I often hear that there are "bad" and "good" emotions. Many people believe that being angry is not allowed, that being afraid is harmful, that being sad is bad, and so on. Sometimes I meet people who will not let themselves show emotions that they, or those around them, consider "bad". Sadly, all of this is imposed by social norms: from early childhood a child hears phrases such as "Don't cry so loudly, what will people say" and the like. Besides forbidding expression, remarks like these also impose a feeling of shame.
Every emotion needs to be lived through. For instance, allow yourself to be sad if that is what you need at this moment in time. All our emotions are there for a reason. What matters here is learning to understand what you are feeling at a particular moment, or which emotion you are experiencing. Emotions signal to a person whether they feel comfortable or uncomfortable in the situation they are going through at this point in their life. So even on this basis alone one can say that a person needs the whole emotional spectrum in order to live a full life.
Emotions are as natural as any other function of the body. A person runs into certain problems if their stomach hurts or their breathing is laboured. In just the same way, a person feels bad after suppressing emotions inside. Those emotions go on living inside the body.
By allowing ourselves to feel different emotions, we become more alive. Emotions cannot be controlled, but we can choose what to do once an emotion has arisen: how to express it and how to convey it to another person safely, without violating boundaries. That is more a matter of ways of communicating.
