Is the fear of being labelled preventing you from seeking help? Being stigmatised does not just come from others: it comes from within each one of us.
Our emotional state is what we should aim to desire. The stigmas which is like a 'monster' that we tend to shake off every time it crops up in our mind are of three distinct types - hurt, anger and pride. I will be referring to them as the 'trio damaging connections'.
The trio damaging connections
You see, the exceptional connection between hurt, anger and pride shows how these damaging trio works aggressively against our emotional state and suppresses our development in life. Let us look at ourselves, the body, I say has two layers - inner self and outer self. Our outer self is what others see so this is our physical self. The inner self is the most delicate and sensitive part of our body. This I classify as our 'mind'. Unlike our outer self that we can protect with clothing's such as jackets, coats, we cannot protect or cover our inner self and as such it is subjected to harm from others. These harm could be in the form of humiliation, being ridiculed with diminishing words, being ignored and even devalued.
Hurt
We are never okay when we pretend that hurt doesn’t hurt. Our emotions play a huge part in our mental health. We sometimes find it hard to identify this within ourselves. We should acknowledge and deal with the situation when we get hurt, because it does not just disappear, no matter how much we try to forget about it or bury our heads in the sand pretending that it is okay, or that we are fine.
Failing to process our hurt in a healthy way becomes mismanaged, depending on how hurt the initial hurt is. When we deny and pretend to continue to move on without addressing the issues that have caused us so much hurt, it then begins to create an unhealthy layer of denial and anger within us, this anger then gradually turns into bitterness and stands in the way of our emotional state. These feeling can be unfamiliar and familiar denials and we gradually begin to tell ourselves, I can deal with this, things are okay, I will deal with the situation in my own way, and so on.
Anger
Anger is the reaction we produce when we are hurt, this helps us distance ourselves somehow from the pain. We tend to live in anger when we are running from the reality of being hurt. Let’s take an example, some of us in the past had confided in a friend or family member about starting a business or going for a particular job, but got a negative response, which then creates in our inner mind, either knowingly or unknowingly, hurt and angry. Our emotions then start to run wild, and we begin to ask ourselves the question: Am I good enough? This is where our inner body mechanism kicks in, and the hurt becomes anger. You see, anger is the perfect protection because it takes the power away from the one who upsets us in the first place and places the narrative about hurt within our own sphere of control.
Pride
Pride on the other hand, encourages us to deny that we are being hurt because pride believes that hurt is only being experienced by someone who is weak, and this is the last thing we ever want to be. We might even deny being angry because pride makes us believe that being angry is losing control. So, we pretend to smile and say, “I’m doing great” or “I don’t care” or “It doesn’t really matter,” when in fact we aren’t doing great, we do care, and it does really matter. In so doing, we close ourselves off from the possibility of our emotional state because our pride refuses to acknowledge that we are not okay. Pride is a hard-hitting level to access but, be assured that as we start to experience our restorative journey, the wall of pride begins to break down, and then an extraordinary recovery starts to flow in our inner self.
Reflection
For a moment, please let us pause and reflect. Consider the trio damaging connections above —hurt, anger, and pride— then ask yourself these vital questions: “Have I been honest with myself and others about the hurt I have experienced?”. Do others accuse me of being angry? If so, is there some unprocessed hurt beneath the anger? Do you often feel the need to appear to have it all together? Do you smile and say you’re okay when deep down you know you’re not? Don’t let us be too hard on ourselves, our emotional state is the ability to take care of our well-being and for each one of us to realise our own abilities, cope with the normal stress of life, work productively and fruitfully and then being able to contribute to our community and all those around us.
We should always remember - 'God created human beings to be loved and valued. We're born with a fundamental need which is to be loved as is, with no strings attached. We are desperate for it and at times will do anything to try to find that kind of acceptance and care'.
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