Expectations

who’s controlling your emotions?

/ courtneykay & Melissa / 1 Comment

You have most likely heard advice that it’s not a good idea to let people control our emotions.

“But I can’t help how I feel. He/she just makes me so mad/upset/frustrated.”

But here’s the thing. We CAN control how we feel by not allowing someone to be the main reason we are happy or sad. Sure, situations happen that can make us feel a certain way, but if we allow what other people say about us or how they treat us influence us too much, it just isn’t very healthy for us and those relationships will suffer. Whether friends or dating, we have to be careful not to rely too much on other people to make us feel valuable.

Here’s how I look at it…

If you let it ruin your day because someone didn’t snap you or text you back right away or maybe they waved at you differently or seemed distracted talking to you, you gotta check yourself. I’ll be the first to tell you that I struggle with this and have gotten so upset if I did not get the response I expected from someone I was close to…or thought I was close to. But is it really such a big deal or was I holding people to unrealistic standards or expecting them to make me feel good about myself when that’s not anyone’s job to do that? Or maybe I misunderstood and we just weren’t as close as I thought we were? Whatever the reason I have to be careful not to allow it to influence me so much that it completely changes my mood and tempts me to do or say stuff I’ll regret.

I have put myself through this more times than I should have. I have allowed things like getting no text back or someone ditching plans completely ruin my mood for the day. And I’m not excusing that it’s okay for you to let people consistently be rude, lie or ignore you, but I realized that I’m not going to let rejection paralyze me anymore. I’ve felt so upset or angry over what someone said or didn’t say to me to the point of it having a negative effect on my schoolwork, sports and other relationships. It’s a slippery slope that many people fall into without realizing it. Once you let the hurt someone causes to overwhelm you, it will affect other things that will keep affecting other things and so on. It’s easy to blame the actual situations for making you feel so bad but really, it comes down to this: why do you give so much power over your happiness to another person?

So I am here to offer some help, but I can’t say I have mastered this myself. I’m still trying not to overthink everything and put unrealistic expectations on situations or myself but I have done a few things that help….

1. Take a break.  Give yourself some space. Put your phone down for a few days (like seriously put it down, don’t pick it up. When I have done this in the past sometimes I have given to my mom and she doesn’t give it to me until the day we agreed on lol!). If you don’t get rid of your phone totally, at least take a break from SnapChat or Twitter or whatever triggers you when you see something that puts you in your bag or makes you want to punch a wall.

Will it feel so weird? Yes.

Will it be so hard? Heck ya, but I can promise you after a few days it’s so refreshing and you realize that you feel a lot more peaceful not relying on Snaps and seeing who liked your tweets to feel good about yourself.

2. Get to know and enjoy being by yourself. I know this may sound weird, but do things alone that you never have time to do. Usually when you do things by yourself, there’s not the usual noise that distracts you from processing your thoughts. I like to paint. You can just splatter all your emotions on a canvas, even though it might not turn out how you want it, it’s unique and beautiful, which is a reminder of who God created us to be. Or take a bath. There is nothing taking a bubble bath can’t solve! Play music. Write in a journal. Go for a run. Start a blog…haha.

3. Talk to someone you trust who is older and wiser. We tend to forget our parents usually have been through a lot of what we are going through. Tell your mom or dad what you are struggling with and be open to their advice on how to get over it. They will want to help and be there for you. Chances are they have already noticed by your behavior if you have allowed someone else to control your happiness so it won’t come as a surprise to them!

4. You need to know your weaknesses and what triggers you to get so upset. If you feel misunderstood, write it down. If someone hurt you, write it down. If you feel ditched, write it down. If you feel like you always give and the other person just takes, write it down. I’ve written down the specific things that hurt me, cried a little or a lot (which actually feels good when you are done) and prayed about it. Then I crumple up the paper and throw it away. Most people don’t realize but doing a physical act like that is actually very powerful and can lift a lot of weight off of you.

5. If you feel like someone is controlling your emotions even if they don’t realize it, tell that person how you feel about him or her. Be honest. Sometimes hiding the way you feel makes the feelings stronger instead of just dealing with them. I have started to try to be more vulnerable and instead of saying “nothing is wrong” or ignoring something that bothers me, I try to communicate with the other person. You can’t force them to communicate back but at least you know you tried so you can move on. And if someone truly wants you as a friend or wants to be with you in a relationship, they will want you to grow and not want to play games with your emotions. Maybe you’ve just come across as clingy or needy to someone and once you realize that you can fix it in the future by communicating honestly.

6. This one is tough. It’s important to realize that if the relationship isn’t helping you grow or it’s very one-sided, you may have to adjust your boundaries. It is just like weeds in a garden, you wouldn’t just let the weeds continue to grow and grow until they take over your whole garden and eventually ruin the pretty flowers. No, you would weed your garden in order to let the seeds grow into the beautiful flowers they were planted to be. The same goes with relationships. Sometimes we have to remove people for a season so we or they can grow. Maybe it’s temporary and sometimes it’s permanent. It depends on how much you or they are willing to grow, change and work towards making things better. If you have an unhealthy relationship with someone that overwhelms your thought life, it can carry over into everything else in your life. Just as I mentioned in the beginning, when I relied on other people to make me happy all the time my self-esteem, schoolwork and even how I played field hockey suffered A LOT because I was so distracted with how bad I was feeling and I just didn’t know how to make it stop. Nobody can make you happy 24/7 so then you blame them because they can’t meet your expectations. I hate that I have done that and I pray I never do it again.

You can’t completely stop caring about how other people treat you, that’s not what I am saying. It’s totally okay to feel angry and hurt and also happy and content with people in your life because that’s reality. What I am saying is to check all of your relationships and  if you notice any type of pattern with that person having a big impact on your overall day-to-day feelings (good or bad) then maybe it’s time to take a step back. If we do this we can deal with arguments, break ups and rejections in a reasonable way without causing more damage or saying and doing things we regret. And hey, we can do this together because I am really still learning this myself!

That’s all I got. Love y’all! xoxo

 

Expectations vs. Lies We Tell Ourselves

/ courtneykay & Melissa

Expectations…

a term defined as “believing that something is going to happen or believing that something should be a certain way,” or in other words, high hopes that the outcome of a certain situation will be what we want it to be.

I want to be real for a minute. In the past, I personally have really struggled with allowing myself to be in certain situations that put too much pressure on myself while having the expectation to do the right thing. If you still don’t quite follow here is an example: I have struggled with depression and very bad anxiety in my past. Now not that it was the main reason, but there were certain people and things I participated in that triggered it. My expectation was that I could be around that type of atmosphere and those people, but not end up feeling depressed and lost. That was not a very realistic expectation for me personally.

Now what determines a “realistic expectation”? It all depends on how much you personally struggle with whatever temptation you are dealing with. Everyone has different triggers. So say if hanging out with a certain girl makes you feel very insecure and upset to the point you start feeling like doing things you know aren’t good, are you going to stick around? I hope not! You can’t keep lying to yourself believing this friendship doesn’t affect you in a negative way. Or, if you like a manipulating guy who only likes you back if you want to do sexual stuff, you may want to reconsider how serious you want that relationship to be and don’t allow yourself the pressure of being put in situations time and time again where your expectations can’t be met. Stop lying to yourself it will get better on its own.

It is a very tough process of giving up things we never thought we would have to, but it is an important first step of healing and meeting our expectations (which I hope are high!). One of my struggles has been picking up on other people’s pain and having an unrealistic expectation that I can “fix” them because I know they are hurting themselves with their destructive behavior. But I have realized that I can’t control them and in the process of trying to help them, I have gotten hurt because I wasn’t aware I was giving them the power to negatively affect my own choices. Only they have the power to change, I can’t do it for them. This situation has gotten me in trouble multiple times, because instead of me influencing them, they influenced me and it put me in some tough decision-making positions. I believed things that were not true and it cost me. I’ve learned how to set up and keep boundaries to make sure I meet my own expectations of keeping out negative influences and that has meant cutting off people months ago that I know were not helping me meet my personal expectations.

Although some may call me selfish, I’ve decided my spiritual, physical and emotional health has to be my first priority. Think of it like this, how will we be able to save a drowning person if we can’t swim? It is not only hurting the other person, but you are going down with them. I hope that as I grow I can also help others who are settling for lies and not meeting their expectations. I’m in a much better place lately including having done all the things I suggested like cutting off toxic people and things that I know will trip me up. I’m not going to lie, I’ve made mistakes in my past and I’m still dealing with regret, loss and pain but I have faith in God that’s going to get better.

It can be very hard to walk away from negative situations that have felt comfortable for so long, but if you want to match your reality with your expectations you have to do hard things. I’ve learned it’s definitely worth it.