You are probably already well aware about all the existing techniques for making your life better and all the “gurus” that preach positive thinking. This positive thinking concept is taken for granted in most cases and people start to shut out any negative feeling and then they start to feel worse without understanding what they did wrong. Well, that’s the thing, this positive thinking should be genuine not forced and does not mean suppressing your feelings.
On the other hand, negative thinking doesn’t mean to become a pessimistic and only expect from the worst of life. It just means to accept that bad things happen, you might be feeling angry, upset or not in the mood to do anything and it’s ok. Just observe the feelings, let them flow through you, let go and carry on with your life. Life is about balance, about fully accepting yourself with all the good and the bad. This means to allow yourself to have bad feelings as it is better for your health rather than to suppress them. Positive thinking, when forced, might lead to burying a lot of dust deep down and hiding the truth from yourself.
Suppressing bad feelings, anger for instance, might lead to health problems and disease that will hit you when you less expect. That is why psychotherapists work with you on your hidden problems, past experiences that have upset you deeply but you haven’t dealt with them and you just locked them somewhere inside you. Most such behaviors have developed since childhood, maybe due to the desire to be accepted by other children at school, to be loved by your parents or to feel safe. Nevertheless, in those early stages of life, children are not able to perceive these patterns or to acknowledge the damages that repressed feelings could make over their adult life. Therefore, once they grow up and find themselves in hard or stressful situations and gain some experiences, they start realizing something is off, they feel something new and start looking for explanations and help outside, when they should be looking inside.
The real problem to be addressed here is that no parent teaches his child to embrace the light and darkness inside him and see all these parts as a whole. Denying negative feelings is like denying a part of yourself that will make your body say NO at some point and make you stop and asses everything in your life. It might start with a small pain in your stomach or headache and develop into serious health problems such as heart conditions, autoimmune diseases and other complications. Therefore, you should not be afraid to feel angry, annoyed or sad some times as long as you find the source of that feeling and understand why you feel like that.
It is vital for your wellbeing and happiness not to avoid uncomfortable experiences, feelings and circumstances from your life! Start facing the truth, accept yourself for who you really are and don’t try to see life through rose shades only! Life is more than just tones of black and white, bad or good, sad or happy, sweet or sour life is a cocktail full of flavors, colors and emotions. Enjoy all of it! That is the only way for you to find happiness and feel really fulfilled. Negative thinking is part of you as much as positive thinking, so find the balance between the two and don’t lean more to one or another.
In the end, if you find yourself in the need to heal, know that you need to confront the healing process on all fronts: body, mind and spirit, not only one of them! In order for you to recover from illness you need to work on all of the above as they are connected and represent you as a whole, so they can’t be treated separately!
