My emotions are important components of my life. They determine my actions and beliefs. I act depending on what I feel towards a certain stimulus. Therefore, I need to understand how my emotions work to understand how I function in everyday life.
There are several unpleasant emotions that I usually feel. I most commonly feel sadness because of the challenges that I have to face. There are a lot of stress of having to do a lot of school works. My teachers often give me a lot of readings, and each has more than ten pages. There is also paper works to be done. My professor in theology even requires me to make a daily prayer after reading a bible chapter.
I also feel stress when someone is pressuring me to be better at society. I understand that the Philippines is suffering from severe poverty so they tend to quilt trip anyone who remains idle, and does not contribute to society. However, that just adds more pressure to me. Going otherwise, would give me a sense of guilt for becoming idle.
I had to overcome the negativity so I had to practice enduring it. As time goes by, I have become better at becoming more unfeeling as a coping mechanism towards difficult situations.
My idea may have been inspired from Buddhism. One of the lessons that I learned is that desire is the root of suffering. Craving for things like material possessions and pleasures that can cause people to feel dissatisfied when these needs are not met. Thus, refraining for these desires can lead to unhappiness
As a result, I have been applying this idea to my everyday life whether consciously or not. If I encounter, an undesirable situation, I try to get rid of any related desires, move on. For instance, If I had gotten a bad score, I just refrain from desiring from having a higher score and move as a coping mechanism.
Unfortunately, I have been using this idea excessively. I started to refrain from desiring towards situation I should not be doing. For instance, whenever I am in a stressed situation with my school works, I try to become more unfeeling, and thus become less motivated to accomplish them.
This behavior helps me to endure the stress, but at a cost of becoming more disinterest in life. My body gradually learns to become more unfeeling, and would result in more difficulty in motivating myself. Since I developed a habit of shutting down negative emotions, I would not be able to utilize their advantages. For example, sadness helps me to remember any bad situations that I encounter, but I become more forgetful as I become less sad towards situations. Being unfeeling refrains me from not able to feel the important events.
In other words, the lack of emotions makes me less motivated. I have difficulty making progress with my projects because I am often not in the mood. The hobbies that I used to do before no longer interest. Whenever I try to do those hobbies again, I hesitated because I feel they are like chores now.
Throughout my life, I have been practicing myself to become more apathetic, and I used to call it a “coping mechanism”. However, I begin to realize that it may not be the right word. If it truly was coping, it would help me effective face my challenges. Instead, it has made my situation worse.
Analyzing emotions is important in life. I use it to diagnose my problem, and understand its roots. Currently, I am encountering a problem of apathy. This is cause by wanting to remain unfeeling in order to endure the stress I am feeling. There is still uncertainty whether I will be able to solve this problem or not, but at least trying to understand my problem would help me become one step closer.
The Myself Journal 