Most of us grew up with an unspoken curriculum: certain feelings are acceptable, others are not. Happiness: good. Anger: bad. Confidence: good. Sadness: weakness. Calm: mature. Crying: too much.
By adulthood, most people have internalised a hierarchy of emotions, with 'positive' ones at the top and 'negative' ones treated as problems to manage, medicate, or push through.
What if none of your emotions are the enemy? What if they are all trying to help?
The purpose of discomfort
Anger tells you a boundary has been crossed. Sadness tells you something matters enough to grieve. Anxiety tells you something important feels uncertain. Shame tells you you have bumped up against a belief about who you should be.
None of these are fun. But every single one is informative. When you stop trying to make the feeling go away and start asking what it is trying to communicate, the entire relationship shifts.
Befriending your inner life
This is not about performing positivity about your pain. It is not about saying 'everything happens for a reason' when you are hurting. It is simpler than that.
It is the practice of noticing what you feel without immediately trying to change it. Sitting with discomfort for long enough to hear what it is saying. Treating your emotional responses as data, not defects.
Your emotions are not the enemy. They never were. They are the most honest part of you, the part that cannot be talked out of what it knows. The question is whether you are going to keep fighting them, or finally start listening.