FOR MORE GREAT STORIES, VISIT COSMO.IN AUGUST 2019 COSMOPOLITAN 99MYTH NO.1
‘DISTRACT
YOURSELF,
SQUASH THAT
NEGATIVITY!
BE POSITIVE’
Let’s take a trip down memory lane.
As children, every time we hurt
ourselves, dropped our ice cream or
were upset, we were told, ‘Honey,
don’t cry, be brave, it’s going to be
okay, here’s a lollipop’. Or, some of
us were just left to cry because our
parents thought that ‘crying it out’
would make us resilient. Ever since
we can remember, the subliminal
messages we’ve been receiving
from our unsuspecting elders have
been ‘shut down, distract yourself...
or deal with it!’
When a child hears ‘stop crying,
be brave, be strong’ his or her
premature brain understands it
to mean ‘suppress your emotions,
stop feeling, and weakness is
substandard’. And when a child
is given a lollipop, he or she
understands that the only solution
to a problem is ‘distracting yourself
with something unhealthy’.
The final nail in the coffin is
the good old ‘wail on’ which is
understood by the child as ‘cry’
because emotions are a hopeless
abyss to lose yourself in.
It’s no wonder then that none of
us know what the heck to do with
our feelings and most of us end up
with unhealthy coping mechanisms
like emotional repression, over-
expression, and distraction.
DO THIS: Allowing yourself to feel
and express how you feel is super
important. Example: ‘I know you’re
upset.’ Hold the child (AKA you),
let him or her feel and then help
explain why they’re feeling what
they are feeling.“Ah,magic! If only life were
this simple,” says Briar.
“Emotions and feelings are
an integral part of human
existence and reality; to
experience both ‘good’ and
‘bad’ feelings, is a human
being’s natural state and birth
right,” says Briar.
Emotional pain is felt very
similarly to physical pain.
Repressing your emotions
after a life-changing or difficult
event is the equivalent of
ignoring a broken bone after
an accident and hoping it will
go away without any care.
Telling yourself that you’re
not experiencing sadness by
thinking positively, when you
are sad, is like telling yourfestering wound to heal with
positive thoughts, not meds.
DO THIS: Uncomfortable
feelings are an essential part of
human reality and experience.
Positive thinking starts
with working through your
uncomfortable emotions in a
healthy way. Accepting them,
feeling them, talking through
them with someone, perhaps
a friend (who doesn’t blindly
tout the positive thinking
manifesto) or a therapist, and
finally allowing them to be
released from deep within your
mind and body. Sometimes,
this process takes a few tries
to feel free, depending on
how rough the personal or
professional circumstance was.MYTH NO. 2
‘TELL YOUR MIND TO
HEAL. IT WILL. BE
POSITIVE!’
Ph
oto
gra
ph
:^ A
BH
AY
SI
NG
H