There are no “Bad” Emotions, Just Powerful Ones
The other day, my daughter asked me if “hate” is a bad word. The short answer is no, because I do not believe that emotions are good or bad. The long answer is a bit more complicated. When emotions such as hate, jealousy, and anger get classified as bad and wrong, then you might try to stuff them down and avoid feeling them, or try to get rid of them like a hot potato, passing your unfelt emotions on to someone else. It takes a lot of energy to continually stuff powerful emotions down inside, and over time, all that stuck energy can turn into deep depression or other health issues. On the other hand, playing hot potato with powerful unowned emotions is a way to give your power away to someone else and can feed a volatile and violent dynamic into which you and that person disappear.
Emotions that we allow ourselves to feel carry messages for us to attend to which hold the potential to transform us. I looked up the word “hate” in the Merriam Webster dictionary and one definition describes it as “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.” Right there in the definition are three possible messages in the feeling of hate. If you are feeling hatred toward someone, examine what is going on in yourself before trying to bury the feeling or blindly act on that person. Are you afraid? Are you angry? Do you feel hurt? The answers to these questions require attendance. If you are afraid, what do you need to do to feel safe? If you are angry, what is it that has made you feel angry? If you are hurt, how can you attend to your wound?
If you don’t listen to your hatred, you might think that the disappearance of this person from this world would be all you need to feel better, but in reality, when you make your feelings about yourself and not about the person you feel hatred toward, their power over you disintegrates.
Years ago, I worked at a job with a person I absolutely hated and who rubbed me wrong in a particular way that made work feel unbearable. One day, it became clear to me that I needed to address this hatred in myself, because I felt miserable. I sat down and examined my feelings. I discovered a deep feeling of jealousy under the hatred. This person had been given a position at work that I felt more qualified for, and I felt such envy and anger toward her. I allowed that jealousy and anger to sink in and I let myself feel it. Soon, the jealousy moved over and made room for an even deeper feeling of sadness and stuckness. In reality, I hated my job because I wanted to do something much more satisfying with my life than work there, something I was more qualified for. Until that moment, it was easier to hate this person who I thought had what I wanted, who I believed held my power in her hands.
After that moment, I understood that I wanted something much bigger than her position, that job, and the life I was living at the time. I focused the energy that had previously been tangled up in the hatred and set about to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. This task kept me busy, and brought me to a new life that still fills me with satisfaction more than a decade later. I can’t imagine where I would be if I were stuck in the belief that hate is just a bad word.
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Wanting the Person Who Hurt You to Hurt As Much As You Do