A Basic Skill We Should Have Learned as Kids

Beyond the question of zooming in or out as a coping strategy, how do we deal with and regulate our emotions, whether those are grief, sorrow, or even fear? Do we ignore them, move on, embrace them, or fall prey to them?

It is a distinctive quirk of our minds that few of the emotions we carry in them are properly acknowledged, understood or truly felt.

We are taught how we should feel about roughly everything in life. Our cultural, religious, familial upbringings dictate a set of things that are “good” and “bad.” Our egos, our desires for survival, superiority, love, acceptance, etc., fill in the rest. We end up with a mental ecosystem of actions and reactions.

Typically, instead of exploring what information the other person might have that we don’t, we assume we know all we need to know to understand and explain things. Instead of working to manage our feelings constructively, we either try to hide them or let loose in ways that we later regret. Instead of exploring the identity issues that may be deepl