EMOTIONAL WELLNESS Becoming aware of your emotions means more than feeling frightened of some things, and feeling angry at others. It means becoming aware of everything that you are feeling. Until you do, there will always be parts of yourself that you don’t know about. Some of them are angry. If you don’t know about them, you will get angry sometimes, whether you want to or not. Some parts of you are frightened. If you don’t know about those parts, you will get frightened sometimes, whether you want to or not. The parts of yourself that you don’t know about are the parts that surprise you. Have your ever decided to make up after an argument, but when you see your friend you start to argue again? You thought you were going to make up, but a part of you was still angry. That part had another idea. It surprised you because you didn’t know about it. Have you ever met someone that you instantly liked, or instantly disliked? That is also what it feels like to have parts of yourself that you don’t know about. All of the parts of yourself have their own likes and dislikes. If you don’t know about them, you will suddenly find yourself liking or disliking what they do. Almost everyone has parts of themselves that they don’t know about. The strongest parts of yourself that you don’t know about are your obsessions, compulsions, and addictions. They are so strong that if you don’t know about them, they do whatever they like, no matter what you want. You feel as if you don’t have any choice. People who can’t stop drinking alcohol are like that. So are people who can’t stop using drugs. They are completely in the power of parts of themselves that they don’t even know about. The only way to get to know about the parts of yourself that you don’t know about is through your feelings. You have to get to know what you are feeling — everything that you are feeling. Each of the different parts of yourself has its own feelings. When you are aware of everything that you are feeling, you can recognise those parts right away. If the boy knew about the part of himself that hurt so much, he might not have chosen to be angry all the time, but he didn’t know about that part, so when it got angry, he got angry. It was almost always angry, and so he was almost always angry, too. Until you know the angry and frightened parts of yourself, they make the decisions for you. Once you get to know about a part of yourself, it doesn’t stop having its feelings and wanting to do the things that it wants to do, but it doesn’t surprise you any more. You don’t find yourself getting angry without noticing it, or being angry all the time, sometimes without knowing why. You can decide if you want to act as angry as the angry part of yourself, or as frightened as the frightened part of yourself. You get to choose.
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(C) Creating Resilient Educators
