. Jealousy causes us to act in a way that, in the past, would have solidified our relationship to our potential mate. It would either cause us to insult/injure the subject of our jealousy (making them a less viable mating candidate in our partners eyes), or to punish or control our potential mate (with a raised voice, or more) so they “learn to stay with us.”

When we find ourselves acting out when emotions like jealousy arise, we’re being controlled by our evolutionary instincts even though they no longer benefit us. While some of these traits keep us alive, and some have become completely neutral, others immediately steer us down paths that are wildly destructive to our happiness.

“I SHOULDN’T BE FEELING THIS”

When we feel carried away by a particularly sour mindset, it’s because we’ve latched onto whatever negative emotional cloud drifted into the open sky of our minds. When our favorite mug hits the ground, it shatters us into anger. We find ourselves carried away by the emotion that arose without even having recognized the fact that it was arising in the first place. It snatches us up, and drags us with it. As we’re pulled along in it’s bitter clutch, our minds tends to instinctively replay the situation that caused the anger to appear.

We remind ourselves that we deserve to feel this,
and even find a twisted notion of pleasure in this validation.

I believe this comforting enjoyment we feel when we mentally justify our anger is born from the fact that the emotion of anger is stigmatized. As children, when it overtakes us, we’re punished. In our adult interactions, our own anger tends to summon the anger of our interlocutors until, in some sort of metaphorical proxy war, our angers decimate the landscape of our interaction to rubble.

It’s rarely explained to us that anger is a natural thing to feel.
In fact it’s perfectly okay to feel it.
Expected even.

Whatever collective authority raised us failed to explain the difference between noticing an emotion, and being overtaken by it. The difference between noticing the sensation of anger whispering inside you, and letting that anger scream its way into your interactions. They never told us that we only get to choose how we react to our emotions, and not which ones appear in the first place. This lack of awareness about the inevitability of negative emotions, has led humanity to find itself stuck in a sort of anger justification loop. The bad trip of day to day life.

This stigma that surrounds “negative” emotions like anger, jealousy, grief, and others has caused us to feel shame when they arise.

“I shouldn’t be feeling this!”
“I thought I was stronger than this.”
“Why am I such an angry person?”

Our mental replaying of the events leading to the “negative” emotion is a defense mechanism against this shame. To counter thoughts of “I shouldn’t be feeling this” and the ego-insulting sensation of shame that comes with it, we remind ourselves that we DESERVE to feel angry. We justify that feeling by mentally convincing ourselves that we were wronged in some way. “That asshole shouldn’t have cut me off, how dangerous! Of course I should be upset, he nearly killed me!”

Convincing ourselves that we’re justified in feeling anger helps us feel less shame because it makes us believe that, given our current circumstance, we SHOULD be angry. The truth is that we should be using a similar mechanism that has a healthier result. We should be thinking that, in our current circumstance, we didn’t even have a choice. Given your circumstance (including the “asshole” cutting you off, how much you slept last night, your current hormone levels, etc), anger was bound to arise. In this way, it isn’t about what you deserve to feel, it’s about what you couldn’t help but feel.

The only choice you have is whether or not
you latch onto the feeling that’s presented to you.

The truth is that the original defense mechanism isn’t only inaccurate, but it’s detrimental. Instead of accepting the sensation of anger and deciding how to respond to it, it leaves us shamefully ruminating on the reasons we deserve to feel it. We replay the situation, justify the anger, and then act on it, convinced that we deserve to. This is what it means to latch on to an emotion. Detaching from it means to understand that it’s nothing more than a feeling that’s unwillingly arising in the open sky of your mind, and then deciding whether or not you let it carry you away. “Oh, frustration is arising again, let’s just let it go.”

The inevitability of emotions alone should dull the splinter of stigma that causes us shame. Do you feel shame when the moon rises? When the flower blooms?

FOCUS ON THE SKY, NOT THE BALLOON

Imagine a new way of interacting with your emotions in which, instead of being overtaken and blinded by them, you notice and calmly react to their arising. Replacing an angry mindset with a calm mindset about anger.

I’ve spent a large portion of my life being wildly aware of my emotions, but still being controlled by them. When I felt jealousy in my earlier relationships (this was one of the emotions I struggled with the most), I’d be equally met with an outward, seemingly unstoppable display of it, and an inward thought of “Damn, this is completely ruling me.” I used to view this combination as a failure, but I now know that the first step towards acting more peacefully while noticing “negative” emotions arise, is being able to notice them in the first place. I’ve found that there are typically three stones we spend some portion of our life standing on as we move towards a more peaceful relationship with our emotions.

1. The emotions that arise within you completely dominate your actions without your awareness of it.

2. You begin to notice how and when emotions arise within you, but you still can’t seem to free yourself from their demands.

3. You, being fully aware of the inevitability of negative emotional states, fell less attached to them when the arise. This allows you to react to them with in a way that doesn’t rob you or those around you the peace that was present before they arose.

You’re either run by your emotions without being aware of it, run by them while being aware of it, or you’re able to notice your emotions arising without being overtaken by them.

My relationship with Katch (my lovely partner) tends to act as a field test for different ways of interacting with the world. The mere fact that we live in a van together and spend almost all of our time within winking distance of each other seems to turn the ground of our interactions into a study of what does and doesn’t create peace in a relationship. As we both move forward on this weird treadmill of existence, we find ourselves learning about what it means to be human, the transience of our emotional states, and how to use these new insights to communicate in a healthier way.

Katch and I often find ourselves saying things like this to each other:
“Hey, I’m feeling frustration, but I’m good!”

This is essentially a statement of:
“A negative emotion is arising within my mind based on these current circumstances and I want to let you know that it’s there, but I’m not latching onto it. Just trying to let it pass, and to be happy while it does.”

This type of interaction with our emotions, can lead to a healthier interaction with ourselves and those around us.

Saying something like, “I’m feeling frustration, but I’m good!” helps me individually by loosening the grip that the emotion has on me, and helps my relationship with Katch by being honest about what I’m feeling without acting out. Aside from freeing Katch from the spears of my emotions, sharing what’s happening in my head also frees her from worrying about my emotional state. If I seem down but address it like this, Katch will now know why, and that I still have a positive mindset as that particular emotion passes through. If you’ve ever sat with a partner who’s caught up in a negative emotion, you may understand how relieving it would be to know that they’re not suffering through it.

When you see a balloon of anger float into the open sky of your mind, focus on the sky instead of tying yourself to the balloon.

EDUCATION & MEDITATION

Understanding the inevitability of our ever-changing emotional landscape is a deceptively involved task, and I’d almost consider myself inconsiderate to leave you without any tangible steps forward. Two things that have genuinely helped me understand and grasp concept of emotional inevitability (and the ability to free yourself from their often destructive clutches) are education and meditation.

Katch and I often talk about the difference between understanding something conceptually, and fully grasping the same idea. Sure, we all understand that everyone we love will die, but do we grasp it? I’d argue that most of us don’t because we’d likely lead completely different lives if we did.

To understand something conceptually is to have knowledge in your head that you can call back to when you need to. Grasping something is not needing to call back to that knowledge, because the truth of the concept is woven within you. It’s the difference between memorizing the multiplication table, and knowing how to multiply. Reading books about the mind, emotions, evolution and philosophy have helped me understand the complicated workings behind our emotional states while meditation has helped me experience them directly, allowing me to find peace in their transience.

Education has helped me understand, meditation has helped me grasp.

Below are a few of the books that have lent me some insight into my mind, along with a couple of meditation apps for anyone hoping to dive into exploring their own.

BOOKS

WAKING UP – Sam Harris (Neuroscientist and Philosopher)
Tackling the largely untethered-to-reality idea of spirituality, from a scientific standpoint.

INCOGNITO – David Eagleman (Neuroscientist)
My subconscious mind led me to buy this book, read it (most of it), and share about it here. This book helped me understand that.

WHY BUDDHISM IS TRUE – Robert Wright (Psychology Professor at Penn, etc.)
An admittedly off putting title to anyone who doesn’t believe in Buddhism’s more metaphysical claims about Karma, Reincarnation, etc., but the title isn’t referring to those beliefs (in fact, that’s largely addressed). Instead, the title refers to it’s more philosophical and practical applications that can lead to a life of equanimity.

THE MORAL ANIMAL – Robert Wright (Psychology Professor at Penn, etc.)
I haven’t read this one yet (currently in the middle of the book above) but this is next on my list as I’m really enjoying Robert’s writing. A book about the science of evolutionary psychology.

TAO TE CHING – Lao Tzu (Ancient Chinese Philosopher)
Unrelated to the content of this article, but something I wanted to include anyways. A philosophical text written in the 4th century BC that’s as littered with insight into the human condition, as my copy’s pages are littered with my notes.

MEDITATION APPS

In a previous article (You Are What You Are & You Feel What You Feel), I talked about how stigma’s can cloud our perception of things. Meditation is a perfect example of a simple concept that’s become laced with complicating stigma over the years. Regardless of what you’ve been conditioned to believe about meditation (it’s for hippies, it’s evil, it’s stupid, it’s a fad, it’s confusing, etc.), let’s look at what it actually is. Meditation is the simple practice of sitting down for about 10 minutes a day, with the intention of developing a calmer mind. While there’s obviously a bit more to it, you can rest assured that you don’t need to adopt any particular belief system, you don’t need to become a monk, and you don’t need to join a cult to do it.

HEADSPACE
A great app for those who have no familiarity with meditation, philosophy, emotional awareness, etc. The app includes a slew of guided meditations, lessons, animations, and support. If you’re looking for something a bit more basic, and easy to dive into, this might be it.

WAKING UP
This meditation app is a bit more dense in its subject matter, but I find its depth to be crucial to my understanding of the mind. If you’re a bit more familiar with concepts of the self, free will, and other more philosophically challenging concepts, you may find yourself at home here. This app includes guided meditations and lessons that will help your practice.

UNTIE YOURSELF

I genuinely hope that realizing that your emotions are largely outside of your control lessens your shame and embarrassment about them. They arise in every human who has walked the planet, and nobody decides which one arises when. Our only choice (unless we’re speaking strictly deterministically, which maybe I’ll write about another time), is how we react to them when they do arise. The first step is noticing that they’re arising without your will, and the second is to untie yourself from them as they float through the open sky of your mind.

LET THEM COME, LET THEM PASS.

ENJOY YOURSELF WHILE THEY DO.

Thanks for reading!

*Also, disclaimer:
I’m not a professional. I’ve never formally studied psychology, or whatever else might lend me any sort of credibility here. I just enjoy reading about, writing about, and meditating on the human experience and the things that unify us. Mainly, our seemingly universal goal of finding some sort of enjoyment in life.

The post NOTICE YOUR LACK OF CONTROL : Emotions & Attachment appeared first on Ben Sasso.

Hi, my name is Ben. I’m into light choking, and the last time I felt sad I had no idea why.

Human interaction often feels like a game of filtering our thoughts. The same deep personal truths that we might reveal to a close friend or partner, we keep hidden from a casual acquaintance.

Every conversation we have seems to begin with, and be punctuated by tiny internal decisions about where our interlocutor falls on this sliding scale of honesty. The scale that determines which personal truths we reveal, and which we conceal. Surely there are even a few so potentially controversial that they’ve never even been considered eligible for release. Some so seemingly threatening to our identity that they live in chains on their native side of the this internal filter.

In most conversations, our mind seems to instinctually reduce everything we share into its least controversial form. The swirling oceans of complexity within each of our minds merely trickles into our interactions, drop by carefully evaluated drop. Share too much, and we risk permanent damage to the identity we’re determined maintain. A private truth spoken becomes a public truth, so here we all are concealing our honest selves for the sake of protecting that glowing facade. A fig leaf to cover the “flaws” of our humanity.

Our tendency to conceal personal truths about who we are and what we feel is one of humanity’s most self-oppressive habits. At the very least, it’s been one of mine. By doing so, we limit the richness of our relationships, and hinder our ability to live a life unburdened. We mold our inherent individuality into a pre-approved a template of a person, building a cage around what was once free.

For the sake of organization in this article, I’ll break down our personal truths into two categories:

TRUTHS ABOUT WHO WE ARE
These are the traits we’ve inherited from Mama Nature and/or our upbringing.
Sexual orientation. Body type. Mental Illness. Fetishes. Etc.

TRUTHS ABOUT WHAT WE FEEL
These are the temporary, constantly fluctuating emotional strings that tug at the stability of our mind.
Anger. Jealousy. Joy. Fear. Etc.

TRUTHS ABOUT WHO WE ARE

There are some things about me that are just flat out fact; my race (eggshell white), size (5’8), the thickness of my eyebrows (Italian). Some of our truths live right on the surface. Information about us that anyone with eyes can gleam. However, there are truths that, while just as inherently factual, are concealable; sexual orientation, current religious beliefs (or lack of them), mental illness. Things you can hide from a crowd.

Thanks to that filter through which we all interact, we’re able to keep certain truths about ourselves safely tucked away when we deem them potentially detrimental to the conversation we’re in or to the identity we aspire to maintain.

I consider the fact most that of us (myself absolutely included) actively hide undeniable truths about who we are, to be one of the most potent poisons to our happiness. Open & free sounds cliche, but damn. It sounds pretty great too.

Alright, time for some reader participation. Take a minute to dig into your mind to find an inherent, undeniable truth about who you are that you’ve decided (consciously or not) to keep hidden. Maybe your sexual orientation, or a fetish you’ve been embarrassed to admit. Maybe a political belief, or even something as simple as your love for a that one movie that everyone seems to hate. Once you’ve unearthed one, read on.

The instinct to hide that truth about yourself is often a finger pointing to one of two other truths:

1. You’ve bought into whatever stigma deemed this truth immoral or embarrassing.
2. You fear that exposing your secret will cause others to think less of you.
There’s value in examining this.

*Also, from an evolutionary standpoint, the reason we feel the need to keep certain things hidden from the group is because in our past it benefited us to fit in. For long stretches of our evolutionary timeline, our species was safest in large groups. To avoid banishment, we evolved to keep the things we thought might upset the group quietly concealed within our minds. Our desire for acceptance is an evolved trait, and knowing that can help take some of the sting out of the struggle we feel about it. (I’m convinced that this was a necessary tangent, at least to introduce this idea to anyone who might want to dig in later.)

In hopes of beginning to convince you that this truth you’ve kept hidden doesn’t deserve the internal banishment you’ve sentenced it to, consider these questions:

Is my truth a natural result of being a human?

If you are in fact human the answer to that is technically always yes, but taking the time to come to this decision on your own may help you fully grasp the importance of that.

Would acting on my truth harm anyone directly?

“Directly” is an important word to consider here.
Some examples of actions that would cause direct harm would be murder, a punch, or an insult. An instance in which you are the cause of another’s suffering, without anything else being involved.

While it’s completely valid to think “If my religious mother knew I was gay, she’d be devastated,” this would be an example of indirect harm, not direct harm. If your mother didn’t buy into the stigma or religious conditioning that convinces many that homosexuality is immoral, would your homosexuality harm her? No.
In cases like this, it’s merely the stigma that harms, not the truth itself.

In fact, whether the truth is made public, or repressed, the stigma harms.

If made public, it would harm those who believe the stigma by causing them to feel “upset” when exposed to it.
If repressed, it harms the individual repressing it by causing the emotional turmoil of a life restricted. A half life.

In this way, the harm comes from the stigma and those who perpetuate it, not the one who acts on their personal truth.
Furthermore, the harm is inflicted on both the ones who’ve come to believe the stigma (by causing them mental duress that would be absent had they never have been exposed to the stigma), and on those who repress their truth because of it.

If acting on your personal truth doesn’t harm anyone directly, it’s not worth repressing.

In the rare cases in which acting on your truth would cause direct harm, say you have frequent urges to injure those around you, there’s an obvious value in not acting on those feelings. However, this doesn’t mean the truth should be concealed. In fact, repressing it could cause it to fight it’s way out (which we’ll talk about in the Truths About How We Feel section), and opening up about your urges to close friends and a therapist could help you work through the difficulty of having to repress those urges.

Does your personal truth make you feel guilt, or shame?

Another important distinction, and one that can help you determine the inherent “it’s really okay”-ness of whatever personal truth you’re struggling to share, is the distinction between guilt, and shame.

Guilt is a feeling of regret. It’s a feeling that typically arises while ruminating about a situation in which you acted poorly, when you know you could have acted in a kinder, or more responsible manner. Murdered someone? Here’s some guilt for you. Guilt grips you firmly and says “You fucked up. You made a huge mistake.”

Shame, on the other hand, is a feeling of disgust towards something that is naturally, and undeniably true about ourselves. When we’ve been conditioned to believe that an inherent truth about who we are is actually a flaw, we feel shame. Since we aren’t able to change the truth we feel shameful of, we hide it from others, or even try to convince ourselves of it’s absence. We repress. Sometimes, we even do this with full knowledge of how wildly freeing it would feel to release it.

A major difference between guilt and shame is that guilt is a feeling we could potentially prevent by choosing to act morally right in every situation (unless we’re talking about this from a deterministic perspective, which we’ll put aside for today). Shame is, arguably, unavoidable as it’s often a result of something natural within us (which we have no control over), conflicting with what our culture deems acceptable (which, mostly, we have no control over).

*Also, a technical note I feel obliged to mention for the sake of clarity: You can, and probably often feel shame for immoral actions. This is essentially guilt turning into shame, and still allows shame to hold the same definition as you’re now also feeling it for something you can no longer change, your past actions.

Does repressing my truth limit my happiness?

I’d have to say yes, and I’m happy to chat with anyone who wants to counter this.
If something is occurring naturally within you and you spend effort repressing it, that struggle alone limits your happiness.

The one caveat I’d add here is that there’s absolutely a potential of hardship when being honest about who you are (the example of the religious mother’s distaste for homosexuality would fit), but the repression itself is already causing you struggle, and I believe that working through potential hardship is a worthwhile endeavor. If this is the obstacle keeping your truth hidden inside, I’d highly suggest speaking with a therapist who may be able to walk through that maze.

After considering these questions, if you determine that whatever you’ve been concealing is just a natural human thing (it is), that it wouldn’t harm anyone directly, that it makes you feel shame as opposed to guilt, and that it’s limiting your happiness, the next step should be fairly clear: Accept, embrace, and be honest about the truth you’ve been struggling against.

ACCEPT AND EMBRACE THE TRUTHS ABOUT WHO YOU ARE

Truth is truth. It’s here, and hiding it, disguising it, or denying it doesn’t make it any less true. You might be able to convince everyone that you’re a square but that doesn’t make you any less of a circle.

I deeply believe in the importance of being honest about who you are and what you’re feeling. There’s value in that. For you, and for the culture you live in. By hiding whatever truth a stigma caused you to repress, you strengthen and perpetuate the stigma that’s oppressing you. Your conviction to hide your truth convinces others that it’s a shameful truth worth hiding.

LGBTQ rights have come a long way. Sure, it feels almost irreverent to say that considering the gulf our society still needs to cross on the issue, but the truth is that things are creeping forward. One of the most well known gay characters on a TV show was Will of Will & Grace. When the show first aired in 1998, it was a rarity. The media rarely portrayed homosexuals as normal people, in normal relationships, doing normal people things. Instead, they were portrayed as caricatures (at best), or mentally sick (at worst). Projecting a relatively unbiased homosexual character into living rooms across the United States began to normalize the LGBTQ community. It took something mysterious and taboo, and put a relatively honest version of it in front of viewers. Thanks to a continual trickle of networks beginning to carry shows with LGBTQ characters, we now have countless shows that portray a practical smorgasbord of the LGBTQ community, (Orange is the New Black, Rupaul’s Drag Race, and The Ellen Show to name a few), contributing to a culture that’s less under the control of the stigma against that community.

Since stigmas tend to not be based in truth,
familiarity with the actual truth degrades the stability of the stigma.

The more unbiased representations of the LGBTQ community the media decides to project into our living rooms, the more chances there are for familiarity, and the sooner the stigma falls apart. It’s often shown that if someone who thinks homosexuality is immoral meets and spends time with a homosexual person, their stance changes. While it would be great to be able to foster these perspective shifting interactions on a large scale, at least representation in the media has shown itself to be a pretty powerful alternative.

In this way, your honesty about who you are can contribute to destabilizing the stigma that has oppressed you. Your small, brave act of revealing the truths you used to conceal can nudge a culture away from a stigma, and towards actual truth.

When truths are concealed, they become taboo.
When truths are revealed, they become normalized.

TRUTHS ABOUT WHAT WE FEEL

Can you imagine anything more complex than the continuous and unpredictable manner in which emotions arise within us?

It’s pretty rare that our mind isn’t navigating some sort of emotional balancing act, trying to hold onto the joy we found in our morning cuddles, without it being overpowered by the frustration of traffic, or having it derailed by some intruding sadness we suddenly feel after unintentionally remembering a deceased relative. Complex multitudes of emotion constantly arise and transform in our minds, yet when we’re asked how we’re doing, we almost always simplify it into some form of “Good, you?”

I’m not going to make a case for responding to every “How are you?” with complete, unrelenting assaults of honesty, but I do hope this section unlocks whatever gate that has kept your true emotional state locked out of your interactions. Keeping your emotions hidden robs those you interact with of the option of being sensitive to your feelings. If they knew you were sad, they might offer a kind gesture. If they knew you needed a break from socializing, they might not continue to tear away at your sanity with their stories.

There’s value in sharing what you’re feeling. There’s value in open communication.
There’s danger in hiding what you’re feeling. There’s danger in filtered conversations.

There are moments in our interactions when an internal feeling is so tangibly tired of being contained that it grows desperate enough to rattle it’s way through our filter. Have you ever had an angry simmer of annoyance, when not relieved of it’s source, boil over into a biting “WOULD YOU JUST SHUT UP?” This is one of those moments when an internal truth (you need some alone time), became so powerfully enraged that it punched it’s way out of your head, and into reality. When emotions boil over, it’s usually because we didn’t pay attention to the simmer.

Let’s try something. Let’s follow an emotional simmer down two hypothetical paths:

PATH 1

After a relatively sleepless night, you pull yourself away from from the sanctuary of bed, kiss your partner goodbye, and head to work. As soon as you arrive, you’re met with complications. Maybe a nasty email from a client. Maybe you didn’t have time for a lunch break. Maybe on top of all of this, Jenny got the promotion you were after. Fucking Jenny.

As you leave work, noticing the angry bubble of frustration in your mind, you spend your drive from work thanking time for finally passing so you can enjoy some peace and quiet at home.

You’ve made it through the day from hell. As you pull into your driveway, Fucking Jenny is almost unnoticably dissolving from your mind. You open your front door, and as soon as the tip of your shoe crosses through the door frame, your lovely partner starts telling you about their day. This is a human who you absolutely adore. A person who you share “everything” with. Yet, today their normally soothing voice seems just ever-so-slightly irritating as it interrupts the peaceful retreat you were longing for. No big deal, you let them talk.

As your partner launches into the second chapter of their monologue, you just barely notice a whisper of frustration arise in you. Faint and unclear like music from another room.

It would be rude to cut them off, and they’ll be done soon anyways. Then you can finally relax.

They continue, and that frustration starts to simmer. The bubbles are tiny, but your awareness of them sharpens.

Oh, you’ve heard this story of his before, it’s quick.

The frustration, now softened by the promise of imminent relief, seems distant again.

OH. This is the long version.

Newly emboldened, the frustration starts to taste more like annoyance. What started as a directionless upset, starts to take the shape of spear, with it’s jagged point aiming right at your partner. That person you so adore.

OH. This is the REALLY LONG version.

An image of Fucking Jenny and all of her promotioned glory flashes in your mind.

There’s no way this story isn’t almost finished.

The spear of annoyance you’re holding in your mind starts to tremble. Then shake. Then it lunges right at your partner. The person you so adore.

“WOULD YOU JUST SHUT UP FOR A SEC!?”

Whoops.

PATH 2

After a relatively sleepless night, you pull yourself away from from the sanctuary of bed, kiss your partner goodbye, and head to work. As soon as you arrive, you’re met with complications. Maybe a nasty email from a client. Maybe you didn’t have time for a lunch break. Maybe on top of all of this, Jenny got the promotion you were after. Fucking Jenny.

As you leave work, noticing the angry bubble of frustration in your mind, you send a text to your partner at home. Something along the lines of:

“Hey love. I’m honestly pretty frustrated after the day I’ve had and have been looking forward to some quiet time at home. I’m excited to hear about your day but would you mind if I just take a bath and read when I get there?”

You spend your drive from work thanking time for finally passing so you can enjoy some peace and quiet at home.

You’ve made it through the day from hell. As you pull into your driveway, Fucking Jenny is almost unnoticably dissolving from your mind. You open your front door to see your partner welcoming you in for a hug. He lets you know that he drew you a bath, pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket and reveals to you that he, literally, drew you a bath (a joke he couldn’t help). Then he laughs to himself as he says “really though, your bath is ready. Enjoy!”

You say your thanks, head upstairs, and let whatever frustration you were feeling melt into relaxation. After a bit, you come back downstairs and have a relaxing night with that person you so adore.

This is why open communication is so important. Leave the lid on a simmering pot and it might boil over into your interactions. This burns the people we love and in turn, ourselves.

MORE THOUGHTS ON SHARING EMOTIONS

One of the perks of being a self-acknowledged mediocre writer is the freedom it gives me to say things like this: Below are some thoughts I’ve deemed important to include but couldn’t manage to effortlessly weave into other sections of this article.

ADDRESS EMOTIONS WITHOUT ACTING ON THEM

The arising of anger in you doesn’t need to transform you into an angry person.

When feeling frustration, calmly tell your partner:
“Hey love, I’m feeling pretty frustrated and I think I just need to relax for a few minutes before we continue talking. I love you and want to make sure I don’t take anything out on you. Is that alright?”

When feeling socially drained, tell your friend:
“Hey, I’m super excited to see you but I’m honestly just socially drained and need some alone time. Can we hang tomorrow so I can give you my full attention?”

This honesty about what you’re feeling shares the truth, and the kindness of your intention. It shows that you’re struggling with something, but that you still want the best for whoever it is you’re interacting with.

DESTIGMATIZE YOUR EMOTIONS

The next time you feel sadness, try not to think “man, I must be broken.” Instead view your sadness for what it is, a natural, biological response to something you experienced. It doesn’t require your judgment, it just is. Any emotion that arises within you is completely natural, and something that every human has felt.

GRIEF? I’ve felt it.
ANGER? Felt it.
LUST? Yup.
GUILT? Been there.
ANXIETY? Yep.

When we feel shameful of our emotions, it points to the truth that almost every emotion carries a stigma with it. This is largely what compels us to keep them hidden. Anxiety doesn’t mean you’re helpless, it just means you’re human. Lust doesn’t make you evil, it just means that you evolved in the same way the rest of us did.

When we begin to grasp the fact that it’s merely a stigma about the emotion we’re feeling that compels us to filter it out of our interactions, we might begin to feel the importance of sharing them. If being honest about our emotions can help diminish those oppressive stigmas, the ones that cause most parents, friends, kids, partners, and strangers to lie about (or at least hide) their emotions, that alone seems to make honesty worthwhile. Like I mentioned in the previous section, when truths are concealed, they become taboo. When truths are revealed, they become normalized.

Sharing your emotions openly destabilizes their stigmas, which helps others feel more freedom to share their own.

IF YOU DON’T SHARE, THEY CAN’T CARE

Your life will become easier if the people you’re interacting with no longer have to guess at what you’re feeling.

If you don’t tell your friend that you’re feeling ashamed of yourself for …. whatever, they can’t console you or help you through it.

If you don’t tell you’re partner that you’re feeling socially anxious about the dinner party you’re about to have, they can’t help you out by taking the reigns of the conversations that will litter the evening.

If you don’t let your mom know that you really miss talking to her now that you left home, she might continue to keep her distance to make sure she isn’t too overbearing.

By hiding your emotions from those who love about you,
you’re limiting their ability to act on that love.

NOTICE YOUR LACK OF CONTROL

The things you feel inside are undeniably there, arising and falling away without your will. The last time you broke a mug, at what point did you choose to feel frustration? Did you thumb through an emotional catalog to select an appropriate mental state in that moment, or did frustration blast into your perception like a gust of wind?

Honestly, this particular tip seemed to evolve into something much longer than I intended it to be so I’ll be digging into this a bit more and writing another blog post for this topic soon. In it I’ll include a few book suggestions, and some thoughts on why we tend to latch onto negative emotions instead of letting them pass as quickly as they arose.

DO NO HARM

From here on out, please mentally include the caveat of “As long as you aren’t causing harm” with anything I write. I firmly believe in sparing other living beings from harm, both mentally and physically (and of course, I’m nowhere close to perfect on this front). When you hear me say “be honest,” please always include this prerequisite.

“Be honest” loses its value if you’re walking around telling people that you think they suck. If you think that a policy of honesty frees you to insult, I’d have to say that you should also work on forming kinder opinions of others by looking inward to clear out whatever cobwebs of conditioning and stigma have led you to think so aggressively.

Don’t forget to include yourself in this “do no harm” ideology. Don’t harm yourself by repressing who you are or what you feel, and don’t harm yourself by nurturing unkind thoughts towards others. Hate is a heavy burden to carry.

FREE YOURSELF FROM THE BURDEN OF DECEPTION

The sheer tension of being human is rough. We’ve all got a lot going on inside. Every single businessman, little league coach, single dad, kindergartner, and passerby has a rich, confusing, and aggressively complex emotional landscape that they spend their days unwillingly exploring. Some days they find themselves relaxing in the gentle sun of contentment, and other days crawling through the wet sand of depression.

Each of our lives is made into a riddle by the absurdity of our feelings.
We shouldn’t add to that by pretending we need to mask it.

Life is complicated enough, and taking off whatever costume of excellence you’ve disguised yourself with can feel fucking great. When we begin to open up about the truths of who we are and what we feel, we might begin to realize how much effort we’ve spent concealing them. When you talk about these truths openly, you free yourself from the burden of deception and welcome in a new way of interacting with the world.

You are who you are, and so is everyone else.

You feel what you feel, and so does everyone else.

Thanks for reading!

*Also, disclaimer:
I’m not a professional. I’ve never formally studied psychology, or whatever else might lend me any sort of credibility here. I just enjoy reading about, writing about, and meditating on the human experience and the things that unify us. Mainly, our seemingly universal goal of finding some sort of enjoyment in life.

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The more open and honest we all are about the experience of being human (and all of the weirdness that comes with it), the more we might realize that our experience isn’t as much of an outlier as we tend to think.

Everyone goes through hard things,
everyone has weird thoughts,
everyone farts,
and everyone hides it.

The more we acknowledge those deep similarities we all share, the thinner those imaginary walls of division become.

We’re all woven together, we just hide the threads that connect us.

The post Jessy & Perry appeared first on Ben Sasso.

Fun Fact about Art:
All of those rules you read aren’t really rules.
At their best, they’re tips. At their worst, restraints.
You’re allowed to do it however you want.
Art isn’t a path, it’s an open field.
Wander.
_

Shot on a Fuji Klasse with Ilford Delta, Portra, & Cinestill.
Scanned by the ever-friendly Indie Film Lab.

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Cannabis has helped me become a more creative, emotionally open, and appreciative human.

I’ve always been weary of sharing that I’m a cannabis user on social media, but that’s just me giving into a stigma that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Society uses a broad stroke to paint those who partake as lazy, stupid, criminal, binge-eating stoners.

After writing a few unsatisfying conclusions to this article, I figured that I might as well take a hit and let High-Ben write it for me:

 

“Stigma’s are the enemy of progression. If one fills your head, there won’t be room for truth.

Stigma’s sneak into your mind every time you make a decision without doing your own research, so please don’t let me or anyone else make up your mind for you.
Do your own research.
Make your own decision.
Be safe. Be smart. Have fun.”
High-Ben

Feel free to share, and feel free to ask questions over on Instagram or Facebook.

I’m an open book.

The post CANNABIS & HOW IT’S CHANGED ME appeared first on Ben Sasso.

THOUGHTS ON HOW I CREATE

1. A friendly idea knocks at my door, and asks me to follow along as it takes me where it wants to go. I follow.

2. Desperate to create, but without any guiding ideas, I open my door and blindly stumble forward hoping to arrive to where an idea might have led me.

(Option 1 always leads to fulfilling work. Option 2 only does 50% of the time, and sucks.)

This is why experiencing things is so important as an artist. Every time you soak in whatever it is that inspires you, you’re filling up a tank that gives life to the ideas that might knock on your door.

Read that book.
Go to that museum.
Have that conversation.
Study that painter.
Buy that photo book.
Question that belief.
Watch that movie.
Analyze those lyrics.
Stare at that river.
Take that trip.
Do that thing.

If you want great work to come out, put great work in.

The post Stare at that river. appeared first on Ben Sasso.

3 billion years ago a living cell was born into a quiet world that it’s descendants would eventually fill.

We’re a hell of a family.

The post Family appeared first on Ben Sasso.

The universe has existed for 14 billion years.
Humans have existed for 200K years.
You’ll only exist for about 80 years.
Let whatever is in you, out.
Be kind. Get weird.

The post Ranga appeared first on Ben Sasso.

Edited with my Heck Yeah Presets!

The post Jeana : Balance appeared first on Ben Sasso.

The things we worry about are so small it’s silly. If you think Instagram likes matter much, you’re probably wrong. Might as well just create whatever you want and share it so the rest of us can enjoy something unique.

Edited with my Heck Yeah Presets!

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