My emotions are valid*
*valid does not mean healthy, or good, or to be privileged above common sense and kindness
A distinction for anyone who is young and hasnât figured this out yet:
You are allowed to have whatever emotions you want. No one can control your emotions. Emotions are healthy responses to things.
You are not allowed to have behaviors that are harmful just because you have certain emotions. Your behaviors are what you can control, and they are far easier to control than your emotions.
You can be jealous about someone or their talents until you turn green, but it is harmful to yourself and to that person if you try to sabotage them because of it. You can be so angry you can literally feel your temperature rise, but this does not give you permission to rage at others.
Your emotions are valid. They are always valid. You are a person of value. However, you behaviors are not always justified just because of those emotions. You may not be able to control you emotions, but you can certainly control your behaviors.
and this one, i beg you to learn before you become right-wing fundamentalists: just because something gives you revulsion feelings does not mean itâs morally wrong.
you may be sex-repulsed; that doesnât mean sex is dirty and bad. maybe you were bullied by teenage girls; that doesnât mean teenage girls are a force of evil. perhaps a villain in a work of fiction reminds you of someone who abused you; that doesnât mean people who enjoy that character or that fiction are abusive. your feelings about those things are absolutely valid, and itâs not right for people to tell you you shouldnât feel that way. but itâs also not right for you to act out against others based on those feelings.
that instinct to generalize served our species well when we were hunter-gatherers living in small bands in a hostile wilderness. you nibble a delicious-looking berry, you throw up, you know that berry is BAD and you make the yuck face whenever you see it so the other hominids know itâs a bad one. but in the modern world, in the information age, there are so many complex things you might encounter, youâre going to have badfeels about a lot of things that arenât actually across-the-board bad.
you need to not be ruled by your hominid yuckberry instinct. thatâs where bigotry comes from.
You need to not be ruled by your hominid yuckberry instinct. Thatâs where bigotry comes from.
This is a beautifully succinct summary. Thank you very much.
In general, I wish people understood that just because their emotions are valid doesnât mean you should always act on them. It doesnât mean you shouldnât step back and try to understand where theyâre coming from and why, and act based on that, rather than just pure unfiltered emotion.
I feel like there are a lot of SJ people Iâve known both online and offline who donât understand this. Your emotions being valid doesnât mean you shouldnât work through them.
THISSSS
