The Choice is Yours...

I spent 7 hours today on a psychiatric ward doing clinic and while it was exhausting both mentally and emotionally, I was priviledged enough to get to sit in on a group therapy session. The patients' issues ranged from alcoholism to bipolar to depression to suicide attempts and they each brought their own issues into the room with them. But as I sat at the back of the room and listened to what the conversation was about, I gained some wisdom that I think everyone could benefit from.
The counselor was talking about anger and how anger is really a secondary emotion. What she meant by that, is when someone "makes" us angry.. they really aren't "making" us angry. We choose to respond that way and it usually stems from a deeper emotion such as embarrassment or frustration or hurt. Something that person has said or done has brought about some sort of emotion and that emotion has led to anger. She also said that anger just IS. It isn't bad or good. It just is. But how we respond with that anger is the problem. Some people cut themselves. Some people drink or do drugs. Some people lash out at other people. Most of our choices have something to do with a deeper emotion. And the fact is we may have every right to feel that emotion. That emotion may be neither good or bad, but we DO choose in how we respond. Nobody can make us feel something. Nobody can make us feel sad or happy unless WE LET THEM. We give our power away to people. That is our choice to do that. But we have the freedom to feel or do as we want. We need to start taking responsibilities for our actions and for our emotions. We have control over them even though we say we can't control our feelings or actions sometimes. That is a lie that we have all bought into. We make good choices and bad choices in our lifetimes but the main point is the choice is ours..
I believe that if people would start taking ownership of their feelings and of their choices, we would see less chaos on people's lives.
I know this blog was super deep and that is not really characteristic of me, but I wanted to share this