Why Do We Apologize for Being Emotional?

Yesterday I heard someone say to a loved one 'I am sorry for being so emotional, I will be okay tomorrow.'
I wanted to say, 'So tomorrow you will not be a human being, but become some alien who has no feelings at all?'

We have learnt to hide our true emotions not only to others but more importantly to ourselves. When someone asks us how we are we will say that we are fine, ok or good which can mean just about anything. We also use the word 'stress' to cover a multitude of feelings which seems to have a common understanding with everyone; 'He is just a bit stressed at the moment.' But what emotions are involved with being stressful, fine, ok or good? How are you really feeling and why wouldn't you think someone else would be interested in the way you feel right now? After all, we all have the capability of feeling all of the same emotions.

It could be that we are in a habit of just using a certain number of words to describe how we feel - happy, sad, angry, calm etc. Maybe we need to increase our emotional vocabulary to help us describe how we are feeling. It would be incredibly useful for our children to learn an expanded emotional vocabulary list.

The emotional revolution requires us to accept that as human beings we are emotional. Our emotions help to drive our behaviour so therefore are important to us all. Being honest with ourselves is the first step towards earning how to acknowledge and accept our feelings.